217 points by popcar2 4 days ago | 83 comments
I've been fed up with search results so much that I decided to make a giant blocklist to remove garbage links by using uBlacklist.
I browsed other blocklists and wasn't very satisfied from what exists now; the goal of this one is to be super organized and transparent, explaining why each site was blocked via issues. Contributions welcome!
Even though around 100 domains are blocked so far, I already noticed a big improvement in casual searches. You'd be surprised how some AI generated websites can dominate the #1 page on DuckDuckGo.
cormorant 4 days ago
The problem seems worse on "alternative" search engines, e.g. DuckDuckGo and Kagi, which both use Bing. It's been driving me back to Google.
A blocklist seems like a losing proposition, unless, like adblock filter lists, it balloons to tens of thousands of entries and gets updated constantly.
Unfortunately, this kind of blocklist is highly subjective. This list blocks MSN.com! That's hardly what I would have chosen.
popcar2 4 days ago
> Unfortunately, this kind of blocklist is highly subjective. This list blocks MSN.com! That's hardly what I would have chosen.
It's definitely a bit opinionated, but it's open to discussion - you can create an unblock request issue (if you care enough to do so, of course!). The reason I blocked MSN is that it just re-hosts articles from other websites, so I'd rather see the official source than be tricked into Microsoft's site which is very annoying, like how it opens another article if you scroll too fast down.
maximilianthe1 3 days ago
radicality 3 days ago
As a Kagi user I actually haven’t encountered much search result spam, surprised you’re seeing enough there to drive you back to Google!
BigGreenJorts 8 hours ago
I'm wondering how much the blacklist can be broken down into categories of spam. Sponsorblock for YouTube has a lot options around the types of things it'll skip through and the user has choice in how they're handled (skipped automatically, prompted to skip, simply highlighted in the scrubbar) at the category level.
rendaw 3 days ago
I'd block them but there seem to be infinite. They're probably buying 10+ character domains using random words/names/phrases in bulk.
econ 2 days ago
LeoPanthera 3 days ago
It ironically makes me think of the Yahoo Web Directory in the 90s.
Time is a flat circle.
dredmorbius 3 days ago
Power-law relations mean that a small number of domains will account for the lion's share of low-relevance results, and filtering those out will result in dramatic improvements in relevance.
That small set is probably fairly dynamic, however, and will likely change at a fairly high rate over time.
Penny-ante sites are less likely to appear in generic results, but might well be whatever the spam/phish term is for junk general Web search results.
We may well come to rely more on whitelisting, but I think at least for now that's not necessary, largely due to the dynamics of publishing / attention economies themselves.
manx 3 days ago
OlivOnTech 3 days ago
Ringz 3 days ago
Another great function (not for this plugin) should be the option to "bundle" all search results from the same domain. Stuff them under one collapsible entry. I hate going through lists and pages of apple/google/synology/sonos/crab urls when I already know that I have to search somewhere else.
troyvit 3 days ago
The upside is that it would go beyond your browser to anything on your machine that makes a DNS request.
> Another great function (not for this plugin) should be the option to "bundle" all search results from the same domain. Stuff them under one collapsible entry.
That would be really cool. Just zip it up if you don't want to see that domain for that specific search.
antithesis-nl 4 days ago
Not saying you should, just that you could...
popcar2 4 days ago
antithesis-nl 4 days ago
On clicking it, uBlock blocked my visit, but that may or may be not enough for you, in which case an additional plugin may be warranted.