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Google Introduces Domain Blocking To Search
An anonymous reader writes "We recently discussed a new Chrome extension that was introduced to block specified websites from appearing in search results. Now, Google has introduced a new feature that hide results from unwanted domains right from the search page. This is yet another way to find more of what you want on Google by blocking the sites you don't want to see at all in search result. The so-called 'experts exchange' or 'online eHow to guide' would be first on my blocked list."
Another neat recent addition was the introduction of Recipe View, which adds depth to food preparation searches.
Funny... I just blacklisted Experts-Exchange on my very first search... before I read this article/summary. Apparently I'm not alone in thinking it is the main scourge of the internet. :)
About half of my answers come with Experts Exchange. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page if you don't feel like paying; all the answers are right there
Awesome, this will make it easier to filter out the malicious porn spam websites when I'm doing my...research.
Huffington Post
Experts Exchange
eHow
Expertsexchange can go strait to hell.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
My ideal list would automatically exclude variations on "be the first to review..." when researching a purchase but just keeping expert sexchange out of the results is already a huge improvement.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Finally an easy way to block all the useless w3schools.com results that for some reason always rank above the actually useful information.
If so it may be worth it to sign in just to block Foxnews. Otherwise, I'll continue to hide foxnews with greasemonkey. Some days half the page is blank.
A way to block experts exchange :D
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Google gets sued by these vertical search engines / content aggregates for severely reducing hits to their websites, despite the fact that they have to trick people into hitting their pages.
Google's pretty strict about having the page look the same to a viewer as it does to Googlebot (and rightly so!)
With one exception: Google Scholar. Google allows scientific journals to paywall their sites but give Googlebot a free sub on the condition that articles are not available through cache. So elsevier, wiley, springerlink, and jstor will be the first on my killfile.
In other words, they made a GUI version of "... -site:foo.com ..."?
Just subj.
Right now, you can just scroll down. No trickery needed, even on IE.
... none of which should be necessary. This is the reason why people malign the site. It's a bait-and-switch site, even if there are ways to get around it (but you shouldn't need to in the first place).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
or just fucking block it
When you click from google and scripts are disabled, just scroll down and see all the answers. Greasemonkey could hide the junk at the top, probably, just i just hit 'END' key and read up. Problem solved.
Ya, flicking that scroll button once is a huge price to pay for some potentially useful information.
Sheesh.
I can understand if some people don't like the format and prefer to use other sites, but to actually complain about it? I don't know if there's a word for people who complain about free stuff, but there should be.
Another neat recent addition was the introduction of Recipe View, which adds depth to food preparation searches.
I wonder what it would make of:
Bukkake udon: Cold udon served with various toppings liberally sprinkled on top
- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udon#Cold
Perhaps a hundred other people did too, but 6 months ago I wrote a short spec to Google recommending exactly this feature.
I also went on to describe a trust system whereby searching is fine-tuned by groups of people with similar interests. For example, an academic department could run a server that monitors the blocking of all authorised staff members. Over time, this should whittle out most of the crudy resources and other noise within a particular field, and thereby make research more efficient. This would essentially allow institutions to fine-tune google search results, with the fine-tuning being done by the experts who need to use the system.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Right now, you can just scroll down. No trickery needed, even on IE.
No, I can't. Are you registered user? I'm not, and I will not.
I don't understand? I can useIE or FF and just scroll to the bottom of the page.
I don't understand the Experts Exchange hate in other posts on here. Experts Exchange does try to organize solutions to problems.........unlike the plethora of websites that just scrape data from sites like Experts Exchange. It is the others tech sites I plan to block.
Experts Exchange works pretty good for a small IT department as a cheap source for help on occasion.
I am going to block about.com.... the most worthless %#$## site in the world. Nothing but a content copying bunch of BS.
... none of which should be necessary. This is the reason why people malign the site. It's a bait-and-switch site, even if there are ways to get around it (but you shouldn't need to in the first place).
