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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?

#31

Post by amelius »

kauju wrote: post #17
blunte wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be asking from a product perspective if they are providing the search results the user is most likely seeking. I seriously doubt that most pinterest results are what users are seeking. As such, Google probably should consider changes to their algorithm to compensate (cat and mouse) for pinterest's gaming. That is assuming how pinterest does it is not against any google rules... because if it were agains…

Just do -pinterest in your search to filter

It gets tiring.

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

#32

Post by mulmen »

kauju wrote: post #17
blunte wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be asking from a product perspective if they are providing the search results the user is most likely seeking. I seriously doubt that most pinterest results are what users are seeking. As such, Google probably should consider changes to their algorithm to compensate (cat and mouse) for pinterest's gaming. That is assuming how pinterest does it is not against any google rules... because if it were agains…

Just do -pinterest in your search to filter

Google account preferences used to have an option to exclude domains from results. About a decade (?) ago I added Burleson Consulting and expertsexchange to blocked domains and Google was instantly useful again. In 2014-ish Google moved this functionality to Chrome so I lost access to it. Not sure if it is still there.

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

#33

Post by heyoni »

ffpip wrote: post #9

google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."]) google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1) Add to uBlock Origin. in the "My Filters" tab. This will completely block pinterest

I miss the days when google had an option to block entire domains. So sad that they removed it.

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

#34

Post by knuckleheads »

burnthrow wrote: post #29
knuckleheads wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> making Google’s index of the web available for use by competitors What incentive would Google have to continue populating that index? Would I be breaking the law if I independently crawled and hosted an index without publishing an API for it? > since no one other than Google is really allowed to crawl the web Maybe this is the problem that needs solving.

> What incentive would Google have to continue populating that index?

Presumably they would still want to run google.com and make money off of it.

> Would I be breaking the law if I independently crawled and hosted an index without publishing an API for it?

No. You would not get the advantage that Google gets when it crawls the web and so would not have access to a large amount of data that nobody else has access to.

Updated based on edit of parent post:

> Maybe this is the problem that needs solving.

Why have websites waste the money to serve all those requests all over again? Why don't we have Google share the results and we can use that money to do more productive things than recreating that work? I don't think website operators would be happy if there were a hundred more crawlers out there crawling as much as Google does now.

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

#35

Post by baskire »

kauju wrote: post #17
blunte wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be asking from a product perspective if they are providing the search results the user is most likely seeking. I seriously doubt that most pinterest results are what users are seeking. As such, Google probably should consider changes to their algorithm to compensate (cat and mouse) for pinterest's gaming. That is assuming how pinterest does it is not against any google rules... because if it were agains…

Just do -pinterest in your search to filter

Or just avoid using google. The Pinterest results in google image search queries was a major driver to me using bing/ duck duck go.

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

#36

Post by blunte »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #8

Another example about how google is broken. It has great difficulty distinguishing noise from signal.

It's also another example of how modern tech companies are broken (or lacking ethics).

Currently, many big tech companies do basically whatever they want. Facebook and other ad companies have been caught knowingly defrauding ad spend customers, Amazon has been knowingly permitting counterfeit sales for years, Uber has been ignoring regional laws globally, Airbnb was (and may still be) ignoring or hiding data that illustrates their connection with increased housing pressures, and on and on.

Doing what you can get away with (because the cost of the penalty is lower than the profit that results from the bad behavior) is not ok. It doesn't contribute to an improved civilization, it pushes civilization back down toward a zero-sum, selfish survivalist mentality. I know it sounds corny or hippie, but if people can try to better balance their own desires against the good of the community, the end result will surely be better.

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

#38

Post by ffpip »

blunte wrote: post #18
ffpip wrote: post #9

google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."]) google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1) Add to uBlock Origin. in the "My Filters" tab. This will completely block pinterest

Unfortunately this did not work for me. I added these two, and then I did a search on images.google.com for "custom carved door frame". 5 of 7 images on the first row of results was some pinterest site.

Can you try this?

  google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."])

  google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1)

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

#39

Post by forgotmypw17 »

heyoni wrote: post #33
ffpip wrote: post #9

google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."]) google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1) Add to uBlock Origin. in the "My Filters" tab. This will completely block pinterest

I miss the days when google had an option to block entire domains. So sad that they removed it.

    -indomain:pinterest

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

burnthrow wrote: post #29
knuckleheads wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> making Google’s index of the web available for use by competitors What incentive would Google have to continue populating that index? Would I be breaking the law if I independently crawled and hosted an index without publishing an API for it? > since no one other than Google is really allowed to crawl the web Maybe this is the problem that needs solving.

[deleted]
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