17 ms·
Ask HN: Is Someone Hijacking Google Images?
I was looking for ideas on how to build a simple network analyzer to test antennas, filters etc. so I typed "network analyzer schematic" (without quotes) on Google Images and it apparently returned some results I was expecting, but clicking on a lot of results from the first page opened some subscription only websites with suspicious names nagging me to create an account to see the actual images, some of which I'm 100% sure I already have seen on their original authors websites.
Those websites are clearly made by the same entity, and to me it appears they're essentially hijacking Google Images results for their profit.
Here are some of those results; many more on the 1st page. I had a hard time finding something that returned an actual loadable image or an article without asking for subscription.
Note that they all return URLs containing "spectrum analyzer schematic" although I searched for "network analyzer schematic".
http://yyrfm.microdeo.de/spectrum_analyser_circuit_diagram.php
https://4.twizer.co/rf-spectrum-analyzer-schematic.html
http://5.6.gvapor.nl/rf_spectrum_analyzer_schematic.php
http://18.10.ulrich-temme.de/spectrum_analyzer_schematic_symbols.php
http://4.3.beckman-vitamin-d.de/vcr_tuner_based_rf_spectrum_analyzer_schematic.php
http://18.10.ulrich-temme.de/spectrum_analyzer_schematic_symbols.php
http://2.4.wohnungzumieten.de/gbppr_1_ghz_spectrum_analyzer_second_local_oscillator_schematic.php
http://5.6.gvapor.nl/rf_spectrum_analyzer_schematic.php
http://13.1.starpartybus.com/lm3915_spectrum_analyzer_schematic.php
Edit: it appears those pages are being slowly buried by legit results, but some of them still surface although much deeper.
Examples:
http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php
http://10.10.artatec-automobile.de/block_diagram_power_antenna_wire.php
http://9.20.wohnungzumieten.de/logic_probe_with_sound_circuit_schematic.php
7.12.gvapor.nl/dds_function_generator_mcu_schematic.php
Note that I searched for the same exact phrase as above.
- erik14th 8y agoMost of the time you can inspect the element and get the url to the actual image.
- dayze 8y agoI think it must be happening on your end. When I search for the same thing I get normal images and none of the domains you list above.
- megaremote 8y agoHow does it happen on his end, when it is a google search?
- eitland 8y agoMalware (specifically adware) browser extensions or malware on computer. Edit: I mentioned malware on ISP, but I guess Google has their TLS in order so the ISP shouldn't see or be able to mess with the content like they did before. Not necessarily saying this happened on the user end though, I just outlined how it could happen.
- squarefoot 8y agoIt lasted for a while, then apparently Google started to filter those sites; not the domains though as some of them resurfaced much down the first page. I highly doubt it's on my side as I'm using Waterfox with the usual well known privacy oriented addons, some of which could block suspicious pages from loading but none of them adds content that wasn't in the search results. I just repeated the same search and got these: http://2.8.combatarms-game.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php http://2.8.combatarms-game.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php https://two.ineedmorespace.co/2020_radar_block_diagram.php https://two.ineedmorespace.co/2020_radar_block_diagram.php http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php I had to take out doubles as some of these urls were returned identical although I was clicking on different images.
- rambojazz 8y agoI can reproduce his results instead, using the same search terms. The first results do actually look legit, but after the first 10-20 I see those useless links too. This however doesn't seem to be new, at least for me... I've seen that already when searching manuals for example.
- r3nrut 8y agoAre you searching through Google.com or a different domain suffix?
- dfsdfklgjljg 8y agoseems like mostly german results
- sexy_seedbox 8y agoYou should try going to www.google.com/ncr first and then see if your results are different.
- copperx 8y agoWhat is that? It redirects me to www.google.com.
- _wmd 8y ago"no country redirect", sets a cookie to prevent you getting the google domain for your locale
- franze 8y agoand doesn't work anymore like you think it works it keeps you on google.com but you still get your markets search results and your language (thx europes "right to be forgotten" for the decline of /ncr functionality)
- kryogen1c 8y agoI cant believe this didnt get more traction. I have been noticing a very painful decline in Google results with more content not labeled as ads but clearly placed due to a metric other than usefulness. I routinely find myself multiple pages deep in searches, which never used to happen. Mark my words, this is purposeful on googles end, either directly through some kind of ordering affiliate or indirectly through some kind of seo partnership
- lapnitnelav 8y agoFWIW, Google is about to put more ads[0] in the Image search results https://www.blog.google/products/ads/shopping-google-images/ https://www.blog.google/products/ads/shopping-google-images/
- tyingq 8y agoThat would align their interests with sites where clicking on the image gives a register or paywall. Because more users will bounce back to more ads.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoIt’s affiliate marketing content locking. I did this in the past but not at this scale. My guess is millions are being made by a network or a very smart and ambitious Russian.
- k_sze 8y agoCould this be an effect of the Google filter bubble? What if you open an incognito session, disable tracking, and try searching on Google again?
- dTal 8y agoIsn't this basically what Pinterest is doing? All their images are stolen from elsewhere on the web (and the website behaves extremely obnoxiously when you try to actually view an image without an account), and yet Pinterest results consistently rank higher than the actual primary sources of the stolen images.
- dawnerd 8y agoI'm surprised they've made it this long. They shut us (eHow/Demand Media) down pretty quickly once we hit a certain point. Image search needs its own panda update. Also part of the problem is Google no longer direct links to images so now sites are fully taking advantage of it.
