Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#71

Post by distortedsignal » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

There was an SO outage this last year, and I only found that out when I tried to go to SO and couldn't get to it. I checked page 2 of Google and found one of the mirrors that you're talking about. I grabbed the content from there and continued with work.

I think it's a matter of perspective. If you _know_ that you want a specific site, use google's 'site:' specifier. If you're looking and find something that is from SO, redo the search and get to the SO Q/A. As for me, I'm moderately grateful for the decentralized backups.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#72

Post by MrWiffles » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

stevesimmons wrote: post #65

Rastonbury wrote: post #60

Somewhat tangential but I believe Google Search is going downhill, they seem to be losing the content junk spam SEO fight. Recently, I've had to append wiki/reddit/hn to queries I search for because everything near the top is shallow copied content marketing.

> they seem to be losing the content junk spam SEO fight Google clearly isn't even trying. So many of these sites are polluting search results for months. It isn't a case of sites that pop up for a few hours until Google notices and blacklists them. Google Search has gone so far downhill. I'm not sure what they're optimising for. Long-term irrelevance, it seems.

Well I think you already nailed it with “not even trying”. You don’t need to try or optimize when you’re a monopoly. Competition forces that function, but a lack thereof enables mediocrity and complacency.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#73

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

bschwindHN wrote: post #31

The answer is, if someone can make money by doing something shitty but not illegal, they will do it. Almost everything on the web is some scheme to put ads in your face so someone can make some money.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#74

Post by pawelduda » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

site:stackoverflow.com

That's what I do

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#75

Post by enobrev » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #69

enobrev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google used to make it possible to filter domains from results. I was sad to see it disappear

You can still do "-site:spam.com".

For sure! Thanks for the reminder. There was a point (as you may know) when the domains were saved into your profile, so you didn't have to add it.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#76

Post by cally » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

diveanon wrote: post #47

This is more of an issue with google results than the content itself. Google is a shit product and you get shit results when you use it.

I have many problems with google as a company, but as a product, google search is fantastic. To say it's shit is a huge, huge, huge over-reaction.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#77

Post by kristiandupont » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

MrWiffles wrote: post #72

stevesimmons wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they seem to be losing the content junk spam SEO fight Google clearly isn't even trying. So many of these sites are polluting search results for months. It isn't a case of sites that pop up for a few hours until Google notices and blacklists them. Google Search has gone so far downhill. I'm not sure what they're optimising for. Long-term irrelevance, it seems.

Well I think you already nailed it with “not even trying”. You don’t need to try or optimize when you’re a monopoly. Competition forces that function, but a lack thereof enables mediocrity and complacency.

Oh come on! I am no fan of Google and their privacy policies etc., and I agree that results like the sites mentioned in this thread are annoying but I am not so cocky as to think I have any idea what Google is fighting.

There are a lot of very smart people from all over the world putting everything they have into getting to the top of that site. It's not a trivial task for them.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#78

Post by scollet » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

radiantttt wrote: post #59

Maybe code snippets are "enriched" in these sites?

They are not. All the context and conversations are stripped.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#79

Post by vanusa » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

They get fed into a web crawler and then into a giant hopper whence they become the backbone of that shiny "No Code" technology you've been hearing about.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#80

Post by _lqaf » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #58

pixelgeek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. Ads are their core business. Those crap sites almost all run ads from Google

That's a shortsighted view because it would imply that the quality of search doesn't have any bearing on their success. I highly doubt any Googler would agree with that. Especially not the ones who have been working on search specifically.

Extrapolating from an employee's feelings to the behavior of a huge public company is a terrible way to model reality.