6 ms·

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top sea

by beachy 5y ago

The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites that use a whole page to blather on and on, leading to a tiny information nugget at the end. No value, just excellent SEO scamming. As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less useful. When I see a site like that, I can be quite sure there is no value to me from that site. I want to blacklist it - not forever (though I'd settle for that) but so I don't see it in search results again. The crazy thing is that this could even be a benefit for Google themselves. They could aggregate these signals and use them to identify SEO scammers, since their algorithms clearly can't. I'm sure that Google aren't happy with the lacklustre performance of their search in modern times.

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
>As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less useful. Any ranking manoeuvrability that Google offers can and will be used against them. The SEO scammers out there would just automate millions of proxy IP addresses to blacklist all of their competitors sites.
- rolisz 5y ago
  But the blacklist would be personal, so applying only to me.
blenderdt 5y ago
This is not only a problem with Google search. DDG is now also flooded with auto (AI?) generated content. For example there are now loads of websites about programming topics. They look real but always lack the main point of the article which makes you navigate to other articles on the same website.
flenserboy 5y ago
A HOSTS file for search would be most welcome.
- erichurkman 5y ago
  Google used to allow you to block individual domains right from the search UI. It was discontinued in 2011. There are numerous extensions to block domains, like uBlacklist: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi... (not affiliated)
mulmen 5y ago
This used to be a feature of Google Search. It then moved from the Google Account to Chrome. I'm not sure if it still exists in the Chrome browser. It can be done with addons but of course that doesn't feed back to Google. It does surprise me that Google wouldn't want to capture this signal. Maybe it is too susceptible to abuse?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- beachy 5y ago
  It surprises me too. Perhaps they are snow blind from having had something like it in the past and then removing it. But in the modern era, I feel that being able to use human signals like that - on top of the fancy algorithms - could well be a killer network effect for them.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    The SEO dreck drives more ad impressions than real content. Why would they improve the results when they have a captive audience who won't switch to other search providers.
- dazc 5y ago
  > Maybe it is too susceptible to abuse? The incentive to block one's competitors from 10,000 different accounts is likely why they no longer offer this function?
  - ansible 5y ago
    At the end of the day, being able to detect bots (and the abuse from them) is key to maintaining, well, anything.
mattwad 5y ago
ublacklist is a browser extension that does what you want. it works well and i don't find myself having to blacklist new sites very often
gwbas1c 5y ago
> The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). I wish I could do that at Hacker News too. I really just don't want anything from medium.com.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tikhonj 5y ago
  Seems like you could do that in a reasonably thorough way on HN with an ad block filter.
  - abbeyj 5y ago
    Quick and dirty version for uBlock Origin: news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a[href*="medium.com"]) news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a[href*="medium.com"]) + tr news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a[href*="medium.com"]) + tr + tr.spacer If somebody can improve this, please share.
- dmje 5y ago
  That's a weird thought. Medium might be irritating as an interface or as a business but there are still some really interesting things written on it, no?
  - EnKopVand 5y ago
    This is completely anecdotal but most medium (and similar platforms) that I end up on from HN are basically an A4 page of what is essentially nothingness. This is not to say it’s not interesting, because it is, but what typically happens is that I end up in the “want to know more” state, but then don’t actually get to know more. This is not really on the medium authors, it’s more just my social media consumption taking me back to HN and then never looking into it again, but that also means that my time on the medium article was sort of wasted doesn’t it? I can’t for the life of me remember a single medium article that had any sort of impact on me or anything I do tech wise.
headsoup 5y ago
I'd say it depends on the money they make. I'm not sure how, but it must be profitable enough for them to let it persist.
version_five 5y ago
There is a programmable search feature [0] that lets you limit search to a defined list of sites. Someone did a ShowHN a few months ago where they had built a programmable search with 200ish common sites that a stereotype HN reader might like (software documentation, wikipedia, reddit, some news and other media, etc), and it was actually pretty good. I've said before, google is now basically what I'd call a "smart" portal site. For most stuff, you already know the handful of sites you might want to look at, and google just sort of brings you there from a relatively clean interface, as opposed to a traditional portal that would have lots of categorized nested links to traverse. In most cases you're not searching for a random site that you wouldn't know existed if it wasn't indexed, like in 1998. So the whitelist approach actually works pretty well. [0] https://developers.google.com/custom-search/ https://developers.google.com/custom-search/
