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I've found that almost all the results I get from Google these days point to some "big site": pinterest, quora, wired, verge, etc. Often, these sites are behind

I've found that almost all the results I get from Google these days point to some "big site": pinterest, quora, wired, verge, etc. Often, these sites are behind a paywall/login wall, and the content isn't very good either. Is the whole concept of authors publishing their opinions and thoughts on their personal websites dying, or is Google ranking such posts lower?

jacoblambda 8y ago
As far as I've seen, it's been both a centralisation of content and heavy abuse of SEO by large sites to force themselves to the top of basically any search. I know I have no interest fighting with SEO and I doubt many of the people who host their own small sites do either.
- CM30 8y ago
  Maybe also add Google's reluctance to truly punish popular/large websites for dubious SEO tactics. If a lot of them got banned just as easily as smaller sites do for similar things (link buying and networks, thin/duplicate content, etc) the results might be quite different.
amelius 8y ago
By the way, why can't I still tell Google to ignore e.g. pinterest or w3schools? Google wants to know everything about me so they can serve me better (they claim), but a simple preference to exclude a website from my search results is not possible?
- Nadya 8y ago
  >By the way, why can't I still tell Google to ignore e.g. pinterest or w3schools? You can. Use "-site:pinterest.com -site:w3schools.com". To facilitate using it in every search, setup a keyword search so you can type "gsearch blah" and have the querystring automatically add those two filters. I agree there should be a way to add sites to a global blacklist in your user settings if you have a Google account. I'm sure Google has monetary reasons for not doing so though.
  - amelius 8y ago
    > setup a keyword search What do you mean by that, exactly? Is that browser-specific?
    - Nadya 8y ago
      It works in any modern browser that I'm aware of - it allows you to use the Address Bar/Omnibar to conduct a search by typing a keyword. For example, I can search Youtube by typing "y Daoko Fog" and it will search Youtube for "Daoko Fog" because the letter "y" is my keyboard for Youtube. You also don't need to use it just for searching - you can use it for quicker navigation since ultimately it is just swapping your text in for the spot in the keyword, you can have it set up like "news.ycombinator.com/%s" and type in "hn newest" or "hn show" or "hn news" to be taken to the respective pages. In Firefox you can right click most any search bar and "Add a Keyword for this Search". It used to be that in Chrome it was that easy as well, but now you need to edit a bookmark and it's a bit more involved OR you can add a "Search Engine" and customize the keywords in about:preferences#search In mainstream browsers at least, I believe it is implemented as an additional field to any bookmark. You change the URL to have "%s" where the search term should go in the URL and then you update the Keyword field of the bookmark. So, for example, a Youtube bookmark would look like "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s" https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s" Then when you type the keyword and search, the %s gets replaced with your search phrase. You would need to hardcode the -site: bits to have it always added to your search. You can even create multiple bookmarks that filter out different sites if you want.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - codetrotter 8y ago
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist... Personal Blocklist (by Google) Blocks domains/hosts from appearing in your Google search results.
    - 8y ago
- wolco 8y ago
  Google started this in 2012. Search has slowly gone down in quality. The older the content the more likely it will be ignored
pram 8y ago
No kidding. Pinterest makes reverse image search almost useless.

jacoblambda 8y ago

As far as I've seen, it's been both a centralisation of content and heavy abuse of SEO by large sites to force themselves to the top of basically any search. I know I have no interest fighting with SEO and I doubt many of the people who host their own small sites do either.

CM30 8y ago
Maybe also add Google's reluctance to truly punish popular/large websites for dubious SEO tactics. If a lot of them got banned just as easily as smaller sites do for similar things (link buying and networks, thin/duplicate content, etc) the results might be quite different.

amelius 8y ago

By the way, why can't I still tell Google to ignore e.g. pinterest or w3schools? Google wants to know everything about me so they can serve me better (they claim), but a simple preference to exclude a website from my search results is not possible?

Nadya 8y ago
>By the way, why can't I still tell Google to ignore e.g. pinterest or w3schools? You can. Use "-site:pinterest.com -site:w3schools.com". To facilitate using it in every search, setup a keyword search so you can type "gsearch blah" and have the querystring automatically add those two filters. I agree there should be a way to add sites to a global blacklist in your user settings if you have a Google account. I'm sure Google has monetary reasons for not doing so though.
- amelius 8y ago
  > setup a keyword search What do you mean by that, exactly? Is that browser-specific?
  - Nadya 8y ago
    It works in any modern browser that I'm aware of - it allows you to use the Address Bar/Omnibar to conduct a search by typing a keyword. For example, I can search Youtube by typing "y Daoko Fog" and it will search Youtube for "Daoko Fog" because the letter "y" is my keyboard for Youtube. You also don't need to use it just for searching - you can use it for quicker navigation since ultimately it is just swapping your text in for the spot in the keyword, you can have it set up like "news.ycombinator.com/%s" and type in "hn newest" or "hn show" or "hn news" to be taken to the respective pages. In Firefox you can right click most any search bar and "Add a Keyword for this Search". It used to be that in Chrome it was that easy as well, but now you need to edit a bookmark and it's a bit more involved OR you can add a "Search Engine" and customize the keywords in about:preferences#search In mainstream browsers at least, I believe it is implemented as an additional field to any bookmark. You change the URL to have "%s" where the search term should go in the URL and then you update the Keyword field of the bookmark. So, for example, a Youtube bookmark would look like "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s" https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s" Then when you type the keyword and search, the %s gets replaced with your search phrase. You would need to hardcode the -site: bits to have it always added to your search. You can even create multiple bookmarks that filter out different sites if you want.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- codetrotter 8y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist... Personal Blocklist (by Google) Blocks domains/hosts from appearing in your Google search results.
  - 8y ago
wolco 8y ago
Google started this in 2012. Search has slowly gone down in quality. The older the content the more likely it will be ignored

pram 8y ago

No kidding. Pinterest makes reverse image search almost useless.