Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#51

Post by joshuacc » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 2:53 PM UTC

lsb wrote: post #37

nodata wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's search results are extremely... crap. There I said it. It used to be that I could search for something, say this: word1 word2 and Google would give me the results for pages which contain both those words. Then Google decided I didn't mean what I searched for, so I had to prefix my searches with plus signs, like this: +word1 +word2 And now this week I find out that even that doesn't work any more. It's crap.…

Duckduckgo's innovations are pretty cool, especially bang-commands (to search on google maps, add "!m" to your query). But the underlying search is Bing. Perhaps Google is personalized and Bing doesn't, or perhaps DDG doesn't pass a uid token to Bing, but it's just not as good actual results, which matter to me about 10% of the time. (Luckily, the query parameters to google.com/search are the same as to duckduckgo.co…

"a simple massage of the URL works well"

As does prefixing your search with "!g".

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#52

Post by jaredmck » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 2:53 PM UTC

yaakov34 wrote: post #27

lhnz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could this be solved though? There are few easy-to-attain signals that will help you to differentiate search results in a way that approximates the opinion of an intelligent human. I believe we have reached the point in which Google's search results are only useful for one reason: speed of information retrieval. If you wish to get high quality information you visit sources that you trust. These are either (a) con…

Hey, I come here to offer useless kvetching and complaints, not solutions :). Seriously, if I knew how to solve it, I'd be the CTO of Google. But I'll make a couple of guesses. I think they need to go for a lot more human input. It goes against the grain of everything they do, they want to solve everything algorithmically. But SEO is just too good at abusing algorithms. I think they need to get more humans involved,…

Search term in domain name should not have as much value as it currently does. Along similar lines, I think link anchor text is way overweighted as it's fairly easy to game for commercial searches and not at all common for the type of "editorial link" model pagerank assumed.

As it stands, link buying is rampant: as risky as black hat techniques are for real businesses, if you're building diverse spam web properties through a scalable model, it's not really risky at all. it's not like google can give you a permaban.

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#53

Post by jarrett » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

asciilifeform wrote: post #47

lhnz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could this be solved though? There are few easy-to-attain signals that will help you to differentiate search results in a way that approximates the opinion of an intelligent human. I believe we have reached the point in which Google's search results are only useful for one reason: speed of information retrieval. If you wish to get high quality information you visit sources that you trust. These are either (a) con…

> How could this be solved though? We aren't talking about tornadoes or earthquakes. Let's remember that spammers are people . How would we "solve" people who spread toxic waste on city streets? That is exactly the way to deal with spammers. They have names, addresses, bank accounts, finally bodies. All of these could be located and dealt with if law enforcement officials felt like it. Until spammers are dealt with i…

I doubt you could ban the type of spam we're talking about. Sure, it's already illegal to send spam emails. But that's because email can reasonably be defined.

Not so for spam sites. What makes a site "spammy?" As reflected in this thread, a site is spammy if it a) ranks better than it should in search, b) fails to provide useful content, and c) is commercial.

Which of these can be turned into an objective test? Just (c), I would venture. And that's clearly unworkable. (a) and (b) are far too subjective and vague to be codified.

Also, I think any effective ban would run far afoul of the 1st Amendment. Even if you could carve out a narrow 1st Amendment exception for certain kinds well-defined spammy conduct, spammers would inevitably just skirt around the edges of that. They'd adapt just like they always do.

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#54

Post by jaredmck » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

beaumartinez wrote: post #30

yaakov34 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I come here to offer useless kvetching and complaints, not solutions :). Seriously, if I knew how to solve it, I'd be the CTO of Google. But I'll make a couple of guesses. I think they need to go for a lot more human input. It goes against the grain of everything they do, they want to solve everything algorithmically. But SEO is just too good at abusing algorithms. I think they need to get more humans involved,…

> Drop the strong signal of a search term being in the domain name [...] It's been abused beyond belief. I whole-heartedly agree—but people still search for "facebook.com login" and similarly trivial queries. If Google broke returning "facebook.com/login" for these it'd lose a lot of its value for these people.

I can only imagine how many links facebook login has across the web from their widgets. Don't think we have to worry about them falling out of the top spot for that query, in fact if they did google would likely get a visit from the DOJ soon after...

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#55

Post by chadgeidel » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 2:59 PM UTC

asciilifeform wrote: post #47

lhnz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could this be solved though? There are few easy-to-attain signals that will help you to differentiate search results in a way that approximates the opinion of an intelligent human. I believe we have reached the point in which Google's search results are only useful for one reason: speed of information retrieval. If you wish to get high quality information you visit sources that you trust. These are either (a) con…

> How could this be solved though? We aren't talking about tornadoes or earthquakes. Let's remember that spammers are people . How would we "solve" people who spread toxic waste on city streets? That is exactly the way to deal with spammers. They have names, addresses, bank accounts, finally bodies. All of these could be located and dealt with if law enforcement officials felt like it. Until spammers are dealt with i…

I love this idea, but who decides what "spam" is? There's a lot of spam I get that I don't like, but isn't much different than other marketing efforts. It's not all V1agr4 emails and 419 scams.