- telotortium 5y ago
  You're looking for https://notrashsearch.github.io/ https://notrashsearch.github.io/ HN comments: [Show HN: No Trash Search](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774456)
- python_bread 5y ago
benrapscallion 5y ago
Kagi.com allows such blacklisting.
wetpaws 5y ago
I started adding "reddit" to all my searches in google, cause 99.9% of time all google links point to seo rubbish. It is absolutely impossible to find anything anymore, I gave up on google for all intents and purposes and use it exclusively as reddit indexer.
- swethmandava 5y ago
  You.com lets you prefer reddit and see it in your search
physicsgraph 5y ago
I've a good experience with uBlacklist, an extension that blocks results by domain in the search page results.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Current Google search doesn't add features, it removes them (see end of + sign and other stuff). This is sadly the logical behavior of a "mature product". When you own the market, your rational question is "how much can I extract from the customers who already must come to me" and that means becoming more and more directive towards the customer. Letting the customers customize only stands against this.
Pxtl 5y ago
The problem, as always, is credibility. If they're not careful about the credibility of the aggregate blocking signal, this would become another tool in the SEO scammer toolbox as they use sockpuppet accounts to downmoderate their competitors.
holografix 5y ago
I’m sure someone is going to point this out but guess what happens when scammers find out their site can be black listed? They get crowds of people and/or scripts to blacklist all other sites.
nomilk 5y ago
This is a great idea. On YouTube I use the 'Don't recommend channel' button a lot and consequently the algorithm has learned to filter out a lot of the nonsense.
- woudsma 5y ago
  This button doesn’t really work for me. Often I need to click it multiple times before a video dissapears from my recommendations. Same with the ‘Not interested’ button. I’m guessing YT works with a system that is ‘eventually consistent’, but having to click the button 2-3 times before a video disappears doesn’t seem particularly consistent to me.
Spooky23 5y ago
I always assumed that they were getting paid. I can’t think of any reason why a spam Pinterest link has any value, yet it’s ranked high.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Pinterest has a surprisingly large userbase of people who actually like the content there. There are a lot of real world people I meet who speak highly of all the great creative ideas they get from there.
  - techdragon 5y ago
    I don’t care, they are a blight on the internet that deserves to end. I have NEVER wanted to see a Pinterest board in my Google search results image or otherwise and their SEO optimisation serves only to parasitically drive traffic in order to feed their conversion funnel. If your Pinterest board is public and you let others see it that’s nice, but the Pinterest developers should never have let that show up in my search results, your board is not and will never be more interesting than the original content you have pinned from other places on the internet, shitty aggregate pin pages hurt original content producers by ranking better and stealing page views and preventing users from navigating to the original content without jumping through hoops in the Pinterest user interface.
  - xg15 5y ago
    It's still completely useless for people who are not on Pinterest.
chewz 5y ago
> Blocks sites you specify from appearing in Google search results This extension prevents the sites you specify from appearing in Google search results. https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...
- arbirk 5y ago
  I use uBlacklist in Safari - highly recommended. In Chrome I have a custom search string that adds "-pinterest -quora" because result on those spammy sites are behind a login wall
- brynjolf 5y ago
  Ironically I tried to find a blacklist extension or similar through Google search past week, and couldn't find it due to blogspam talking about how it used to be. So added reddit and clicked in past year, but reddit now doesn't show accurate dates on posts so that didn't work. Thanks, will add this!
dazc 5y ago
> So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites ... The problem is, since these sites dominate the SERPS, there is little incentive for anyone to offer the result you want. As a consequence, the web page that would satisfy your request probably doesn't exist.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Aw man... that would destroy pinterest.
ajmurmann 5y ago
kagi.com allows you to adjust from the results page how often you want to see a page in the results or just block it entirely. I don't think there is a way to temporarily ban though.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
I believe -site:facebook will remove that site from your queries. Annoying but it is functional.
Giorgi 5y ago
This will create Perverse incentive, SEO "ninjas" will just mass-block competitors.
bigcat123 5y ago

by beachy 5y ago

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago

>As these scam artists get better and better at this, Google gets less and less useful. Any ranking manoeuvrability that Google offers can and will be used against them. The SEO scammers out there would just automate millions of proxy IP addresses to blacklist all of their competitors sites.

