8 ms·

Here's another similar idea, someone please do this: a search engine that excludes all "commercial" sites. "Commercial" means the site contains ads or accepts p

Here's another similar idea, someone please do this: a search engine that excludes all "commercial" sites. "Commercial" means the site contains ads or accepts payments.

PhasmaFelis 13y ago
"Contains ads" by itself is a pretty bad definition of "commercial site," and will exclude a whole lot of useful, high-quality sites that run ads to pay the hosting bills.
lobotryas 13y ago
This would exclude SO (ads) and Wikipedia (accepts payments as donations). Even of you refined your criteria, what do you have against sites that try to recoup costs of hosting or content? Or, are you referring to completely different sites, lumping them all under "commercial sites" label?
- cousin_it 13y ago
  Okay, it seems I was trigger-happy in excluding nonprofits that accept donations. Maybe "accept payments for products or services" would work better? Not sure how to formalize that though. More generally, I don't have anything against any sites, I'm trying to come up with a way of viewing the internet that would have a high signal to noise ratio. It seems plausible to me that excluding all sites with ads would improve the signal to noise ratio over what we have today. If you think the signal to noise ratio would be improved further by carefully including some sites with ads (SO is a good example), can you take a stab at defining the criteria? Maybe include only sites whose ads are deemed acceptable by adblock? But then we might include many content farms...
Benferhat 13y ago
> "Commercial" means the site contains ads Your idea started out good. Sometimes I want to research a product before I go looking for a merchant. Blocking all sites that contain ads? Just use adblock if you're that fanatical.
- anjc 13y ago
  Presumably the idea is to define 'commercial' as a website with ads or accept payments, rather than removing sites with ads to increase viewing pleasure. I think it's a good idea. It'd certainly help with the problem of blogspam etc.
- JeremyMorgan 13y ago
  Also, it's not the ads themselves, but sites that produce content for the purpose of serving up more ads. May not be as good theoretically.
- derleth 13y ago
  I think the idea was that the presence of ads indicates the advertisers had influence on content, which isn't true for a lot of websites which run ads.
mlinksva 13y ago
Indeed, the first part (search that filters out site with ads, including affiliate links and the like) is something I wish for frequently. It isn't that I mind seeing ads (I can use AdBlock for that, and sometimes do), it's that I don't want to wade through spam sites when looking for info, and sites with ads seems like an obvious hard filter. Maybe DDG or the like could implement filter.
ry0ohki 13y ago
I remember Yahoo actually had this as a Yahoo Labs thing way back in the day (when they actually did search). You had a slider that would make your results all research (if you are researching a bike) to all commercial (if you want to buy one).
- barista 13y ago
  What about sites like amazon that serve both type of content? Reviews for research and an option to buy?
  - trentmb 13y ago
    You'd find them half-way on the slider.
oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
It's almost as if there's a need for a top-level domain to distinguish between commercial organisations and non-profits. This [1] was working brilliantly until everyone decided to abuse it left, right, and center. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com
- Laremere 13y ago
  The worst common day offender being .io.
  - nwh 13y ago
    .io is a generic TLD in most books now anyway. There's lots of other ccTLD that are fairly useless, though it's obvious why ones like .co.ck (the uninhabited Cook Islands) were never picked up as generics.
drakaal 13y ago
I don't think that just because a site makes money it is a bad result. If you searched for "Used Jeep Grand Cherokee" Craigslist would be a good result. So would AutoTrader. Both break your rule.
- robertjwebb 13y ago
  I agree - such a search engine would not be as general as Google or Yahoo. But in sacrificing generality it might become better at handling certain types of requests. I am sure that given such a service the community of HN will make light work of finding out what they are :)
  - drakaal 13y ago
    Also it would by hypocritical that it would block sites with ads but likely have to use ads to generate revenue. As the owner of a search engine I can tell you search ain't cheap.
    - robertjwebb 13y ago
      Yeah. Also, how do you computationally distinguish between a commercial and non-commercial site? Loads of grey areas.
      - drakaal 13y ago
        Our Natural Language / Language Heuristics Engine can do this. We do to a small extent now, we haven't gone whole hog because I'm not sure I agree that commercial sites shouldn't rank. For things we determine to be reference searches we downrank sales pages, for things we determine to be shopping searches we uprank them.
        robertjwebb 13y ago
        What product are you developing the engine for?
snoonan 13y ago
Would HN be excluded as a commercial site? :)
brownbat 13y ago
Now everyone is fighting to perfect the concept and the definition. Bikeshedding I say! If we're just making something interesting and different, not shooting to replace all search, imperfect definitions are a wonderful place to start.

