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Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. useful feedback. As you point out #1 organic link on G is Yelp. They currently block all but G, Bing and Yahoo! - we'll get in touch with them again. https://www.yelp.com/robots.txt Organic link #3 on G is Belcampo; we have some of that indexed so we'll take a look: https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=food+site%3Abelcampo.com

>we'll get in touch with them again. Feel free not to. Follow the link, it isn't a quality result.

Fair point. Some other big sites we are blocked from - we don't sweat. It keeps down the noise-to-signal ratio!

Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#82
post #78
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, these completely remove any matched results

Yes, and creates blanks. Not visually but where it would be 10 results there are now 9.

I received an ivite withing half an hour.

So, I guess it varies.

Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#85
What if we all started clicking on every ad on every spam page? Would they eventually get kicked off all the ad platforms for fraud?

The only reason why Google and Facebook work is because their algorithms believe that we only click on the ads that we're interested in. If we click on every single ad, we will completely break their system within 3-6 months.

Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#86
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh, interesting, how do you get an invite?

kagi.com has a "sign-up for beta" link. Didn't take long before I received an invite (week or two?).

I just signed up myself.

I like how they ask you what features you want as you are signing up. I mentioned that I want to be able to vote on results and have my own results prioritized by the votes of me and my peers.

Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#87
post #48
post #47

The second this is added, the spam domains will just multiply. User interventions with spam doesn't work.

Domains aren’t free the way sending email is. So, forcing more domains would be a significant expense that would seriously discourage these companies. Also, they would be easier to detect.

It practically is. You just add a new record to create a new domain.

Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#88
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An incognito session provides privacy against other people who have casual access to your computer. It provides no extra security or privacy in the context of search providers.

Disagree. When the FBI comes to them asking for a list of everyone who's done a search for "pipe bomb", your anonymity would have been welcome.

Kagi doesn't log much identifying information, so the government would have to compel them to change their system with a national security letter LavaBit style.

https://kagi.com/privacy

Re: Ask HN: Why do search engines not let you blacklist spam domains?

#89
Adding -site:baddomain.com still seems to work in both Google and DuckDuckGo. You should be able to include that in the URL template used for search so it gets added to all queries. You can build your blacklist that way. E.g.

  https://duckduckgo.com/?t=hk&iar=images&q=-site:pinterest.com+-site:flickr.com+%s
As an aside, I haven't used Google in a while, and I find it interesting how the first page shows only like 5 results and at the very end. The rest of the page is widgets like "top stories" and "people also ask".
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