Exactly, thats why this tool is so useful (I have been using the chrome add-on since it came out). You could spend the time scrolling down to the bottom of the page to get your info, or you could go to the next google hit down. In principle it has saved me a lot of time to just keep on looking. That and I am not feeding the trolls at experts-exchange.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov
You scroll down and you see a box over the accepted solution with a big "Subscribe Now" button - you can't see shit.
You're a subscriber.
Experts Exchange is a scam operation that tries to trick people into paying for an answer that's already on the webpage in question (just buried below 19 pages of crap).
Besides, Stack Overflow does a far better job of getting quality answers these days. EE was shady before and is obsolete now.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I immediately blocked penisland.net, now I can search for penisland.net without that other pesky domain showing up!
I used to love browsing YouTube to discover truly funny or interesting random videos, but for quite a while now it's been overwhelmed by "YouTube celebrities" (*coughs* trolls). Please allow us to block videos from particular uploaders. In return we'll both benefit: I'll get what I want- a world without that Tard family, that unsexy guy or that fake community channel all of whom are polluting my YouTube experience. And you'll give me a reason to log into YouTube, which might please your advertisers.
The "Experts Exchange" is definitely on the top of my list.
According to something that I read, they are using techniques "banned" by Google to get their high rankings.
The technique involves "..showing you the user one page and the Google SEO bot a different page."
Thanks for the Greasemonkey mention.
Using Firefox 3.6.15, I google "how do i convert perl to python" (no quotes) and click on the experts-exchange link, and I see the "This question has been solved./..30 day free trial..." box, and when I scroll down, no answers anywhere.
With the Greasemonkey script, I see what you're talking about...
Very nice. Thank you.
as it fits in so well with the social manipulation contracts, secretary of censorship appointments, stuff like that. like it is now. then, us just plain folks will propagate to real search engines, & people will have choices again. thanks for the ongoing heads-up.
Or just let everyone block them, their traffic will die, and the shitbags will close down.
I had someone block the domain since they thought it was "expert sex change."
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
They won't on mine. They provide useful information, and the abstract is enough to tell if I want to read the article. I know the prices they charge are extortion, but it's nto that hard to email someone you know at uni and ask them to download the article and send it to you.
I find that Experts-Exchange is all but gone from my (IT-related) search results, supplanted entirely by StackOverflow. I think EE were in trouble even without this Google feature.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
it's nto that hard to email someone you know at uni
That would require me to know someone at uni.
Experts Exchange let google crawlers see the full content to boost their search ranks. Open the cached page in a search and scroll right to the bottom for the answers.
Finally i don't have to search "-ubuntu" when looking for answers to linux problems!
I hate that site. The answers are complete garbage, yet they almost always land on the front page of Google.
Oh, how I'm going to love this feature.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Am I the only one that remembers this ability to block domains from severs YEARS ago that google had and yanked? (As I had experts exchange blocked back then)
All this buzz about a old feature that WAS there and google removed it and is now just adding it back in "reincarnated"
And I'm sure that experts-exchange will probably think about filing something against google for allowing people to block their site:-D
The so-called 'experts exchange' ... would be first on my blocked list.
Seconded! That was the first domain I thought of when I read the headline.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
No thanks, regardless of whether it's performed by an expert.
It'd be cool if google took users' blacklisting habit as feedback into their algorithm to determine page rank. I'd love to see sites like experts exchange and link farmers get dropped off the first page of results.
Man, I hate that fucking site and the idiots who post comments there.
Much faster and easier to just go to Stack Overflow.
I love it! It is being used for other meanings, however.
So - if I want to leave out a site from ALL my searches, I first have to search for something this site responds to, visit the site, go back to Google and then search again?
Why can't I block it without visiting? Why can't I add "-site:example.com" to my search term? Why can't I create a blacklist in my settings? Or upload a blacklist in a text file?
It seems to me like having to call a phone sex line BEFORE you're able to set up a block for that phone number.
You for got the fourth way:
* Point your browser at http://Stackoverflow.com
XP
In how long will this benefit be outweighed by Google twitching to add a LIKE button as well?
