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Google Goes After Content Farms
RedEaredSlider writes "Aimed at stripping search results of pages from 'low-quality' sites, a new Google Chrome extension allows users to block specified websites from appearing in search results. The names of these sites are then sent to Google, which will study the collected results and use them to determine future page ranking systems. Google principal engineer Matt Cutts wrote in a post on the Google blog that the company hopes the extension will improve the quality of search results. The company has been the target of criticism in recent months, much of which centered around the effect that content farms were having on searches."
Dear Google,
Please port this to Firefox.
Sincerely,
The rest of the browser market
Slashvertisement starts now....
I can't begin to express how aggravating it is to google a programming issue, and have the top five results all link to the same page with the same paywalled answers.
Frankly, no browser extension will be suitable to the task of going after link farmers until Lethal Force over IP is developed and widely adopted; but, in the absence of robust LF/IP implementations, I suppose hitting them in the wallet will have to do....
Just scroll down to the bottom. The answer is always there.
Isn't this similar to the "Search Wiki" feature of Google that's available in every browser? Why didn't they just use that instead?
Users who run into paywalls are going to pretty quickly add these sites to the filters, since the results are technically useless even if the content locked away is high-quality. This does not bode well for sites like Experts-Exchange or America's Test Kitchen.
I don't really have a problem with expert sexchange; their answer is right there on the page; you simply have to scroll down to the bottom of a very long page filled with advertising so most people never notice that you don't need to pay. Just immediately scroll to the bottom and there is the answer. You don't even have to change your user agent string to googlebot or anything.
You're talking about "Expert Exchange".
I've never used them, paying for Internet based programming help defeats the purpose of the Internet. If that's what I wanted, I'd hire a contractor.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
That was one of the first sites I thought of when I saw this post.
It looks like you can set your own block list up. So I'm going to be happy never to see Experts Exchange again.
Here is the solution to your coding problem.. Oh wait no, give us money first.
So long DirectoryM, HotFrog, and all you other link/content farm assholes who rip off content.
Well, more correctly, AN answer is there... May not be correct or even relevant to the question, but there will be an answer. I used to have my Google preferences to exclude Expert Sex Change from results, but that setting keeps getting reset...
i have never installed an extension faster.
Very true, but that is what you get with Experts Exchange.
Goodbye yahoo answers...
I'm genuinely POed at myself for not figuring this out. It could have save me countless hours of frustration.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
FINALLY ! I am so tired of the first three or four pages of Google results being heavily populated with links to OTHER search engines. Fan-Tas-Tic !
Turn page styles off, turn page styles on.
Your answers are on the bottom of the page.
I'm surprised it took them this long to do this. It seems like a pretty good way to leverage the fact that they've got their own software running on the client side too.
So what stops me from burying my competition with this? Instead of getting cheap far-east labor to link to me in linkfarms, the same people will just now engage in blocking out my competitors.
There's no easy solution.
I hope that site and its squads of web-shitting bastards all get kicked off google's search results.
Then, if they could boot the fake review sites and the domain squatters ("AnalRape.com: What you want, when you want it.") the web might be worthwhile again.
Solution: Add "stackoverflow" to the end of every programming-related question. It saves a lot of time.
I wish it was available for Firefox. I really get of having to look at the domain name of each returned search result before clicking on it. The so-called "experts exchange" would be first on my blocked list.
#DeleteChrome
*pulls hair out*
They maybe I can disable the messy greasemonkey script that adds -site:wn.com -site:eggheadcafe.com etc to all my queries.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Google already "charges" for increased search "relevancy" and gives massive discounts to large bulk buyers (think Amazon, Ebay, etc)... What happens when my legit sites start getting pruned for lack of payment... er... relevancy? Google already sticks it to small businesses with Adwords rates that are uncompetitive when compared to huge advertisers, so what would stop them from not doing the same in this realm? Don't be evil? right...
Just scroll down to the bottom. The answer is always there.
Jesus, I didn't know that!
I still wish they would die, I hate what they do. They're not trying to be helpful first and make money second, its the other way around with them. Or being helpful might be 3rd or 4th on their list.
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
I've never paid for expert's exchange, but the last 2 companies I've worked for had an EE account.
I must say its as hit/miss as a regular search engine, but I do find many answers there that I can't find on a regular search engines (Example: Answers where I'm too lazy to read the documentation).
