Is there a way to search the internet while avoiding sites with paywall articles?

Question

Like I want to search for coding or stats sites, but a bunch of sites with paywalls for articles come up (or they say to sign up for free, to which a paywall for the article is then mentioned, maybe after a few more articles). I can skip the ones I know have paywalls, or add something like -medium to my search, for the ones that I know of. But is there a more general way to avoid sites with paywalls that I have to sift through?

Answer 1

Not exactly what you're looking for, but there are more extensions that actually stop some paywall sites from being annoying. Examples:

• Spaywall that can find archived versions of paywalled articles, if available
• PaperPanda that's more geared towards academic documents

To find something that prevents all links from appearing in search engine results HTML, once again, you'll to be specific about search engines you're using. Because "the internet" isn't universal and different search engines use different HTML, filters for queries, etc. You absolutely can't cover everything. Here's an example extension for Google: The Free internet plugin!