Earlier quoted context omitted.
I installed the extension and blocked experts exchange first thing ... not sure if I'll even use it for any other sites ...
I immediately dropped velocityreviews.com, bytes.com, and about.com too.
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New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
171–180 of 226 posts
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#172Isn't anyone else kind of bewildered by this? I mean this is kind of like if a kid pissed all over the floor in wal-mart, and when you notified an employee about it they gave you a mop to clean it up yourself.
It is more like being in a Walmart full of zombies and having all the Walmart employees killing zombies as fast as they can but then when you ask what is up with all the zombies they hand you a shotgun so you can help them by killing the zombies in your immediate vicinity. On the one hand, in an ideal world there wouldn't be a large and ever growing number of zombies at Walmart, but on the other hand, thanks a millio…
Really? This is kind of like some sort of weird time warp, and the Yahoo mentality of "curating" the internet is back in fashion. Which is weird, because Google came to power because that strategy doesn't work.
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#173I just wanted to say thanks to all the people on Hacker News who asked for this option. We'll look at offering a "block site" option directly in the search results over time, but it takes longer to write, test, and launch that code. In the mean time, use this extension to clean up your own search results and tell us which sites you don't want to see in Google.
In addition to removing the blocked site from the search results would it be possible to be able to remove a site's contribution to pagerank? I feel that this would probably be more effective in the long run...
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#174Awesome extension!
An option to hide the icon from the toolbar would be nice.
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#175I was just bitching about experts-exchange last night and wanted this feature. Thanks for sharing.
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#176I just wanted to say thanks to all the people on Hacker News who asked for this option. We'll look at offering a "block site" option directly in the search results over time, but it takes longer to write, test, and launch that code. In the mean time, use this extension to clean up your own search results and tell us which sites you don't want to see in Google.
So, does this mean expertsexchange will eventually get shoved down the search results? (AKA great stuff!)
OMG that was the first domain I blocked.
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#177I just wanted to say thanks to all the people on Hacker News who asked for this option. We'll look at offering a "block site" option directly in the search results over time, but it takes longer to write, test, and launch that code. In the mean time, use this extension to clean up your own search results and tell us which sites you don't want to see in Google.
Matt, I don’t understand why Google need to offer blocking as a user option. Any web netizen with some experience can tell at a glance the spammy and low-quality results on a SERP, but Google, with their vast knowledge and experience and their ability to monitor all sorts and aspects of user clicking behaviour, cannot?
It's one thing for an individual user to ask not to be bothered by results from an entire domain. It's quite another for Google to make that call for EVERYONE. I think this is a great first step. If the evidence is overwhelmingly against a domain, I would hope that Google would use that as a strong negative signal against the domain to adjust the ranking of the site.
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the subject of eHow, here's another reason to consider blocking them, Google for "no text to spin" (include quotes). That's an error message from bots that are spamming random wikis. I wrote more about it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215993
To be fair, there isn't a scintilla of evidence that they're involved with that. Some black hat is just using them as feedstock for content spinning. Happens to Wiki and my blog all the time.
Very possible. I gave more mention of that possibility in the writeup.
There are some weird things, too. I see what might be links between mystery numbers in the spam pages and parts of their URL, and I find it odd that they're the only site listed in those error messages, and there aren't a lot of those errors. Which may indicate that they're not deliberately blocking the spambots. But I will concede that it's weak evidence so far at best.
On another note, who is using your blog as feedstock? Can you give a URL to a spun copy of your stuff?
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#179So HN, what sites are we all blocking?
A few more: http://www.google.com/search?q=hubpages http://www.google.com/search?q=ezine+articles http://www.google.com/search?q=all+experts
I added +-hubpages to my keyword search in Firefox. I should probably look into an extension instead, but it works well enough. I like the idea of Google getting lots of searches for -hubpages
Re: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
#180Any chance we can get the blocklist transfered via sync in the next iteration of this plugin?
I second that suggestion. It would make the extension that much more awesome to not have to block sites on each device. Might also help to lower the noise on Google's end, so they're not seeing multiple blocks on the same domain from the same users, though I'm sure they account for this already.
It's a bit difficult to implement sync of arbitrary data in a Chrome extension now. The extension developer has to setup their own storage and implement their own sync code. Either that, or some developers just store their data in the bookmark system, which has its own problems (please don't do this Matt!).
We (the extension posse) are working on making this really easy to do [1], but nothing exists yet.