Building the First Rule Set

Normally the starting point for a new rule set is using the New rules wizard. We will cover that later, but for the purpose of simplicity this exercise will instead build a new rule set from scratch. Return to the console and click on Rule Sets:

Rule Sets tree

In the action window select your new repository and give the rule set a name (in this case NoAds) and click on Create:

Create new Rule Set

Note: The rule set name should always be a single word with no spaces.

A new rule set is created, ready for us to edit:

Update rule set

Click on Update to start editing the rule set. A pop-up window will appear showing the rule set in the Rules Editor:

Rule set canvas

Note: If no pop-up appears then check your browser's pop-up blocker. Pop-ups (though blocked by some users) are useful for the rules editor. It allows you to have many rules editing windows open at the same time and edit them all concurrently (including copying and pasting between them).

We encourage you to expand some of the elements of the Rule Catalog to see what is available. The complete rules reference is also available as a PDF document from the main console page.

At this stage you should also add a short description of what your rule set is going to do. Do this by clicking on the Rule Info tab and keying in a short description of the purpose of the rule set:

Rule set description

The next step is to start building some rules to handle the search result. The first consideration is that the rules should only apply to search results, not items like images, CSS and the like. Normally the New rules wizard would insert a special rule to take care of that problem, but with Google there happens to be a very simple solution: Any request that has a dot (.) in it, is sure to be non-HTML.

Other sites may use some other consistent extension for pages (such as .php, .jsp or .html), but for Google it is pages with no extension at all.

Therefore, our first task is to filter out all requests with a dot (.) in them, and to do this, we need a condition. Expand the Conditions group and drag an If Condition from the tree onto the canvas:

If Condition rule added

At this point, move your mouse over the If Condition on your canvas, right click it and select Help. The expanded help for the rule appears:

Docs for the rule

All rules have this help available. In addition, in the bottom left corner of the rules editor you will also see a summary help notice:

Summary help notice

These help features are often useful when trying to find the best rule to suit a specific purpose (as some rules may sound very similar).