Another approach to allow google ads with Pihole

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1

Everywhere we can see people complaining that they can no longer click on google ads when using Pi-hole. The answers are always the same: works as intended, look further down.
When I looked at the blocked URLs, I saw the URL that I really wanted after "adurl=". E.g.

> https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?...&adurl=wantedUrl

. The approach is to strip everything before adurl= and redirect to the wanted URL. Sometimes it is more complicated than this, because adurl refers to another ad server, like ad.doubleclick.net, then the wanted url is in another parameter.

I test this approach with a small Chrome extension. It has just two files. Put them in an empty directory, and call chrome://extensions/ , then "load unpacked from directory" or so. The two files are
manifest.json:

{
	"name": "pihole_googleads",
	"description": "make google ads usable for Pihole",
	"version": "1.0",
	"manifest_version": 3,
	"declarative_net_request": {
		"rule_resources": [{
			"id": "ruleset",
			"enabled": true,
			"path": "rules.json"
		}]
	},
	"permissions": [
		"declarativeNetRequest"
	],
	"host_permissions": [
		"https://www.googleadservices.com/*"
	]
}

and rules.json:

[
	{
		"id": 1,
		"priority": 2,
		"action": {
			"type": "redirect",
			"redirect": {
				"regexSubstitution": "\\1"
			}
		},
		"condition": {
			"regexFilter": "^https://www.googleadservices.com/.*adurl=https://ad.doubleclick.net/.*_clickid_%3F(.*)%3F.*",
			"resourceTypes": [ "main_frame" ]
		}
	},
	{
		"id": 2,
		"priority": 2,
		"action": {
			"type": "redirect",
			"redirect": {
				"regexSubstitution": "\\1"
			}
		},
		"condition": {
			"regexFilter": "^https://www.googleadservices.com/.*adurl=https://clickserve.dartsearch.net/.*ds_dest_url%3D(.*)%3F.*",
			"resourceTypes": [ "main_frame" ]
		}
	},
	{
		"id": 3,
		"priority": 1,
		"action": {
			"type": "redirect",
			"redirect": {
				"regexSubstitution": "\\1"
			}
		},
		"condition": {
			"regexFilter": "^https://www.googleadservices.com/.*adurl=(.*)%3F.*",
			"resourceTypes": [ "main_frame" ]
		}
	},
	{
		"id": 4,
		"priority": 1,
		"action": {
			"type": "redirect",
			"redirect": {
				"regexSubstitution": "\\1"
			}
		},
		"condition": {
			"regexFilter": "^https://www.googleadservices.com/.*adurl=(.*)",
			"resourceTypes": [ "main_frame" ]
		}
	}
]

Basically, the condition specifies a regexp, and the part in () is referred to in regexSubstitution as \1.

The 3F-stuff is there, because the url after adurl is urlencoded, and I can not find out how to unencode before redirect. The 3F is the question mark, so essentially the wanted URL is stripped from the parameters.

I know this is very rough, but I looked into Chrome Extensions only for a few hours, and my hope is, that someone who reads this comes up with something more polished.

I tested this on a few ads, and I was quite pleased.

2 Likes
2

Pi-hole doesn't block at the URL level, it blocks at the domain level.

This seems very odd. Run an adblocker (i.e. Pi-hole) for the purpose of blocking ads. Then, circumvent this ad blocker so you can get to ads.

This is the much more preferred approach. Why go to the ad-served link when the regular link is just a few lines below?

3

Can be achieved, using pihole, read here (Whitelist Google Ads for some clients with Pi-hole).

4

Your approach looks similar to that of the Google search link fix browser extension I've been using, but that seems to be discontinued?

Anyway, this seems more related Google's dynamically scripted URL link manipulations (channeling you through their tracking sites instead of taking you straight to the target site) than to Pi-hole: You'd benefit from changing the link in the browser back to the originally intended target site regardless -and even in the absence of- any additional client-side or server-side filtering. :slight_smile:

5

Most of the search engines are now funneling their first page of results though tracking sites, or at least the top ones. I notice that Bing will put a tiny "AD" next to it which tells me not to select it. You have to scroll down much further to get the real site, here is an example searching for Kohl's. The one with AD many times will route you though their tracking servers.

image
image812×804 144 KB

6

To jpgpi250: Yes, I was aware of this alternative. Basically, this is why I choose the title "another approach". Your link should show to the moderators, to what lengths people go who like to continue to use pihole, and still look for peace with the rest of the family. I use pihole in the simplest configuration, where I just told the router to use pihole for DNS requests, and pihole, to use 1.1.1.1. I want to avoid to configure DNS on every device. And I do not want to start whitelisting. Unfortunately, it turns out that Chrome on Android does not support extensions, so my wife, for whom I experimented with this approach, can still not click on google ads...
To Bucking_Horn: I looked shortly on the github page of the Google search link fix. It does not mention adurl, or googleadservices, and is archived since 10 years. The extension can no longer be found anywhere. I suspect also that the links of google ads have changed since that time.
I do not intend to work against pihole. Rather, I am fond of pihole, and I think there are a lot of people either deinstalling pihole or whitelisting google ads entirely or configure pihole for each device, just because household members insist to be able to click on google ads.
To RonV42: I am in Germany and here there are no ads for Kohls. Also, the ad links on Bing look very different, and the original URL is not in clear text as on Google. So this approach does not work with Bing, only with Google.

7

Put your wife's device(s) in their own Pi-hole management group, assign all your current adlists to that group and whitelist the Google ad domains for that group only.

She will be able to load Google ads, but they will continue to be blocked for the rest of the network.