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Author Topic: Getting rid of "Google Goo"  (Read 7774 times)

app103

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Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« on: April 06, 2008, 03:26 PM »
Anyone with a Google account may have started experiencing something rather unpleasant recently, when doing searches while logged in.

Google has begun adding extra tracking garbage to links, making it rather difficult to copy a link target from the search page.

A friend of mine wrote a javascript function that removes the "Google Goo", leaving you with a page full of nice, clean, copyable links.

It has been tested with FireFox 2 and 3, K-Meleon, and IE 6. It should work in all other versions of IE after IE6, as well. Also should work in Opera (in theory), but has not been tested.

What you need to do is create a new bookmark with the function as the target (copy & paste it in). When you do a Google search, before you click anything, click the bookmark and it will clean the page.


Copy the function from the page linked below (don't create a bookmark with the page as the target, or it will not work)

http://pastebin.com/jpMiu5Vj (courtesy of Krishean/draconislabs.net)

UPDATE: His site is down. I think the xbox he was hosting it on died. So here is the code for it:

Code: Javascript [Select]
  1. javascript:{function detect(el){var r=false;if(el.className&&el.onmousedown){var c=el.className.split(' '),m=el.onmousedown,t=false;var s=((m.toSource)?m.toSource():m.toString());for(var i=0;i<c.length;i++)if(c[i]=='l')t=true;r=(t&&(s.indexOf('return rwt(')!=-1||s.indexOf('return clk(')!=-1));}return r;}var a=document.getElementById('search').getElementsByTagName('a');for(var i=0;i<a.length;i++)if(detect(a[i]))a[i].setAttribute('onmousedown','');void(0);};
« Last Edit: July 23, 2011, 10:40 PM by app103, Reason: Krishean improved the script »

Dormouse

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2008, 04:30 PM »
Works in Opera too. Tested on 9.5beta

sri

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2008, 04:22 AM »
An alternative for Firefox users is CustomizeGoogle add-on. After installing the add-on, go to its options and check 'Remove click tracking'.
<a href="https://sridharkatakam.com">My blog</a>

icekin

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2008, 04:27 AM »
I use Opera, 9.5 too and I don't seem to have this problem, despite not installing the .js file attached above. I do however have customizegoogle for opera installed. Maybe that does the trick too?

app103

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #4 on: July 31, 2008, 04:53 AM »
Not all Google users will get this tracking garbage in their links, and the ones that do will not have it all the time.

It only happens if you have some sort of google account (like gmail, adsense, blogger, etc) and are logged in. Once you log out the links are clean again.

sri

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2009, 10:34 PM »
I am using this Greasemonkey userscript to get rid of Google tracking so the search results are clean. The advantage of this over the bookmarklet (if you use Firefox) is that you don’t need to click on the bookmarklet to clean URLs. It works automatically.
<a href="https://sridharkatakam.com">My blog</a>

Curt

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2009, 01:07 PM »
I am using this Greasemonkey userscript to get rid of Google tracking ...

- to my understanding this script is for google.com only? I believe Google default is any local "domain", giving different surnames all over the world - around here: .dk

tomos

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2009, 03:13 PM »
I am using this Greasemonkey userscript to get rid of Google tracking ...

- to my understanding this script is for google.com only? I believe Google default is any local "domain", giving different surnames all over the world - around here: .dk

I notice sometimes that google.com redirects to wherever you are (.dk .de .ie etc) and sometimes it doesnt - not sure does this depend on settings or have they changed the 'procedure'.
Can be challenging if you dont speak the local language...
Tom

sri

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Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"
« Reply #8 on: October 20, 2009, 07:16 AM »
One can easily any other domains to the list of sites on which that (or any other) greasemonkey script should run.

For example since my search defaults to google.co.in, I have added it in the list like so:

GTBG.png

To get to the above window, right click on the greasemonkey icon in status bar and select 'Manage user scripts'.
<a href="https://sridharkatakam.com">My blog</a>