Summary
Google has many Doodles and hidden “Easter eggs” that can potentially be of time-wasting nature, or even be an online game playable in the browser. This article explains how to block these Doodles and “Easter eggs” from being accessed through your Smoothwall.
Problem
To celebrate certain anniversaries Google creates “Easter eggs” or what they call Google Doodles. These can be anything from a different image, to the traditional Google logo on the Google homepage or even full screen games playable in the browser. This article details how you can prevent access to these time-wasting activities.
Solution
Our blocklist team has added additions to the blocklist for this. It's included in the Online Games category. If new doodles become available, the following steps can be used to block access to those until the blocklist gets updated.
To prevent these Easter eggs from being accessed you need to create a custom category that contains several search terms, and then create a new entry in your policy table to block this category. You also have to ensure that the Online Games category is blocked, because the Google archive of previous “Doodles/Easter eggs” are currently categorized as such.
The most popular Google Doodles/Easter Eggs:
- Do a barrel roll Typing this in the search bar will make the page spin as if doing a barrel roll.
- Zerg Rush Typing this in the search bar will make the search results into an online playable game of having to click on the incoming letters to defeat them.
- Askew Typing this in the search bar will tilt the Google results page to the side.
- Pacman/Google Pacman Typing either of these phrases will present the user with a playable version of Pacman above the search results.
- Atari Breakout If searching on the Images tab of Google for Atari Breakout the images will turn into a playable version of the classic game Breakout.
Step 1 Create the new category which will contain the search terms you want to block:
- Go to Guardian > Policy Objects > Categories.
- Enter a name, for example, Google Doodle Games.
- Enter the following under Search Term Filtering. (Enter one search term per line in the format, [search term] )
- [pacman]
- [atari breakout]
- [do a barrel roll]
- [zerg rush]
Note: These are fairly exact search terms. Therefore, a bit of variation might be needed. Our blocklist team has added additions to the blocklist for this. It's included in the Online Games category.
Step 2 Create a new web filter policy to include the new category:
- Guardian > Web Filter > Manage Policies > Create a new policy.
- Create your new policy as follows:•
- Who Everyone *
- What Google Doodle Games
- Where Everywhere *
- Action Block
* Change as appropriate.
When completed, it will take a few minutes for the changes to take effect. You might need to restart your browser to see the changes.
Once this is in place, users will not be able to use the Google “Easter eggs” because they will receive a block page for the policy that the search terms are in.