Blocking Unwanted Websites from Google Searches

I had been using the Optimize Google add-on in Firefox, and the Search Engine Blacklist extension in Chrome, to keep unwanted websites from clogging up my searches.  I especially like the approach of Optimize Google:  it would still show the sites that I was blocking, but they would be greyed-out.  This made it easier to keep an eye on what I was blocking.  I didn't want to be accidentally preventing myself from seeing good sites.

Unfortunately -- in Firefox 8 and 10, as distinct from Firefox 3 -- OptimizeGoogle was messing up my Google search tools.  I noticed it particularly in my ability to select a date range for a search.  Meanwhile, in Chrome, I eventually found that Google offered an option to Manage Blocked Sites -- but in that option, as in Search Engine Blacklist, I had to enter each website manually, rather than just pasting in a list from a file, as Optimize Google would let me do.  Even if these extensions had worked perfectly and easily, they still didn't help with other browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer, Opera).

I found a Computrick webpage that told me I could block out websites for all browsers in one move.  The recommended approach was to open the Hosts file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. (elsewhere in earlier versions of Windows).  (It would apparently take administrator privileges to modify that file.)  The modification was to add lines like this to the end of that Hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 www.badsite.com
127.0.0.1 badsite.com

In other words, each line would begin with "127.0.0.1" followed by at least one space, and then the brief URL of the unwanted website.  As that example shows, I was supposed to enter the site's URL both with and without the "www" prefix.  The first line, 127.0.0.1, was apparently required to make the process work.  It was already there in Hosts, but it was commented out (i.e., its line was prefixed with a # symbol, making it nonoperational).  So I removed the # symbol before that line to make it work, and likewise for the next line, the last one that was already there when I first opened Hosts:  ::1.

I still had the list of sites that I tended to paste into Optimize Google's filter list.  I pasted that list into Excel, worked up formulas to produce the two versions suggested above (i.e., with and without the "www"), pasted those into Hosts, and saved it.  As soon as I did that, Microsoft Security Essentials (my antivirus program) popped up a message warning of a potential security threat.  I told it to Allow this instance.

I had decided to look into this website-blocking issue because I had just done a Google search that was plagued by sites I did not want to see.  I suspected that some of them were probably on that long list of unwanted sites that I had developed.  So now I hit F5 to refresh that search.  It didn't look like anything had changed.  I was looking particularly at one website that I knew I didn't want to see in my search results.  I made a point of adding it to Hosts, and I saved Hosts again.  Then I hit F5 to refresh the webpage again.  The unwanted site was still listed.

Further investigation led to an MVPS.org post that said Hosts was loaded at startup.  So apparently I would have to reboot the system for it to take effect.  This would be another drawback in comparison against a tool like Optimize Google, which could be fine-tuned on the fly to keep removing unwanted sites until my search results would be as pure as the driven snow.  OptimizeGoogle would also let me designate subparts of a website (e.g., www.GoodSite.org/CrappyDownloads).

I was thinking it would be great if someone had cooked up a list of suspicious or unwanted websites.  Presto!  Ask, and it shall be given unto you.  Someonewhocares posted a truly monumental Hosts file, free for the copying.  I was pretty sure that, if I pasted their Hosts file into mine, I would not be troubled by contacts from anyone anymore.  I was intrigued, but I decided that I would work into this thing more gradually, starting with my modest list of a hundred or so sites that I wanted to block.

While browsing this subject, I came across a long discussion that looked like it would have been interesting, if I had been interested.  One topic that did have potential had to do with sites like ad.doubleclick.net.  It sounded like my browsing might speed up if sites like that were not bogging down my system.  I went back to the Someonewhocares.org webpage and searched for ad.doubleclick.  They did have a few lines for websites like that.  But their comments indicated that blocking those sorts of ad sites could mess up some retailers' websites (e.g., Sears) and also Google itself.  I decided not to proceed further with that issue at this point.

I saved my newly revised Hosts file.  I also saved a copy of it to another drive, to be protected in case I had to reinstall Windows for some reason.  When I rebooted, I took another look at that most recent Google search.  No effect:  the unwanted sites were still there.  That was in Opera.  I tried the same search in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome.  Same result:  nothing had been filtered.  I looked again at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.  It was still there, and it still contained the list of unwanted websites.

That was as far as I got with this project at this point.

Warning: System Memory Usage High

Summary

A sudden announcement from my computer speakers appeared to be due to a bug in Rizone Memory Booster (MB).  The solution seemed to be to change, rename, or delete the MP3 files in MB's Sounds folder.  I used this problem as an opportunity to look at some related freeware.

