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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?

#321

Post by ganstyles »

alisonkisk wrote: post #201
ganstyles wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using tricks at the detriment of the user to the benefit of the service is blackhat. Pinterest is doing these tricks to their benefit at the extreme detriment to everyone but themselves.

It's weird to blame Pinterest for Google's choice to promote the site. Sure Pinterest wants to rank highly, but they aren't tricking Google. Google knows how popular they choose to make Pinterest results, and how much most users like those results.

If I make an algorithm to rank sites, and you figure out the internals of that algo and manipulate your behavior to rank at the top, that's bad and not the same as being Google's choice, at least not directly.

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

#322

Post by blunte »

ffpip wrote: post #38
blunte wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Many thanks, this does work. I do see a momentary flash of pinterest results, but they quickly disappear (and subsequent matches are re-tiled up). Good enough!

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

#323

Post by ffpip »

blunte wrote: post #322
ffpip wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you try this? google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."]) google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1)

Many thanks, this does work. I do see a momentary flash of pinterest results, but they quickly disappear (and subsequent matches are re-tiled up). Good enough!

Yeah. uBlock Origin is just hiding the results, like it hides blank spaces after it blocks ads. You might notice a momentary flash only for the first few times, or on slower machines.

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

#324

Post by whatsmyusername »

Google hasn't returned the best results for years. They return the results someone paid to put there. Either through direct paid ads or through heavily SEM/SEO influenced results for everything except the most esoteric topics.

We actually ended up having to do defensive SEM/SEO on bing simply because of how cheap it is to game results there, just because they're not google (no one does it except scammers and people addressing scammers).

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

#325

Post by krainboltgreene »

ganstyles wrote: post #321
alisonkisk wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to blame Pinterest for Google's choice to promote the site. Sure Pinterest wants to rank highly, but they aren't tricking Google. Google knows how popular they choose to make Pinterest results, and how much most users like those results.

If I make an algorithm to rank sites, and you figure out the internals of that algo and manipulate your behavior to rank at the top, that's bad and not the same as being Google's choice, at least not directly.

My friend, Google tells you how this works. Pinterest doesn't have secret knowledge.

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

#326

Post by blunte »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #72
blunte wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ill…

The economy is meant to be built so that anything harmful to the rest of society is either unprofitable, or criminal (i.e. theft). Obviously we have a new frontier of digital stuff, but the law and economic incentives are still ignorant of it.

There are plenty in power now who would disagree with your definition of economy.

Sometimes law and policy is ignorant of technical concerns, but quite often it is aware and simply has a more selfish agenda. Prime example of this is modern US copyright and patent laws and enforcement.

As long as elected officials have to raise funds to campaign and win, elected officials will be beholden to the people who financed them. If politicians didn't write special laws and loopholes for corporate special interests, they wouldn't last more than one term. They would be replaced by the next challenger who would take special interest money and then "pay it back" via special laws.

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

#327

Post by saeedynz »

John Muller (from Google) says about Pinterest:

I'd argue there's a lot of content on Pinterest -- even if it's not a collection of 3000 word blog posts. Sometimes images, even with minimal textual content, can be exactly what people are looking for. Not always, and sometimes we get it wrong, but it's certainly an option.

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1260171380580024320

========= Regarding Pinterest, while I'm personally not a user of the site, there is a ton of content there. It's not 3000 word articles, but you don't need that for search anyway.

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1316668506918866944

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

#328

Post by inadequatespace »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #61
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…

With Google featuring progressively more ads and Google content at the top of the results page, it's not clear if it's still in Google's self interest to give users the best results anymore.

If ever.

Well to be fair, probably the engineers want to on some level, but there is a business mandate to not (and there always has been).

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

#329

Post by DanielleMolloy »

Just wanted to come here to agree. I blacklisted pinterest (and some other garbage content with forced registration for the purpose of data collection, like Quora) long time ago using a browser extension. It is particularly annoying when searching for images. I never clicked on pinterest either and wonder why Google is still showing me these results.

I wish they would natively allow blacklisting specific domains.

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