Hijacked websites when searching

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

Has anyone else come across this problem?

I've conducted a search for information on my Graham Engineering DM25 Mill/Drill and most of the websites that are returned on the search mention my search term but want to sell me earth moving or rock crushing equipment!

I'd like to fill in their on-line enquiry forms with spurious information but cannot be bothered to waste my time further.

Is there anything that can be done about these companies (usually Indian or Chinese)?

Brian

Edited By BDH on 23/05/2018 17:53:02

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

yes I was researching some older machinery and noted the same – 10s or even a 100 virtually identical sites – many it seems involving Indian based industries but all having the same pictures with no connection to the terms used in search (in my case via DuckDuckGo) – as I don’t browse with javascript enabled and have to give permission for any referral to another site I suspect I didn’t see the real reason for such sites unless of course they would only unleash some malware if my geographic location matched what they were after

[clivelParticipant @clivel]

Those are not hijacked web sites, it just so happens that a DM25 Mill is also an item of machinery used in the mining industry so you are getting legitimate results.

If you wish to exclude certain country domains such as for China or India from your search results you can do so by means of -site search parameter e.g to search for DM25 excluding both of those countries from the results use the search term: DM25 -site:.cn -site:.in

Now if only I could find a way to exclude the hundreds and hundreds of items from China that overwhelm when searching for things on eBay.

Clive

[OldironParticipant @oldiron]

If you use Google or most common search engines they will search for any or every term in your search wording. They also target you with ads that are loosely related to your search terms. So "mill, drill, milling engineering etc" returns searches on earth moving, cereals etc. These sites are not searching you out, you are inviting them in every time you do a search. The only way you or anyone else can stop it is by not searching online. To get malware on your machine you almost always have to click a link within an email or a website. Navigating through the fields on any decent website is highly unlikely to leave you open to a virus or malware. Unless you search dubious sites you are mostly pretty safe. Make sure you use Malwarebytes or similar and a good antivirus on every device you use online. Even enabling Windows Defender is pretty good now. They will warn you if the site is bad or you try to download a threat.

regards

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by clivel on 23/05/2018 18:13:55:

Now if only I could find a way to exclude the hundreds and hundreds of items from China that overwhelm when searching for things on eBay.

Clive

So you haven't noticed the 'Item location' filter with the choice of Distance from postcode, UK, European Union and Worldwide…

[clivelParticipant @clivel]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 23/05/2018 20:33:26:

So you haven't noticed the 'Item location' filter with the choice of Distance from postcode, UK, European Union and Worldwide…

Thanks Neil, I had,
However my choices are Distance from Postcode, Canada, North America, and Worldwide.

And as most of what I search for is sourced from the UK, USA or occasionally Japan, Worldwide is the only practical choice.
It would be great if eBay had the option to exclude some countries.

Clive

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