Description

I was working along as usual in Windows 7, and suddenly a voice announced from my computer speakers, "Warning:  System memory usage high!"  I had recently reinstalled Windows and all sorts of software, so it wasn't immediately obvious what piece of hardware or software would keep repeating this announcement every few minutes.  I ran a search and saw that nobody else seemed to be reporting exactly this problem, so I thought I had probably better log, here, my efforts to resolve it.

I first checked to see whether the warning was correct.  There were all sorts of things to know about memory, such as whether I was using 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems and hardware.  Getting an accurate and informative impression of the current status of my system could be tricky.  I was using the Windows 7 Task Manager (Start > Run > taskmgr.exe > Performance tab) and the Windows 7 Resource Monitor (Start > Run > perfmon.exe > Open Resource Monitor), but I wasn't entirely sure what they were telling me.  I thought maybe another tool would help to clarify the situation, so I did a search on CNET.

Among the several highly rated options there, it seemed that Iolo's System Mechanic Free might give me a good memory tool and might incidentally address some other needs.  On Iolo's website, I saw that their "standard" version of System Mechanic cost $40, so I was a little concerned that I might actually be installing shareware.  Not that I shouldn't pay for useful software, but I was already running behind in that department, and there were other programs of long service that had first dibs on my financial resources.  It developed, in any case, that flipping the switch from "Disabled" to "Enabled" on System Mechanic's option to "Automatically repair low memory problems" brought up a prompt to upgrade to the $40 version.  System Mechanic did have manual cleanup and reporting options.  For instance, by the time I got to the point of writing these words, its IntelliStatus report more or less agreed with Task Manager that about 70% of my RAM was free, and the adjacent Optimize button opened up a memory defragmentation process that ran for maybe 10 seconds and claimed to recover another 5% of RAM.  I decided to keep System Mechanic for a while and play with it some more.  Using Windows Explorer, I added a link to System Mechanic to the Startup folder in my Start Menu, so that System Mechanic's options window would open up when I started the computer.

At some point, I noticed that CNET's editors and users ranked Advanced SystemCare Free pretty highly.  It was another program, like System Mechanic, for cleaning and optimizing the system.  It appeared to be a lot more popular.  I had used a previous version for years, but I think I fell away from it when I transitioned from Windows XP to Windows 7.  I decided to try it too.  It seemed likely that I would join the crowd and prefer it over System Mechanic.

For present purposes, an automatic memory optimizer appeared to be what I needed, so I went back to CNET and looked at the popular MemInfo.  Its purpose seemed to be to provide fast, system-tray access to memory information and a manual RAM defragmenter.  But then I saw the widely used Moo0 SystemMonitor Portable.  I tried it and liked it.  It took me a minute to catch on to it.  I had to right-click on its onscreen display to get options.  It was easier to access and more configurable than Windows 7 Task Manager or Resource Monitor; it took less screen space; and it could be made to minimize to the system tray.  It didn't seem to have a measure of graphics performance, though, so it seemed I would have to use the Windows Experience Index for that (Start > Control Panel > Performance Information and Tools).

At some point in this inquiry, I remembered that I actually had already installed an automatic memory optimizer:  Rizonesoft's portable Rizone Memory Booster.  I hadn't tried to tweak it or anything; it had just sort of faded into the background or, more accurately, the system tray.  But now I thought, well, of course, that had to be where this phantom voice was coming from.  I right-clicked on its icon, which now seemed terribly obvious there in the tray, and looked at its options.  Yes, it did have an option to "Play warning every 3 minutes if load exceeds 80" (percent, I assumed).  The default values of 3 and 80 were adjustable.  But, oddly, this option was turned off.  I turned it on and changed it to 1% and clicked Apply.  Nothing happened.  I retried with 30%.  Still nothing.  Memory Booster's main screen said 50% of memory was used, so I should have gotten something.  Ah, but when I closed out of the dialog altogether and let Memory Booster retreat to the system tray, the voice came back.  "Warning:  system memory usage high."  So that was the culprit.  The program's readme file seemed to indicate that there had been a previous issue with saving the sound settings, so maybe the fix for that problem had created this new one where apparently the program would sometimes turn on the sound on its own initiative.

I played with Memory Booster (MB) for a few minutes and then sent Rizonesoft a link to this blog post.  MB had options to Optimize or Defrag memory.  Its writeup and an Addictive Tips review agreed that, unlike many other memory optimizers, MB's Optimize option used a safe method, involving "a Windows API call."  This would reportedly leave programs and data in memory and, as such, would only free up a minor amount of memory -- but it might also cure memory leaks and unfreeze programs.  By contrast, the writeup said that the Defrag option was an experimental (presumably potentially unstable) function that, unlike Optimize, would force most of the contents of memory into the pagefile (i.e., the portion of hard drive space set aside as a memory overflow area).  It seemed that Defrag was the more extreme option, carrying a risk of (temporarily) screwing up the system and requiring a system reboot.

