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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?

#91
Implicit signals are far more significant than explicit. Search engine already know which links are not getting clicks and which links are causing re-queries and which links causes pressing of back button.

People do dumb things if you ask them not to show results from a domain or even “report spam”. For example, Fox News and CNN will all be marked as spam millions times a day even after people are finding what they are looking for.

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

#92
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cached still exists, press the 3 points next to the url.

Still exists in some urls. It used to be virtually universal.

don't blame google when robots.txt directives are to blame.

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

#93
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.

While there is certainly possibility of FBI asking for this, I am afraid we couldn't respond to such request. Reason is simply we do not log or associate searches with an account.

Our business model is selling subscriptions, not data.

(Kagi Founder here)

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

#95
post #5

Google used to have that feature: https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/10/google-adds-block-all-doma... In my opinion, back then, they needed the data as a training set for spammy domain detection. Now that SERP spam is no longer a serious issue (in Google's eyes anyway), why bother. Google always knows what's best for you.

>Now that SERP spam is no longer a serious issue (in Google's eyes anyway) Given the number of clones of StackOverflow and GitHub that show up on the front page, even at the cost of replacing the original SO and GH links that they copied from, I can only assume either Google's eyes are blind or the search engine devs are so good at their job that they never need to Google anything themselves.

Another fun one— next time a public figure dies, especially a slightly more obscure one, just google them/their death.

Whole first page is just poorly written fiverr style articles, all by people for whom English is clearly a second language, at best.

Eventually, legit stuff gets on the first page too, but theres a few instances where weeks later the first result is still one of these garbage seo-torture sites.

Has really made me lose my faith in google lately.

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

#96
post #28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Kagi yesterday and I am so far very impressed. I did this search to answer another comment and later did the Google one: https://kagi.com/search?q=What+does+that+site+make+you+drag+... https://google.com/search?q=What+does+that+site+make+you+dra... Kagi shows the exact answer in the first result. Google gives no relevant answers on the first five pages (did not go further). Probably because Google focus…

The pricing (in the FAQ) is a non-starter for me, but there are probably enough people with the money for it to make a nice business out of it. Maybe it'll be enough to apply some competitive pressure to Google. edit: to be clear, it's not unwillingness, I literally do not have $10-30/month to spare without compromising my progress toward not being perpetually broke. Not everyone here is a well-compensated tech worke…

I'm hoping they figure out an easy way to let users charge this as a business expense (maybe an annual subscription?) For programming it's as valuable to me as a good editor plugin!

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

#97
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm surprised that I never remembered that feature existed. I wonder why they removed it, just like why they removed the insanely helpful "Cached" feature.

Cached likely went away for the same reason image search was made to suck, legal issues.

On the topic of image search, duckduckgo links directly to the image file like Google used to do. It's my go to for image search.

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

#98
post #16

uBlock Origin static filters to the rescue! Block results from specific domains on Google or DDG: google.*##.g:has(a[href*="thetopsites.com"]) duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(a[href*="thetopsites.com"]) And it's even possible to target element content with regex with the `:has-text(/regex/)` selector. google.*##.g:has(*:has-text(/bye topic of noninterest/i)) duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(*:has-text(/bye topic of…

Nice! I've used HTML attributes as targets as well. They aren't random so they are also easy to target. I use this one on Twitter:

    twitter.*##div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]
This will hide the trending tweets box. You can see it's targeting the `aria-label` attribute on the `div` element

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

#100
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Kagi yesterday and I am so far very impressed. I did this search to answer another comment and later did the Google one: https://kagi.com/search?q=What+does+that+site+make+you+drag+... https://google.com/search?q=What+does+that+site+make+you+dra... Kagi shows the exact answer in the first result. Google gives no relevant answers on the first five pages (did not go further). Probably because Google focus…

Funny side effect of this post: For me the first link in the kagi results is now the link to kagi itself with the same search term.

Oof, I feel like Kagi should be filtering out results that reference itself.
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