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There are browser extensions for blacklisting domains from your Google searches. I've been so incredibly happy using one if them. If I see one of those despicab

There are browser extensions for blacklisting domains from your Google searches. I've been so incredibly happy using one if them. If I see one of those despicable content farms I just blacklist it and move on. Often when I search on Google for technical stuff I only get 2 visible results on the first page, 1 SO and 1 documentation. Soooo relaxing. The business reasons why Google doesn't take steps to remove the bad content and make their product pleasant to use again is so far from my understanding it might well be aliens running the company for all I know.

lolc 3y ago
My understanding is that Google has an incentive to send people to content farms because those farms will show Google's ads. Stackoverflow doesn't. So they can increase ad exposure. Thinking of it, it would be an interesting test to compare the ranking of two similar sites, one with google ads, another with ads from another provider. Might be good evidence for antitrust litigation. But what do you do if they just prefer sites with more ads? Because due to their market position, that benefits them, but it isn't anti-competitive against other ad-pushers.
- geysersam 3y ago
  Maybe you're correct. I've heard that explanation before but it just seems too incredible that they'd undermine their monopolistic global billion dollar business for a measly share of the revenue of geeks4geeks.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    the way you phrase it there makes it sounds miniscule, but you scale that up to the size of the SEOified internet and the numbers are surely into the billions
    - martin_a 3y ago
      I was thinking the same. Taking in consideration the vast amount of such SEO farms, there's surely a lot of ad money to be spend/earned if you prioritize the "right" sites.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      Last time I saw, Google gets much more revenue from ads on search than from the entire 3rd party ecosystem.
      - permo-w 3y ago
        a big number that's much smaller than a big number is still a big number
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Google is a self playing piano with clueless leadership. There is probably no plan involved. Just managers doing what they get more money for or devs hunting promotions by increasing ad revenue by 0.01% in the short term one sting at a time.
  - arp242 3y ago
    I don't think it's an intentional decision anyone has taken, or that they intentionally made the search engine the way it works now, but more of a "there's nothing wrong here from out perspective, so what's there to fix?" kind of thing.
jazzabeanie 3y ago
This is good to know. I refuse to click on a geeks4geeks result even if it looks like it has exactly the answer I want.
dmje 3y ago
I've been using Kagi[0] for a while now and it's pretty great in general - but also has options to boost up / down / totally ignore certain domains. It also has "lenses" that let you set a context (example: I'm searching for code stuff so just include sites a,b,c). It's really good and IMO more than worth the price. [0] https://kagi.com https://kagi.com
- viraptor 3y ago
  Yeah, my Kagi list of content farms / SO clones which are completely dropped from all results keeps growing. On the other hand, searching just SO from Kagi still seems to give decent results.
rightbyte 3y ago
Your experience matches mine. Spend two or three weeks blacklisting sites as you hit them and they disappear. Some people argue that Google possibly can't win the fight vs spam sites, but obviously it works perfectly fine manually blacklisting them. It takes time to build ranking. The underlying reason is probably that the spam sites use Google Ads (revenue which is tied to 1000s of PMs and managers bonuses) and that Google as an org is deeply dysfunctional at this point.
- ncruces 3y ago
  Yeah, but then they're editorializing. And not in a generic “this kind of content is bad for our users” but very specifically “site x.com is bad for our users.”
  - tivert 3y ago
    >> Some people argue that Google possibly can't win the fight vs spam sites, but obviously it works perfectly fine manually blacklisting them. > Yeah, but then they're editorializing. > And not in a generic “this kind of content is bad for our users” but very specifically “site x.com is bad for our users.” Except that shouldn't be a problem because I'm pretty sure Google already blacklists domains.
    - ncruces 3y ago
      Surely, they do. But they reserve that for stuff that's really way beyond the line. For everything that might be legitimate they leave it to the ranking algorithm to sort out and it's a game of cat and mouse.
coldpie 3y ago
Do you have a suggestion for a Firefox extension to do that?

lolc 3y ago

My understanding is that Google has an incentive to send people to content farms because those farms will show Google's ads. Stackoverflow doesn't. So they can increase ad exposure. Thinking of it, it would be an interesting test to compare the ranking of two similar sites, one with google ads, another with ads from another provider. Might be good evidence for antitrust litigation. But what do you do if they just prefer sites with more ads? Because due to their market position, that benefits them, but it isn't anti-competitive against other ad-pushers.

geysersam 3y ago
Maybe you're correct. I've heard that explanation before but it just seems too incredible that they'd undermine their monopolistic global billion dollar business for a measly share of the revenue of geeks4geeks.
- permo-w 3y ago
  the way you phrase it there makes it sounds miniscule, but you scale that up to the size of the SEOified internet and the numbers are surely into the billions
  - martin_a 3y ago
    I was thinking the same. Taking in consideration the vast amount of such SEO farms, there's surely a lot of ad money to be spend/earned if you prioritize the "right" sites.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    Last time I saw, Google gets much more revenue from ads on search than from the entire 3rd party ecosystem.
    - permo-w 3y ago
      a big number that's much smaller than a big number is still a big number
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Google is a self playing piano with clueless leadership. There is probably no plan involved. Just managers doing what they get more money for or devs hunting promotions by increasing ad revenue by 0.01% in the short term one sting at a time.
- arp242 3y ago
  I don't think it's an intentional decision anyone has taken, or that they intentionally made the search engine the way it works now, but more of a "there's nothing wrong here from out perspective, so what's there to fix?" kind of thing.

jazzabeanie 3y ago

This is good to know. I refuse to click on a geeks4geeks result even if it looks like it has exactly the answer I want.

dmje 3y ago

I've been using Kagi[0] for a while now and it's pretty great in general - but also has options to boost up / down / totally ignore certain domains. It also has "lenses" that let you set a context (example: I'm searching for code stuff so just include sites a,b,c). It's really good and IMO more than worth the price. [0] https://kagi.com https://kagi.com

viraptor 3y ago
Yeah, my Kagi list of content farms / SO clones which are completely dropped from all results keeps growing. On the other hand, searching just SO from Kagi still seems to give decent results.

rightbyte 3y ago

Your experience matches mine. Spend two or three weeks blacklisting sites as you hit them and they disappear. Some people argue that Google possibly can't win the fight vs spam sites, but obviously it works perfectly fine manually blacklisting them. It takes time to build ranking. The underlying reason is probably that the spam sites use Google Ads (revenue which is tied to 1000s of PMs and managers bonuses) and that Google as an org is deeply dysfunctional at this point.

ncruces 3y ago
Yeah, but then they're editorializing. And not in a generic “this kind of content is bad for our users” but very specifically “site x.com is bad for our users.”
- tivert 3y ago
  >> Some people argue that Google possibly can't win the fight vs spam sites, but obviously it works perfectly fine manually blacklisting them. > Yeah, but then they're editorializing. > And not in a generic “this kind of content is bad for our users” but very specifically “site x.com is bad for our users.” Except that shouldn't be a problem because I'm pretty sure Google already blacklists domains.
  - ncruces 3y ago
    Surely, they do. But they reserve that for stuff that's really way beyond the line. For everything that might be legitimate they leave it to the ranking algorithm to sort out and it's a game of cat and mouse.

coldpie 3y ago

Do you have a suggestion for a Firefox extension to do that?