rolisz 5y ago
But the blacklist would be personal, so applying only to me.

blenderdt 5y ago

This is not only a problem with Google search. DDG is now also flooded with auto (AI?) generated content. For example there are now loads of websites about programming topics. They look real but always lack the main point of the article which makes you navigate to other articles on the same website.

flenserboy 5y ago

A HOSTS file for search would be most welcome.

erichurkman 5y ago
Google used to allow you to block individual domains right from the search UI. It was discontinued in 2011. There are numerous extensions to block domains, like uBlacklist: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi... (not affiliated)

mulmen 5y ago

This used to be a feature of Google Search. It then moved from the Google Account to Chrome. I'm not sure if it still exists in the Chrome browser. It can be done with addons but of course that doesn't feed back to Google. It does surprise me that Google wouldn't want to capture this signal. Maybe it is too susceptible to abuse?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beachy 5y ago
It surprises me too. Perhaps they are snow blind from having had something like it in the past and then removing it. But in the modern era, I feel that being able to use human signals like that - on top of the fancy algorithms - could well be a killer network effect for them.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  The SEO dreck drives more ad impressions than real content. Why would they improve the results when they have a captive audience who won't switch to other search providers.
dazc 5y ago
> Maybe it is too susceptible to abuse? The incentive to block one's competitors from 10,000 different accounts is likely why they no longer offer this function?
- ansible 5y ago
  At the end of the day, being able to detect bots (and the abuse from them) is key to maintaining, well, anything.

mattwad 5y ago

ublacklist is a browser extension that does what you want. it works well and i don't find myself having to blacklist new sites very often

gwbas1c 5y ago

> The one thing I wish that Google offered would be the ability to blacklist sites for a period (coud be fixed - say 6 months). I wish I could do that at Hacker News too. I really just don't want anything from medium.com.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tikhonj 5y ago
Seems like you could do that in a reasonably thorough way on HN with an ad block filter.
- abbeyj 5y ago
  Quick and dirty version for uBlock Origin: news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a[href*="medium.com"]) news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a[href*="medium.com"]) + tr news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(a[href*="medium.com"]) + tr + tr.spacer If somebody can improve this, please share.
dmje 5y ago
That's a weird thought. Medium might be irritating as an interface or as a business but there are still some really interesting things written on it, no?
- EnKopVand 5y ago
  This is completely anecdotal but most medium (and similar platforms) that I end up on from HN are basically an A4 page of what is essentially nothingness. This is not to say it’s not interesting, because it is, but what typically happens is that I end up in the “want to know more” state, but then don’t actually get to know more. This is not really on the medium authors, it’s more just my social media consumption taking me back to HN and then never looking into it again, but that also means that my time on the medium article was sort of wasted doesn’t it? I can’t for the life of me remember a single medium article that had any sort of impact on me or anything I do tech wise.

headsoup 5y ago

I'd say it depends on the money they make. I'm not sure how, but it must be profitable enough for them to let it persist.

version_five 5y ago

There is a programmable search feature [0] that lets you limit search to a defined list of sites. Someone did a ShowHN a few months ago where they had built a programmable search with 200ish common sites that a stereotype HN reader might like (software documentation, wikipedia, reddit, some news and other media, etc), and it was actually pretty good. I've said before, google is now basically what I'd call a "smart" portal site. For most stuff, you already know the handful of sites you might want to look at, and google just sort of brings you there from a relatively clean interface, as opposed to a traditional portal that would have lots of categorized nested links to traverse. In most cases you're not searching for a random site that you wouldn't know existed if it wasn't indexed, like in 1998. So the whitelist approach actually works pretty well. [0] https://developers.google.com/custom-search/ https://developers.google.com/custom-search/

telotortium 5y ago
You're looking for https://notrashsearch.github.io/ https://notrashsearch.github.io/ HN comments: [Show HN: No Trash Search](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774456)
python_bread 5y ago

benrapscallion 5y ago

Kagi.com allows such blacklisting.