Here's another similar idea, someone please do this: a search engine that excludes all "commercial" sites. "Commercial" means the site contains ads or accepts payments.

PhasmaFelis 13y ago

"Contains ads" by itself is a pretty bad definition of "commercial site," and will exclude a whole lot of useful, high-quality sites that run ads to pay the hosting bills.

lobotryas 13y ago

This would exclude SO (ads) and Wikipedia (accepts payments as donations). Even of you refined your criteria, what do you have against sites that try to recoup costs of hosting or content? Or, are you referring to completely different sites, lumping them all under "commercial sites" label?

cousin_it 13y ago
Okay, it seems I was trigger-happy in excluding nonprofits that accept donations. Maybe "accept payments for products or services" would work better? Not sure how to formalize that though. More generally, I don't have anything against any sites, I'm trying to come up with a way of viewing the internet that would have a high signal to noise ratio. It seems plausible to me that excluding all sites with ads would improve the signal to noise ratio over what we have today. If you think the signal to noise ratio would be improved further by carefully including some sites with ads (SO is a good example), can you take a stab at defining the criteria? Maybe include only sites whose ads are deemed acceptable by adblock? But then we might include many content farms...

Benferhat 13y ago

> "Commercial" means the site contains ads Your idea started out good. Sometimes I want to research a product before I go looking for a merchant. Blocking all sites that contain ads? Just use adblock if you're that fanatical.

anjc 13y ago
Presumably the idea is to define 'commercial' as a website with ads or accept payments, rather than removing sites with ads to increase viewing pleasure. I think it's a good idea. It'd certainly help with the problem of blogspam etc.
JeremyMorgan 13y ago
Also, it's not the ads themselves, but sites that produce content for the purpose of serving up more ads. May not be as good theoretically.
derleth 13y ago
I think the idea was that the presence of ads indicates the advertisers had influence on content, which isn't true for a lot of websites which run ads.

mlinksva 13y ago

Indeed, the first part (search that filters out site with ads, including affiliate links and the like) is something I wish for frequently. It isn't that I mind seeing ads (I can use AdBlock for that, and sometimes do), it's that I don't want to wade through spam sites when looking for info, and sites with ads seems like an obvious hard filter. Maybe DDG or the like could implement filter.

ry0ohki 13y ago

I remember Yahoo actually had this as a Yahoo Labs thing way back in the day (when they actually did search). You had a slider that would make your results all research (if you are researching a bike) to all commercial (if you want to buy one).

barista 13y ago
What about sites like amazon that serve both type of content? Reviews for research and an option to buy?
- trentmb 13y ago
  You'd find them half-way on the slider.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago

It's almost as if there's a need for a top-level domain to distinguish between commercial organisations and non-profits. This [1] was working brilliantly until everyone decided to abuse it left, right, and center. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

Laremere 13y ago
The worst common day offender being .io.
- nwh 13y ago
  .io is a generic TLD in most books now anyway. There's lots of other ccTLD that are fairly useless, though it's obvious why ones like .co.ck (the uninhabited Cook Islands) were never picked up as generics.

drakaal 13y ago

I don't think that just because a site makes money it is a bad result. If you searched for "Used Jeep Grand Cherokee" Craigslist would be a good result. So would AutoTrader. Both break your rule.

robertjwebb 13y ago
I agree - such a search engine would not be as general as Google or Yahoo. But in sacrificing generality it might become better at handling certain types of requests. I am sure that given such a service the community of HN will make light work of finding out what they are :)
- drakaal 13y ago
  Also it would by hypocritical that it would block sites with ads but likely have to use ads to generate revenue. As the owner of a search engine I can tell you search ain't cheap.
  - robertjwebb 13y ago
    Yeah. Also, how do you computationally distinguish between a commercial and non-commercial site? Loads of grey areas.
    - drakaal 13y ago
      Our Natural Language / Language Heuristics Engine can do this. We do to a small extent now, we haven't gone whole hog because I'm not sure I agree that commercial sites shouldn't rank. For things we determine to be reference searches we downrank sales pages, for things we determine to be shopping searches we uprank them.
      - robertjwebb 13y ago
        What product are you developing the engine for?

snoonan 13y ago

Would HN be excluded as a commercial site? :)

brownbat 13y ago

Now everyone is fighting to perfect the concept and the definition. Bikeshedding I say! If we're just making something interesting and different, not shooting to replace all search, imperfect definitions are a wonderful place to start.