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

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

#171

Post by Nasrudith »

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.

Isn't that a bit narcissistic to think that your one problem in particular out of millions is a sign that they aren't doing anything at all?

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

#172

Post by nerdponx »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #18

uBlacklist is a great tool to block sites you don't want from showing up on your search results on google (and a couple others including bing and duckduckgo). It supports regular expressions as well, I use /pinterest\..*/ to block all pinterest-related content. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublacklist/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...

It'd be pretty neat if DDG let you configure this as a setting.

They don't have "accounts" as such, but they do provide users with a one-time password that lets you save and restore settings.

Alternatively, if they at least supported "do not include" filters in regular searches, you could build a client that stored those kinds of search defaults locally. The best you can do now is strip out those results on the client side, which isn't bad but seems like a hack.

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

#173

Post by Nasrudith »

WhisperingShiba wrote: post #108
dehrmann wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for a company that gamed Google like this, but with product search results (that were, themselves, CPC ads). The company got bought for scrap because Google got good at downranking their pages in search results and finally taking shopping seriously. A lot has changed since then, but I doubt that Google has decided these kinds of content farms are suddenly OK. It should also give pause to people asking…

It does give me pause, but do you really think there is no way to have both open algorithm and good results? What is users assessed sites as they used a search engine, and then this was broadcast back to the engine? I have a feeling there is a way to introduce randomness to this search engine in a way that smooths out the game theoretic arms race of gaming an algorithm. This goes against our natural urge to have a fu…

Neural network weighting loops and adversarial inputs say yes, it is impossible.

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

#174

Post by Nasrudith »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #40
lloydjones wrote: post #5

As others have said: SO content is ripped-off (poorly) and mirrored. The page games Google's algorithm and shows up as a 'legit' result. Probably more complex than simple keyword stuffing, which isn't supposed to work these days..

I don't understand how these sites rank so highly though, they can't get much organic traffic at all. Most people who click on them will bounce immediately.

Generally they show up as one of the few options if you look for very specific subqueries - that is when I tend to find them.

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

#175

Post by hnarn »

projproj wrote: post #121
shmde wrote: post #98

Just to chip in with a very minor annoyance, I hate how google puts up w3schools results above MDN for anything related to JS/HTML.

Check out tomdn.com. I created it to make it easier to get to MDN. E.g., instead of googling array.map, just type tomdn.com?array.map. It will take you straight to MDN docs on Array.prototype.map. Other things work as well, like tomdn.com?object.keys, tomdn.com?css.color, tomdn.com?htmlel.button, etc. If there is a pattern it doesn't recognize, you end up on the MDN search results page. edit: More info. about how it…

What value does this provide over simply Googling or DDG'ing "array.map mdn"? It's shorter and the first result for me is (unsurprisingly) MDN on both, and I don't have to run my searches through an unknown third party.

DDG also has !bangs for this specific purpose and !mdn does, as expected, lead you to MDN.

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

#176

Post by freediver »

charlesdaniels wrote: post #170
ScottWRobinson wrote: post #129

For years now I've ran a programming site (stackabuse.com) and have closely followed the state of Google SERPs when it comes to programming content. A few thoughts/ramblings: - The search results for programming content has been very volatile the last year or so. Google has released a lot of core algorithm updates in the last year, which has caused a lot of high-quality sites to either lose traffic or stagnate. - The…

I wonder if we'll see a comeback of hand-curated directories of content? I feel like the "awesome list" trend is maybe the start of something there. I would be willing to pay an annual fee to have access to well-curated search results with all the clickbait, blogspam, etc. filtered out. Until then, I recommend uBlacklist[0], which allows you to hide sites by domain in the search results page for common search engines…

You can access one without paying a dime.

http://teclis.com

Problem is people usually want one general search engine, not a collection of niche ones.

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

#177

Post by Nextgrid »

ScottWRobinson wrote: post #129

For years now I've ran a programming site (stackabuse.com) and have closely followed the state of Google SERPs when it comes to programming content. A few thoughts/ramblings: - The search results for programming content has been very volatile the last year or so. Google has released a lot of core algorithm updates in the last year, which has caused a lot of high-quality sites to either lose traffic or stagnate. - The…

> It's a difficult task as it's hard to convince programmers to pay for anything

I wonder if there's an opportunity for a paid bundle of programming-related sites. I indeed will not pay for a single site (nor for a news site for that matter), but a $10-20/month subscription that covers quality programming websites could be interesting.

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

#178

Post by nunez »

jrumbut wrote: post #165
ScottWRobinson wrote: post #129

For years now I've ran a programming site (stackabuse.com) and have closely followed the state of Google SERPs when it comes to programming content. A few thoughts/ramblings: - The search results for programming content has been very volatile the last year or so. Google has released a lot of core algorithm updates in the last year, which has caused a lot of high-quality sites to either lose traffic or stagnate. - The…

Recently I've just punted and begun searching SO and Github directly. One thing Google has gotten really good at lately is knowing that when I search for "John Smith" I mean John Smith the baseball player not the video game character or vice-versa.

you can also add 'site:github.com' or 'site:stackoverflow.com' to your search

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

#179

Post by Nextgrid »

kristiandupont wrote: post #77
MrWiffles wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. Google has absolutely dropped the ball - I'm not saying that it's easy to algorithmically rank good/bad content, but they're not even trying.

A stop-gap solution would be to simply penalize anything with ads. Legitimate websites will still have enough "SEO juice" (for the lack of a better term) to offset the penalty, but brand new copycats with otherwise no inbound links to them from other legitimate websites (and no other business model beyond scammy ads) will never be able to rank high, essentially removing the incentive from setting up these sites in the first place.

Not to mention, these problems can be identified, prioritized and then tackled manually one-by-one. Stackoverflow copycats can be dealt with by downloading the SO data dump, parsing it and then severely penalizing any website where the bulk of the content matches the dump. Pinterest can be penalized by simply excluding it from image searches until they actually display the searched image without asking for login. So on and so forth.

You can't win them all, and you can't train an algorithm to win every time either, but you can manually observe what's happening and deal with the biggest problems.

The problem however is that the current status-quo is good for Google. They've got the monopoly on search (every other one is typically even worse when it comes to these issues), and spammy copycat websites happen to have Google ads or analytics so Google actually benefits from them too.

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

#180

Post by alx__ »

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.

Yeah there's a whole mini scam network that copies programming how-to videos on YouTube and puts new thumbnails on them. So you watch the ad and then get 30 seconds into the video before realizing it's garbage, they've made some a few stupid pennies :(
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