wetpaws 5y ago

I started adding "reddit" to all my searches in google, cause 99.9% of time all google links point to seo rubbish. It is absolutely impossible to find anything anymore, I gave up on google for all intents and purposes and use it exclusively as reddit indexer.

swethmandava 5y ago
You.com lets you prefer reddit and see it in your search

physicsgraph 5y ago

I've a good experience with uBlacklist, an extension that blocks results by domain in the search page results.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Current Google search doesn't add features, it removes them (see end of + sign and other stuff). This is sadly the logical behavior of a "mature product". When you own the market, your rational question is "how much can I extract from the customers who already must come to me" and that means becoming more and more directive towards the customer. Letting the customers customize only stands against this.

Pxtl 5y ago

The problem, as always, is credibility. If they're not careful about the credibility of the aggregate blocking signal, this would become another tool in the SEO scammer toolbox as they use sockpuppet accounts to downmoderate their competitors.

holografix 5y ago

I’m sure someone is going to point this out but guess what happens when scammers find out their site can be black listed? They get crowds of people and/or scripts to blacklist all other sites.

nomilk 5y ago

This is a great idea. On YouTube I use the 'Don't recommend channel' button a lot and consequently the algorithm has learned to filter out a lot of the nonsense.

woudsma 5y ago
This button doesn’t really work for me. Often I need to click it multiple times before a video dissapears from my recommendations. Same with the ‘Not interested’ button. I’m guessing YT works with a system that is ‘eventually consistent’, but having to click the button 2-3 times before a video disappears doesn’t seem particularly consistent to me.

Spooky23 5y ago

I always assumed that they were getting paid. I can’t think of any reason why a spam Pinterest link has any value, yet it’s ranked high.

londons_explore 5y ago
Pinterest has a surprisingly large userbase of people who actually like the content there. There are a lot of real world people I meet who speak highly of all the great creative ideas they get from there.
- techdragon 5y ago
  I don’t care, they are a blight on the internet that deserves to end. I have NEVER wanted to see a Pinterest board in my Google search results image or otherwise and their SEO optimisation serves only to parasitically drive traffic in order to feed their conversion funnel. If your Pinterest board is public and you let others see it that’s nice, but the Pinterest developers should never have let that show up in my search results, your board is not and will never be more interesting than the original content you have pinned from other places on the internet, shitty aggregate pin pages hurt original content producers by ranking better and stealing page views and preventing users from navigating to the original content without jumping through hoops in the Pinterest user interface.
- xg15 5y ago
  It's still completely useless for people who are not on Pinterest.

chewz 5y ago

> Blocks sites you specify from appearing in Google search results This extension prevents the sites you specify from appearing in Google search results. https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...

arbirk 5y ago
I use uBlacklist in Safari - highly recommended. In Chrome I have a custom search string that adds "-pinterest -quora" because result on those spammy sites are behind a login wall
brynjolf 5y ago
Ironically I tried to find a blacklist extension or similar through Google search past week, and couldn't find it due to blogspam talking about how it used to be. So added reddit and clicked in past year, but reddit now doesn't show accurate dates on posts so that didn't work. Thanks, will add this!

dazc 5y ago

> So damn annoying when the top search results all lead to shitty SEO-optimised sites ... The problem is, since these sites dominate the SERPS, there is little incentive for anyone to offer the result you want. As a consequence, the web page that would satisfy your request probably doesn't exist.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Aw man... that would destroy pinterest.

ajmurmann 5y ago

kagi.com allows you to adjust from the results page how often you want to see a page in the results or just block it entirely. I don't think there is a way to temporarily ban though.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

I believe -site:facebook will remove that site from your queries. Annoying but it is functional.

Giorgi 5y ago

This will create Perverse incentive, SEO "ninjas" will just mass-block competitors.

bigcat123 5y ago