Block Download.com From Google Search Results
My story on Cnet's Download.com installer that the company added to many downloads on their website has sparked the interest of other websites and software developers.
Users who download software from download.com now download an installer first that comes bundled with adware offers.
This web installer then offers to download the program, be it portable or in form of a setup file, that the user wanted to download initially.
Users basically download an installer that downloads an installer to install the software they wanted to download.
Update: Direct downloads seem to be offered now for all download.com downloads as well on the site, but the most visible option on it is still the web installer.
I have spoken to some software developers who made the decision to pull their software from Download.com, or at least contacted Cnet to remove their application from the software repository.
I'd like to introduce a few options for those users to remove download.com results from the Google search engine.
Google Account
Google users who are logged in when they use the search engine can block up to 500 different domains in the account options. All they need to do is to open the following link to add or remove domains from their blocklist.
Blocked domains are displayed on the very same page. A search on Google removes all domain references. Google still displays ten results, which basically means that results from the second or third page are moved to the first page to fill up the slots.
Not all users want to be logged in to their Google account though when they search on the site.
Third Party Tools
Third party tools have the advantage that you do not need to be logged into your Google account to block domains in the search results. Their disadvantage is that the blocked domains are removed but not replaced with other results. This could in worst case mean that not a single result is displayed on a search results page.
Here are a few extensions and tools to block domains in the Google search engine:
- Personal Blocklist (by Google) - The Google Chrome extension adds a Block domain option next to each search result.
- Google Hit Hider by Domain (Search Filter / Block Sites) - A userscript for the Firefox web browser to block unwanted domain in the Google search results.
- Search Noise Reduction for Opera - A userscript for the Opera web browser. Works not only in Google but also Bing and Yandex.
You may have heard of other tools or extensions to block domains from the search results in Google. Please let me know about them in the comments.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.