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Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

news.ycombinator.com

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

#161

Post by jonhendry »

Rhapso wrote: post #156

It seems like a obvious answer, but why not just use "-site:annoyingpage.com" in you search? In fact "-TotallyUnRelated" has helped me narrow down searches effectively too. You are asking for a feature that only a small subset of the users will benefit from and use, it makes more sense for google just to find a way to rank sites better then it does to build a additional filter on top of the current system.

Because I'd want to add a list of excluded sites for pretty much every single query I do.

Would you want to type out a string of 20 or 30 excluded sites every time you search Google?

Ranking clearly isn't going to be good enough, because algorithms can be worked around and gamed.

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

#162

Post by jonhendry »

ergo98 wrote: post #44
djhworld wrote: post #20

I think the worst culprits are the ones that skim StackOverflow questions and rehash them into their own supposed original "question and answer" site

What do you think most StackOverflow answers are? It's a karma-paid labor pool where you can post questions and a lot of under-employed people will rush out and do the necessary Google searches, collating and slightly rewriting the results to yield the most votes. Everyone is ripping off someone's content. And just to be accurate here, SO content is creative commons (created by the community). Are those just cheap wo…

" It's a karma-paid labor pool where you can post questions and a lot of under-employed people will rush out and do the necessary Google searches"

Maybe it's like that in your field, but in Mac dev questions you're fairly likely to get answers from established OS X developers, and even Apple employees.

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

#163

Post by j_baker »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #113
bradly wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ExpertsExchage and About.com

I don't get the hating on About.com. There are sub-sites there that I actually read intentionally, e.g., http://heavymetal.about.com/ This sure looks to me like real, original content. EDIT: how about the courtesy of an explanation for the downvote?

About.com's content is decent sometimes. The problem is finding it amongst all the ads.

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

#165

Post by eli »

robryan wrote: post #93
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.

If this wasn't at all preventable the idea of adwords would never work, people would just be running up competitors costs.

I don't know how many people get away with it, but that sort of thing definitely happens. Google claims they filter all the bogus clicks out and you aren't charged for them, but you kinda have to take their word for it since there's virtually no way to verify.

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

#166

Post by tomjen3 »

moe wrote: post #109
tomjen3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most botnets would easily have more than that number of computers. So yeah it can be done.

It would also be a significant undertaking if the down-votes are tied to google accounts. Not only do you have to bypass the captcha, but also the heuristics that google could (does?) employ to detect fake accounts. If the votes were weighted by account activity then the spammers would not only have to sign up and vote; they would also have to keep all these accounts busy with fake queries or other means.

Not really, you just have to steal the account of the person who owns the computer.

If you have a botnet, you shouldn't have much trouble doing that.

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

#167

Post by JonnieCache »

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.

Just use this chrome extension, it redirects them all to the relevant SO page.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gledhololmniapej...

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

#169

Post by dejb »

radley wrote: post #151

Google does provide this service: it's called Google Custom Search. You can prioritize or blacklist sites and it's pretty easy to add it to your browser searchbar. I don't always use it, but I'll switch to it when I encounter a spammy topic, usually dev-related searches. http://radleymarx.com/blog/better-search-results/

I can't believe this isn't the most popular comment. Kinda makes HN look a bit like a knowledge vacuum with all these recent discussions of how to ban results when a google service that's existed for nearly 5 years can do the job. The format of the results isn't quite a nice as the normal google search though.

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

#170

Post by slaker »

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…

That's not true. Google is already having a Spam button in Gmail. The same idea can be applied here.
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