Don't bother posting a question on there, because 99% of the time you stump the "Professionals".
I can't begin to express how aggravating it is to google a programming issue, and have the top five results all link to the same page with the same paywalled answers.
Amen brother, amen.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
There's a Greasemonkey script for that.
...it's the only way to be sure. Searching the web nowadays is like walking in a dog kennel cage: you're constantly stepping in crap.
Well, more correctly, AN answer is there... May not be correct or even relevant to the question, but there will be an answer. I used to have my Google preferences to exclude Expert Sex Change from results, but that setting keeps getting reset...
You need to choose the 'cached' version for EE and then scroll all the way to the bottom. You'll find the answers there, though recently they screwed with the stylesheet so it doesn't always look right on the cached version (but the answers are still very easy to read).
What really pisses me off is that google already had this feature. Personalized search results used to let you relegate some websites to the bottom and mark some results and sites as being more important. It was incredibly useful when filtering out garbage spam sites. Google also said were would be able to share these in some way to improve search results. Then for no reason they removed that feature and replaced it with the ability to put a gold star on some results. Of course the benefit of the feature was in relegating spam up the bottom of the page and you could no longer do that. When they removed they feature I stopped using the feature entirely. Now google is backtracking by introducing this extension. What was entre point of removing the original feature which worked on all browsers?
Why not make this a part of Google search itself, like the report spam buttons in Gmail?
I'd be happy if Google let me filter my stuff through OpenDNS. If I have blocked there, I don't want to hit it in my searches.
God, I hate those pukes. Finally a way to get rid of those spammers!
The laws of unintended consequences suggest that this will have the exact opposite of the desired effects as the same people who run the content farms use this extension to report legitimate sites and get them removed or have their ranks lowered, further increasing the prominence of content farm placement in Google's search results. Shortly thereafter Bing's results will also go to hell since it's been implied that they're taking results from Google. Search as we know it will be set back by over a decade! Anyone know if Altavista is still around?
My name is not Jesus, most people stopped getting confused about that when I cut my hair.
A few sites are using these spam farms to sell blender using misleading advertising (including copyright violation I believe).
ie illusionmage.com - search 'create 3d animation'
and 3dmagixpro.com - search '3d animation software'
illusionmage.com is also using spamming via twitter and i think facebook as well.
If anyone has twitter and facebook contacts who might help us get rid of these spammers would be appreciated.
Email at LetterRip AT gmail Dot com
....is my list going to be LOOONNNG!
finally.
or Expert Sexchange as they are really known
The filter out feature should send the filtered sites back to Google so the search rankings of the objectional sites can be lowered. Could yo imagine what
that would do to the so-called "experts-exchange"?
I haven't noticed that as much lately. These days you get stack overflow and much higher quality answers without all the crap. I don't even remember the last time Experts Exchange popped up in a search for me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I can't believe anyone uses Expert Exchange anymore. Even if for some reason you cannot find an answer on there, if you ask within an hour you should have a number of responses.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've never payed a dime to expert sexchange, but I have, on occasion, gotten good answers (they're batting about .133, for me) from their site. You don't have to pay to view the answers (as long as your referrer header is google.com) you just have to scroll all the way down.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9462
There are at least a dozen others as well.
I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet!
LOL!
Yes. I knew I could not be the first person to post Expert Exchange. It was the *very* first thing I thought of, and then some of the more annoying driver sites that popup when you do searches for various printer and hardware drivers.
I love this idea too, but honestly wonder just what Google will do the results. I can see abused like Astroturfing to influence a competitors ranking in the search results.
That being said, just being able to block Expert Exchange is priceless to me. I hate those bastards.
What's wrong with distributing copies of GNU/Linux for a fee (e.g. Red Hat)? And what's wrong with distributing copies of Blender + video tutorials + clip art + other non-free goodies for a fee? I thought including value-added non-free components was the entire point of a free software business model. What specifically is IllusionMage.com doing wrong?
Web searches used to yield more relevant info back in the early to late 90's. Since the Internet has become used by everyone, commercial interests have polluted the search engines for their financial gain. Because of this you can't always trust what you see in the search engines result page, and end up cross checking things like Wikipedia and other research sites. This in my opinion is is a terrible shame as that was not meant to be how the web was used back before it was commercialized.