When will bots abuse this system to sink perfectly OK sites and even the new playing field?
What.could.possibly...go wrong with how Google shares grades I give out with my not-so-close gChat-Contact lists and Youtube followers?
what about those of us using https for google searches? I'm fine without instant search but this new feature seems really useful.
What happens when spammers, MAFIAA's etc start writing scripts, virus's botnets etc to submit downvotes on legitimate pages?
That's the trouble with recommendation systems. They're far too easy to spam. Yelp and Citysearch are heavily spammed in this way. Nor will requiring a Google login help. There's Jiffy Gmail Creator to generate fake Google accounts in bulk. Even phone-verified accounts can be purchased in bulk.
experts-exchange doesn't do any "who are you?" tricks: different pages depending on search engine or real person. google would hammer their rankings for that abusiveness, they can't get away with that
no, instead, they just bury what you are looking for at the bottom of the page, under 50 yards of cruft. try it out if you don't believe me: search for seomthing that brings up experts-exchange. they have "reply shaded out, pay now" at top...then tons of cruft...then the actual replies at the bottom of the page. i feel sorry for those who actually paid those trolls cash, when the answer they were searching for was just at the bottom of the page
but far better, for getting good results, is to just append "site:stackoverflow.com" to whatever you search for on google code related
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We will not show you results from experts-exchange.com again.
Manage blocked sites Undo
YESESSESESSESESESSssssSESESSESSSESSESES
Wohoooooooooooo
Worthless trash!
Like many people in China, I use Google to search. Unfortunately, Google is a proven tool of American hegemony and if you believe otherwise, please provide citations that refute the facts in the above article. Being able to see search results and not click on them is not particularly helpful. If we could have a sitelist that keeps up with what the Golden Shield blocks, it would make Google a lot more useful. Otherwise, Google is just helping imperialism and impeding socialism. What would the workers in Wisconsin say about that? What if the people of Wisconsin could, with a mouseclick, be inoculated against the Koch Brothers' poisonous propaganda, much like China has been inoculated against the lies of the Dalai Lama clique?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Finally, I can use google to block all connectivity to google's miserable advertising engine!
TFA reads "Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that reads “Block all example.com results.”" Why should I have to click on every link first that I don't want to see in the first place?? I prefer the OptimizeGoogle firefox extension, which BTW supports regex.
How is this different from using the existing search?
Search for: "ford escort" -inurl:ford.com
Aside from paid ads, you won't have any results from ford.com
So, this tool is really for people who require pointy-clicky utilities. The rest of us had this capability years ago.
"Lame" - Galaxar
it doesn't work that way - try editing your hosts file.
"Lame" - Galaxar
So, where is the Exchange section on StackOverflow? What about Cisco? A cursory glance at the category for those two nets ~500 combined results, with almost all of them being related to C#, Java, or VB.net.
What took Google so long? I've been waiting for this feature for YEARS. It is obvious, as are a number of other not-so-difficult-to-implement features that Google would have implemented long ago if they were truly trying to meet user's needs:
- Classify "type" of site - retail merchant, manufacturer, blog, parking, professional association, amateur enthusiast, personal, etc. etc.
- Allow users to select the type of sites to include in search results. If I'm researching a product, I don't want to see retail merchants (yet). I might want authoritative results from the manufacturer, reviews from major publishers, etc. I am constantly frustrated when trying to do research on a subject WHERE THERE IS NO PRODUCT INVOLVED and getting nothing but retail stores and link farms.
- Allow users to filter over-all based on type of site.
- Ban sites (what Google just implemented).
- Allow user to control whether other user's bans influence their search results.
- Third-party ban lists. Some (most?) content-blocking software allows this. e.g. different groups rate site content and make their lists available as a kind of plug-in.
- The ultimate user control - let USERS make use of demographics. Maybe I want to see the results ordered by the most popular results with republicans/democrats/Armenians/teachers, age 40+, etc. etc. etc. I suppose Google is already doing this for me (IF I also had GMail, and IF I logged-in to Google...) but *I* want to be in control of this, not Google.
