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Ask HN: Hacker News missing from Google results?

2 points by rpedela 13y ago

When I search for "hacker news" on Google, this website is not in any of the results. Do others see the same thing? What is going on?

dubbyDU 13y ago
For me it comes up as either the 4th or 6th result depending on whether you put it in quotes or not. Interestingly the HN article it links to is the one the other day discussing how Google paid Adblock Plus to get its ads white listed.
- rpedela 13y ago
  Interesting!
Peroni 13y ago
If HN were a popular result, the quality of this community would rapidly decline. Eternal September etc.
- rpedela 13y ago
  How? It is pretty clear that this website is only interesting to "hackers", and there are already a lot of people who visit the site. I think what makes HN different than Reddit or any other similar website is the rules on posting and the subsequent consequences for not following those rules. That is what encourages interesting, useful comments and prevents stupid comments like "you suck, kill yourself". As far as I can tell, the Google ranking has little to do with it.
  - Peroni 13y ago
    It's almost impossible to avoid a decline in quality as the quantity of users increases. Reddit being a prime example. Every now and again there are threads posted here discussing the apparent 'HN decline' as the userbase grows.
    - rpedela 13y ago
      To me, those threads sound like old people complaining rather than an actual problem. "Back in my day..." You still did not answer my question: how?
gtmtg 13y ago
This has been discussed before -- see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955043 (for the discussion) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955374 (for Matt Cutts' comment).
- rpedela 13y ago
  Thanks! I don't why they don't limit Google, Bing crawlers to the homepage via robots.txt. Then crawling should not overload an already busy website. Honestly, it seems like an overreaction to me.
  - gtmtg 13y ago
    For what it's worth, pg said that "crawlers are disproportionately bad for HN's performance because HN is optimized to serve recent stuff, which is usually in memory" (at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277661).

2 points by rpedela 13y ago

When I search for "hacker news" on Google, this website is not in any of the results. Do others see the same thing? What is going on?

dubbyDU 13y ago

For me it comes up as either the 4th or 6th result depending on whether you put it in quotes or not. Interestingly the HN article it links to is the one the other day discussing how Google paid Adblock Plus to get its ads white listed.

rpedela 13y ago
Interesting!

Peroni 13y ago

If HN were a popular result, the quality of this community would rapidly decline. Eternal September etc.

rpedela 13y ago
How? It is pretty clear that this website is only interesting to "hackers", and there are already a lot of people who visit the site. I think what makes HN different than Reddit or any other similar website is the rules on posting and the subsequent consequences for not following those rules. That is what encourages interesting, useful comments and prevents stupid comments like "you suck, kill yourself". As far as I can tell, the Google ranking has little to do with it.
- Peroni 13y ago
  It's almost impossible to avoid a decline in quality as the quantity of users increases. Reddit being a prime example. Every now and again there are threads posted here discussing the apparent 'HN decline' as the userbase grows.
  - rpedela 13y ago
    To me, those threads sound like old people complaining rather than an actual problem. "Back in my day..." You still did not answer my question: how?

gtmtg 13y ago

This has been discussed before -- see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955043 (for the discussion) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955374 (for Matt Cutts' comment).

rpedela 13y ago
Thanks! I don't why they don't limit Google, Bing crawlers to the homepage via robots.txt. Then crawling should not overload an already busy website. Honestly, it seems like an overreaction to me.
- gtmtg 13y ago
  For what it's worth, pg said that "crawlers are disproportionately bad for HN's performance because HN is optimized to serve recent stuff, which is usually in memory" (at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277661).