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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?

#51

Post by fuzxi »

maya24 wrote: post #47
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…

Stop using Google search. DDG works just as well

Would that this were true, but it's not. Searching for specific technical issues especially shows DDG's weakness.

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

#52

Post by oneplane »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #5
jldugger wrote: post #4

Are we using different googles?

I see Pinterest appearing disproportionately in image search.

I practically never see Pinterest in the results. I suppose it really depends on what you are searching for.

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

#53

Post by ehsankia »

This answer has never made sense to me. Pinterest breaks the 2 signals I would assume Google search to use:

1. Often, the image I'm looking for isn't the main image on the page, just one of the small thumbnails and very hard to find on the page

2. Almost every single time I click on a pinterest result, I end up going back because it doesn't help me, i assume others do the same.

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

#54

Post by _AzMoo »

maya24 wrote: post #47
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…

Stop using Google search. DDG works just as well

I use DDG search most of the time, but I find this to be untrue. DDG is pretty good, but struggles with context a lot more than Google does. For example, when searching for an error in a programming library, DDG is likely to return the library homepage, whereas google is more likely to return the specific github issue where the error is being discussed.

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

#55

Post by krainboltgreene »

xg15 wrote: post #20
hayksaakian wrote: post #3

There's no intentional or manual effort at Google to promote pinterest. Pinterest shows up because they understand how the Google algorithm works and built their website to display all the signals that Google looks for in relevant image content. They understand user intent and generate URLs that present content in a way that google expects to see. Examples of how they do this from their engineering team: https://medi…

Still odd that Google tolerates this. Isn't this exactly the kind of black-hat SEO that they are usually downranking or banning sites for? Pinterest landing pages are intentionally unusable for anyone without an account. It's hard to make a good-faith argument that those pages are the "most relevant result" for someone making a simple image search.

> Isn't this exactly the kind of black-hat SEO that they are usually downranking or banning sites for?

How is it blackhat to do exactly what Google wants?

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

#56

Post by mrtksn »

blunte wrote: post #13
hayksaakian wrote: post #3

There's no intentional or manual effort at Google to promote pinterest. Pinterest shows up because they understand how the Google algorithm works and built their website to display all the signals that Google looks for in relevant image content. They understand user intent and generate URLs that present content in a way that google expects to see. Examples of how they do this from their engineering team: https://medi…

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…

>Google should be asking from a product perspective if they are providing the search results the user is most likely seeking.

I am cynical. Maybe Google's own experiments show that users click more ads when they get frustrated of the Pinterest spam that is technically not spam enough to be removed from the index.

What the users are going to do? Use Bing?

Google's most optimised version is probably being an Ads search engine where you are presented only with the most lucrative ads that are relative to your query. Essentially Yellow pages.

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

#57

Post by DevKoala »

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

Thank you, but still, the regular person is not finding what they seek, but what SEO experts want them to find.

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

#59

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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

Clearly we should not have no include -fakenews -porn, etc, otherwise I might as well use bing / Duckduckgo/ whatever

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

#60

Post by thaumaturgy »

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

User: This service has a problem and it's not working well.

Programmer: There's nothing wrong with the service, you just have to use [magic incantation] to make it work right.

I've been hoping for 20 years that this kind of exchange would stop happening. Still hoping! :-)

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