topic Re: URL blocking Web Advertisements with exceptions? in General Topics

URL blocking Web Advertisements with exceptions?

JimMcGrady — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 01:25:29 GMT

When i set our URL filter to block category 'web advertisements' it works as expected. However, it also blocks many of the results of Google and Bing searches. I understand that is because the results in question are web advertisements, strictly speaking.

Ideally i'd like to block inline advertisements whilst allowing results from Google/Bing searches - even if they are web ads.

If this isnt possible, how would i go about setting up exceptions for specific *.site.com URLs?

Re: URL blocking Web Advertisements with exceptions?

Braden_Tolman — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 04:30:04 GMT

Im certainly not well-versed in how the search engine ads specifically work, but you could try cloning the rule you're matching, and specify google/bing applications in that policy. Define a URL Filtering profile that doesn't block web-adverts in the rule.

I hope that helps!

Re: URL blocking Web Advertisements with exceptions?

Rene_Boehme — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 11:04:26 GMT

Hi,

so basically I had the same issue with a customer once. They've blocked a lot of stuff include the "Google - I am no robot - capture" which was required to enter the website. So we allowed it, analyzed the webpage (in Chrome presss F12), found the respective URL and allowed it trough. Strange enough even allowing *.google.* was not working out. However you can try to go on with your category blocking and starting whitlisting those advertisements. Unfortunately I am unaware of best practice here. I good way to start is within the URL filtering log. Setup filters like (url contains 'bing') and (action eq block) so see whats blocked and allow it if suitable. For testing you can clone the respective rule and add a UserID to it so the setup can be tested on live environment without interrupting. (if no UserID in place nail the source ip down to something)

Hope that helps.

Re: URL blocking Web Advertisements with exceptions?

BillyeMoore — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 13:47:07 GMT

I have implemented a couple of cloud SWG's from other companies and they do not block search results but do block Ads really well, Palo Alto does block search results on every PAND implementation I have experienced. This is a problem for retail/ marketing companies who have to allow all ADS and then utilize Ad-blockers in browsers which is not an optimum solution.