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I have a list of sites I would like to permanently exclude from Google search results. These are the large family of sites plagiarizing (and some of them garbling with machine translation) Q&A from the StackExchange network, like qaru.site. I've created a filtering search engine in Chromium, with URL like https://google.com/search?q=%s+-site:site1+-site:site2+-...+-site:siteN, with some 30 sites to blacklist. Naturally, after I blacklisted one more site, Google started to complain:

"site:qano.site" (and any subsequent words) was ignored because we limit queries to 32 words.

So some of these blacklisted domains aren't actually blacklisted.

I have tried using Chromium extensions for filtering search results, but these generally work on a higher level, only filtering the results page, often leaving me with almost empty page instead of presenting the pageful of more relevant results as does the -site:domain.com token in the search query.

So, how can I permanently have a blacklist for a potentially large set of sites? I'd prefer not to have to log in to Google for this.

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  • "tried using Chromium extensions...", "created a filtering search engine in Chromium...", "...prefer not to have to log in to Google...". I think you run out of choices. I believe your best bet is to create a custom search engine. If you want me to, I can turn this to an answer.
    – marikamitsos
    Sep 21, 2019 at 12:04
  • @marikamitsos Custom search engine seems to only allow to search in one specific site. It's not the same as search on the whole observable web, filtering out bad sites.
    – Ruslan
    Sep 21, 2019 at 13:17
  • Key word being "seems". You can add many, many..., many...... more. There is a trick to exclude them as well. See. Have to go now. We can turn this to an answer if it suits you.
    – marikamitsos
    Sep 21, 2019 at 14:15
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    @marikamitsos OK, found it. Apparently, I have to specify any site to begin configuring my CSE, then I can delete it, having turned on the "Search the entire web" option.
    – Ruslan
    Sep 21, 2019 at 17:18
  • You do not have to delete the site as you mention in your answer. On the contrary, it helps if you keep it. In any case, I also posted my answer with additional info. (You can now delete yours or not. I leave it to your discretion). :)
    – marikamitsos
    Sep 22, 2019 at 1:08

3 Answers 3

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Thanks to user marikamitsos, I've found out that Google Custom Search Engines can work for the entire web.

To do this, I had to

  1. Go to https://cse.google.com/cse/create/new
  2. Add any site in the "Sites to search" field (I used example.com)
  3. After creating the Custom Search Engine, go to its configuration
  4. In the configuration, enable the "Search the entire web" option
  5. Delete the site entry you used in step 2
  6. In the "Sites to search" section of configuration, click "Advanced"
  7. There, in the "Sites to exclude" section, you can exclude sites. If you have a list of sites to exclude, make sure they are each on a new line and paste the list in the text field in the "Add"→"Exclude sites in bulk" dialog
  8. Press Save
  9. Now that you have your Custom Search Engine, grab its URL from the "Public URL" section
  10. To make a custom Chromium/Chrome search engine (to easily search from the address bar), you can use the URL you took in the previous step and appending &q=%s to it. Thus, my custom Chromium search engine URL looks like follows (with the ID replaced by a placeholder):
https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:YYYYYYYYYYY&q=%s
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4

As mentioned in my comment the way to filter out a long list of sites from Google search is by creating a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). This allows you to have it customized with up to 500 sites.

How to create a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) in 6 steps

1. Go to https://cse.google.com/cse/create/new
2. Add any name as your site in the "Sites to search" field (e.g. mySearchSite.com), give it a friendly name and click Create.

enter image description here

3. After creating your Custom Search Engine, click on the Control Panel. You land on the Basics tab.

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4. Copy its URL from the "Public URL" section and save it somewhere.

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5. Remain on the Basics tab. Scroll down, enable the Search the entire web option and then click on the Advanced button.

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6. Under Sites to exclude click Add and Exclude sites in bulk. You can add up to 500 sites, each on a new line. Press Save.

enter image description here

You finished. Enjoy :)
Extra bonus: You can many CSE configured for different uses.

How to use your CSE public URL

1. As a bookmark on any/all of your browsers for easy access.
2. As your default custom search engine (to easily search from the address bar of your browser) by appending &q=%s to it.
3. Add it to your site and monetize it's use.

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-1

I did some research but couldn't find a way round the 32 word query limit for Google specifically. Apparently, according to this source from 2017, Yahoo search doesn't seem to have a word limit so you could try that instead.

https://www.quora.com/What-determines-the-32-word-limit-for-Google-searches

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