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I wrote this because I was so annoyed by irrelevant low-quality search results for my queries on Google. For instance if I'm looking up for Python xyz topic, 99

I wrote this because I was so annoyed by irrelevant low-quality search results for my queries on Google. For instance if I'm looking up for Python xyz topic, 99% of the times I am not interested in some 'low-quality' content (based on my personal preferences) from website example.com. The plugin maintains a persistent and customizable list of URLs (keywords) that are used as a 'blacklist' for stripping results.

Causality1 6y ago
I can't wait until I get home and try this. I am completely sick to death of Google image search results being full of videos. It's impossible to find an actual gif to imbed in an HTML comment post because the results are drowning in videos from Giphy, Tenor, etc. It'll be so delicious to consign them to oblivion. Edit: unfortunately it doesn't work on image search. Oh well.
- throwaway777555 6y ago
  Seconding this for Tenor. They certainly know how to game Google for traffic, then stop users from getting what they want
Paperweight 6y ago
Amazing! Thanks! We need this for YouTube as well, though the blacklist would be extremely large. In fact, I wonder if this could be implemented as a filter list for uBlock Origin?
- andai 6y ago
  When I log out, YouTube becomes total trash, so I thought the algorithm was really customized to me. Then I visited a friend to watch some movies and saw half our recommendations were identical. Like we got placed in the same "bucket" or something.
  - chipperyman573 6y ago
    I remember reading something that said is how spotify makes discover weekly playlists (but I can't find it now), so I wouldn't be too surprised
zaat 6y ago
Thank you so much for this. Was looking for something similar, found only solutions that were dependent on extensions I didn't want to install due to privacy/security reasons.
- davehcker 6y ago
  Thanks. Same here and I tried to keep it as vanilla as possible. Let me know if and I can improve it (either here or using Github issues).
  - zaat 6y ago
    Can we have the option of not showing the removed results? Or maybe just show small notification on top "some results were removed by Wiper, click here to show them"? Otherwise some search results might still be plagued with offenders, though admittingly their presence is much more sufferable.
    - davehcker 6y ago
      Apparently some people prefer the fact that the results are not fully removed. I have a better idea- to let the users decide it, so for v.1.0 I'm going to take these two ideas into account: 1. CSS-ify to suppress the results, 2. Remove them fully.
saagarjha 6y ago
Name and shame: my personal ones are cplusplus.com and w3schools.com.
- jpxw 6y ago
  For me it’s the stackoverflow and github comment scrapers. They often clutter up my results greatly.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I hate those, but they're so many that you'd need a community maintained list to keep track of them all…
  - RedShift1 6y ago
    I have often wondered about the point of those websites. What do they win out of this?
    - jellevdv 6y ago
      that sweet advertising money.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        Would there really be enough revenue to warrant doing this, considering 1) scraping and hosting that content requires some effort, 2) the content would (should?) be penalized for plagiarism so they would have very little traffic and 3) developers are probably the worst audience to try and monetize with ads due to the prevalence of ad blockers.
        waheoo 6y ago
        Very little traffic, yet enough to be annoying?
        Normal_gaussian 6y ago
creatonez 6y ago
Which domains would you recommend adding to the blacklist for a HN crowd? It would be nice if this had some presets builtin.
- ImaCake 6y ago
  I suppose you could contribute your own via a pull request.
  - davehcker 6y ago
    I'd be more than pleased to merge your relevant pull requests.
29athrowaway 6y ago
You can add: -site:example.com To your query to exclude all results from example.com Then, you can configure your search bar to automatically add those terms to your query.
- davehcker 6y ago
  But that way you'd be avoiding the results completely(even in the unlikely event that they could be potentially helpful)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
onyva 6y ago
Wonderful idea. I find google to be marginally useful. Mostly though it returns a barrage of low quality results like mentioned here in the comments, that might be related but you really don’t ever want to see. Obvious though it’ll never be allowed on chrome’s web store.
ericd 6y ago
Cool! I did something similar for my own use, in Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/antibookmark/pobgfjgaaggkllghpfhieddgnojeijoj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/antibookmark/pobgf... I use FF more nowadays, though, so I'll have to check yours out.
sequence7 6y ago
Firstly, thank you for building this I have exactly the same itch and I'm so glad someone provided a way to scratch it. > The plugin maintains a persistent and customizable list of URLs (keywords) that are used as a 'blacklist' for stripping results. Could you explain a little more about how the stripping of the 'blacklist' works.
- sequence7 6y ago
  OK, I suppose I could be slightly less lazy and read the source, which shows that you're iterating through the blacklist then iterating through the results page and removing elements that match. There are some default offenders blacklisted automatically by the look of it, nice and simple. var blacklist = new RegExp('https?:\/\/.*\.(geeksforgeeks|tutorialspoint).*\.*'); function clearURLs(urls) { var i, j, arr, res, url; arr = []; res = document.querySelectorAll('div.rc'); for (i = 0; i < res.length; i++) { for (j = 0; j < urls.blacklistURLs.length; j++) { if (res[i].firstChild.firstChild.getAttribute('href').indexOf(urls.blacklistURLs[j]) !== -1) { arr.push(i); } } } arr = [...new Set(arr)]; for (i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { url = res[arr[i]].firstChild.firstChild.getAttribute('href'); url = 'Wiper blacklisted URL: <a href="' + url + '">' + url + '</a>'; res[arr[i]].parentElement.innerHTML = url; } } browser.storage.local.get('blacklistURLs').then(clearURLs);
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
And I just recently looked for something like this because I'm sick and tired of Google top-ranking results from Reddit, where someone asked an intelligent question, and there were zero responses. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen an actually-useful response to a technical question on Reddit, but a link to a targeted subreddit always seems to be at the top of my search results now. I wonder how much this is costing Reddit. I hope it's a lot, and they stop this nonsense soon.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  You sure that, reddit buys its place? I rather suspect this has to do with the search algorithm favors known and big domains in the ever going on war against scam and fake sites.
  - anewdirection 6y ago
    I too have noticed the big 3 search engines serving more *eddit links than usual. And without retyping the url, (old.) the comments are hidden anyway so they are effectively a shade worse than useless.

