Live data from Hacker News

Removing my site from Google search

btao.org

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#91
I block all Google trash from my servers and the companies I work for, we have a separate domain for all search and a separate service for websites that can be indexed by Google.

I purposely block all their ips from my servers, aws, and Azure as well and then whitelist any service we want from those services individually and carefully.

Google spies on Everything online, they are the largest collector of exposed data and if they weren't so big they'd be in jail for theft, imo.

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#92

The first sentence grabbed my attention, and I was looking forward to learning about the "threat that surveillance capitalism poses to democracy and human autonomy". But then the article fell flat: he gave no examples of that threat, and neither did the linked article in The Guardian. Are there specific examples of this type of harm? The only complaints that he made were that Google makes a lot of money (which I have…

He referenced this page: https://www.socialcooling.com/

Thanks, ok I just looked at that one too. Most of the examples on that page don't pertain to Google, and the ones that do pertain to Google are not harmful (e.g. targeted ads, or someone's emotional reaction to data collection).

Since his ire is specifically directed at Google, I'm still left wondering what specific harm he is envisioning from Google's activities.

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#93
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why I would want to exclude my site from any index? Being in indexes helps people find my writing, which I like! It's essentially a form of boycott. If one believes Google is a problematic entity (too many fingers in too many aspects of our lives), it's a way to sever connections with them at some personal cost. At least, if you care about search traffic - one might argue the assumption that Google-like…

So, first, I don't think Google search is harmful, so I'm not especially interested in boycotting, but I'm happy to grant this for the discussion. There's already an interesting question about when boycotting is it worthwhile tactic, but in this situation, there's the additional complexity of there being two ends at which one could boycott a search engine: * Producer: don't allow the search engine to include your stu…

The producer side would be the much more effective option if they could get a significant fraction of people to do the same. That might not happen now, but if enough people get fed up with Google maybe it will.

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#94

It seems like the amount it will hurt Google is directly proportional to the amount it will hurt the owner of the site (assuming they want people to read their message). I'm sure someone at Google is pretty happy that they don't have to show this page in their search results. Nobody can accuse them of bias against anti-Google pages -- the site owner did it to themselves. Seems like as perfect an example of "cutting o…

That may end up being true, but if it were to inspire a movement off of google at a large enough scale it could have an significant impact.

Kinda like everything at human scale. If I stop using fossil fuels the planet still burns, if we all stop we have a chance.

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#95
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that (i.e. removing the site from google search) was the goal. I'd review the other usage on a case by case basis; e.g. determining ratings of other sites seems fair use to me. I'd guess you're allowing others to use your site's content when you're making your site public (TINLA).

maybe, but I guess I would be cantankerous enough to see the goal as preventing google from profiting off your site.

[deleted]

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#97

It seems like the amount it will hurt Google is directly proportional to the amount it will hurt the owner of the site (assuming they want people to read their message). I'm sure someone at Google is pretty happy that they don't have to show this page in their search results. Nobody can accuse them of bias against anti-Google pages -- the site owner did it to themselves. Seems like as perfect an example of "cutting o…

That may end up being true, but if it were to inspire a movement off of google at a large enough scale it could have an significant impact. Kinda like everything at human scale. If I stop using fossil fuels the planet still burns, if we all stop we have a chance.

The way to create real change is to come up with viable alternatives. I use DDG as my primary search engine but still find myself using Google on a daily basis using "!g".

Rarely do principles alone keep people using inferior products or technologies.

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#98
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a good idea,but google sometime crawls without the google user agent. So that’s not going to be 100 percent foolproof. You’d be better off just blocking all of the ip addresses that google crawls from. There are lists of those out there. When I used to cloak website content, and only serve up certain content to google, the only reliable way was to use ip cloaking. Because google crawls using “partners”, such a…

Hey! Googler here! We don't use our hardware located on partner networks to do indexing. Those machines are searching for malware and serving some YouTube videos and Play Store downloads.

You forgot to add the word "currently"

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#99
post #69

A more interesting issue is the opposite -- many large sites have robots.txt rules that Disallow all crawlers except Google. A new search engine either 100% respects robots.txt with the result that some major properties are completely unavailable in their index, ignore robots.txt in these special cases where robots.txt configuration is unreasonable, or- crawl anything that allows Google to crawl it. None of these opt…

Any idea why this would be (other than incompetence)?

I once read it's about bandwidth. Presumably, search engines require lots of BW to serve, and some sites don't want this cost. They make an exception for Google because they want to be on Google.

Re: Removing my site from Google search

#100

It seems like the amount it will hurt Google is directly proportional to the amount it will hurt the owner of the site (assuming they want people to read their message). I'm sure someone at Google is pretty happy that they don't have to show this page in their search results. Nobody can accuse them of bias against anti-Google pages -- the site owner did it to themselves. Seems like as perfect an example of "cutting o…

DId you just compare boycotting Google with not getting vaxed? I used to vote left. But reading people like you arguing like this reminds me to never ever do so again.
Post reply on HN