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Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#291

Post by geomark »

foobarian wrote: post #212
smoe wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still works -site:pinterest.* Even with wildcard tld, otherwise it is still all Pinterest But it is interesting that those kind of Google/search engine feature hardly ever get talked about these days whereas in the past they were considered crucial to get decent results.

I don't know what the pathway for this is but just -pinterest does it for me.

I use that a lot. Wouldn't Google notice if a lot of people were telling it they don't want to see results from Pinterest and make some adjustments to their SERPs?

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#292

Post by udioron »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #247
udioron wrote: post #37

I feel like pinterest is being a "placeholder"/"fallback"/"default" of the web. Each time I encounter quora or pinterest search results I am getting the feeling I was looking for something that does not have good online answer/content.

Did you look beyond the Quora / Pinterest / other SEO spam results? There's good content on the web for virtually any query, it's just often buried under mountains of SEO spam results.

I did. Usually I am not clicking the pinterest/quora links and I am left with nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#293

Post by fsflover »

knuckleheads wrote: post #25
marmaduke wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your think tank come up with any ideas on how to keep companies like Pinterest from peeing in the pool so to speak? They made it impossible to find DIY craft stuff that I used to search for, and I can’t imagine it’s the only site doing it.

We are pursuing ideas that we think will increase competition in the search engine market. Our main focus right now is making Google’s index of the web available for use by competitors, since no one other than Google is really allowed to crawl the web. If people were allowed to use the index to build what they want, then you or somebody else would be able to build a search engine that avoids the Pinterest cruft and w…

Wow, such index would tremendously help free p2p search YaCy, https://yacy.net.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#294

Post by LordDragonfang »

GraemeL wrote: post #114
erichocean wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be great if Google had a little "hide this domain for me permanently" next to every search result. Not only would it improve that user's own search results, it's a very strong signal that other users also might not like it, for de-ranking purposes.

They used to offer that functionality but removed it years ago. I've been using this userscript since then. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-d... It might be called Google Hit Hider by Domain but the author has expanded it to cover most major search engines over the years.

I've used a similar script; the problem is, for certain searches, literally every result is a pinterest link, and you end up with a blank page.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#295

Post by summerlight »

alkonaut wrote: post #132

If Google decided tomorrow that Quora and Pinterest is spam and should basically never be in the top 10 results pages, couldn’t they just fix it? What’s the worst that could happen?

DoJ, which is in charge of the on-going antitrust lawsuit against Google, will be very excited about that change.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#296

Post by seanwilson »

For people saying Pinterest has mastered SEO and that's why they're at the top, what exactly are they doing that is so effective?

I'm not understanding how individual Pinterest pages or users would gather that many quality backlinks for example. Do they have quality backlinks? If not, why is lack of backlinks not hurting their rankings?

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#297

Post by alkonaut »

mianos wrote: post #179
alkonaut wrote: post #132

If Google decided tomorrow that Quora and Pinterest is spam and should basically never be in the top 10 results pages, couldn’t they just fix it? What’s the worst that could happen?

They would be sued. Pinterest and Quora don't actually care that their actions make the web crappy for us all. They would stand on their high horses and complain that google is treating them unfairly. Normally I would assume this problem is because all the cool kids at google are working on more interesting problems but in this case I honestly believe they can't make a change for the betterment of the majority of the…

Does google have a legal obligation to be fair or transparent? I thought what made google tick was the army of manual and arbitrary blacklisting where SEO cheating like e.g showing a full article to the google bot and a “subscribe to read the full article” to everyone else was way over the line that could lead to a ban

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#298

Post by npteljes »

grendix wrote: post #96
npteljes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Services and users have different goals. Why is the helpful technologist the problem?

Your second statement is enabling bad behavior, your first statement is insane.

Care to elaborate on the insane part? I feel sane.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#299

Post by npteljes »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #139
npteljes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Services and users have different goals. Why is the helpful technologist the problem?

Real answer? Because helpful technologists are the interface between less knowledgeable users and services like Google. We’re the power users and “mavens” who are both highly exposed to the product and have some understanding of what’s going wrong and how it might be made better. We also spend a lot more time talking to that product’s engineering staff than the typical user (see e.g. the fact that we’re here on HN.)…

I see your point. Working around abusive behaviour, and accepting that as a solution, just enables further abuse. I don't think we can influence said engineers here on HN. I know for a fact that I personally wouldn't be influenced, and I also think that if the product managers will want something, then it will get done, no matter what people write here.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?

#300

Post by Cockbrand »

smoe wrote: post #168
Chirael wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t there an option at one time to tell Google to hide results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven’t seen that in years though

It still works -site:pinterest.* Even with wildcard tld, otherwise it is still all Pinterest But it is interesting that those kind of Google/search engine feature hardly ever get talked about these days whereas in the past they were considered crucial to get decent results.

That's a nice hack, thanks! I've just modified my Google search engine entry in Chrome to include this.
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