Causality1 6y ago

I can't wait until I get home and try this. I am completely sick to death of Google image search results being full of videos. It's impossible to find an actual gif to imbed in an HTML comment post because the results are drowning in videos from Giphy, Tenor, etc. It'll be so delicious to consign them to oblivion. Edit: unfortunately it doesn't work on image search. Oh well.

throwaway777555 6y ago
Seconding this for Tenor. They certainly know how to game Google for traffic, then stop users from getting what they want

Paperweight 6y ago

Amazing! Thanks! We need this for YouTube as well, though the blacklist would be extremely large. In fact, I wonder if this could be implemented as a filter list for uBlock Origin?

andai 6y ago
When I log out, YouTube becomes total trash, so I thought the algorithm was really customized to me. Then I visited a friend to watch some movies and saw half our recommendations were identical. Like we got placed in the same "bucket" or something.
- chipperyman573 6y ago
  I remember reading something that said is how spotify makes discover weekly playlists (but I can't find it now), so I wouldn't be too surprised

zaat 6y ago

Thank you so much for this. Was looking for something similar, found only solutions that were dependent on extensions I didn't want to install due to privacy/security reasons.

davehcker 6y ago
Thanks. Same here and I tried to keep it as vanilla as possible. Let me know if and I can improve it (either here or using Github issues).
- zaat 6y ago
  Can we have the option of not showing the removed results? Or maybe just show small notification on top "some results were removed by Wiper, click here to show them"? Otherwise some search results might still be plagued with offenders, though admittingly their presence is much more sufferable.
  - davehcker 6y ago
    Apparently some people prefer the fact that the results are not fully removed. I have a better idea- to let the users decide it, so for v.1.0 I'm going to take these two ideas into account: 1. CSS-ify to suppress the results, 2. Remove them fully.

