[plug] Google web search sanitiser

William Kenworthy billk at iinet.net.au
Mon Oct 22 06:57:01 WST 2012


I am using duckduckgo for exactly this reason.  Search results are not
quite as good as google (funny, because I think that it uses google as a
feed!) and its definitly slower (lag after click) to return a result
(maybe the ssl is part of this).

So I use it almost all the time, but on difficult searches return to
google.  Not sure if duckduckgo handles the google api trickery.

BillK



On Mon, 2012-10-22 at 06:39 +0800, Brad Campbell wrote:
> On 21/10/12 23:23, Nick Bannon wrote:
> 
> > Simple Google search results used to use a tracking URL _occasionally_,
> > random sampling to get some idea of when otherwise anonymous users chose
> > a particular outgoing search result. At some recent stage they turned
> > it on pervasively.
> >
> > Meaning that one can't simply copy and paste a working URL out of
> > a search result anymore. It adds extra lag to every click on such a
> > result, perhaps over a slow UMTS link. I can't believe it improves the
> > results they got from occasional sampling that much. It's not even a
> > HTTP redirect, it replaces a simple static link with a JavaScript HTML
> > file that does the redirect. (!)
> >
> > <script>window.googleJavaScriptRedirect=1</script><script>var
> > f={};f.navigateTo=function(b,a,g){if(b!=a&&b.google){if(b.google.r){b.google.r=0;b.location.href=g;a.location.replace("about:blank");}}else{a.location.replace(g);}};f.navigateTo(window.parent,window,"http://razzed.com/2009/02/12/analysis-of-google-outbound-link-tracking/");
> > </script><noscript><META http-equiv="refresh"
> > content="0;URL='http://razzed.com/2009/02/12/analysis-of-google-outbound-link-tracking/'"></noscript>
> >
> > Madness.
> >
> > Nick.
> >
> 
> Interestingly enough when you mouse over the results, you get the 
> correct url in the status bar. Its the trickery they play when you hit a 
> mouse button that is causing the issue. I pulled apart the firefox 
> plugins xpi that I'm using and it simply removes the 'onmousedown' 
> handler from each link. Nice and very simple. Works a treat.
> 
> Now I must need to figure out how to do that in squid before the html 
> hits the browser.
> 
> On the same note, I've been looking at alternate search engines that 
> promote no tracking and privacy. duckduckgo and ixquick. Anyone else 
> using alternate search engines?
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