Adblock Plus doesn't block Google ads. How to enable?

Question

Recently I've noticed that Adblock Plus doesn't block Google ads anymore. The page is just full of ads. Here's a query for "SSL" with Adblock Plus turned on.

I would like to not see Google ads in my browser. How do I get the previous behavior back?

Solution 1

As @djfdat already said: You have to disable "Acceptable Ads".
This setting is enabled by default

This has nothing to do with your Google query for SSL or SSH. It's just that all Google websites are in the "Acceptable Ads" whitelist.

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Story behind

Google (and other big companies) were asked to pay money by a firm called EYEO GmbH to show their ads. This firm owns Adblock Plus together with its main developer Wladimir Palant. And big player firms like Google accepted their offering.

Wait, they pay? Yes. This was a big story on the net the last couple of weeks when a blogger revealed the mafia-like system of Adblock Plus. Read more on Techcrunch.

Key statement on techcrunch

AdblockPlus says this fee is about helping it to maintain its filter list, which also whitelists some small websites and blogs for free, in addition to charging those larger companies like Google that participate. But it’s easy to see Google and others buying the right to put ads in front of web-browsing users, with Adblock Plus essentially acting as a gatekeeper meting out access to that sizeable chunk of consumers. Which gives Adblock a lot of power, and companies like Google that can pay a sizeable advantage over mid-sized competitors who can’t.

The Adblock Plus company blackmail websites in that way: "If you don't pay us, we block all your advertisements. We have 50 mio. users and the power to ruin you." The techchrunch article doesn't go into details, but the blog articles linked above do. They fake user reviews, even whole websites, conspire with big ad firms to white-list them and block those who doesn't pay. That's criminal and I recommend you not to use this plugin anymore in any browser.

Are there alternatives?

Alternatives like Adblock (without the plus) or AdGuard jumped onto the "acceptable ads" train and therefor are no longer a valid alternative. To give you an idea why they probable changed their business model, here's a quote from an article on theguardian.com regarding AdblockPlus' cash income.

Currently there are just 148 sites on the whitelist out of 777 which applied, according to a blogpost from Adblock Plus. For those which have to pay - which includes Google, Amazon and Yandex, Russia's largest search engine - the fee for not having their ads blocked is reportedly the cash equivalent of 30% of the revenue generated by showing ads.

My only advise I can give you stand today: Use whatever extension you want, but look up the option to disable Acceptable ads.

Solution 2

In your Adblock Plus Options > Filter Lists, make sure you're subscribed to Easylist. Also, turn off the last checkbox on that tab for 'Allow some non-intrusive advertising'.

Solution 3

On Chrome 42 with AdBlock 2.31, right click on the AdBlock icon and choose options. Then deselect "I like the text ads on Google search results; show me those".

Solution 4

I just modified the "Acceptable Ads" list.

Actually, I deactivated Adblock Plus's list in the preferences, then I downloaded the source text file (you can find the link in the prefs dialogue) and removed all lines that I didn't like (Google and Amazon).

For Google I removed all lines (with some JavaScript) that satisfied the regular expression:

/^[^!].*(?:google|doubleclick.net)/i

Then I added the new filter list and, lo and behold, Google ads disappeared again.

Since I wrote a script for that task, I can do that again at any time. It's some work, but for me it's the best solution, because I still have all "non-intrusive" ads white-listed except that from Google and Amazon.

I added the filters via a filter file I put on my own local server, so I could subscribe to my own list. But, I think, you can also add the filters manually.

Solution 5

On Chrome 42 with Adblock Plus 1.8.12, right click on the Adblock Plus icon and choose Options. Then deselect "Allow some non-intrusive advertising".

View more solutions

Comments

[ADTC]

Isn't it more like "please ensure your ads are non-intrusive and we will allow you subject to user agreement"?

[Crick]

It was pointed out correctly that I posted about AdBlock and not AdBlock Plus. I run both on different browsers and they behave similarly. I will add a separate post about how to enable blocking of ads on Google search results using AdBlock Plus (basically the same process).

[Ruslan]

Adblock actually does allow "unobtrusive ads", and Adblock Edge isn't really updated that frequently as ABP is. It's nothing of a good advice to switch to inferior options, when ABP is opensource and can be made behave with a single option.

[kreemoweet]

This answer amounts to little more than ill-informed slander. Slander is more akin to "criminal" action than anything AdBlock Plus does.

[Mark Jeronimus]

The most devious thing is that you have to disable "Acceptable ads" filter list in Adblock to block those ads.