Blocking paywall sites

[ChrisGreaves]

?forum?
Is there a nifty trick to block specific domain LINKS from search engines?
I'm using Chrome (no idea what version, Help, About doesn't)

I load Google News, which service returns me a list of links to news articles on various topics.
OR
I use Google to search for articles, which service returns me a list of links to news articles on various topics.

Now some of the links are to, say The Toronto Star which now has a paywall(sp?), so when I click on a link, I get a pop-up that says "Your free issues this month have been used up" or similar..

I get that they want me to pay, I also get that I don't want to pay.

A neat bit of code (somewhere) would say "Don't ever give me a link to The Toronto Star ever again"; ditto a few other newspaper sites.

[HansV]

You could add the domain (thestar.com) to your HOSTS file...

[ChrisGreaves]

You could add the domain (thestar.com) to your HOSTS file...

Right. So that when I click on a link, I won't have the delay of loading that (linked) page and learning that I didn't really want to be told to [euphanism]go away[/euphanism] anyway.
That's definitely an improvement (and now I know what the HOSTS file is!).

But if I could I'd tell the search engine (in my case Google, but could be Bing or Yahoo ...) not to even put the link in the web page of hits.

An alternative would be to tell the browser (Chrome in my case, but could be Internet Explorer or Firefox ...) to omit such links. I think this leads us into a world of "web page rendering".
I shall essay with my HOSTS file ...

Thanks Hans.

[HansV]

Google used to have the ability to block sites from being included in search results - it worked very well while it lasted. But they silently dropped this feature, I assume because of commercial reasons. They still have an add-on "Personal Blocklist" for Google Chrome though.

[ChrisGreaves]

You could add the domain (thestar.com) to your HOSTS file...

Whoop, as we say in the trade, dee-doo!
This web page suggested blocking both "www.thestar.com" and "thestar.com".

I did that, by starting NotePad in administrator mode, opening "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" (no extent) and appending these three lines (and saving the file!)

Code: Select all

# 6:52 PM 11/28/2013 Block the Toronto Star
        127.0.0.1       www.thestar.com
        127.0.0.1       thestar.com

Thanks Hans.

[ChrisGreaves]

They still have an add-on "Personal Blocklist" for Google Chrome though.

I have agreed to their Terms Of Service (which probably means that they have started a file on who-I-hate ) and now I have an icon (top-right corner) and the ability to file references to sites I'd rather not see.

Untitled.png

[Rudi]

Boy...that makes it easy to block out! You just click on that link below each search item.
Just one thing: If you enthusiastically block too many sites, you might not have any working internet anymore

[ChrisGreaves]

If you enthusiastically block too many sites, you might not have any working internet anymore

The thought had crossed my mind.
Hence my thought to block The Star; I pick up a free print copy each morning, so I'm unlikely to miss the online stuff.

OTOH:
Yesterday I listened to a fascinating podcast from CBC:-
"For years, people proclaimed that the Internet was going to completely transform media. In 2013, it actually happened. That's the argument of The New York Times media columnist David Carr who delivers the 2013 Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. He argues that the campfires built by traditional media companies are going out and new methods of content creation and distribution are taking hold."

[ChrisGreaves]

... you might not have any working internet anymore

Still and all, there's always Google's cache.

Untitled.png

[Rudi]

LOL...I wouldn't like to know the amount of space all those cached copies will take to store "the internet" on your PC...

[ChrisGreaves]

LOL...I wouldn't like to know the amount of space all those cached copies will take to store "the internet" on your PC...

ER, I don't think that it is referring to my cache.
I think it is referring to Google's cache, the cache they keep on a server farm that occupies 1/3 of Texas, probably!

[Rudi]

Clearly not my field of expertise...I just use the internet LOL