What would really be nice is a search engine where feedback from the users doing the searching could be used to influence the relevance of the search results. I don't think Google will ever do this because of vested financial interests in the adwords business, but maybe some day someone else will.
Whats a 'low-quality' site? A blog/forum/site that a large well connected party political flash mob sends to Google?
If Google takes time to get the code/human effort working well, good sites will be airbrushed from the 'google' web.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Oh, for mod points!
Now google will have to deal with botnets constantly complaining about the competition's websites. This is not the winning strategy.
Try scrolling down. The answers are there. The paywall is a tax on the lazy.
The first thing that comes to mind is, how will they prevent this from being abused by the very people who are farming in the first place?
It could just spark yet another scriptwar.
I've run into a lot of duplicate content out there. Obviously, somebody is the originator of the content. It ought to be possible to filter out the dupes.
For link farms, It should also be possible to characterize the signal:noise ratio of a website somehow, and to offer an SNR choice in the advanced search options.
I'm not sure how much this effort to improve the quality of their results will work; but I must applaud it since at least it's not another Bing-envy feature.
Now, Dear Google, will you please un-Bing your image searches? Please? Pretty-please?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
For my own sake, I just throw the junk into /etc/hosts so I don't make the mistake twice. Still shows up in search results and Google doesn't hear about it, but at least I get the satisfaction of not sending any traffic their way. answers.yahoo.com, telegraph.co.uk, pcmag.com, foxnews.com... The list goes on and on.
Very true, but that is what you get with Experts Exchange.
Don't you mean expert-sexchange?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I have the same issue when I'm googling porn. Sick of hitting the same link sites.
I don't understand why this needs to be done in the browser. Can't they add the feature on the search result itself?
User participation will be more widespread and it will be more representative of the search users as a whole.
That being said, just being able to block Expert Exchange is priceless to me. I hate those bastards.
/etc/hosts, or, c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Apparently (from ping) they're at 208.87.33.150.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
This will work until the scumbuckets learn to game it. Such as a bot that automatically negatively rates all your competition. I can see overseas services where their bot-like employees will just all check block on selected websites.
And the bot-nets can't help but have a crack at this one.
So a tool that should block experts-exchange will end up blocking stack overflow.
If a zillion other users block something like EE then block EE. Where this is going to get messy is over issues where people disagree. Abortion and whatnot. All I can say is Good luck google.
YES the freakin driver sites are getting ridiculous. Every time I look for a driver the first 2 pages are some crap site that just pops you around from page to page only to try and install their crappy software to "give" you the driver for a small fee! If their site was not there the driver would be easy to find. With all these sites it makes the driver impossible to find.. therefore you need these sites to find them.. AHHH gonna throw up now.. then download this bad boy.
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
Will this mean the death of Ebaumsworld? The YTMND community rejoices!
Heh
I know about the hosts file :)
How does that block it from appearing in the search results for Google? I know Google ain't pure as the driven snow, but they ain't checking my hosts file on disk either before they return search results :)
I blocked the crap out of some sites using this old tool but due to the billion page nature of these sites they just kept coming up anyway.
This crowd sourced feature will only sort of work if you do something like google and have random moderators with a vested interest in their reputations. Even here on slashdot you can't vary too far from the demographic before you will get your comments moderated out of existence. Try saying something favorable about Microsoft or going all right wing and you are a goner. But if fox news used a slashdot type engine the reverse would be true.
I have seen very little if any gaming of slashdot. Bit of trolling but this works. The google thing won't as it stands. What it might do though is give them the heads up on anything that people really hate.
Really hoping for that too. Many times i stop looking when i accidentally to get to spam shit fucked up crap like that.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
I went to expertsexchange.com and was very disappointed with the results. They kept coming out at the top of the Google results, and thought I was onto a sure thing. But you start to solve you problem, then they expect you to pay for the full answer.
I am now stuck halfway - without a penis or a vagina.
It does that. Could you at least read the fucking summary?
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Dear Google,
Screw the plugin.
1. Give me a "search preference" where I can say "never this site in my results." You track my "safe search" and other preferences, just add this one.
2. Along with the star, preview, cached, etc... buttons in the results, give me a "this site's results are shit" button. A turd icon would do nicely.
3. Extend your search keywords to add "nosite". i.e. nosite:experts-exchange.com
All of these you could track and adjust your algorithms based on trends of "real life" searchers who utilize these features.
