Skip to content

Cannot block any URL from the default Search Engine #166

Description

@lizi-meng

[Block-Site in Edge browser] When I set my search bar's default Engine to Bing or Google, that search engine's results cannot be blocked. For example, if Bing is set to default, I can still type in the address bar to search in bing even if bing.com is blocked.

Issue Summary

I am using Microsoft Edge with the Block Site extension and a regex rule:

\biran\b

The goal is to block URLs containing the standalone word "iran" (e.g. search queries such as "iran war").

Initially I observed that Google search URLs were blocked while Bing search URLs were not, even though both URLs contained the same query term.

Example 1

Blocked

https://www.google.com/search?q=iran+war

Not blocked

https://www.bing.com/search?q=iran+war

Since both URLs contain the standalone word "iran", this suggested that the regex itself was not the problem.

Example 2

I then replaced the hostname in the Bing URL while leaving the rest of the URL unchanged.

Blocked

https://example.com/search?q=iran+war

This indicated that the matching logic was working and that the issue appeared related to the search engine/domain rather than the regex.

Example 3

Further testing showed that the behavior follows the browser's default search engine:

  1. When Bing is configured as the default search engine:

    • Bing search results are not blocked.
    • Google search results are blocked.
  2. When Google is configured as the default search engine:

    • Google search results are not blocked.
    • Bing search results are blocked.

This suggests that pages belonging to the current default search engine may be exempt from blocking, or that navigations generated through the browser's default search provider are handled differently from normal URL navigations.

Expected Behavior

The regex rule should be applied consistently regardless of which search engine is configured as the browser's default.

For example, all of the following URLs should be evaluated identically:

https://www.google.com/search?q=iran+war
https://www.bing.com/search?q=iran+war
https://example.com/search?q=iran+war

Since each URL contains the standalone word "iran", they should either all be blocked or all be allowed according to the same matching logic.

Actual Behavior

The current default search engine appears to bypass the block rule, while the same pattern works correctly on other domains.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions