Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#81

Post by nervechannel » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #78

al_james wrote: post #7

Yes that would be good. They could then look at the number of people blocking certain domains and de-weight them in the global results. Traditionally google seem against human powered editing (as this would be), but I think as the black hat SEOs run rings around them, its needed badly .

This would only work if 1) it was sufficiently painful to put in a block for your searches and 2) this had no effect on global results. 1) - It doesn't have to be extremely painful, just painful enough, such that true loathing is needed as motivation. This way, we filter out frivolous decisions. A few seconds pause would be enough. 2) - We need to let the reduced ad revenue do the job for us through the market. Anyth…

Re 2, yes. A lot of people have reacted as if I suggested letting people affect everybody else's results. I'm not convinced that's possible to do safely, I'd be happy just to see it for my own results.

Re 1, painful? WTF? The whole point is to make it quick and usable. I can already blacklist sites the painful way, by adding them to a Google Custom Search page. The whole point is I'd like a quick add-to-killfile button, like email clients have had for decades.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#82

Post by SimonPStevens » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

nervechannel wrote: post #80

SimonPStevens wrote: post #77

No, it's not particular hard, but it will make the problem worse. Why? 99% of users are non-tech oriented. Those users will not really be aware of the specific problems with the search results, they won't understand the concept of a good vs bad result and they certainly won't bother to tweak/ban/filter their results. The 1% that do care and are currently being vocal about it will start filtering their results and the…

Do you think 99% of users are too stupid to click 'report spam' when they get a spam email?

Not "too stupid" no.

I think 99% of email users have not been adequately trained in why or how they should report spam, and even if they were I think most of them would still not care enough to actually do it with any regularity.

When pushed many may acknowledge that they know it exists, they will probably even be able to find the button when asked if given a chance. But they won't remember to do it when they see spam, they'll just ignore it and move on to the messages from people they know.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#83

Post by matthiaswh » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:52 PM UTC

nervechannel wrote: post #80

SimonPStevens wrote: post #77

No, it's not particular hard, but it will make the problem worse. Why? 99% of users are non-tech oriented. Those users will not really be aware of the specific problems with the search results, they won't understand the concept of a good vs bad result and they certainly won't bother to tweak/ban/filter their results. The 1% that do care and are currently being vocal about it will start filtering their results and the…

Do you think 99% of users are too stupid to click 'report spam' when they get a spam email?

Not all spam is so obvious, both in email and search results. These are all assumptions, but I think it's safe to say the average person identifies the email 'Grow your Pe Nis like a Woman' (true story) as spam. However, the less obvious 'Enter to win a trip to Hawaii' still fools many people. Think about how effective the 'I am a Nigerian Prince that needs help out of my country and then I will give you 1.2 million dollars' scam has been over the years.

With search results, the spam is more often than not Made for AdSense sites that the average user doesn't realize are pure garbage. Then there are the mass-produced content sites like eHow that most technical people realize are worthless, but the average user loves. It isn't often you see Viagra sites popping up in searches for woodworking. It does happen occasionally though.

So no, I am pretty confident a majority of users would not utilize effectively a feature like that.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#84

Post by mattmanser » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:54 PM UTC

jqueryin wrote: post #60

hessenwolf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efreedom is deliberately manufacturing links, whereas SO may be just hoping for the best.

Efreedom has been the bane of my recent programming related searches, polluting my results to no end.

Do what I've taken to doing nowdays, for programming questions go straight to stackoverflow.com before Google. Or use google with site:stackoverflow.com

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#85

Post by nervechannel » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:56 PM UTC

matthiaswh wrote: post #83

nervechannel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think 99% of users are too stupid to click 'report spam' when they get a spam email?

Not all spam is so obvious, both in email and search results. These are all assumptions, but I think it's safe to say the average person identifies the email 'Grow your Pe Nis like a Woman' (true story) as spam. However, the less obvious 'Enter to win a trip to Hawaii' still fools many people. Think about how effective the 'I am a Nigerian Prince that needs help out of my country and then I will give you 1.2 million…

Frankly, I'm not fussed whether the majority of users would use it right.

I posted this as an entirely self-serving request for a way to make my results cleaner.

Also: If the majority of users do like eHow, then that's a sign it's not spam. But a lot of 'power users' consider it spam. This is an argument FOR personalised blacklists, not against them.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#86

Post by nervechannel » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:04 PM UTC

hoofish wrote: post #56

the problem I have with this is that some black hat people can do this to any site they feel they are competing with. what would prevent someone from blacklisting a legitimate blog or website just because they did not like the content?

So what? All that would mean is that the site wouldn't show up in their results.

I never said anything about it affecting other people's results...

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#87

Post by bromley » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:05 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #75

eli wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An extremely easy way for a bunch of people to get together and destroy someone's ranking? That doesn't sound like such a good idea.

Given that Google gets hundred of millions of search and visitors, then you'll need a hundred of thousands of down votes to get black-listed. No black hatter can really do that (create a 100K account/IP to avoid Google radar and down vote the website).

Hundreds of millions of searches and visitors in aggregate: yes.

Hundreds of millions of searches and visitors in any one keyword niche: not so often.

Many websites live off a handful of visitors a day coming from a few core keywords and associated long-tail traffic. For a keyword that only gets 100 searches a day, it wouldn't take many down-votes to affect the rankings of the relevant sites.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#88

Post by equalarrow » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #84

jqueryin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efreedom has been the bane of my recent programming related searches, polluting my results to no end.

Do what I've taken to doing nowdays, for programming questions go straight to stackoverflow.com before Google. Or use google with site:stackoverflow.com

Or just don't use google anymore. I've switched to Duckduckgo and Blekko. So far, so good.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#89

Post by seabee » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

SimonPStevens wrote: post #82

nervechannel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think 99% of users are too stupid to click 'report spam' when they get a spam email?

Not "too stupid" no. I think 99% of email users have not been adequately trained in why or how they should report spam, and even if they were I think most of them would still not care enough to actually do it with any regularity. When pushed many may acknowledge that they know it exists, they will probably even be able to find the button when asked if given a chance. But they won't remember to do it when they see spa…

Do you think this could be improved by alternate wording? Instead of reporting 'spam', ask the user 'was this useful?' or 'did you want this?'.

After all, the real goal is giving people a better, more relevant experience, detecting and removing spam is just one facet of that. Whether it's email or search.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#90

Post by bromley » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:12 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #84

jqueryin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efreedom has been the bane of my recent programming related searches, polluting my results to no end.

Do what I've taken to doing nowdays, for programming questions go straight to stackoverflow.com before Google. Or use google with site:stackoverflow.com

Or use stacksearch.org (to include serverfault et al.), or the custom search built into stackexchange (which uses Google behind the scenes as well).

stackoverflow has been my first port of call for programming queries for quite some time. If Google wasn't so filled with scraper junk that probably wouldn't be the case.