Sincerely,
Me
Get off my lawn.
I'd like to remove entire classes of websites from my search results: by country, for starters.
One answer, we also want all the discussion, clarification, confirmation, others problems with implementing solution, alternative answers, corrections and warnings that the answer has major problems. Without that the solution is often useless, and may be outright dangerous to blindly follow.
Would you bother reading slashdot if it only showed the first comment to get to score of 5?
Already installed and blocked, along with some sites which give me paywalled or embedded (no local save) datasheets for electronic components I search for daily. Gone, I want the manufacturers page, not ripped, embedded and ad surrounded low res reproductions of the original freely available pdf.
When Apple improves the quality of their native mobile app platform by arbitrarily leaving some apps out of their store, that is "closed", but when Google arbitrarily removes some websites from their Web index, that is "improving the quality of search results"? Isn't there more of an imperative that the Web index be open and on equal terms? Am I really going to Google.com to see what Chrome users haven't voted down yet? Are they going to vote down articles that say Chrome is a shitty browser? That Google is a shitty company?
If your app is de-indexed by Apple you have many alternatives. What is the alternative if you are de-indexed by Google? Retire?
We already have Digg, right? Do we need Google.com to be another Digg?
Heh, true. Oh well, trying to help here. :) And you're right, a search result which times out is even worse that one you simply have to scroll down to the bottom to see the answer. :)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Your on /. - it doesn't matter.
bang goes my karma... again...
When looking for a local business, I often search for the name and town of the company. All well and good. But I often find that the first few links (sometimes even pages) are crammed with business directory sites. I really would prefer to use the proper company's website.
1) The company's website will have up to date information and more info like opening hours etc /NO LINK WHATSOEVER/ to the company's site - just a sodding phone number. It's almost like they feel it's against the law to display a link to a company's website.
2) The business directories often have
3) The business directory sites sometimes have the name and town and nothing else - wow, way to go. Tell me what I just searched for and nothing else. Thanks. Really useful there Einstein.
4) Using these directories, I would be using a search engine to go to - a search engine! (or as near as). Yeah - maybe if these directories could chain up and I could spend all f***ing day going around in circles (note the no hyperinks point above)
5) These directories are often full of crap - when the page loads, I'll see my own query loaded up in the directory's search box and then a really helpful and information message below "Sorry, we can't find anything that matches your query. Did you mean blah-dee-blah instead?" (poor recall)
6) Precision of returns is also poor. Lots of irrelevant company's are shown when something does come up for a query. I want local pizza delivery and they recommend car / auto parts. Wow, I was hungry but maybe what I really need are some brake pads?
7) These bloody things often appear *above* the website of the very company I'm looking for.
Although they're trying to be useful, they have a crap business model that doesn't nothing but get in my way.
Another one is review sites. Say you want to buy a camera and you want to read reviews. Yeah, there are pro reviews, but you want reviews by real users. So you type in the word 'review' as well. Up come a ton of returns from the search engine... ...most of which say, "Be the first one to write a review". I have honestly used that phrase as a Boolean NOT just to try and get some useful content.
bang goes my karma... again...
There's not a search box on stackoverflow's site or anything, is there?
If I remember correctly this is only true if you go directly to the page from a google search, otherwise the answer is hidden.
I would think it would be much faster and considerably more cost effective for those who intend to manipulate search rankings to pay someone to block out sites than it would to create content. This just seems like it would be opening the door to making reverse SEO a more viable business. The high quality sites that currently rank well for competitive terms would become huge targets for "blocking" attacks. At that point, how would it be possible to distinguish legitimate votes from malicious ones?
There goes my idea for a new Facebook app: Content Farmville.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not always.
I have definitely caught them serving me up answerless pages until I changed my user agent to google bot.
I have to second the time wasted with experts-exchange, but I have learned to avoid that site. My biggest complaint is when I search for an unknown dll or exe file. All the top sites are just shills for scanning programs, many are malware. Try googling any of your services or processes and see haow many links are little more than farms for overpriced scanners. You will see most simply say "having problems with ---.exe" or "---.exe is a possible Trojan, check with XYZ for only$$$" Few results actually tell you anything related to the query. Looking forward to this tool, just wish it followed my Google login.
