How good is a content blocker? You could say that it is great if undesirable content is blocked while content that you want to access is not, but that is only taking content that you could identify visually into account. Most content blockers reveal information about the level of blocking, e.g. how many items were blocked and how many were not.
Ad Block Tester is a free service on the Internet to evaluate content blocking solutions. It is not designed to be a benchmark, but it reveals the level of blocking against a set of hosts that are very popular.
Just visit the Ad Block Tester website to get started. The test runs for a couple of seconds before the results are displayed. You get a percentage score, e.g. 84% of hosts blocked, and a list of blocked and allowed hosts afterwards.
With Brave Browser defaults, 84% of all hosts are blocked. The list of hosts used in the test is divided into the categories ads, analytics, error trackers, social trackers, mix and OEM. Hosts are owned by companies like Google, Facebook, FastClick, Media.net, Doubleclick.net, or Amazon.
Results are color coded and you may expand a particular selection to reveal all hosts. Red entries refer to connections that are not blocked by the solution. A click displays the hosts, which you may then add to the filter list of the content blocking solution.
It is likely that some solutions are not blocked automatically. Compatibility is one reason why a particular host may not be blocked. Most content blocking solutions may allow some of the hosts in their default states. Users who block scripts, e.g. with an add-on like NoScript, may get a clean score.
Closing Words
Ad Block Tester offers a quick way to test a content blocking solution against a set of popular hosts that are widely used. Connections that are shown as unblocked may be added to the blocker, especially if a site or service is not used so that the likelihood of site compatibility issues is kept to a minimum.
