Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#111

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #2

Isn't this Google's job? Are developers a small but lucrative target and so the suits at Google don't see the benefit of improving that experience by cleaning up the spam? Can we just nudge them to do so under the threat of an influential minority leaving due to their use case being affected?

Google's goal isn't to create the best possible search engine, it's to have a search engine that is good enough that people won't actively seek an alternative at the same time that they put as much ad content as possible in there, again before it's so much that people seek an alternative.

I doubt many advertisers like the status quo very much either. They basically have to pay for ad placement to ensure the first results for their product aren't ads for competing products. On mobile when I search for Boox the first result linking to them is an ad. Same for Kobo. In other instances I'll search for company or product and a competitor ad is the first to show. So vendors get stuck paying for ads when their own site should probably be the first organic result, above the ads.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#112

Post by JonathanBuchh » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

stevenleeg wrote: post #108

omnicognate wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendation? I use ddg but it's Bing based and the results are no better.

I've been using Kagi over the last few days and have actually been pleasantly surprised with it performing better than both Google and DDG for my use cases. It's still free during the beta so might be worth giving it a shot.

I’ve also been using https://kagi.com for the past couple of days and have found the search results to be unparalleled to both Google and DuckDuckGo. I haven’t come across any SEO spam and the results seem to be of better quality overall. They have all of the same bangs DDG uses and get results from Bing, Google, and a bespoke index. Because they query Bing and Google, it will be pretty expensive when it launches (it's in private beta) since it costs $12 per 1000 queries, but since search is so important, it will probably be worth it. They say they're privacy focused too, but it's hard to be sure when a product isn't open source.

Kagi isn't trying to take significant market share from Google or DDG, but find a niche (probably Hacker News type people). The one thing I find they're lacking is maps and location based results (e.g. you can't search for "lunch near me"). If you're interested, I'd recommend checking out their FAQ: https://kagi.com/faq

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#113

Post by xwdv » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

roneoo wrote: post #105

xwdv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reasons?

Describing something negative with the black color is related to racist mindset, in short. Thank you Abimelex for pointing this out

I disagree. It has nothing to do with race. Even in societies where blacks didn’t exist, black has symbolized bad, evil things. It is ridiculous to say a color cannot mean something negative just because it has the same name as a race of people. I also doubt the rest of the world feels using black this way is racist. It seems to be an opinion held only by coddled American minds still trying to cope with the trauma of learning that everything they enjoy about their country was built on the backs of black slave labor.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#114

Post by fowkswe » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #107

fowkswe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG has no idea of the intent of your search based on your previous searches and unfortunately this generates abysmal results for me when searching for something like `ruby xxx`. Those terms rarely return results about the programming language. I unfortunately end up using Google in these situations, always to immediate success.

>ruby xxx Not sure if the X's were to denote wildcards or if you're after porn actresses named Ruby, but either way it might be worth adding a term to the query to clarify

Oof - muscle memory failure....

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#115

Post by tomhallett » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

sanketpatrikar wrote: post #71

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a word for this tendency to say, "it's someone else's job" as a justification for doing nothing at all to help or improve one's own circumstances? I see more and more of it in the public discourse over the last years and it kind of bothers me. I see it a lot in conversations related to poverty or climate change, but it is as we see here by no means exclusive to those topics. To the original replyer: you coul…

I ended up creating a repo with blacklist.txt myself and will add to it for my own usage. I don't see anyone else who'd maintain this. Feel free to use it / contribute to it. https://github.com/sanketpatrikar/hn-search-blacklist

I just added to your repo:

* code-search-blacklist based on this jhchabran's repo [1]

* pinterest.com based on SwiftOnSecurity's interesting seo analysis [2]

Maybe your repo could be an opinionated list of things developers find annoying about google search results, where others might value sites like pinterest in their results.

[1]: https://github.com/jhchabran/code-search-blacklist

[2]: https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/12588753334467174...

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#116

Post by nemosaltat » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

fowkswe wrote: post #102

javajosh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with ddg has been very positive over the years. Although I think my eyes have gotten good at skipping over the noise in the search results. It might be nice to offload that effort to software.

DDG has no idea of the intent of your search based on your previous searches and unfortunately this generates abysmal results for me when searching for something like `ruby xxx`. Those terms rarely return results about the programming language. I unfortunately end up using Google in these situations, always to immediate success.

Pretty sure you’re using “xxx” as “some generic search term” but if you include literal xxx as a search term, you’re almost definitely going to get some skewed search results.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#117

Post by wackget » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

roneoo wrote: post #105

xwdv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reasons?

Describing something negative with the black color is related to racist mindset, in short. Thank you Abimelex for pointing this out

This isn't mentioned on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#118

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

sanketpatrikar wrote: post #80

dredmorbius wrote: post #65

TL;DR: I strongly suspect that relatively small, personally-curated lists will be much more appropriate and highly effective. These might be augmented with specific classifications, but probably not on a widespread basis. Though the proposed solution borrows heavily from concepts long used in email and Usenet spam, there are a few critical distinction in SEO SERP[1] spam which both make a widely-crowdsourced listing…

In that case, we'd still need a repo bringing together all these individual lists. I couldn't finding anything like this. I suggested a single list to prevent repetition and to limit the imports one needs to make to one.

So, my larger point is that no, that repo doesn't seem to be called for.

For malware and the like, repurposing extant DNS-based blocklists as in for uBlock Origin / uMatrix should be viable, and not require an additional curation effort.

Note also that we're looking at a browser extension, and as such, very large lists and memory load would probably carry significant negative impacts.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#119

Post by analognoise » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

Why are we spending the effort to fix Google?

We make $0 doing this, they make...astronomical profits screwing it up. So we invest a bunch of time so they can continue to take in astronomical amounts of money while abandoning "don't be evil"?

Absolutely not.

Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?

#120

Post by ffhhj » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

Cort3z wrote: post #109

pluc wrote: post #75

Use a search engine that doesn't fuck up your results instead of trying to unfuck the results it gives you. Why go through this much effort to still give your money to google?

I use ecosia.org wich is like ddg, but a part of the proceeds go into charity. Not affiliated with them, just like it a lot. Like ddg it's just Bing with a gimmick, but it's decent.

> ddg it's just Bing with a gimmick

Is that true? I've read images are served by Bing, not sure about the web search.