Sigh. Now I have to seriously consider logging-in to Google for search. Don't really want to, though. It's a carrot, but not much of a carrot.
? you could already do this .... -www.whatever.com in the search string removes that site from the results ....
I've been trying to filter BBC and Guardian from my searches forever.
You can often just email a couple of the paper's authors - they're usually more than happy to provide you a PDF. They may even have it publicly available on their personal web site, too.
I still have a university account that works, but not everything is available through that university, so even while I was still there I had to ask authors directly a couple of times. Always got a reply with the paper I wanted. You do have to be patient, of course.
I see another uberhacker knows the sophisticated "End key" technique. Seriously though, I'm sure at least one time expertsexchange has been the only site with the info I'm looking for. And for those of you who really want a sexchange, why not get an expert to do it?
And there's always the easiest way: just scroll all the way down past the crap that's trying to get you to pay and the answers are right there.
Apparently, Google has a problem with non-public content coming up in search results.
That was my first thought as well, and I have promptly blocked them.
Too bad you have to click a link and go back in order to block. I almost always middle-click links to open them in new tabs.
Experts Exchange was exactly what I thought of as well! Hah
Experts Exchange has tons of solved questions/answers. I think that 90% of people that hit the site don't know to SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM.
I can't get it occurring here in Australia. (yes, logged in)
Why can they give us the ability to have a preferred sites list. I'd love it if wikipedia and new egg always popped to the top of my list.
I just wondered if this might have further consequences for Experts-Exchange.
As a Google algorithm developer, I would now think about ways to make use of those blocking requests as a sort of negative influence on page rank. As in "if lots of people block this, it must be really crap". Needs some careful thought to prevent abuse, but the idea of Experts-Exchange and similar sites getting hammered sounds sweet ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Another neat recent addition was the introduction of Recipe View, which adds depth to food preparation searches.
I wonder what it would make of:
Bukkake udon: Cold udon served with various toppings liberally sprinkled on top
- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udon#Cold
Well, there was the udon, and other dishes, well before there was ... that other thing.
"Bukkake" is from butsu, meaning to hit something, and kakeru, to cover something. Together the meaning is a bit like "to cover something with lots of stuff all at once" -- which, alone, is perfectly innocuous, and could easily refer to food toppings or heavy blankets. It's only in certain other contexts that this gets at all off-color.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
This is a great tip. Replacing www with mobile in the URL, not only shows the answers which would otherwise be hidden, but it also gets rid of all the crap and makes the whole page very comfortable to read.
I actually agree with this. While eHow still has plenty of poorly written articles, there is a lot of good knowledge there, and some of the articles have been helpful to me. I know then I see eHow I open it in a new tab, not because I think it'll be the end of my search, but because I'll get something out of it.
When I click on experts-exchange, it's an accident, and all my time on there is wasted.
4th way: * Just right click and view page source, if you can read html, it's easy to find the answers.
I subscribed to Experts Exchange for 12 months once. I did find probably 4 useful answers there during that time (that weren't obvious available anywhere else), and I felt like I got my money's worth. Since StackOverflow and StackExchange came to prominence, I think Experts Exchange is no longer worth the money, and the quality of its content has declined dramatically. It's no longer worth my money. (If you're going to reply and say: "it was never worth your money," please save yourself the trouble.) Yes, I know there are ways to get at the Experts Exchange answers without paying; and yes I know their gaming of the Google spider and search results provides a strong argument for justifying circumventing their payment system, but when I am collecting information for my professional obligations, I'd rather go through the proper channel. Has paying your way and acting in earnest really lost all respect as a valid choice? :-)
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> but for those of us who contributed only to have someone > cash in on out hard work leaves a bad taste in our mouths.
No disrespect, but, how old are you? After the cddb fiasco people around here learned. But that was like 10+ years ago. But since then a lot of other examples have occurred. I personally liked how DJB [*flame on!*] in his email headers (shiz, I read it in the archives no less, maybe news, wtf) included the following in paraphrase: I hereby license this work [email] under $public_domain, even, if, yuo have told me otherwise.