- Something1234 8y agoPinterest is the absolute worst. They're basically plargists at this point. I really don't like rehosters.
- nullc 8y agoI've just blocked them on my host... too many times have I fallen down a well of trying to find the origin of some image there. It's just not worth it.
- nightfly 8y agoI've had the same problem... It's super frustrating because sometimes an image on Pinterest is _exactly_ what you're looking for, but you need the related context to actually use it...
- armagon 8y agoTinEye reverse image search is fairly useful in this scenario. Go to https://tineye.com/ https://tineye.com/ , upload an image (or paste in a URL), and it'll show you other copies of that image all over the internet. This doesn't always help you get to the bottom of things, but it is a next step to take.
- ppetty 8y agoJust for comparison I uploaded this image of both duckduckgo & google for the query above: https://imgur.com/a/1Fci80P https://imgur.com/a/1Fci80P The layouts are different & it’s hard to tell if that impacts whether or not the results are sorted by dimension so they can fit the maximum number of images in the viewport; or if they just have slightly different ranking. Probably a little of both, but image search results are a little harder to compare between search engines — or harder to compare than “plain” results. My point is, while it’s completely fair to question Google’s results and doubt what actually producing those results; it’s a lot more scientific to compare their results to at least one of their “competitors.” Easier said than done, but until there are no comparisons available we should do this (maybe just to produce data so when you search “Which is better Google or ??????” there’s a result).
- hatfieej 8y agoI got the same thing here, but had to scroll just a little. It's always the same popup on each site. It leads to a Czech Republic company herbalfun which offers downloads of games and movies for $40/mo. It looks like someone may be buying up recently expired domains, uploading a bunch junk there and Google is falling for it. Going to just the main site of any of those links shows just a long link of links for various strings.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoThe same thing is happening with PDFs. Google any popular business or finance book and append pdf and see the results for yourself. Google has been gamed by affiliate marketer - my guess it’s the same guy who was outed a while ago and had his address shared online. It was a HN headline not long ago.
- titanix2 8y agoI noticed something similar recently when searching for icon like files.
- Jaruzel 8y agoRight now, Google Images is useless for icon type images. I've had to switch to using Bing images, which is currently better for smaller, square images that can be used or modified for icons. Top tip: although Bing Images doesn't have an 'Exact Size...' option, I've found that suffixing your query with <X>x<Y> (i.e. '256x256') seems to work.
- villgax 8y agoYeah this happens on search as well, whenever you search for something very specific then the only few pages that show up contain these weird php sites for >50% of the irrelevant results & are mostly cached versions of the original site's content.
- techaddict009 8y agoSurprising many of the above redirect to this : https://signup.peltmedia.com/en/html/sf/registration/eone.html https://signup.peltmedia.com/en/html/sf/registration/eone.ht... page Seems like this is like same old free download click here and when you click it says subscribe to download.
- z3t4 8y agoI got none of these. Maybe someone from google saw this and manually cleaned up the search results. However, everything after scrolling three pages down are people faces linking to "Sydex.net People Search" My guess is "SEO" abuse. Google are always 3 years behind the SEO black hats.
- aasasd 8y agoI'd say this is just aggressive SEO, with you looking for a specific digital “product” of schematics. I get similar experience in regular search when looking for manuals for appliances and such. As for ‘spectrum analyzer’ instead of ‘network analyzer’, it's probably Google's wonderful synonym substitution, which considers ‘music’ and ‘noise’ interchangeable, or similarly with ‘Saint Petersburg’ and ‘Moscow.’
- agent008t 8y agoI am highly suspicious that google was instrumental in centralizing the web. At some point, it started to increasingly only show results from the same dozen or two websites. At this point, if you want to search for something that is not hosted on one of the popular 'centralized' sites, you are out of luck.
- buboard 8y agoi thought google images was for finding pinterest boards and stock photo sites
- kevinventullo 8y agoThis happened to me the other day when looking for a high resolution image of a world map with country labels. For the life of me, I could not find one on Google Image search that led to a directly downloadable file. I finally gave up and used Bing (!) and got what I was looking for immediately (!!).
- julianlam 8y agoYeah this happened to me too! I was looking for a simple outline drawing of the USA, with state-level outlines. All I found were pages and pages of sites letting me buy what I wanted for the low low price of `$morethaniwanttopay` I don't recall what I did in the end, possibly DuckDuckGo'd it
- knowsmorsecode 8y agoMaybe these are hijacked wordpress sites. Anyway, I'm using this https://www.sdr-kits.net/VA5-Antenna-Analyzer-Kit https://www.sdr-kits.net/VA5-Antenna-Analyzer-Kit . It only goes to 600 MHz and is cheap, but my needs are simple.
- Calist0 8y agoThis is when you open up devtools and remove the pesky obstacles.
- kappuchino 8y agoWhat they do is basic search result manipulation. I'm genuinely confused why the crawler/analyzer part google doesn't see and blacklists this (Context:I used to work as a search quality rater for google) Look at: http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/pna_x_block_diagram.php Short it to: http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/ http://3.17.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/ (Weblink to admin@gmail.com - haha, funny) Change it to http://www.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/ http://www.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/ ... same But: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DHZ9SdtbSRQJ:www.tierarztpraxis-ruffy.de/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DHZ9Sdt... and this is just "blacklist and forget" stuff: Show one to the "user" and the other to the crawler. Maybe Matt should see this.
- mtnGoat 8y agounfortunately this has been going on with all of google search results since people figured out their algos could be gamed.