This really sucks. As said above, it wasn't working anyway. Too bad it happened. I wonder if Google could've gained more knowledge about the common "undesired" results and use it to improve the search.
Blocked Sites is discontinued
61–70 of 141 posts
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#62I guess I need to go back to manually appending "mdn" to all my html/css/js-related queries. How much longer is w3schools going to stay at the top of those results? EDIT: Actually, it turns out I've been using the linked Chrome extension (went to install, discovered it was already installed). I just conflated the two services and forgot about the extension. So to make this productive, I recommend this extension. I ha…
/me straightens DuckDuckGo independent evangelist hat and nervously rings doorbell "Judging from your comment, you sound like the perfect user for Duck Duck Go! If you set DDG as the default browser for chrome/ff, you can search mdn with just '!mdn foo'. Also at your fingertips is searching !jquery (and hundreds of other search shortcuts) DuckDuckGo is great and makes searching super productive!" /me smiles eagerly
I switched to DDG permanently a while back, and using it as a pass-through for other searches has been great. Saves me the effort of keeping up with a bunch of custom search bookmarks myself, and they're intuitive enough to guess (for example, I started working with Node a couple of weekends ago and naturally assumed that !npm would be available; same experience with !bgg for BoardGameGeek).
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#63Note that you can continue to use the Chrome extension to block sites, which I believe we rolled out before this feature. Get it at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist... And here's the blog post we did about the Chrome extension: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-...
Interestingly enough this means you have to install software on your own computer to get better search results from a company that tries to deliver a hosted ("cloud") service. Seems backwards to me.
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
A blacklist that can be added to anonymously and unaccountably is not something you want affecting search results.
Sure it is, obviously you don't take any small amount of blocks as a signal. By getting a significant amount though and looking at each persons block list to normalize there blocks I think it would be useful.
> Sure it is, obviously you don't take any small amount of blocks as a signal.
You do realize spammers are extremely good generating large amounts of things, right?
> By getting a significant amount though and looking at each persons block list to normalize there blocks I think it would be useful.
Spammers are also very good (though not great) at adding innocuous data alongside their spam to look like real users.
You don't realize it, but your solution has just exploded in complexity.
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Experts exchange stopped showing up in the results back when Google released the new indexing engine over a year ago. You should be fine.
I still see it sometimes. Meanwhile, Quora is in the works to become next EE...
Already is. I noticed the Google Blocklist was broken explicitly because I was trying to remove Quora from my results. Quora is another example of a company/site imploding.
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#66My blocked sites list only had one entry: experts-exchange.com
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#67Personal Blocklist(by me)
http://crossrider.com/download/29789
> here an extension that works with firefox and google chrome (and maybe with some version of ie)
> currently only block w3schools and expert-exchange :-)
> will be extendable soon
it is not on the browser marktplaces right now, so you kind of got to install it manually.
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#68I find both its birth and death interesting. The birth because the fact that you could mark sites as spam was one of the early talking points at Blekko, the back end architecture of our engine includes a 'selector' mechanism (slashtags) and maintaining a personal 'spam' slash tag came along for free. Its one of the features I continue to use. And then it showed up as a feature in Google's results which I found intere…
I think it'd be illogical for Google not to in some ways compete with alternatives, like Blekko in this case. Google's core business is search, and in the early days, it was this very naive behavior that allowed Google to sneak right under places like Inktomi. Just because a search engine starts small doesn't mean it can't gain traction or market, and if it has compelling enough features, it'll happen in a heartbeat.
I suggest reading "I'm Feeling Lucky" by Douglass Edwards - the early chapters describe a lot of Google's anxiety of being killed by other search engines for one reason or another. It helps to explain why they'd be quick to adopt new strategies to keep results fresh.
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
/me straightens DuckDuckGo independent evangelist hat and nervously rings doorbell "Judging from your comment, you sound like the perfect user for Duck Duck Go! If you set DDG as the default browser for chrome/ff, you can search mdn with just '!mdn foo'. Also at your fingertips is searching !jquery (and hundreds of other search shortcuts) DuckDuckGo is great and makes searching super productive!" /me smiles eagerly
I switched to DDG permanently a while back, and using it as a pass-through for other searches has been great. Saves me the effort of keeping up with a bunch of custom search bookmarks myself, and they're intuitive enough to guess (for example, I started working with Node a couple of weekends ago and naturally assumed that !npm would be available; same experience with !bgg for BoardGameGeek).
The only thing I hate about using DDG is the lack of a synchronized history. It's very helpful for me to find past Google Searches through Web History, because it works cross device.
Re: Blocked Sites is discontinued
#70Removing a feature that fixes a major shortcoming of your product (spam sites) and directing your customers to use an extension to fix it is awful. What faith I once had in Google being a company that puts users first is long gone.
Google has been shutting down features left, right and centre. I'm left wondering: what useful thing has google done since gmail and ads?