

Google May Let Users Personally Blacklist Domains To Fight Spam - w1ntermute
http://searchengineland.com/google-may-let-you-blacklist-domains-to-fight-spam-62129

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brianwillis
This article is speculative at best, but I can't say my heart didn't skip a
beat at the prospect of never seeing experts-exchange.com in my search results
ever again.

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Natsu
Of course, this might just make the spammers buy up more domains ...

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DenisM
That's just fine, today many spammers are building up domain reputation to
exploit, so if we force them out of their domains it will slow them down quite
a bit.

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elsewhen
An alternative that you can implement right now, is to create your own custom
search engine powered by google that gives you very deep control over which
sites are excluded from the results. google has made it easy and surprisingly
powerful: <http://www.google.com/cse/>

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kissickas
Sorry, but how do you add all websites to the whitelist?

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elsewhen
i think you are confusing google's custom search engine (CSE) and their site
search. "Google Site Search" is for specific sites, but a CSE starts with the
whole web, and you can tweak the weightings for certain sites or blacklist
them if you wish.

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kissickas
Thanks for being helpful. Here's where I run into a problem:
<http://www.google.com/cse/manage/create>

What do I put in the "Sites to search" box?

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elsewhen
if i recall correctly, you used to be able to start with the full web and
refine by just blacklisting... now i see that if you try to make it past the
step you linked to without entering any websites in the "sites to search"
field, it gives the following message: "You must enter 1 or more websites."

i haven't read the docs recently, but it does appear that they have restricted
this product since it first launched.

sorry if i have led you astray.

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niallsmart
Sounds like it would be a great way for Google to experiment with
crowdsourcing results quality. If there's a ton of people blocking, say,
experts-exchange.com – that should feedback into their search result quality
ranking.

Of course scammers would attempt to game this system too (by, for example,
blacklisting stackoverflow.com) :)

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wybo
For those who might have missed it, the Blekko (<http://blekko.com/>) search-
engine already allows one to do this in a quite powerful way, and Google's
plans might have been a response to it.

(the beauty of improvement through competition...)

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beoba
I think this would help with domain squatters, in some situations. Who'd buy a
'used' domain that's already built up a reputation for being filled with
garbage?

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Natsu
Can't you already just use -site:example.com if they're spamming you? I
usually only get spam results when I'm searching for something that doesn't
actually exist, in which case spam is the only thing around for it to show me.

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jonknee
Sure, but they don't let you block dozens of sites and it's annoying to have
see your queries cluttered up with -site:ehow.com. It's not just classical
spam that I want to see blocked in my SERPs, but widely low quality content
like eHow, Yahoo! Answers, Cha Cha, Mahalo, HubPages, Experts Exchange,
Associated Content, Examiner, etc etc.

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jsz0
That would be wonderful. After the 3rd or 4th SPAM farm I usually decide the
information I was looking for wasn't really that important and give up. The
Instant Search feature was kind of the breaking point for me. It showed me how
useless most of my carefully crafted search terms really were. You can sit
there and type it in 30 different ways but you're going to keep getting the
SPAM results over and over again.

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mistermann
Prediction: this will not happen. But, I would love to have to eat my words.

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prawn
If they allow it done for individual users, they will have to prevent users
from trading lists/scripts or they risk seriously cannibalising AdWords
revenue.

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eru
Users who are smart enough to trade those lists (and care), are probably
already using ad-filters.

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buckwild
I'm still holding to my argument that black-listing is a fools errand. Spam is
in unlimited supply. What we REALLY need is a white-listing system, which is
probably easier said than done...

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skbohra123
Once I block sites I should be able to export my list of blocked sites which
anyone can import. And there can be several personal search profiles. Makes
sense to anyone?

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gojomo
For some queries, not necessarily all, I'd also like to be able to block all
sites containing AdSense.

An obscure advanced search operator would be fine. I don't mind having to type
it, or having it clutter my query-text. Options for blocking other ad
networks, or all, would also be appreciated.

If Google offered this, it would be a strong indicator that search
functionality is offered without any contamination by revenue concerns.

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w1ntermute
> For some queries, not necessarily all, I'd also like to be able to block all
> sites containing AdSense.

What kind of queries would you want to do that for? I can't imagine any.

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benologist
Because when was the last time you saw a spam site that _didn't_ use AdSense?

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infocaptor
You could already remove sites from your search results when you are logged
into gmail. This would be an extension of the feature, like if many people are
removing results from their search then maybe put them at the bottom or give
them lower rank.. interesting

