http://*banner* ? [n/a]

[Guest_4_now]

Hi everybody.

I really like Adblock Plus with Rick's Easylist.
One item that I manually added under Advertisment filters
is http://*banner* and it is getting a lot of hits.
Shouldn't this be added to Rick's Easylist ?
That is assuming of course, that the hits I see mean it is
actually blocking adds.

[rick752]

Hi everybody.

One item that I manually added under Advertisment filters
is http://*banner* and it is getting a lot of hits.

Hi Guest.

Code: Select all

http://*banner*

... is actually just *banner* (unless you find a few addresses that don't start with "http://".

You WILL get many hits with it ... but about 10-15% of them will be false-positives. For example, a banner can be a logo, a divider, a background for the page top, weather banners, stock banners. You certainly wouldn't want to block "logo_banner.gif" now either, would you? There are also banners that are made for stores and for parties. And let's not even talk about the 100s of newspapers that have names like "The Herald Banner" at ' http://www.heraldbanner.com ' (try it). All of these would be blocked if the name *banner* was in ANY part of the address of the file. Because there is nothing defined around *banner*, it doesn't even define it enough to confine it to a domain, a subdomain, a subdirectory, a script, or an image .... it only needs to be PART of ANY word.

I have run across many false-positives even with more 'defined' versions of *banner*. The word *banner* needs to be treated VERY carefully as many things containing *banner* are not ads. It is not a good string if it creates many false positives. YOU could probably get away with it .... I have to be more careful as I have a half million subscribers that depend on me to not 'screw up'.

Just type "banner" in google and read the results (especially look for *banner* in the link addresses) ...a lot of them are not what you would expect them to be. EVERYTHING in those sites will be blocked with *banner* in the string. Try them!

[Peng]

Just type "banner" in google and read the results (especially look for *banner* in the link addresses) ...a lot of them are not what you would expect them to be. EVERYTHING in those sites will be blocked with *banner* in the string. Try them!

Even better: inurl:banner

[rick752]

Even better: inurl:banner

Yes sir-ee, Peng. That would do it, too.

[Guest_4_now]

Thank you Rick for your quick feedback, maintaining the filter list, and all of
your support.

I updated the filter to *banner* per your suggestion.
I then took your advice by going to
http://www.google.com/search?complete=1 ... gle Search
The first link it listed was http://www.bannerengineering.com/
The page did not render correctly until I disabled my *banner* filter
by clicking on the green dot to disable that line.

Is there a way to enable and disable logging the complete URL for filter matches?

[Banner Blocker]

I have had no trouble with this list of wildcards to block banners:

*/banner-images/*
*/banner.php?*
*/banners/*
*banner*.js*
*bannerad*
paybanner*.gif