Try adding -site:experts-exchange.com or -inurl:experts-exchange
"Weird. Slashdot lets positive contributors disable ads, but not financial contributors."
I can't speak to the financial end of it, but I can tell you that despite my karma being "bad" for almost my entire stay, here, I have the checkbox. So, yeah, that's weird.
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
I have seen a lot of well-deserved complaints about expert-exchange. My nemesis is "fixya" which pops up with a mirror of your question (and no answer) for many typical DYI problems you try to google.
Ed.
A rather hilarious example of the absurd level that content farming can reach on Google is the first result when "female serial killers" is entered as the query:
"Famous Female Serial killers; Top Serial killers; Best Females in their Field
List of notable or famous Female Serial Killers; incl. professionals who went on to have careers in other fields..."
BLACK KNIGHT SECURITY SYSTEMS
We'll bite your legs off
Actually you better check more than one source for the information anyway because as others have pointed out just because they give AN answer does mean you get the RIGHT answer.
I had a customer ask advice on one of the eAnswers style sites before he brought it to me and the advice he was given was like some sort of WinXP urban legends handbook or something. They had him throw out all the Windows prefetch files "to speed things up", set prefetch to 4, make a separate partition for the page file, just total BS.
So I'd agree with you but I don't even think the helpful part is real big on their todo list, just more of a nice side effect but no hard and fast perquisite. The only thing they really really REALLY care about is cranking up those page views to max, everything else be damned. It reminds me of those SEOs where they fill fill the comments section of a blog with the same set of keywords over and over and over.
But if this gets content farms off the top 10 I'm all for it, but sadly it will probably be more like spam and SEOs where the little twerps just keep figuring ways around it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And any other site that either the general populace or whoever owns a big botnet wants to disappear.
I read this news on various news portals. I have submitted my content on various website. But, I found that due to duplication Google stop to index that content. So, will Google mesh up duplicate content?
Thanks, Rajan Shah http://www.spiderofficechairs.com/
As has been said Google did have something similar before and got rid of it unfortunately. Yes, this definitely needs to be ported for FF. It almost makes me want to try Chrome just so I can have the satisfaction of getting rid of experts exchange, driver sites, be the first to review this sites, get a free virus scan sites, blog sites and on and on and on.
Yes, it will be a long list for me and may take a while to complete it but eventually I'll be able to search without nonsense filling the first ten pages.
I love you...
They occasionally have actual answers. The thing is, Google won't give you any credit for answers browsers can't see - which would mean the paywall would knock your page rank to shit.
How does Expert Sex Change get around this? They pretend that the answer is behind a paywall, when in fact the answer is actually all the way at the bottom of the page. The Google search bot is much more patient than you are, and will not care about the pretend-paywall.
So yeah. Whenever it looks like Expert Sex Change has your answer, just follow the link and scroll all the way down.
I've heard this before, but for me at least it doesn't work. There is nothing below the advertisements to subscribe. I have a different computer where I had done some trick from a tutorial to make it look like Google bot, and it works there, but not on my new computer. It's not really that important though as Google Cache works.
...which regardless of number will never have any influence on ranking.
Its not even funny considering Google has been sued by a couple of content farms for downrating them in searches. They have to somehow rate them lower in searches without doing it manually and with the users themselves rating them low.
HTTP/1.1 400
Oh gee, I never paid people $0.20 a pop to write in phony complaints on Amazon Mechanical Turk
I had an exchange with Google a little while ago via here. I was starting to feel like Search was becoming like a chess computer without randomization. It doesn't matter if "Google's results *overall* are expert grade" if specific most natural searches feel like they are wasting those precious top-ten slots. My favorite one was the word "advanced". To me that means Advanced (adjective/adverb) ______ Stuff. However a couple of companies did some brilliant SEO and got into the top 5. If I keep chipping away at the nuisance items, it will force more interesting results (informational, to me) to bubble up.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Can we get this to apply to Farmville? : )
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually there's lost productivity always scrolling past the same crappy results and for the jittery types including me, a tiny bit of stress at looking at them.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Or use Duck Duck Go as your search engine and prefix your query with !so.
When you get to the bottom of an expert sexchange, there isn't anything left down there.
actually their domain was 'expertsexchange.com' until they realised what a problem that would be :)
you can rerank & filter results with a proxy for example. Seeks does this, http://www.seeks-project.info/ .
