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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?

#101

Post by kelnos »

freediver wrote: post #93
CWuestefeld wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I've been using Kagi for the past couple months (and love it so far!), but whenever I open a private browsing window, I revert back to DDG.

Even though you say you don't associate search queries with accounts, it's hard for me to get over the "mental hump" to truly feel that in my bones and feel comfortable entering a "private" query while being signed in. I know it's not entirely rational. I mean, maybe it is a little bit rational: I only have your word (some random person that I don't know) that you don't -- and, critically, will never -- log queries associated with account. But regardless, it's hard to feel private when I'm entering something into a form on a website where I'm signed in as myself.

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

#102

Post by asab »

I see lots of “google is evil” narrative here… in reality they could add a feature to collect spam flags and still disregard user preferences. It’s just that the data will probably not help them, since adversaries are much more motivated to manipulate it for SEO profit than the average user who is unlikely to repeat that search

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

#104

Post by guelo »

timbit42 wrote: post #94
guelo wrote: post #83

I want a search engine that let's me exclude sites that have ads. Or even just exclude javascript.

You can exclude JS with the NoScript addon.

No, I want the search engines results to filter out websites that use ads or maybe even websites that use javascript.

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

#105

Post by saurik »

naoqj wrote: post #71
Blackthorn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Notably, only on desktop browsers.

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

#106

Post by freediver »

kelnos wrote: post #101
freediver wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I've been using Kagi for the past couple months (and love it so far!), but whenever I open a private browsing window, I revert back to DDG. Even though you say you don't associate search queries with accounts, it's hard for me to get over the "mental hump" to truly feel that in my bones and feel comfortable entering a "private" query while being signed in. I know it's not entirely rational. I mean, maybe it is a litt…

Thank you!

Your concern is shared by many users and realistically speaking there is not much we can do, but hope to survive long enough to build trust.

It is somewhat ironic that the only business model that has hope of not being interested in private information, does require an account. While there is nothing inherently bad with accounts, all the other services we are competing with, that have been exploiting user data for years also made accounts have bad reputation.

User choice at this moment is really - use a free service that you know is doing absolutely everything it can to track your behavior (directly or indirectly contributing to ad-tech, even without you logging in), or use a paid service that aligns the incentives with the user (also requiring a leap of faith because other services before it burned the trust bridge).

I hope enough users will make that leap of faith with Kagi.

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

#107

Post by freediver »

dharmab wrote: post #96
Kye wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Curious what do you have in mind? Every subscription can be expensed as a business expense, does not need to be annual?

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

#108

Post by dreamcompiler »

Arnavion wrote: post #65
rbinv wrote: 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.

I'd be surprised if Googlers don't have an internal tool to filter out the crap that only they can use.

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

#110

Post by hedora »

g105b wrote: post #45

I wish I could do this to tell DDG that I don't want to see any amazon.com products in my listing. I fell out with Amazon years ago and have been shopping independently since, but they have a stronghold over search engines with their out-of-stock listings.

Actually, blocking any site that links to Amazon would be nice.

Goodbye affiliate spam!

(I wonder why Amazon hasn't killed the affiliate link program yet..m)

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