saagarjha 6y ago

Name and shame: my personal ones are cplusplus.com and w3schools.com.

jpxw 6y ago
For me it’s the stackoverflow and github comment scrapers. They often clutter up my results greatly.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I hate those, but they're so many that you'd need a community maintained list to keep track of them all…
- RedShift1 6y ago
  I have often wondered about the point of those websites. What do they win out of this?
  - jellevdv 6y ago
    that sweet advertising money.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Would there really be enough revenue to warrant doing this, considering 1) scraping and hosting that content requires some effort, 2) the content would (should?) be penalized for plagiarism so they would have very little traffic and 3) developers are probably the worst audience to try and monetize with ads due to the prevalence of ad blockers.
      - waheoo 6y ago
        Very little traffic, yet enough to be annoying?
      - Normal_gaussian 6y ago

creatonez 6y ago

Which domains would you recommend adding to the blacklist for a HN crowd? It would be nice if this had some presets builtin.

ImaCake 6y ago
I suppose you could contribute your own via a pull request.
- davehcker 6y ago
  I'd be more than pleased to merge your relevant pull requests.

29athrowaway 6y ago

You can add: -site:example.com To your query to exclude all results from example.com Then, you can configure your search bar to automatically add those terms to your query.

davehcker 6y ago
But that way you'd be avoiding the results completely(even in the unlikely event that they could be potentially helpful)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

onyva 6y ago

Wonderful idea. I find google to be marginally useful. Mostly though it returns a barrage of low quality results like mentioned here in the comments, that might be related but you really don’t ever want to see. Obvious though it’ll never be allowed on chrome’s web store.

ericd 6y ago

Cool! I did something similar for my own use, in Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/antibookmark/pobgfjgaaggkllghpfhieddgnojeijoj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/antibookmark/pobgf... I use FF more nowadays, though, so I'll have to check yours out.

sequence7 6y ago

Firstly, thank you for building this I have exactly the same itch and I'm so glad someone provided a way to scratch it. > The plugin maintains a persistent and customizable list of URLs (keywords) that are used as a 'blacklist' for stripping results. Could you explain a little more about how the stripping of the 'blacklist' works.

sequence7 6y ago
OK, I suppose I could be slightly less lazy and read the source, which shows that you're iterating through the blacklist then iterating through the results page and removing elements that match. There are some default offenders blacklisted automatically by the look of it, nice and simple. var blacklist = new RegExp('https?:\/\/.*\.(geeksforgeeks|tutorialspoint).*\.*'); function clearURLs(urls) { var i, j, arr, res, url; arr = []; res = document.querySelectorAll('div.rc'); for (i = 0; i < res.length; i++) { for (j = 0; j < urls.blacklistURLs.length; j++) { if (res[i].firstChild.firstChild.getAttribute('href').indexOf(urls.blacklistURLs[j]) !== -1) { arr.push(i); } } } arr = [...new Set(arr)]; for (i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { url = res[arr[i]].firstChild.firstChild.getAttribute('href'); url = 'Wiper blacklisted URL: <a href="' + url + '">' + url + '</a>'; res[arr[i]].parentElement.innerHTML = url; } } browser.storage.local.get('blacklistURLs').then(clearURLs);

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

And I just recently looked for something like this because I'm sick and tired of Google top-ranking results from Reddit, where someone asked an intelligent question, and there were zero responses. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen an actually-useful response to a technical question on Reddit, but a link to a targeted subreddit always seems to be at the top of my search results now. I wonder how much this is costing Reddit. I hope it's a lot, and they stop this nonsense soon.

hutzlibu 6y ago
You sure that, reddit buys its place? I rather suspect this has to do with the search algorithm favors known and big domains in the ever going on war against scam and fake sites.
- anewdirection 6y ago
  I too have noticed the big 3 search engines serving more *eddit links than usual. And without retyping the url, (old.) the comments are hidden anyway so they are effectively a shade worse than useless.