The rational is that if you build your own search filter / preferences at home, you keep control over your search profile. This profile grows over time, under your control.
The obvious thing for spammers to do is hire lots of third world labor to start marking legitimate web sites as spam. This will mess up Google's data collection and render this useless.
Type any search query, ANY query at all, you're bound to get multiple pages full of "full version download keygen checked version" links that are just click decoys.
Can we get this to apply to Farmville? : )
And experts-exchange?
The problem is that they hide the fact that it's GPL
I've never seen a TV commercial for Windows, Mac OS X, or iOS, or for a product with one of these operating systems preinstalled, mention that said operating system is proprietary. I've never seen a TV commercial for video game consoles mention that home users can't develop for the consoles. Is there an obligation to disclose licensing status that major computer manufacturers and software publishers have been ignoring for decades?
and they use copyrighted artwork that they do not have permission to use, and do not respond to requests to remove such content.
If an OCILLA takedown notice to an alleged infringer fails, and you don't want to bring in the lawyers, try sending a notice to the alleged infringer's hosting provider and then to the hosting provider's upstream ISP.
The more people who reject that ridiculous, paid-for service (unless you frig your headers, and want to scroll down about 10 pages to get to the 'hidden' answers), and instead use Stack Overflow, which is free and attempts to promote the best answers and encourage some sense of community, the better for everyone.
I like how you can install the extension without Chrome telling you what information it can access... not.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Aside from the technical sites, the worst offenders in this area are the Hotel sites. The search results for anything related to Hotels or Travel are loaded with sites that simply try to hide the hotels actual sites from you. They use misleading URLs that try to trick you into believing you are visiting the Hotel's actual website, and the prices are always higher than they will be if you are able to actually find the Hotel's actual website. If this can help all of those sites die, all the better.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Is there a predefined list of domains we can start with?
Actually it is not always at the bottom but it is of course in the source code. of the page. And if your really that annoyed by it you can always write a greasemonkey script to remove the fake paywall overlay to just read the page normally.
It's the indiscriminate use of Adwords and the Search-Based Keyword Tool (SBKT) to siphon lots of traffic that really isn't relevant to your goods or services.
For example, yesterday I was searching for stamp-sized LCD screens to incorporate into some hobby projects of mine. I. could. not. get. anything. but. Amazon.com. They wanted to sell me watches or personal DVD players or anything but what I was looking for. This has been happening with every search for information for the past month.
Google needs to really tighten up their advertising policies, because their search engine is teetering on the event horizon of uselessness.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
A firefox extension would be nice, but why not just build this feature into the search results?
Google used to have a "demolish" or X link for bad search results. Why not just take that idea and evolve it so I can block "just this result" or "block this site". Poof--same result. I can personalize for my search, it's persistent across all my browsers (so long as I'm logged in), google can fold the info into search results for everyone, etc...
Here's what I'm doing to identify the spammers:
Search for malamanteau and block the spam sites that popup.
Then go to: http://www.google.com/trends
Search for a combination of a few of the top hits that should be very unlikely to appear together in a site most people would be interested in. For instance search for: "irina shayk" "cta bus tracker" "bleach episode 309". Then block the obvious spammers.
Glad to see that the Google boys were up late last night near Shoreline Amphitheatre; maybe they're really working on this.
Because filtering results is not my action item. I should not have to append jargon to filter out pseudo-facts disguised as advertising. And while programmers and data base designers no doubt can contrive filters on the fly to get better results, other users are much less capable of outsmarting professional search engine optimizer experts. It's not a fair fight; these SEO guys are well-paid and very competent at spamming Google's index.They're a lot better than my wife, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and to be just, two out of three of my brothers-in-law. All of these are doomed to crappy results when they search for health-related questions, fuel-efficient cars, recipes, or any of a thousand everyday interests.
Bad results not only frustrate lay users. They also screw up many academics in non-technical fields. For example, a literary scholar searching for "The Red Badge of Courage" + "text" will turn up the same Gutenberg.org file (and the same typos) under a different commercial guises in six of the first ten results. Of the remainder, two will be puerile cheatsheets from the likes of gradesaver.com. If he's patient, he will find a single worthwhile link--a scholarly edition from the University of Virginia.
By the way, in the unlikely event that anyone here is searching for serious results for sex research, "Orgasm" -"cumming" works better than "Orgasm"+"coming."