Know what? Since then, whenever I contribute any work _of mine_ I add that - as suffix to my /* copyleft license header comment, like so. */
Guess what, I do it like so to the likes of the LA Times, the Financial Times, Asahi Shimbun, Zappos, whomever. I want to give back, those comments have value, but since they haven't paid me, and if you bother reading the runon infinite legalese they always make a land grab, if not outright, then as a future option---and they always pick up the option. I get a drink before I get fucked, madam, and I say when.
BTW, if you've noticed the same BS occurs when your local news TV station asks for your photographs after a snow storm, flood, shooting, etc. Your name, your copyright NEVER appears in the televised photo. Google Earth barely gets a 1/10th second day-in-and-day-out when the TV stations use Google's imagery when highlighting the story du jour: Lybia, Honshu, Lincoln Park, etc. Tisk, tisk.
If by "Exchange" you mean MS Exchange, that's because Stack Overflow is a programming site, and those aren't programming topics. Try Super User or Server Fault.
Even though it's trivial to scroll down and see the actual results in older browsers (remember, they were forced to do this by Google checking that page content they crawl is displayed at least for _some_ browsers) my very first thought was:
"Yes, I can get rid of expert sexchange!"
And it seems I am not alone.
I will also make a point of blocking every single site that aggregates mailing lists and pretends they are forum entries (no, the old players who do this optionally will not be blocked).
Simple move, but very nice one, Google.
Though I am taking bets on how long it will take for malware to block anti-virus/anti-fraud sites or blocking for negative SEO purposes.
It will be nice not having to type -site:www.variable.com
You stated that " Stack Overflow does a far better job of getting quality answers these days," which was immediately followed by an assertion that EE is obsolete. The only logical conclusion to your statements is that you believe EE to be obsolete because of Stack Overflow. My only question is regarding how Stack Overflow makes EE obsolete when EE is only comprised of about 10% programming topics. Oh, and in what part of the world does someone need clarification on what Exchange means in this context?
for the last time it's not a paywall either.. if you scroll to the bottom you can still see the actual results and answers, use your end key.
As others have said, this only works if you have a Google (and possibly other sites) referrer. If you go directly to http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Email_Servers/Exchange/Q_23968962.html, you will not see any answers at the bottom. If you go to http://www.google.com/search?q=Exchange+2007+shell+cmd+to+show+mailbox+sizes+in+a+store%3F+site%3Aexperts-exchange.com and click through on the first result, then you'll see the answer at the bottom. If you then go directly to http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Email_Servers/Exchange/Q_23968962.html again, you will once again not see any answers at the bottom.
When I saw the headline of this article, experts-exchange.com is the first thing I thought of. More often than not, whatever question I'm Googling is answered by one (or more) of the five links before EE or the five after. Now that I know you can still see the answers at the bottom, perhaps my first step when I see EE in the results won't be to search again with "-site:experts-exchange.com" added on. As far as I'm concerned, EE is using a paywall on their search results, and hiding the answers at the bottom solely to avoid getting removed from Google. They even have a cute little "Tired of scrolling?" ad at the bottom next to the answers which isn't there on the direct page. Even though I can now see the answers, I dislike the practice, and it has thus far kept me from even giving the site a second look.
I didn't realize that you could cover the cost of subscription by answering questions, so I'll probably do that just to have the access handy for when a problem does come up. I do enough free tech support on my site and other forums, so I might as well answer a few questions at EE and "get something" for it. Again, this decision is based on your post, whereas EE's site has conditioned me to simply click "Back" or "X" when I stumble upon one of their pages while trying to solve a problem, or just completely exclude their domain from my searches. While I'm sure there are smarter people out there, I am generally considered quite knowledgeable and helpful, and yet I'm the kind of person EE is alienating. Based on the other comments here, I'm not the only one (and while /.ers might not be the most friendly people in general, they're probably more knowledgeable about tech issues than average).