If you're like me, you rely on Google a lot to help you though your day. There are a few sites out there that - much to my frustrated chagrin - include their content in Google's index but won't let you see the content when you click the search results link - unless you sign up for an account (sometimes you even have to pay). I know there are some ways around the blocked access (Google can see the content, so there are open doors), but what I really want is a way to avoid seeing those sites in my search results.

As it turns out, excluding a domain from search results is very simple. It's not very clearly documented anywhere, but I'll tell you here, so you'll be a tiny bit smarter and look really cool to whomever you show it to in the future.

To start, one key thing about searching with Google that we need to understand is that in pretty much any Google search you can exclude anything you want by preceding it with a minus sign when you type your term into the search box. Knowing this, we can exclude almost anything - including a domain/site.

Next, we need to know how to search and specify a domain in our search query term. We do this by entering the word "site," followed by a colon, followed by the domain name. For example, I can search for an exact match on my name within this site's domain by structuring my search term like this:

Similarly, if I want to search for exact matches on "Greg Hughes," but this time I want to search all sites except greghughes.net, I do it like this:

Note the "minus sign" that precedes the "site:" search operator in this case. That's how we tell Google to exclude the site/domain specified.

So there you have it. Want to exclude a domain from your search term? Just specify the domain with "-site:" and you're all set.

But what if you don't want to specify the domain to exclude every time by hand? In that case, set up a Google Custom Search Engine (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) and specify during setup that you want your custom search engine to include results from the entire Internet. Then, after your search engine has been created, go to the Control Panel, choose the "Sites" tab, and from there you can specify as many domains as you like to exclude from every search. You'll get a custom search engine that you can tweak to your heart's content.



That's it - hope it helps someone in need. Enjoy!