But, to repeat, twisting my brain around to construct a fruitful search for information about such topics as physiology, politics, economics, or philosophy is not my job. Hint to Google: quit working so hard and just buy Duck Duck Go.
They actually changed that with a recent site revision. If you click the actual link, you won't find any responses or answers, just a box with a link telling you to subscribe now.
Instead, just do what has always worked and use the Google cached link. You might have to look a bit harder to find the accepted solution, but it's there.
I'm guessing that they originally didn't trust users to give a worthwhile judgment on the utility/relevance of the results, and something .... some internal decision on their part caused them to fall in love with crowdsourcing again.
But hey, it's love at second sight, right?
There is. It sucks. Google is better.
Is it as annoying as that google misfeature that displays a page of search results then hides them just as you're about to click on one ?
Back when there were "remove this result" X's in search results about experts-exchange, I checked them and now on my dashboard (https://www.google.com/dashboard/?pli=1), there are Search Wiki notes showing "removed results" for the site.
I think these results are specific to my account, but by whatever mechanism, I don't get as much crap form experts-exchange in my search results as I used to.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Please tell me this works the way I want it to. "User noglorp has blocked www.w3schools.com from appearing in ALL search results: nobody will be bothered by them again."
Hint: The Google cache version always shows the answer.
Don't feel too bad. Took me four years of being a PC tech before I complained out loud about that lousy site, and someone mentioned I should just scroll down.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Actually, you can see the answers without paying. You just have to scroll down the page.
Head to pinkmonkeyplanet instead - your search life redefined. We're also thinking of banning 'em. Take that, you stinkin link farmers. Cough.
i am going to use my link farm to report my compet
There's not a search box on stackoverflow's site or anything, is there?
They were going to implement one, but couldn't figure out how.
<ducks>
Its about time they really did some thing about the crap results.. at least I can now block the stuff that irritates the heck out of me.
This thread is now diamonds.
At least Expert's Exchange contains some answers (at the bottom). Whenever you search for free or GPLed software, you end up with these completely useless software.informer.com results.
I've long resorted to using CustomizeGoogle on Firefox and I'm glad this is finally available on Chrome as well. The fact that they get reported back is an added bonus I guess.
Or you can just delete your cookie for the site and refresh the page. They start hiding the answers after you've been there a few times, removing the cookie resets the count.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
"Free %s Downloads" has been added to your blocklist.
Yesterday the entire first 1.5 pages of results offered me a free carburetor download. What sort of 3d printer do they think I have??
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
...my concern would not be that it blocks sites, but that I get to specify why I am blocking sites, not just that the site is blocked.
Site killers for me are 'free' forums that require you to register to see responses. The ad host that does everything it can to keep you on it's site.
Content pharms are the boogie man here in that most of the time the only readers who knows that the content was pharmed are the original author and the pharmer. All too often the reader who's looking for an answer to what's wrong doesn't care who provides the answer, so long as it solves the problem. I'm not saying that it's not a problem. It is on multiple levels. All I'm saying is that if the information satisfies the question, most searchers are done. I'm probably not going to go back to the site unless I run into the problem again on a different system. But that's me.
Now the 'free' site that requires me to register to see a response, That I would block, and I would be happy to discourage other people from going there as well.
Occasionally I would block sites for content that I don't like, but I'm of the opinion that on that matter you shouldn't be affected by my decision not to see that site again. If you like content I don't, that's your business, not mine. If I like content you don't, I think that's my business not yours.
You never know...
To give special status to their browser -- if you want to be able to block results, you have to use their browser....
I got the xkcd reference.
You're right, there's a whole class of sites that have some trick to borrow a search term and inject it into their results, creating one of the most irritating types of bad matches. (Think "no, you can't possibly be selling purple wumpii".)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Stackoverflow is brilliant in concept and execution.
I can't say enough good things about it.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I jumped into this thread just to make sure that someone was properly trashing experts-exchange.
They are teh suck.
I HATE accidentally clicking on one of the search result links for them.
I will be downloading this chrome extension solely for the purpose of dinging experts-exchange as the opportunities arise.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
That is the first thing I though of when I read the headline here. Please some one kill expertsexchange asap! I won't even give that site the dignity of a hyphen.
I got here through a series of tubes