Greasy Fork

For whatever reason, this script occasionally (~1 in 5 searches) fails to block on startpage. Because of this I kinda want to switch back to duckduckgo again, though I highly dislike the ai-generated description of search results on ddg... are there any other things I can do?

ok after some investigation (including contacting Startpage support) I think I find the reason. For each search query, the results returned by Startpage may come from either Google or Bing, which can be distinguished by the slightly different style of the result list. Google Hit Hider works fine for the style of Google (80%~90% of cases, identified by a section like <section class="a-gl-tp a-gl-tp--desktop">), but does not work for the style of of Bing (10%~20% of cases, identified by a section like <section class="w-bg w-bg--desktop w-bg--light">). Thus the random failure. Also the Startpage support says it's not possible to choose the search provider from the users' side...

Thank you for the report. It seems they have now changed the Google results, too, so I need to do an update.

I posted version 2.2.9 which tests out okay for me on both of the results layouts. (Tested in Windows/Firefox/Violentmonkey.)

Hopefully yout last update resolved it for Icely. Thanks for being active and maintaining this script Jefferson, it's helped me for years already and I hope for many more. So an extra big thank you!!!

Appologies for being off topic to this thread...I only use yours and one more, sadly the other one seems to have been abandoned and I've not been able to find a replacement (worst it's likely simply a smaller bug with how it injects the menues (as they don't show), but I'm not a coder as to fix it myself). https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/33780-google-search-region. If you know of something similar or need a new project, lol, I'd love to hear :)

wow huge thanks to the author (I never expected this script to get an update)! I tried v2.3.0 on startpage; result blocking generally works now, though I noticed two issues:

1) the "block" buttons disappear in the result page. I can consistently reproduce this with the following steps:

a) install a new Firefox instance, then install Violentmonkey and the script;
b) visit startpage.com, type something in the search box in the middle, then press Enter;
c) note that the "block" buttons initially appear in the result page, but disappear automatically after like 1~2s.
The "block" buttons would disappear when searching from the address bar, startpage.com, or Ctrl+F5 on the result page; but they do not disappear when clicking the search icon in the result page.
Set startpage to use GET requests instead of POST (result page setting icon - Privacy and Safety - HTTP request method - GET) seems to fix the issue; however, the issue appears again if I perma-ban any site in the result page (and then Ctrl+F5).

2) there is a small delay before banned results are hidden. When the result page is loaded, the banned results would appear at first, and are hidden only after like 0.5~1s.

Anyway, thanks again for the update!

Reply to Organizer:

If you know of something similar or need a new project, lol, I'd love to hear :)

fyi, both Duckduckgo and Startpage support switching regions directly in the result page

fyi, both Duckduckgo and Startpage support switching regions directly in the result page

Oh I did not know that. I've been a slave to Google since 20 years, and Google also have some stuff to open set region and or language, but I don't find it friendly and it seems like to many steps to e.g. search as if I was on GOOGLE.DE getting local german results and also then easily getting them in German as if I was googling from e.g. Hamburg on German locale PC.. if that make sense. Not even sure the basic settings fully fake that.

That said great shoutout/tip, I will take a look... tried one or two other engines but genereally just like googles results look better and I also feel the results for me at least have been better.

two issues:

1) the "block" buttons disappear in the result page. ... the "block" buttons initially appear in the result page, but disappear automatically after like 1~2s

When the ads are inserted, pushing down the organic results, in my testing, the buttons on the organic results remained where the script had initially placed them. Is your organic results section getting rewritten in a way that flushes the buttons? I guess I need to add some detection for that.

2) there is a small delay before banned results are hidden. When the result page is loaded, the banned results would appear at first, and are hidden only after like 0.5~1s.

Yes, this was my workaround for the buttons disappearing within the first half second. I think something is difference between our configurations that causes your results page to load a little more slowly than mine, so a time-based workaround isn't a reliable way to handle this problem. Bummer.

I don't know how to fix the slow render issue. I added detection for Ctrl+click on the Manage Hiding button to refresh the block status of the results and hopefully restore missing buttons.