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Google Goes After Content Farms

Posted by Soulskill on from the cleaning-up-the-e-streets dept.

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."

11 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Firefox Extension Needed! by dch24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dear Google,

    Please port this to Firefox.

    Sincerely,
    The rest of the browser market

    1. Re:Firefox Extension Needed! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      perhaps the description for that script is lacking...BUT it doesn't report the sites you block back to google--which is the best frickin point of this extension!!!

    2. Re:Firefox Extension Needed! by multisync · · Score: 5, Informative

      That is not a meta-mod system. It is a comment popularity system.

      It is useful as well. It is comment-centric, and gives site administrators a very high level snapshot of what users think about the current state of the user generated content.

      The old meta-moderation system oth tasked the meta-moderator with judging whether a specific moderation a comment received was fair. It wasn't a perfect system, but it provided just the smallest possibility that there may be consequences for abuse of moderation privileges.

      --
      I don't care why you're posting AC
  2. Here's to hoping Expert's Exchange is among them by Zilvreen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Paywall sites are going to be hit pretty hard by ZackSchil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Paywall sites are going to be hit pretty hard by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

      if a site serves different content to people than to spiders

      If a site does that, why should it be listed at all? That's straight down the line spammery, as far as I can see.

  4. Death to experts-exchange.com by Uloi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is the solution to your coding problem.. Oh wait no, give us money first.

    1. Re:Death to experts-exchange.com by eddy+the+lip · · Score: 5, Funny

      Me, too. Now I'm just annoyed because I discovered the quality of the answers.

      --

      This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.

  5. Google already had this feature by skomes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  6. No plugin, just extend what you have already. by clintp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  7. Re:Here's to hoping Expert's Exchange is among the by IICV · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.