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Yeah, Pinterest is almost always disappointing as a result: their account requirements are annoying and it tends to obfuscate the source of the image or informa

Yeah, Pinterest is almost always disappointing as a result: their account requirements are annoying and it tends to obfuscate the source of the image or information you’re looking for.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
A few times I've landed on Pinterest and they lock user copied (contrary to copyright law in my country AFAICT) content behind a registration-wall. They never show enough utility for new to register, they just tease on Google and then don't show what they teased. Google results would be better for me with all Pinterest results removed.
- Chirael 6y ago
  Wasn’t there an option at one time to tell Google to hide results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven’t seen that in years though
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Just add `-site:example.org` to your query.
    - joegahona 6y ago
      I have done this throughout COVID for the NYTimes' content, as it's behind a paywall.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - ashleshbiradar 6y ago
        Interestingly, if you use Brave, it lets you hop to the tor versions of sites, and since NYTimes has a tor version, if you visit that, it’s paywall free.
        dgeiser13 6y ago
        I use Brave. How do I hop to the Tor version of a site?
        intellirogue 6y ago
        If you go to a site that advertises (via HTTP header) that it has a Tor version, you'll get an "Open in Tor" button at the end of the address bar. Examples are nytimes.com and dw.com
  - smoe 6y ago
    It still works -site:pinterest.* Even with wildcard tld, otherwise it is still all Pinterest But it is interesting that those kind of Google/search engine feature hardly ever get talked about these days whereas in the past they were considered crucial to get decent results.
    - foobarian 6y ago
      I don't know what the pathway for this is but just -pinterest does it for me.
      - leereeves 6y ago
        -pinterest removes pages that contain the term pinterest, so pages from a pinterest.* domain, plus articles about pinterest, etc.
        dylan604 6y ago
        Sounds pretty good to me. If I'm searching for a term, but don't want results from pintrest, then I'm probably not wanting to read an article about pintrest either.
        whatshisface 6y ago
        "Here's a picture I took today. I also posted it on Instagram and Pintrest."
        jbay808 6y ago
        If you wanted to read an article about Pinterest, it would probably be hard to search for it in any other way.
        CompuHacker 6y ago
        Except that the word "pinterest", like pinterest.* results, appears in all the nooks and crannies of the rest of the Web. Excluding the domain like that succeeds in narrowing the scope of the search without excluding content unduly.
  - russh 6y ago
    It was too effective.
  - tobyjsullivan 6y ago
    You can hide sites with a flag in the query. No idea if it works on image search but I assume it does. -site:pinterest.com
  - Udik 6y ago
    I don't get why Google doesn't give an option to permanently remove or downgrade certain domains, straight from the results page. There are results I am never interested in. It could also work as a further signal for their ranking, if used with some caution.
    - visarga 6y ago
      Probably Google would do good to give up total control and obscurity and put people in the driving seat of search customization. Maybe that would even save them from the anti-trust push (one indexing and retrieval back end + multiple ranking, filtering and UI front ends). But I'm wondering if this would not be better implemented at browser level. Can we have the white/black list run locally in the browser, re-ranking results on web pages and hiding what we don't want to see? Not just on Google, but also on the rest of the web, like ad blocking extensions.
