Today we have introduced a new Test Profile option that allows you to block requests to specified hosts in your Synthetic monitoring tests.
Screenshot: Host Blocking and Third Party Blocking in Test Profile settings.
Using host blocking, you can specify a given host e.g.: example.com or even wildcard subdomains (e.g.: *.example.com), and all matching requests will be blocked during the test run.
Prior to this update, there were two options for blocking requests in your tests:
- Third Party Blocking
- Adblocking, powered by uBlock Origin browser extension
Due to changes introduced by the infamous "Manifest V3" extensions changes in Chrome, the future of adblocking extensions in Chrome is unclear. We can no longer consider adblocking extensions as a viable solution for automated monitoring.
In order to provide reliable alternatives to block hosts, we have immediately deprecated Adblocking, and replaced it with Host Blocking.
Adblocking support will remain operational for the next 30 days. We recommend migrating to Third Party Blocking or Host Blocking as an alternative. If you have any questions, please contact our support team.
In most cases, Third Party Blocking is the recommended mechanism for blocking requests, as it is powered by an ever-growing list of known third party services and the hostnames they use.
You can find the new Host Blocking option in Test Profile settings (Site → Test Profile → (Add or Edit Test Profile) → Host Blocking).
For more information, see our Test Profile configuration documentation.