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Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

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Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#201

Post by not2b »

tyingq wrote: post #188
endisneigh wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the search engines have seen massive increases in SEO and consequently, spam. Do you believe Google et al isn’t working on it? It’s obviously a very difficult problem.

I believe they've become more complacent since there is no competitive pressure, yes.

I doubt it. If their results become noticeably worse than Bing (and therefore DDG) results, people will start to switch. But Bing is having the same problems with the crap sites.

So they at least have to keep their quality even with the competition for the average person (HN readers are not the average person).

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#202

Post by ryanmcbride »

fowkswe wrote: post #102
javajosh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with ddg has been very positive over the years. Although I think my eyes have gotten good at skipping over the noise in the search results. It might be nice to offload that effort to software.

DDG has no idea of the intent of your search based on your previous searches and unfortunately this generates abysmal results for me when searching for something like `ruby xxx`. Those terms rarely return results about the programming language. I unfortunately end up using Google in these situations, always to immediate success.

I'll take having to write verbose and specific searches over google guessing what I really want any day.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#203

Post by Karsteski »

nixcraft wrote: post #122
jhchabran wrote: post #5

That's an ambitious goal, I'm not sure to see how that would be maintainable on the long run. On a much smaller scale, if anyone is interested, I maintain a black list focused on those code snippet content farms that gets in the way when you're searching for some error message or particular function here https://github.com/jhchabran/code-search-blacklist .

May I know why my domain (cyberciti.biz) was added to that list? I created my site back in 2000, and there was no StackOverflow or anything. So much for creating original content and then getting labelled as a spammer. In fact, some of the top answers on StackOverflow were copied from my work without giving any credit to me. Some people do give credit tho. But, go ahead block a site that actual humans maintain over 2…

I've noticed cyberciti.biz showing up in my DDG search results but I've always ignored it because of the initial captcha. I will try it now that I've seen your post here!

The .biz definitely does not help, since it hints to me that it's just another one of those worthless reposting sites, as someone else commented below.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#204

Post by tyingq »

endisneigh wrote: post #195
tyingq wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they've become more complacent since there is no competitive pressure, yes.

I don't know, a lot of people have claimed this but no one has any proof.

What would proof be? Over a period of time, they have clearly de-prioritized organic search results by pushing them down the page with ads, widgets, and so on. They used to engage more directly with content producers. Matt Cutts was often called the "Head of Web Spam". When he left, they dissolved his role and spread it around to several other people.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#205

Post by tyingq »

not2b wrote: post #201
tyingq wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they've become more complacent since there is no competitive pressure, yes.

I doubt it. If their results become noticeably worse than Bing (and therefore DDG) results, people will start to switch. But Bing is having the same problems with the crap sites. So they at least have to keep their quality even with the competition for the average person (HN readers are not the average person).

That matches what I said, really. "Better than current-day Bing" is a much lower bar than they used to shoot for.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#207

Post by nixcraft »

nitrogen wrote: post #200
nixcraft wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare sometimes triggers those when they think IP reputation is not good. Typically happens for data centre IP ranges as WAF has an anti-bot feature. So I know it is a problem for some.

Maybe it's the fact that I don't use one of the three major US ISPs. Hopefully CDNs get used to the idea that there can be more than one fiber provider.

Would you mind sharing the Cloudflare ray id displayed at the bottom of the screen when you see a captcha? I can look into it, and maybe be I will able to fix it too. Reply here or email me at webmaster@cyberciti.biz. HTH.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#208

Post by endisneigh »

tyingq wrote: post #204
endisneigh wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, a lot of people have claimed this but no one has any proof.

What would proof be? Over a period of time, they have clearly de-prioritized organic search results by pushing them down the page with ads, widgets, and so on. They used to engage more directly with content producers. Matt Cutts was often called the "Head of Web Spam". When he left, they dissolved his role and spread it around to several other people.

Your claim regarding deprioritized search results for example - where’s the proof?

If what you are saying is true it should be trivial to give sample queries so we can test across all search engines and see if it’s true.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#209

Post by endisneigh »

tyingq wrote: post #205
not2b wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. If their results become noticeably worse than Bing (and therefore DDG) results, people will start to switch. But Bing is having the same problems with the crap sites. So they at least have to keep their quality even with the competition for the average person (HN readers are not the average person).

That matches what I said, really. "Better than current-day Bing" is a much lower bar than they used to shoot for.

Bing has always been very comparable to Google. Especially in certain niches. For example bing was better for social in 2010:

https://www.eweek.com/news/microsoft-bing-beat-google-in-soc...

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#210

Post by AmosLightnin »

Shouldn't we make a plugin for SearX that learns from the results you click, so that the customization and machine learning is on the client side? That way search becomes a commodity, but the final selection algorithm's behavior is owned by the user.
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