codenaschen.de » November 2014 » Google Minus

I hate Experts-Exchange....

...and a big couple more of this useless crappy junk in Google search results. For some reason it looks like Google is doing all to prevent you from removing domains permanently from your search results. There was a relatively hidden feature on the Google website to do that in 2011, but it's discontinued some years ago. Some Firefox plugins existed, but all are removed. And so on...

The only way you can choose is to install Google Chrome, there exists a plugin....but I don't checked if it works. I use Palemoon, a Firefox fork, for a good reason, I don't want a user interface like chrome...

As some searching around with no result I found my own way:

Google has the feature to remove a domain on a search request by adding -site:domain.com to your request. But to do that with 50+ domains to get usable results is anoying and time consuming. The reason is to add a new search engine entry in your Firefox/Palemoon that does this for you. It's really simple. The search engine plugins are yust small XML files with the important informations. The Google one looks like this:

<!-- This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
   - License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
   - file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. -->

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Google</ShortName>
<Description>Google Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,AAABAAIAEBAAAAAAAAB9AQAAJgAAACAgAAAAAAAA8gIAAKMBAACJUE5HDQoaCgAAAA1JSERSAAAAEAAAABAIBgA
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<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="https://www.google.com/complete/search?client=palemoon&amp;q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://www.google.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="aq" value="t"/>
  <Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="palemoon-a" falseValue="palemoon"/>
  <MozParam name="channel" condition="purpose" purpose="contextmenu" value="rcs"/>
  <MozParam name="channel" condition="purpose" purpose="keyword" value="fflb"/>
  <MozParam name="channel" condition="purpose" purpose="homepage" value="np"/>
  <MozParam name="source" condition="purpose" purpose="homepage" value="hp"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>https://www.google.com/</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

You can recognize the URL that called on every search and the parameters added to the URL. For us, the parameter "q" is important. At the moment there are simple the searchterms puttet in. We want to add some extra stuff to the search terms.

i.E. I want to remove the domains
experts-exchange.com
softonic.com
gutefrage.net

so I add +-site:experts-exchange.com+-site:softonic.com+-site:gutefrage.net to every usage of {searchterms} .Put the file to the other search engine files in your firefox/browser/searchengines directory. Maybee the location can change but the XML format should be similar in all Firefox/Palemoon/wathever versions.

You can additionaly rename your new search plugin and add it to your search engines. My one names "Google Minus" and removes some other junk domains too. It looks like this:

<!-- This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
   - License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
   - file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. -->

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Google Minus</ShortName>
<Description>Google Minus</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,AAABAAIAEBAAAAAAAAB9AQAAJgAAACAgAAAAAAAA8gIAAKMBAACJUE5HDQoaCgAAAA1JSERSAAAAEAAAABIBgA
AAB/z/2EAAAFESURBVDjLpZNJSwNBEIXnt4lE4kHxovgT9BDwJHqPy0HEEOJBiAuCRg+KUdC4QS4KrpC4gCBGE3NQ48JsnZ6eZ3UOM6gjaePhQU93v6+qq2q0pqgeJj2S8EdJT1hr0OxB
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kHFJX+YlPxpVlbCx2mZ5DzPI04k4kUwHHdskU3pH76iftG8yWlkAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC</Image>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="https://www.google.com/complete/search?client=palemoon&amp;q={searchTerms}+-site:gutefrage.net+-site:experts-exchange.com+-site:cosmiq.de+-site:helpster.de+-site:finanzfrage.net+-site:softonic.com+-site:filehippo.com+-site:softonic.it+-site:soft32.com+-site:giga.de"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://www.google.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}+-site:gutefrage.net+-site:experts-exchange.com+-site:cosmiq.de+-site:helpster.de+-site:finanzfrage.net+-site:softonic.com+-site:filehippo.com+-site:softonic.it+-site:soft32.com+-site:giga.de"/>
  <Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="aq" value="t"/>
  <Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="palemoon-a" falseValue="palemoon"/>
  <MozParam name="channel" condition="purpose" purpose="contextmenu" value="rcs"/>
  <MozParam name="channel" condition="purpose" purpose="keyword" value="fflb"/>
  <MozParam name="channel" condition="purpose" purpose="homepage" value="np"/>
  <MozParam name="source" condition="purpose" purpose="homepage" value="hp"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>https://www.google.com/</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>


If you need a better Information source for how to find the search plugins and the paths, look here [1].
Additionally, if you changed one of the plugins, you must remove the search.json from your profile and restart firefox before the changes are effective.

[1] http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/02/11/creating-a-custom-firefox-search-plugin/

 

UPDATE:
I uploaded my actual version to Github: https://github.com/krater/GoogleMinus/tree/master