Just learned a really helpful trick for internet searches

I just learned a really helpful trick / hack for internet searches and thought I'd pass it along here.

Have you ever wanted to 'exclude' certain websites from a search? Pinterest used to be a good example, but that has calmed down now, but network news sites are also a great example, for instance when you want to see a video without a bunch of talking heads telling you what it means, just the raw video. Sometimes it can be impossible to find these with all the network news outlets clogging up search results all trying to "scoop" each other.

So, on Google (and others) for example, you can just type what you want to search for and then exclude specific sites by using " -site:[excluded site.com]. So, let's say I want to exclude CNN from a search result for the Jeju crash in South Korea. To do this, I would type "Jeju crash South Korea -site:cnn.com" This will yield all search results for "Jeju crash South Korea" EXCEPT for those from CNN. Let's say I wanted to exclude more than one, like say CNN and ABC. Then I would type "Jeju crash Sough Korea -site:cnn.com -site:abcnews.com".

There is no need for commas as delimiters, just put a space between each site you want to eliminate. You can eliminate as many sites as you like this way.

Maybe y'all already knew this, but I didn't, so I thought I'd pass this along.

Happy searching! And Happy New Year!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Untangling the Web: An Introduction to Internet Research by Robyn Winder and Charlie Speight, 2007 A guide to internet research
Commissioned and Published by the National Security Agency Center for Digital Content, 643 pages

Untangling the Web PDF

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

This is the rabbit hole of search customisation

Try the below :-

ahrefs.com...

www.googleguide.com...

and finally , this beauty www.google.co.uk...

a reply to: watchitburn

Holy Cow! That's an 'All-Day-Sucker'!!

Thanks! Looks interesting (and even a bit exhausting too). LOL!

a reply to: Cymru

Thanks!

And you're right, a rabbit hole indeed!

Appreciated.

My simpleton trick in the OP was merely because I wasn't sure how much people knew about tricks like that. Your links, and the link from watchitburn go into far greater detail.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Yeah, it's tedious but useful.

I don't remember who posted it here first, probably about 10 years ago.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

If you want to do some advanced searches I direct you to both google advanced search www.google.com... , google advanced image search www.google.com... and advanced video search www.google.com... .


More help topics. Enjoy.

support.google.com...
support.google.com...

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

very helpful...thanks!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

That's great! Thanks, mate

Good tip. I use that frequently when looking up items for purchase, usually to eliminate temu. It's useful for a variety of applications. If I do any search that returns a number of results from sites that are less than helpful, I redo the search excluding those sites.

a reply to: yeahright

Exactly! I first learned it when Pinterest would clog up all your search results, and then forgot about it until yesterday when I just had to dump all the talking heads in the MSM while trying to get facts on the NOLA attack.

Google must have switched their algorithm to deal with the Pinterest issue because it was really bad there for a while. Lots of people were complaining about it. I laughed when whole websites got stood up with nothing but content on how to eliminate Pinterest from every search engine on the planet and blocking it at the browser level.