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Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

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51–60 of 217 posts

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#51
post #35

That will never happen, if they ever did that it would be an admission that there is something inherently wrong with their algorithm. They won't do it.

On the contrary. As suggested by another commenter, it could be used to improve their algorithm. Greater number of exclusions would reduce their relevance.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#52
post #46
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Atwood discusses this in his most recent Coding Horror blog post ( http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-hous... ), in which he states that he doesn't really mind people copying StackOverflow questions (and answers), but that he does mind that the copies get a higher Google ranking than the original.

How does that happen though? efreedom must be doing something special with SEO to get higher than SO given that SO must have huge page rank score.

Pagerank is based on number/quality of links.

Nobody links to an SO question, except perhaps mentioning it in a blog post. Scrapping sites create lots of links to the question, even if they are low quality ones

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#53
post #7

Yes that would be good. They could then look at the number of people blocking certain domains and de-weight them in the global results. Traditionally google seem against human powered editing (as this would be), but I think as the black hat SEOs run rings around them, its needed badly .

An extremely easy way for a bunch of people to get together and destroy someone's ranking? That doesn't sound like such a good idea.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#54
I'm not sure how this would be implemented. Where would the blacklist be held and how would it influence the search results? I know that they already do a lot of search customization but most of it is just aggregate statistical computations. It's not that they return results specifically tailored to you but more like results tailored to a very fuzzy average version of you. A blacklist seems way too specific to each user to be susceptible to meaningful aggregate statistical operations like spam filtering which is one of the reasons that spam filtering in google is so good. Each user contributes something and everyone benefits. I don't see that happening with blacklists. I think to make it worthwhile they would need to figure out how to feed the information from blacklists into providing more meaningful results for everyone.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#55

I'm not sure how this would be implemented. Where would the blacklist be held and how would it influence the search results? I know that they already do a lot of search customization but most of it is just aggregate statistical computations. It's not that they return results specifically tailored to you but more like results tailored to a very fuzzy average version of you. A blacklist seems way too specific to each u…

That's the point, what I want is exactly a user-specific blacklist.

I can even do that already with Google's Custom Search, all that's missing is a little 'block this site' button. Instead I have to go and configure Custom Search manually for each URL mask.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#57

How many gmail accounts do we need to band together to lower the rank of stack overflow against our super-duper question-and-answer site QandAdsWithMe.annoying.com?

An excellent point. Blacklisting works both ways, and there's nothing stopping spammers from creating hundreds, maybe thousands, or even more, of throwaway Google accounts just to blacklist the original site. Sure, the logged in Google users wouldn't see the spam site (if they blacklisted it), but it would still appear, and outrank the original site, in standard search results for those that aren't logged in.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#58
post #44

I think the worst culprits are the ones that skim StackOverflow questions and rehash them into their own supposed original "question and answer" site

What do you think most StackOverflow answers are? It's a karma-paid labor pool where you can post questions and a lot of under-employed people will rush out and do the necessary Google searches, collating and slightly rewriting the results to yield the most votes. Everyone is ripping off someone's content. And just to be accurate here, SO content is creative commons (created by the community). Are those just cheap wo…

What do you think most StackOverflow answers are? It's a karma-paid labor pool ... said the comment on Hacker News, earning the poster 3 points so far.

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#59
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like every few months, EE tries to cloak its site in a new way ... then Google catches them and they revert to merely misleading people (by putting the answers several page-scrolls down) into thinking that they need to pay to see the answers. Actually, I sort of sympathize with the predicament EE faces. They want to show up high on Google search results, because that's how they get new customers ... but they…

Actually, I sort of sympathize with the predicament EE faces. They want to show up high on Google search results, because that's how they get new customers ... but they don't want to give away their content for free. I have no sympathy at all for them. All the answers are community-generated for free, aren't they? So they're trying to charge for other people's generosity. And plenty of sites on the web give away bett…

I thought that the experts that answered the questions got paid? Guess I was wrong...

Re: Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results

#60
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone have any ideas why the clone sites like efreedom are ranking above Stack Overflow when SO's inbound links and reputation values are likely far better than efreedom's in Google's algorithm? I'm surprised that search engine optimization could do THAT much to a site's ranking. Also it's not like SO isn't doing the same kind of SEO themselves. What I'm trying to get at is, with all things equal, let's say Stack Ov…

Efreedom is deliberately manufacturing links, whereas SO may be just hoping for the best.

Efreedom has been the bane of my recent programming related searches, polluting my results to no end.
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