IMHO this is akin to the "pornography" issue. What is "pornography"? "I know it when I see it".

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#56

Post by Klinky » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:07 PM UTC

yaakov34 wrote: post #13

Klinky wrote: post #6

One thing that irks me is Google News. It's hard to get your site listed on Google News but when you see some of the sites that are listed, you have to wonder why Google makes it so difficult. Some search terms bring up "news sites" that are essentially devoted to spamming health remedies and playing them off as though they were real news articles.

I don't know, Google News actually doesn't seem very spammy to me. I just searched for "diabetes" - this is usually a good one to check if an index is spammed - and while it brings up some sensationalist garbage (that's life for you), it doesn't seem to find anything which wants my credit card number right now. Even a spam-king search like "weight loss", while it finds nothing interesting, doesn't seem like pure spam…

Do a search for RezVera. I research digestive health news & this has been coming up a lot over the last few weeks. Either copycat sites or PR sites that link back to another site with an iframe containing a short form promo offering the supplement for $60 bucks. Blah.

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#57

Post by yaakov34 » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:08 PM UTC

willwagner wrote: post #48

yaakov34 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I come here to offer useless kvetching and complaints, not solutions :). Seriously, if I knew how to solve it, I'd be the CTO of Google. But I'll make a couple of guesses. I think they need to go for a lot more human input. It goes against the grain of everything they do, they want to solve everything algorithmically. But SEO is just too good at abusing algorithms. I think they need to get more humans involved,…

We tried doing something similar at XMarks (a bookmark sync service) when I worked there. We figured bookmarks were a good source for mining quality websites and hired some very bright people with a search background to build it. For some searches, it gives pretty good results. Here's the one it gives for VPN providers: http://www.xmarks.com/topic/vpn_providers It was an uphill battle for us, which ultimately never w…

The conflicting interests involved in building a search engine are a fascinating subject. This is probably a bit deep in the comment tree to start a discussion of it, but it's certainly true that it doesn't do you any good to present wonderful academically vetted search results, if the users don't click on the dang ads.

For the particular search here - yes, you do better than Google, but you don't have a million hungry SEO guys trying to game you. So it's not a fair comparison. If you get as big as Google, it will be a different story. Of course, if you get as big as Google, you might not care :)

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#58

Post by vaksel » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:12 PM UTC

CrazedGeek wrote: post #42

vaksel wrote: post #23

you could probably take it even further just by making it a lot more difficult to rank the other types of domains: 1. anything that's not a .com or .org(let's face it...if it's a .net, then it's most likely bought for seo optimization) 2. the .co.uk/.de etc, should only get a bonus in their own countries. 3. anything that's longer than 16 letters. If it is, chances are that its just a spam domain. 4. anything with a…

Most ISPs I've used use .net for their domains, and there are plenty other legitimate sites that use .net (Battle.net, anyone?).

brands would still be able to rank.

it's just going to get a lot more harder to rank legitimateISPs.net

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#59

Post by yaakov34 » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:22 PM UTC

asciilifeform wrote: post #47

lhnz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could this be solved though? There are few easy-to-attain signals that will help you to differentiate search results in a way that approximates the opinion of an intelligent human. I believe we have reached the point in which Google's search results are only useful for one reason: speed of information retrieval. If you wish to get high quality information you visit sources that you trust. These are either (a) con…

> How could this be solved though? We aren't talking about tornadoes or earthquakes. Let's remember that spammers are people . How would we "solve" people who spread toxic waste on city streets? That is exactly the way to deal with spammers. They have names, addresses, bank accounts, finally bodies. All of these could be located and dealt with if law enforcement officials felt like it. Until spammers are dealt with i…

Please don't get the government involved in this. As much as I dislike eHow.com, I don't think they need to be dragged away in chains for "SEOing one's way to the top of search results, title 256, section D". That's not a good kind of call for the government to make.

Re: Google Removes More Than 11 Million .co.cc Domains From Search Results

#60

Post by asciilifeform » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:23 PM UTC

jarrett wrote: post #53

asciilifeform wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could this be solved though? We aren't talking about tornadoes or earthquakes. Let's remember that spammers are people . How would we "solve" people who spread toxic waste on city streets? That is exactly the way to deal with spammers. They have names, addresses, bank accounts, finally bodies. All of these could be located and dealt with if law enforcement officials felt like it. Until spammers are dealt with i…

I doubt you could ban the type of spam we're talking about. Sure, it's already illegal to send spam emails. But that's because email can reasonably be defined. Not so for spam sites. What makes a site "spammy?" As reflected in this thread, a site is spammy if it a) ranks better than it should in search, b) fails to provide useful content, and c) is commercial. Which of these can be turned into an objective test? Just…

> spammers would inevitably just skirt around the edges

Imagine if spam were treated in the same way as child porn, the apparent "root password to the US Constitution."

Or the way drug smuggling is treated in East Asia.