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“Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

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Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third sentence explicitly states what rule Pinterest breaks....

That's not one of Google's rules, as far as I can tell. Here are some of Google's rules: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/open-we... Some might say that Pinterest's behavior is covered under the "Spam and Malware" section on that page, but clearly Google does not agree with that interpretation of Google's rules or else the search results would have been removed by now. There are other sites requir…

> "Google search results reflect content on the web"

That's what's being violated. The GoogleBot gets the content, but not a human visiting the site. That's not what a user expects. That's why Pinterest and LinkedIn should be removed from Google search indexes.

Addendum We're not even talking about violating Google's T&C here. It's about how their ranking algorithm works. Try building a site and applying similar black-hat SEO tactics and watch your traffic disappear. Not for them.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#62
post #2

It should, but this also illustrates a problem with Google Search that they'll need to grapple with in the future. Namely, that while they should treat all sites equally, in practicality there's not really much incentive to on their part. Think about it. Let's say Google does remove Pinterest altogether, banning the site as a punishment for 'gaming' the system. What then? The people that do search for Pinterest will…

"Show auto-filtered results"

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#63
post #57
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What then? The people that do search for Pinterest will find it missing, and likely assume Google screwed up/their search engine is broken. Would that be a problem for Google (or anyone else)? If a group of users specifically expects the results to come from Pinterest, they'd presumably be able to search on that site directly. For other searches, they'd presumably still use Google because there is no good alternati…

"...search on that site directly." Not for an unbelievable number of people (according to my own anecdata.) There exist large numbers (extrapolating from aforementioned anecdata) of people who don't know you can just visit a website - they think it must first be "googled." I've witnessed on a single occasion an individual who accidentally went directly to facebook.com, didn't trust that they'd gotten facebook.com, pr…

Even then the suggestion further down this thread could work: include pinterest results only if the search query contains the word "pinterest".

If people then still complain because they expect google to read their mind and provide pinterest results for completely unrelated queries, I honestly don't have much compassion for them.

(Though if google wanted to, they could even make allowances for those people via profiling - e.g., if you know user X has clicked on many pinterest results in the past, always permit those results in their queries.)

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#64

> "I'm searching for a specific piece of technical hardware " What specific piece of technical hardware shows up anywhere near the first page of results in Google that's from pintrest? I can't think of a single time I've seen pintrest in the search results and I search for various technical things all the time? Just curious since this surprises me. I thought pintrest was non technical stuff usually.

I'm a hobbyist woodworker. I was recently searching for an unusual wood-joint, and I had to give up because the google search results were absolutely polluted with pinterest.

Interesting! Good answer, thanks :-)

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#65

> "I'm searching for a specific piece of technical hardware " What specific piece of technical hardware shows up anywhere near the first page of results in Google that's from pintrest? I can't think of a single time I've seen pintrest in the search results and I search for various technical things all the time? Just curious since this surprises me. I thought pintrest was non technical stuff usually.

A bunch of arduino and other small easy beginner hardware is stuff that comes to mind. Since pintrest is about cataloguing project type things it can actually be quite relevant. Unfortunately.

Also Interesting! Good answer, thanks :-)

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#66
post #2

It should, but this also illustrates a problem with Google Search that they'll need to grapple with in the future. Namely, that while they should treat all sites equally, in practicality there's not really much incentive to on their part. Think about it. Let's say Google does remove Pinterest altogether, banning the site as a punishment for 'gaming' the system. What then? The people that do search for Pinterest will…

What rules is Pinterest breaking? And what would it mean for Google to treat "all sites equally"?

Pintrest is projecting Facebook attitude with an AOL product.

They give the googlebot one answer and the user a different one. My understanding is that is a no-no.

Pintrest and Quora fit in this weird category like Expertsexchange; they get high search ranking because of the questions, but don’t deliver the answers.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#67

> "I'm searching for a specific piece of technical hardware " What specific piece of technical hardware shows up anywhere near the first page of results in Google that's from pintrest? I can't think of a single time I've seen pintrest in the search results and I search for various technical things all the time? Just curious since this surprises me. I thought pintrest was non technical stuff usually.

I'm a hobbyist woodworker. I was recently searching for an unusual wood-joint, and I had to give up because the google search results were absolutely polluted with pinterest.

Yep. I've encountered this way too many times. And you'll find the picture you're looking for and it will only be on Pinterest. Then you click on to Pinterest and there is zero context for the picture. WTF? No links. Nothing. I'll never understand Pinterest.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#68
post #2

It should, but this also illustrates a problem with Google Search that they'll need to grapple with in the future. Namely, that while they should treat all sites equally, in practicality there's not really much incentive to on their part. Think about it. Let's say Google does remove Pinterest altogether, banning the site as a punishment for 'gaming' the system. What then? The people that do search for Pinterest will…

I don't know what the problem is with implementing opt-in community block lists. This gives blocking functionality, and offloads the responsibility to communities that users can subscribe to.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#69
post #39

While they are at it please remove LinkedIn. You can't actually view anything on any page without logging in. Why is it listed at all? Seems pretty deceptive to me.

Can we also ban Elsevier and get Google to replace their links with Sci-Hub links?

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#70
post #56

I agree that it's quite annoying, but you can already remove it yourself from the search results by adding "-site:pinterest.com" in the query.

Will this allow different service to get into same space and then we will do "-site:pinterest.com -site:random.com"? Maybe than there will be space for new search engine that will do it for us?
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