  - caymanjim 6y ago
    There use to be an easy way to configure your account to always block certain domains, but that's gone now, so you have to use -site per-query. Maybe there are browser plugins that help? I miss the old functionality. I only had to block about a dozen sites to get great search results. Maybe it'd be less viable now; I'd probably have to block hundreds or thousands of sites, and they'd keep breeding new ones.
    - giancarlostoro 6y ago
      You used to be able to tweak part of the URL in the Firefox google search thing, and append queries I thought so as well.
    - kazinator 6y ago
      Just make a search that excludes all the domains you despise. Don't include any search terms or just a dummy one. Then save it as a bookmark. e.g. "-site:foo.* -site:bar.* ..." Use that bookmark as your search engine: click on it, then fill in search terms.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - aendruk 6y ago
    Yep. Google removed it. https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674 https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674
bsder 6y ago
The irritating part is that Google used to penalize websites dramatically if the user couldn't get to the content but the search engine could. I guess that interfered with Google extracting ad money.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I have an account there and I use it but the interface is atrocious and they seem to actively be making it worse. Recently they removed the facility to, when saving a pin, to type the name of the board to find it, now having to scroll through an alphabetical listing. Before that, they also redesigned the website such that a refresh of the page was required in order to save a pin to two different boards, an action they explicitly support. The website is also a slow resource hog. Of course, it comes with the tried and tested “corporate morality” where there are rules against various things that are phrased in terms of moral concerns that are really about keeping their app on the Apple store — this naturally includes vague standards on “nudity” that are not worded in a gendered way, but there is an unofficial code that everyone knows that it very much is. The most annoying moral preaching I encountered was that I searched for “boy's love” once — the genre of male–male tragic romantic fiction, that got me a preachy message about pædophilia that made me suspect my i.p. address was probably passed on to some U.S.A. authorities. It's really quite a big genre and has nothing to do with pædophilia. They only recently added a way to search one's own's pins, and it's very lacking and doesn't reliably even catch words in the descriptions thereof. Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn't. What can be said about it is that the algorithm for finding related things is generally quite good — the interesting thing is that it's actually better at finding the aforementioned boy's love fiction than most of the websites that actually host it. The problem is that there is no real competitor.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  > I have an account there and I use it but the interface is atrocious and they seem to actively be making it worse. If the user is confused on how to do something then it keeps them on the page longer and pushes the metrics up taps on head
sixothree 6y ago
The absolute worst part of pinterest is the the time it takes to respond to ctl-w. It's slower than just about every other site.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Yeah, the results should definitely contain a HEAVY waiting for accessibility by the general user and most people don't have a pinterest account nor do they want one.
Ekaros 6y ago
Yes, Ointerest and Quora are types of site that Google should really punish hard. Account requirements is something that should move sites outside the few top pages...

