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Comment by floren | Hacker News Reader

My biggest search wish is an option to eliminate any results from online shopping sites. Hell, I want a "give me the old web" toggle that eliminates shopping sites, social media, and any corporate websites so I can just find the hand-written HTML from the weirdos who'll tell me how to change the clutch on a 1969 MG Midget.

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All search interfaces should support "Don't show me this again". All of them.

Imagine having a roommate who doesn't remember you want to avoid sugar and are allergic to nuts, yet keeps making PBJ sandwiches when it's his turn to make dinner. That and you're getting effin PBJ for dinner.

Web search: Don't show me anything from this domain again.

Google: You are so keen to remember things about me that I don't want you to remember. But you don't bother to remember what I reject? Of course, because I am the product, not the customer. This feature might run afoul of your relationship with advertisers, yeah?

Yelp search: You've suggested this place before, I spent the time to read the details and reviews and rejected it, but you keep showing it to me on future searches, and because as a human I can't remember all the stuff you've showed me before, I waste time considering it all over again. You even show me places I rated 1 star. STOP!

Maybe DuckDuckGo could add this feature? Please? Pretty Please?

This is something I'd love.

I find, when searching for info on a relatively uncommon bug DDG will give me a page that starts with a relevant stackoverflow answer then continues on to list a bunch of sites that scrape SO and repost the content. It's extremely annoying.

DuckDuckGo, you could do this client side within your browser extension, which both avoids server side costs and protects our privacy. Pretty please?

Google used to have a "block" feature. Those were the days!

I've been using this chrome extension (made by Google) for quite some time. Surprised it's not more popular:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...

Web search: Don't show me anything from this domain again.

Google had this for a while. I think their customers complained.

This is my frustration as well. Today's web (as seen through search engines) is just content marketing.

And to reach such a page, you have to go through ads on the results page, then a newsletter popup (sometimes two, these days), then ads all around the content (which is still marketing, remember).

This is nuts.

I'd like to see a search engine where a trusted/verified set of users are allowed to categorize websites and the categories thus derived can be used by everyone to help filter their searches.

So when a categorizing user does a search and clicks on a result that takes them to best-auto-parts.co.uk, they click "Shopping" on their categorization toolbar. After one or two matching categorizations, that site gets excluded from searches which have "shopping sites" turned off.

You could also turn the categorizing thing around and decide that you only want to search within web forums (phpBB systems and similar), where you'll often find people posting rather esoteric knowledge about whatever esoteric car you're searching for.

You are describing Yahoo, ca. 1995. The problem is that new users have no idea how to navigate the categorization system. (Remember using the dewey decimal system? It had the same problem, except that your local librarian was there to help.)

Yeah, I remember the old categorization thing. I'm thinking of a much more high-level categorization: Here's sites selling shit. Here's web forums. Social media. Blogs. Commercial sites.

Honestly what I'd really like is a toggle that I can flip over to say "only show me sites that aren't trying to sell me shit", and then maybe I can read an honest review about the tent I'm interested in without 50 bullshit blog entries that just copy-pasted the manufacturer's copy and added an Amazon affiliate link.

DMOZ[0] was that catalog, more or less, and was used as you describe, more or less. It finally died last year, although I think it was quite dormant for the last 10 or so.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ

Basically you want Yahoo but with a Wikipedia-like hierarchical tagging. You need a reputation system though so the editing isn’t just seo’d getting us to the same situation we’re currently in.

If Facebook had an api, you could filter based on the tags just provided by your contacts or something like that.

Well, today is your lucky day then, for there is a search engine that does just that.

https://wiby.me/

Yeah that doesn’t work so well.

https://wiby.me/?q=Change+clutch+1969+mg+midget

Wiby is more a work of art than a functional search engine ; it becomes clear when reading the submission rules.

https://wiby.me/submit/

I'd use a search engine that removes any result that includes an affiliate link. Some shopping sectors are so crowded with affiliate links that it's impossible to figure out what is real or not

This is not a replacement for actual search engine, but I use this userscript and I love it.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-d...

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