Apologies to Jim for jumping in here.

Dan, the answer to this question is time relevant. There is a war going on between Youtube and ad-blockers. I use Brave with Brave shields, and I hadn’t seen an ad in Youtube for a long time. When Youtube upped the ante in its fight against ad-blockers as Jim mentioned, I started seeing the new anti-ad-blocker pop-ups Jim mentioned. After a day or so, they disappeared, and I haven’t seen an ad since. I explained this tug of war in an article (How To Mitigate YouTube’s Ad Blocking Detection w/Brave) two years ago in more detail.

https://davescomputertips.com/how-to-mitigate-youtubes-ad-blocking-detection-w-brave/

I believe Brave Shields and UBlock are using the same filters. Assuming UBlock is still being updated, this should apply to UBlock, also.

JD

Hi Dan. I used AdGuard. There is a free version and extension that works with the Firefox browser and has the ability to whitelist sites, Mindblower!

I vote for the Brave browser for ad control. I’m almost afraid to type this lest I jinx things, but well, the Google video app. Figure it out. Brave is so good that I specifically allow DCT to display ads to support them.

Hey Granny Geek,

While we are waiting for Jim’s article on search sites, here are a few past articles on DCT that may interest you:

Mojeek — https://davescomputertips.com/mojeek-a-search-alternative/

Brave Search — https://davescomputertips.com/brave-search/

Reverse Image Searches — https://davescomputertips.com/how-to-perform-reverse-image-searches/

JD

Hey Peter,

You are not wrong mate – Amazon didn’t reduce the price for the standard plan, they started charging more for an ad-free experience.

Hey Robert,

The ads that display on DCT are from Google, we have very little control over ad content. About 2 1/2 years ago Google changed its payment system for sites displaying ads from Google, naturally in Google’s favor, so websites earn less revenue while Google gets a larger slice. That’s probably the reason you are generally seeing more ads.

No, changing from Google search to DuckDuckGo will not stop the ads. Search engines only provide a link to websites, they do not block ads. In order to block ads on websites, you need a browser that includes an ad-blocking feature (such as Brave) or an ad-blocking extension (such as uBlock Origin).

That said, most smaller sites, such as DCT, rely solely on Google ad revenue to survive so blocking all ads is almost certain to have a detrimental effect for smaller sites. What you can do though is install an ad-blocker extension and then whitelist those sites that you find useful (such as DCT 🙂 ) so the ads will still display on sites that you choose to allow them on.

I also find it interesting how many people left cable TV due to commercials and now a lot of the streaming channels include these unless you pay more. I recently had an Amazon prime trial and was annoyed to find the standard version now includes ads but I don’t think they reduced the price (could be wrong there though)

Jim, I meant of course “switch from Google to DuckDuckGo.” Not enough sleep these days.

There are lots of different search engines and there is a setting in most browsers where you can choose which search engine to use.

DuckDuckGo began purely as a search engine and the developer later released a browser of the same name. John mentions the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search engine in his list.

I’ll write an article explaining browsers and search engines, no problem. Keep an eye out.

Cheers… Jim

Sounds like some of us could use an article on alternate search engines. I use Brave as my browser and search from there. I never heard of any those other search engines. If I’m not in Brave, I duck, duck, and go!

John is talking about the Brave search engine, not the Brave browser. All in his list are search engines. He searched for “Best Free Portable Screen Capture Tool” in each of those search engines and reported where DCT’s article appeared in their respective list of results..

HTH

John,
When I ran the same search in Brave, I got a standard list of sites like PC Mag, The Windows Club, The Geek Page, etc., all with lists of their own. I’m not making sense of your list. Could you please elaborate?

Hey John,

Interesting results. Which just go to show that, when it comes to matching precise search terms, Google search is comparatively way out of whack.

I decided to do a quick comparison on placement for a search of “Best Free Portable Screen Capture Tool” among some search sites

Mojeek #1
Qwant #3 (less AI and Videos)
Bing #4 (less AI and Videos)
DDG #6
Brave #6 (less AI and Videos — note was a link in AI stuff)
Google Bottom of page 7 (I wasn’t going to count all that)

JD