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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?

#161
post #48

I solved this nonsense by installing a plugin in chrome that automatically adds -site:pinterest.* to all searches. Almost living in bliss ever since.

Care to share? A convenient, trustworthy plugin that lets you exclude sounds ideal. Anything for Firefox?

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-indomain:pinterest

As a configuration, not per search.

I used to have a .txt file full of - options for google back in 2009 or so.

Then Google started ignoring more and more of what I searched for and they also started blocking the worst offenders so I forgot about it.

These days I mostly use DuckDuckGo for my programming searches.

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

#163

Pinterest spends a large percentage of their budget on gaming the search page. Though I’m sure you’ve noticed in recent years that Google has begun to replace many search results with answers directly from them instead of redirecting you to places like Pinterest. For the better I say. Companies like Pinterest are parasitic and degrade the overall ecosystem of search.

> Google has begun to replace many search results with answers directly from them

> Companies like Pinterest are parasitic

Surely you mean companies like Google are parasitic?

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your think tank come up with any ideas on how to keep companies like Pinterest from peeing in the pool so to speak? They made it impossible to find DIY craft stuff that I used to search for, and I can’t imagine it’s the only site doing it.

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…

> Our main focus right now is making Google’s index of the web available for use by competitors

How would that work? I'm pretty curious about this if there's anything out there to read.

EDIT: Ah I saw the link to Knuckleheads' Club :P

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think others here have alluded this but the thing is that once, doing everything you need to do to get listed but actually being crap was enough to get you de-listed. The criteria wasn't "do what Google wants", the criteria was "be good and also help the algorithm determine that you're good". Only running the right SEO wasn't sufficient then and I certain wish that criteria remained.

Who determines what is the best ranking? Who was defining what was "good"? There isn't some abstract, mathematically verifiable best ranking, a platonic ideal that all search engines should aspire to. Google has always made choices about how to rank that trade off the interests of various groups of users, from the very beginning. The complaints that you and I have about pinterest being ranked so highly come because G…

There isn't some abstract, mathematically verifiable best ranking, a platonic ideal that all search engines should aspire to.

Of course, "quality" applied is a broad term indeed. But there no being a single certain measure of quality doesn't mean there aren't some things that most people would call crap. Google employs a large number of search quality raters and these folks can likely distinguish the terrible from the OK.

Google is far from ideal and getting worse but you seem to be exposing a pure democracy of algorithm conformance, which is guaranteed to result in hot, steaming idiocy.

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

#166
post #13

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 has shown time and time again they do not worry about providing the search results the user is most likely seeking. They monitor ad revenue and adjust accordingly.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few times I've landed on Pinterest and they lock user copied (contrary to copyright law in my country AFAICT) content behind a registration-wall. They never show enough utility for new to register, they just tease on Google and then don't show what they teased. Google results would be better for me with all Pinterest results removed.

Wasn’t there an option at one time to tell Google to hide results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven’t seen that in years though

Just add `-site:example.org` to your query.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few times I've landed on Pinterest and they lock user copied (contrary to copyright law in my country AFAICT) content behind a registration-wall. They never show enough utility for new to register, they just tease on Google and then don't show what they teased. Google results would be better for me with all Pinterest results removed.

Wasn’t there an option at one time to tell Google to hide results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven’t seen that in years though

It still works

-site:pinterest.*

Even with wildcard tld, otherwise it is still all Pinterest

But it is interesting that those kind of Google/search engine feature hardly ever get talked about these days whereas in the past they were considered crucial to get decent results.

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

#169
post #45
post #2

“Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack” https://www.rankscience.com/blog/pinterest-image-seo-growth-...

Ugh, this is bad. Makes you wonder, why they let this happen. Do people at Google own Pinterest stocks?

Yeah, Google has done so many things to thwart so many kindS of bad SEO (and sometimes even good SEO) that it's really hard to believe they've just innocently dropped the ball on this one. At a certain point you just have to conclude that they want the search results to look like this. "Oopsie, we just accidentally let one bad actor trample on this valuable 'real estate' for years. Silly us." Yeah right.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few times I've landed on Pinterest and they lock user copied (contrary to copyright law in my country AFAICT) content behind a registration-wall. They never show enough utility for new to register, they just tease on Google and then don't show what they teased. Google results would be better for me with all Pinterest results removed.

Wasn’t there an option at one time to tell Google to hide results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven’t seen that in years though

It was too effective.
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