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
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....
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
It may help that Google reviews the results.
They are pretty good at spotting trends (especially spam), because spammers go for the easiest target.
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
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...
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.
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?
My name is not Jesus, most people stopped getting confused about that when I cut my hair.
or Expert Sexchange as they are really known
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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...
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.
Can it be caused by the fact that contribution is giving comments, making posts etc. and karma is the evaluation of some random moderator about your "contribution". Take a discussion about apple vs. linux. Depending on the day and the phase of the moon, you would end up either at -1 or +5 if you have anything of value in your post.
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.
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.
Oh gee, I never paid people $0.20 a pop to write in phony complaints on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Most people use Stackoverflow for that.
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.
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.