Yeah, Pinterest is almost always disappointing as a result: their account requirements are annoying and it tends to obfuscate the source of the image or information you’re looking for.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

A few times I've landed on Pinterest and they lock user copied (contrary to copyright law in my country AFAICT) content behind a registration-wall. They never show enough utility for new to register, they just tease on Google and then don't show what they teased. Google results would be better for me with all Pinterest results removed.

Chirael 6y ago
Wasn’t there an option at one time to tell Google to hide results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven’t seen that in years though
- feanaro 6y ago
  Just add `-site:example.org` to your query.
  - joegahona 6y ago
    I have done this throughout COVID for the NYTimes' content, as it's behind a paywall.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ashleshbiradar 6y ago
      Interestingly, if you use Brave, it lets you hop to the tor versions of sites, and since NYTimes has a tor version, if you visit that, it’s paywall free.
      - dgeiser13 6y ago
        I use Brave. How do I hop to the Tor version of a site?
        intellirogue 6y ago
        If you go to a site that advertises (via HTTP header) that it has a Tor version, you'll get an "Open in Tor" button at the end of the address bar. Examples are nytimes.com and dw.com
- smoe 6y ago
  It still works -site:pinterest.* Even with wildcard tld, otherwise it is still all Pinterest But it is interesting that those kind of Google/search engine feature hardly ever get talked about these days whereas in the past they were considered crucial to get decent results.
  - foobarian 6y ago
    I don't know what the pathway for this is but just -pinterest does it for me.
    - leereeves 6y ago
      -pinterest removes pages that contain the term pinterest, so pages from a pinterest.* domain, plus articles about pinterest, etc.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        Sounds pretty good to me. If I'm searching for a term, but don't want results from pintrest, then I'm probably not wanting to read an article about pintrest either.
        whatshisface 6y ago
        "Here's a picture I took today. I also posted it on Instagram and Pintrest."
        jbay808 6y ago
        If you wanted to read an article about Pinterest, it would probably be hard to search for it in any other way.
        CompuHacker 6y ago
        Except that the word "pinterest", like pinterest.* results, appears in all the nooks and crannies of the rest of the Web. Excluding the domain like that succeeds in narrowing the scope of the search without excluding content unduly.
- russh 6y ago
  It was too effective.
- tobyjsullivan 6y ago
  You can hide sites with a flag in the query. No idea if it works on image search but I assume it does. -site:pinterest.com
- Udik 6y ago
  I don't get why Google doesn't give an option to permanently remove or downgrade certain domains, straight from the results page. There are results I am never interested in. It could also work as a further signal for their ranking, if used with some caution.
  - visarga 6y ago
    Probably Google would do good to give up total control and obscurity and put people in the driving seat of search customization. Maybe that would even save them from the anti-trust push (one indexing and retrieval back end + multiple ranking, filtering and UI front ends). But I'm wondering if this would not be better implemented at browser level. Can we have the white/black list run locally in the browser, re-ranking results on web pages and hiding what we don't want to see? Not just on Google, but also on the rest of the web, like ad blocking extensions.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  There use to be an easy way to configure your account to always block certain domains, but that's gone now, so you have to use -site per-query. Maybe there are browser plugins that help? I miss the old functionality. I only had to block about a dozen sites to get great search results. Maybe it'd be less viable now; I'd probably have to block hundreds or thousands of sites, and they'd keep breeding new ones.
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    You used to be able to tweak part of the URL in the Firefox google search thing, and append queries I thought so as well.
  - kazinator 6y ago
    Just make a search that excludes all the domains you despise. Don't include any search terms or just a dummy one. Then save it as a bookmark. e.g. "-site:foo.* -site:bar.* ..." Use that bookmark as your search engine: click on it, then fill in search terms.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- aendruk 6y ago
  Yep. Google removed it. https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674 https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674

bsder 6y ago

The irritating part is that Google used to penalize websites dramatically if the user couldn't get to the content but the search engine could. I guess that interfered with Google extracting ad money.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

I have an account there and I use it but the interface is atrocious and they seem to actively be making it worse. Recently they removed the facility to, when saving a pin, to type the name of the board to find it, now having to scroll through an alphabetical listing. Before that, they also redesigned the website such that a refresh of the page was required in order to save a pin to two different boards, an action they explicitly support. The website is also a slow resource hog. Of course, it comes with the tried and tested “corporate morality” where there are rules against various things that are phrased in terms of moral concerns that are really about keeping their app on the Apple store — this naturally includes vague standards on “nudity” that are not worded in a gendered way, but there is an unofficial code that everyone knows that it very much is. The most annoying moral preaching I encountered was that I searched for “boy's love” once — the genre of male–male tragic romantic fiction, that got me a preachy message about pædophilia that made me suspect my i.p. address was probably passed on to some U.S.A. authorities. It's really quite a big genre and has nothing to do with pædophilia. They only recently added a way to search one's own's pins, and it's very lacking and doesn't reliably even catch words in the descriptions thereof. Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn't. What can be said about it is that the algorithm for finding related things is generally quite good — the interesting thing is that it's actually better at finding the aforementioned boy's love fiction than most of the websites that actually host it. The problem is that there is no real competitor.

hanniabu 6y ago
> I have an account there and I use it but the interface is atrocious and they seem to actively be making it worse. If the user is confused on how to do something then it keeps them on the page longer and pushes the metrics up taps on head

sixothree 6y ago

The absolute worst part of pinterest is the the time it takes to respond to ctl-w. It's slower than just about every other site.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Yeah, the results should definitely contain a HEAVY waiting for accessibility by the general user and most people don't have a pinterest account nor do they want one.

Ekaros 6y ago

Yes, Ointerest and Quora are types of site that Google should really punish hard. Account requirements is something that should move sites outside the few top pages...