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Chrome just needs to put a 'mark as spam' button right in the browser which could then be used to augment their current ranking system. Isn't that pretty much

Chrome just needs to put a 'mark as spam' button right in the browser which could then be used to augment their current ranking system. Isn't that pretty much how spam filtering for email works? If enough people say something is garbage, it goes in the toilet. The user is still free to look in the toilet, but usually they don't need to.

nkurz 16y ago
This isn't necessarily false, but I think it's too simplistic to work well. How long before it too is being gamed? The current PageRank system is essentially that the creators of web content vote for what ranks highly based on what they link to, with the strength of their vote based on the strength of their incoming votes. Seeing that this difficult to compromise system is falling to pieces, I worry that an easy to game system such as you suggest will be laid to waste within days. Email filtering is a bit different, since you can only vote down the things that you've been sent. It's difficult for you to mark your competitors correspondence as spam since you never have a chance to vote on it. Whereas with search, you can vote on anything you choose to search for. There's also the question of whether it's really in Google's best interest to remove the spam. It's a plausible argument that they have no easy way out --- if they remove all the links to spam sites hosting Google ads, it's entirely possible that their revenue would fall precipitously. To argue that they need to remove spam, one first needs to conclude that they benefit from doing so. I have more hope that a 3rd party might be able to solve this. Offer a series of browser plugins for Firefox/IE/Chrome that will allow you to black list sites from search results? Everything you mark is blacklisted for you forever, and once there is a consensus (likely with human oversight) it's globally blacklisted as well? AdBlock essentially works on this model, so it should be possible. ps. Google already offers an official Chrome extension that does much of what you suggest: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhjafeidhfbojhnfiepj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhja.... It's somewhat ironic to note that many of the 'user reviews' for it on that page are actually spam.

nkurz 16y ago

This isn't necessarily false, but I think it's too simplistic to work well. How long before it too is being gamed? The current PageRank system is essentially that the creators of web content vote for what ranks highly based on what they link to, with the strength of their vote based on the strength of their incoming votes. Seeing that this difficult to compromise system is falling to pieces, I worry that an easy to game system such as you suggest will be laid to waste within days. Email filtering is a bit different, since you can only vote down the things that you've been sent. It's difficult for you to mark your competitors correspondence as spam since you never have a chance to vote on it. Whereas with search, you can vote on anything you choose to search for. There's also the question of whether it's really in Google's best interest to remove the spam. It's a plausible argument that they have no easy way out --- if they remove all the links to spam sites hosting Google ads, it's entirely possible that their revenue would fall precipitously. To argue that they need to remove spam, one first needs to conclude that they benefit from doing so. I have more hope that a 3rd party might be able to solve this. Offer a series of browser plugins for Firefox/IE/Chrome that will allow you to black list sites from search results? Everything you mark is blacklisted for you forever, and once there is a consensus (likely with human oversight) it's globally blacklisted as well? AdBlock essentially works on this model, so it should be possible. ps. Google already offers an official Chrome extension that does much of what you suggest: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhjafeidhfbojhnfiepj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhja.... It's somewhat ironic to note that many of the 'user reviews' for it on that page are actually spam.