The Defrag option was not included in the version that Addictive Tips reviewed.  Possibly it was previously a feature available only in the Gold ($14.95) version of MB.  Then again, I wasn't entirely sure whether a gold version continued to exist.  The writeup (dated July 7, 2011) said that MB "is now part of the Doors system," and explained how to install MB by installing Doors.  But I hadn't had to do that.  Maybe things had changed since the time of that writeup.  I wasn't familiar with the Doors system.  It seemed to be Linux-related.  So that part was a mystery.  One source had said that MB had only a nine-day trial period.  Maybe that had changed too -- maybe it had been removed or lengthened.  Rizonesoft's webpage said, "Demand no nonsense freeware," so apparently there were no worries there, unless the Doors situation had changed that.

I did like the program -- it was informative, and it seemed to be accurate, and its Intelligent Memory Optimization seemed to be working.  While some might not understand or appreciate the sarcasm on the website or in the readme file, it seemed that the programmer was responsible and meant to be helpful.

It occurred to me that I might be able to fix the sound problem myself.  I looked into the program's Sounds subfolder.  There, I saw five MP3 files.  One was called mem-high.mp3.  I played it.  Sure enough, that was the one I'd been hearing.  I created a subfolder called "Originals" and put these MP3s into it.  I wondered whether identically named replacement MP3 files would work.  First, I inserted a song MP3 into the Sounds subfolder, renamed as my new mem-high.mp3 file.  At first it didn't seem to be working, but I fiddled with it for a few minutes, and then it did.  Of course, I realized immediately that this had some prank possibilities.  But for my purposes, I removed all MP3s from the Sounds folder.  The program didn't crash when it failed to find a mem-high.mp3 file to play, and it seemed to continue to work.  I didn't want MB to make sounds, so that was the way I left it.

Google Search: Freeware: Get Rid of Unwanted Sites

I was using Google to search for freeware.  My search produced a bunch of websites that did not give me what I wanted.  This post briefly describes some steps I took to get better search results.

First, I modified my search to eliminate some sites that were giving me a combination of freeware and shareware.  For purposes of this particular search, I figured that any freeware of good quality would have been noticed and commented on by a number of people.  People selling software had a number of strategies to obscure the fact that they were not offering freeware.  Not to blame them -- they worked hard on their software, and they wanted to make some money for it -- but what I was searching for wasn't important enough to buy.  If there was a freeware solution, great; if not, I'd just skip it.  So the modified search I used was this (assuming I was searching for software related to "mouse" and "cursor"):

mouse cursor freeware -shareware -"free download" -"free trial" -"free to try"

This got through one set of unwanted results, but I wasn't done.  Now I was getting a bunch of websites that offered all kinds of freeware, but none providing what I was looking for specifically.  They just seemed to put up any freeware that seemed remotely related, and that wasn't helping me.  I was doing this search in Firefox, and I knew of two ways to get rid of these sorts of sites in Firefox.  (There probably were similar solutions in Google Chrome, but I didn't check.)  One approach was to install the Web of Trust (WOT) add-on, and look for its colored rings next to the search results.  These, I had found, were helpful but sometimes alarmist. 

Another approach, which I used in conjunction with WOT, was to install the OptimizeGoogle add-on, and start to build up its list of list of filters.  The steps here were, first, to install the add-on, and then, in Firefox, go into Tools > Add-ons > Extensions tab > OptimizeGoogle > Options > Filter.  My list of filters was still growing, but at this point the list was as follows:

http://*.recipester.org/*
http://*.neevia.com/*
http://*.headkeys.com/*
http://headkeys.com/*
http://*.all-freeware.com/*
http://*.softducks.com/*
http://*.topshareware.com/*
http://*.top4download.com/*
http://*.xentrik.com/*
http://*.fileguru.com/*
http://*.software.informer.com/*
http://*.filebuzz.com/*
http://*.bestfreewaredownload.com/*
http://*.windows7download.com/*
http://*.freedownloadscenter.com/*
http://*.winsite.com/*
http://*.easyfreeware.com/*
http://*.brothersoft.com/*
http://*.filetransit.com/*
http://*.macshareware.com/*
http://*.fileheap.com/*
http://*.informer.com/*
http://mac.download3000.com/*
http://*.mac360.com/*
http://*.freemacware.com/*
http://www.downv.com/Mac-software-download/*
http://*.downloadatoz.com/*
http://*.ptf.com/*

I saved that list (Export from the filter list) for when I would have to reinstall Firefox.  With this list in place, Google searches in Firefox that found any of these websites would now give me a small, greyed-out line to let me know that my results were being filtered, but would focus on the remaining sites.  This, I found, reduced distraction and saved time in other searches.