Block sites from ever appearing again in Google results
google.com
google.com
I agree with geius that I'd rather have some indication of what I've blocked. I like the Murdoch blocker (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/moepiacmhnmbiilhpo...) for that reason - it'll tell you why it's blocked you from a site, and gives you the option to whitelist it.
I know that, on the face of it, sounds dumb, but there's some that annoy _everyone_.
experts-exchange was the first site I've blocked, for example. Anyone have a list of those annoying sites that pop up when you're trying to search for some obscure error message etc? I'd love to be a bit proactive.
Background: Had an account since April 2007, had reviews removed, last month had my account deleted without notice or warning. I emailed asking for a reason, but have heard nothing.
Yelp uses its "rank" in Google, Yahoo, et. al to bribe and extort small businesses, to prevent facts from being public knowledge, and to censor citizen reporting.
If a small business doesn't have its own website, Yelp is usually the first thing that pops up in a search; it knows this and milks it for everything it can.
Why? See http://w3fools.com
It's written by the kind of people who used to recommend "validating" your HTML because then it would be valid. Yay!
The pedantry against w3schools is unhelpful, misguided and at times down-right wrong.
For example:
w3schools: "URLs cannot contain spaces. URL encoding normally replaces a space with a + sign."
w3fools: "That's not true. An URL can use spaces. Nothing defines that a space is replaced with a + sign"
Actually: "The encoding used by default is based on a very early version of the general URI percent-encoding rules, with a number of modifications such as newline normalization and replacing spaces with "+" instead of "%20". The MIME type of data encoded this way is application/x-www-form-urlencoded, and it is currently defined (still in a very outdated manner) in the HTML and XForms specifications. In addition, the CGI specification contains rules for how web servers decode data of this type and make it available to applications."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding#The_applicatio...
Many (most) of these things are judgement calls and/or historical anomalies. W3Fools is wrong to say w3schools is a problem - it is merely insufficient on its own. They would be better off generating a better version rather than complaining.
I also don't see what you mean that it's a "stupid site that exists sorely [sic] as a protest against the existence of another site". If a hypothetical site did exist that was as bad as W3Fools claims W3Schools is (setting aside that you don't seem to think W3Schools is that bad), don't you think it's nice, or at least not stupid, to have a site you can point people to that explains what's wrong with the hypothetical bad site and what alternatives there are?
Validating your HTML is like linting your JS, I agree that it'd be dumb to do it for it's own sake, and in fact I know HTML and JS well enough and have enough quirky personal preferences that I don't do it, but I believe it is in fact good practice, especially for beginners, because invalid HTML, like JS that doesn't pass lint, can be a sign of bad practices or mistakes.
I hate hate hate the thought of having to do all my Google searches logged in though.
Java : Javadoc :: Javascript : ????
There was a Chinese knock-off (counterfeit) goods spamming Craigslist heavily a year or so back, hosting a bunch of domains out of a Fremont datacenter.
Too many domains to list individually. It's cases like this that make aggregate blocking/banning approaches far more valuable.
The problem with individual blocklists is that they have to be maintained, and over time they suffer from bitrot. And life is hard and I want a pony.
This to me says "If we get enough reports of a site being blocked, we're going to make sure everyone's Google searches will block you."
I think this is great for spam sites, but for legitimate sites (whether you like w3schools or not) I can certainly see this as annoying.
There are a few "low price" sites that keep popping up in my results, but never actually offer goods for sale at these teaser prices. I'd love to never be tempted by them again.
True, it's ugly and written at a 6th grade reading level, but it's sometimes useful. It's certainly not a spam site.
Official announcement (from March): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-mo...
There has been previous discussion on HN as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2310310 and discussion of the Chrome extension that led to it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218382
Look, take a few minutes and watch this. http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...
When a site gets blocked by Google, it doesn't disappear from the internet but all of a sudden it disappears to hundreds of millions of people. Poof. Gone.
If a site gets ranked lower, then it won't get as much traffic but at least its still findable. Even spammy sites deserve a chance to turn their shit around (although it almost never happens).
If I want to block a site for just me, fine. There's browser extensions that do that. However, when Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo lets you do it and then uses that data in ranking sites for other people there's a Big Filter Problem.
Or alternatively, there's a Big Fucking Problem.
I'm not sure which part of this you think contributes to the filter bubble effect (which I'm skeptical about in the first place). If I block a site, it's because I don't want to see results from it, and I was never going to visit it anyway.
How is using blocking data as part of the algorithm any bigger a filter problem than any other part of the algorithm? Google uses many, many search signals and this is just one of them. And I imagine a pretty good one.
Of course, as soon as it starts working, we'll get various religious or politically motivated groups blocking sites they don't agree with, and blackhat SEOs selling packages of botnetted or mechanical turk-ed "blocks" of your competitor's sites...