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

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121–130 of 284 posts

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

#121

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?

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…

Internal v External Loci of Control perhaps?

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

#122

That's an ambitious goal, I'm not sure to see how that would be maintainable on the long run. On a much smaller scale, if anyone is interested, I maintain a black list focused on those code snippet content farms that gets in the way when you're searching for some error message or particular function here https://github.com/jhchabran/code-search-blacklist .

May I know why my domain (cyberciti.biz) was added to that list? I created my site back in 2000, and there was no StackOverflow or anything. So much for creating original content and then getting labelled as a spammer. In fact, some of the top answers on StackOverflow were copied from my work without giving any credit to me. Some people do give credit tho. But, go ahead block a site that actual humans maintain over 20+ years. Also check my About[1] and Twitter[2] page. There is no scrapping or spamming going on my part.

[1]https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/about-us [2]https://twitter.com/nixcraft

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

#123

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.

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.

xxx ** ??? same thing, it's obvious by context

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm, annoyingly some bloody invite based thing instead of just being able to try the damn thing. What is this, 2004?

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

#127

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?

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?

Google doesn't make money from people finding what they're searching for. Google makes money by keeping people searching.

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

#128
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?

Fully agree, its an endless cats'n'mice game, as SEO spammers create new pages on new domains with automated wordpress deployments in no-time.

Instead of a blacklist, a whitelist like a curated list of links à la Yahoo would be better approach, or something with upvote/reputation/karma as on HN.

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

#129

I am keenly interested in this idea. I sense that in the near future the paradigm of search engines will go from the current “index everything and become a universal answer engine” to “index a small subset of the Internet and become an answer engine honed towards a specific topic/domain”.

The repo exists here:

https://github.com/sanketpatrikar/hn-search-blacklist/

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

#130
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst case scenario if Google drops the ball I just go back to the library.

I'm sure they have great books on stackoverflow answers, reddit reviews of products and opening times of local stores.

Luckily, stackoverflow, reddit, and your favorite mapping thing have their own searches.
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