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Noticed your Google Search results filled with posts from a handful of sites? We’re here to tell you how to remove those sites from your searches.
Sites like Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, and Medium, to name just a few, have started to dominate Google, so here’s how to exclude these links from your search results.
Why You See So Many Reddit Links in Your Searches
Before we tell you how to remove certain sites from your searches, let’s look at why a select few sites are dominatingGoogle’s SERPs(search engine results pages).
As part of its stated mission to help people navigate the web, Google regularly updates its Search algorithm. Whether through occasional major updates or smaller ones happening more often, the SERPs are constantly changing. As part of that, websites will move up and down the rankings as Google assesses how well they’re catering to people’s needs.
Right now, Google Search is evolving, with Google acting to counter the rise of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. One component of this is promoting (or over-promoting) knowledge-sharing platforms filled with people talking about their personal experiences. Because artificial intelligence cannot have personal experiences ofbuying a new TVorcreating a Spotify playlist, to cite two examples, Google is giving those sites extra weighting in its ranking.
This isn’t entirely new, with Google starting to surface more forums and blogs from 2021 onwards. However, in 2023, this became an even bigger shift, with forum posts and personal accounts pushed further up the SERPs to the point that end users started noticing it—and getting annoyed by it. Plenty of search-focused sites have discussed this issue, butSearch Engine Landprovides a decent summary for those interested in the background.
The result of this is that sites like Reddit often appear at or near the top for all manner of queries, with websites dedicated to helping people with search queries down the rankings. Thankfully, it’s easy to fix this problem manually.
How to Exclude All Reddit Links From Your Search Results
Excluding specific sites from your Google Search results is easier than you may think and requires nothing but the knowledge of how to do it.
First, open Google Search and type in your query as you would normally do. Then, add “-site:reddit.com” to the query to exclude the site mentioned (in this case, Reddit).
Be sure to include the “-” (minus sign) as missing it off means Google will ONLY deliver results from the site mentioned, the exact opposite of what we’re going for here. It’s also crucial to include the “.com” part, as otherwise, it won’t work. Of course, if the site you’re looking to exclude from your search results uses a different top-level domain (TLD—for example, .co.uk or .org), use that instead.
If you have used the search modifier correctly, the results should load with the site you have chosen to exclude missing. If they’re still showing, then you have done something wrong. And as with allsearch modifiers, you do have to write this one out exactly as stated.
Please note that you can also exclude more than one site from your results by adding the search modifier a second time with a different URL attached and a third, or fourth, etc.
Use This Trick to Exclude Any Site From Google Searches
you may use this trick to exclude results from ANY website you want. We have focused on Reddit here, as that (along with Quora, LinkedIn, Medium, and others) is the most egregious example of how the new Google Search promotes forums and blogs over informational websites. However, you can use this particular search modifier to exclude any website(s) from your search results.
You now know how to exclude specific sites from your Google Search results. You should find that your searches have become more useful as a result!
