[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text sear...
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Ask HN: Why does Pinterest dominate Google text search results?
More and more often when I search (using text queries, not image
search, which I know has been polluted by Pinterest for years), I
get pages upon pages of Pinterest results, sometimes the same
Pinterest page but from the different pinterest country domains
like pinterest.fi for Finland and pinterest.se for Sweden. Does
anyone know if Google gives Pinterest preferential treatement in
SEO rankings? Edit: A few comments were asking what my queries
were to generate search results where Pinterest dominates, so
clarifying that a bit. I run a site that has a colour search engine
for lipsticks and since Google is one of the dominant ways in which
people land on my site (searching for things like "nyx budapest
lipstick dupes"), I was studying various makeup related queries to
see which sites ranked highest . Edit2: Edited the title for
clarity - I mean text search, not image search
Author : Winterflow3r
Score : 295 points
Date : 2020-12-25 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Could you please post some examples of search queries (text or
| image) that are dominated by Pinterest?
|
| I share the sentiment in other comments that search engines are
| (deliberately?) allowing SEO abusers to degrade the user's
| experience. I noticed that for some queries (Like "How to brush
| teeth"), there are more ads on the first page than results!
| They're marked, but not in an immediately-visible way; I'd be
| most people integrate them with search results mentally.
|
| I started throwing together a search engine about a week ago to
| address these concerns, and put it online yesterday.
| (https://www.pageref.org). I'm deliberately penalizing SEO
| abusers, and promoting websites that have high-quality content.
| Running custom searches on these sites in some cases based on
| keyword.
|
| In a lot of cases, I'm throwing in search queries, and going
| through each result one at a time, and categorizing them; eg
| penalizing sites that use clickbait or scammy ads, that are low-
| quality but show up high in results etc, or probably aren't
| relevant, but are highly SEO optimized, like Pinterest.
| noja wrote:
| Why does Google let Pinterest dominate their results?
| grishka wrote:
| Related: in the last several years, there started appearing these
| StackOverflow mirrors. It's gotten to the point that you can't
| google a programming question without running into at least one.
| Some copy the questions and answers verbatim, some use machine
| translation to (crappily) translate them into my native language.
| Sometimes they even rank higher than the real StackOverflow.
|
| I really wish there was a non-hacky way to ban sites from Google
| search results. I also feel like Google's ranking algorithm is
| utterly broken since it's amenable to this kind of exploitation.
| alfu wrote:
| I've been seeing the same even in English language.
| ratww wrote:
| They're pretty old. I remember when Google added an option to
| block domains (the option you want) around 2011 and they were
| the first thing I removed from my results, along with Wikipedia
| mirrors.
|
| After the option to block domains was removed around 2014-2015,
| I rarely came across those anymore, but it seems they're
| back...
| dalmo3 wrote:
| I've even had one of those spammy websites appear as the first
| result, in a "featured" box. It's just sad.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25437378
| somerandom895 wrote:
| Pinterest search results are so frustrating. There's a page
| that's close to what I want - but I can't get to the text ... I
| don't want a picture, I want to read a document. Seems like
| something is off, cuz it's crowding out sites with real content.
| omaranto wrote:
| For me this is an instance of Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any
| headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word
| no." :) I very rarely see Pinterest in my search results.
| zelly wrote:
| It should violate the duplicate content guideline, since 100% of
| Pinterest content is not original and lifted from another
| website.
|
| Then again G also ranks those Markov-generated "blogs" with
| nonsensical text, not sure what to call them but you've seen
| them. It seems SEO is still alive and well despite all the claims
| of its death.
| hftf wrote:
| Some relevant prior discussions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21622322 (Nov 2019) "Tell
| HN: Google should drop Quora from search results" 1000+ upvotes
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16613996 (Mar 2018)
| "Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO" 1100+ upvotes
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16388833 (Feb 2018)
|
| And many more:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
| mancerayder wrote:
| Certainly worth mentioning the WP article from October that
| highlights Google search's deterioration only in the last few
| years.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/19/google-...
| "How does Google's monopoly hurt you? Try these searches. Right
| under our noses, the Internet's most-used website has been
| getting worse"
|
| Yeah, sure, Pinterest knows how to game the results. But the
| rules of the "game" are in Google's control, so... I hope we
| don't normalize a deterioriation of a valuable resource under
| some neutral-sounding algorithmic play.
| bane wrote:
| I solved this nonsense by installing a plugin in chrome that
| automatically adds -site:pinterest.* to all searches. Almost
| living in bliss ever since.
| derenge wrote:
| "Deconstructing Pinterest's reverse-image-search SEO growth hack"
|
| https://www.rankscience.com/blog/pinterest-image-seo-growth-...
| amelius wrote:
| Ugh, this is bad. Makes you wonder, why they let this happen.
| Do people at Google own Pinterest stocks?
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| Oh wow :( I'm a bit scared by this, because of what it means
| for smaller competitors, who can't afford to pour investor
| dollars into hiring a whole team of software engineers just
| focused on SEO driven growth
| hayksaakian wrote:
| There's no intentional or manual effort at Google to promote
| pinterest.
|
| Pinterest shows up because they understand how the Google
| algorithm works and built their website to display all the
| signals that Google looks for in relevant image content.
|
| They understand user intent and generate URLs that present
| content in a way that google expects to see.
|
| Examples of how they do this from their engineering team:
|
| https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/demystifying-seo-wi...
|
| More:
|
| https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/tagged/seo
| cblconfederate wrote:
| One could say they are gaming it
| nvrGiveUp wrote:
| I always thought that SEO errors should boost results to punish
| content factories.
|
| Grandmas cookies are going to be better than 24 years old
| copypaste cookies for big bad marketing company.
| blunte wrote:
| Google should be asking from a product perspective if they are
| providing the search results the user is most likely seeking.
|
| I seriously doubt that most pinterest results are what users
| are seeking. As such, Google probably should consider changes
| to their algorithm to compensate (cat and mouse) for
| pinterest's gaming. That is assuming how pinterest does it is
| not against any google rules... because if it were against any
| rules, they should be slapped down hard.
|
| When my searches result in mostly pinterest results, I give up
| more quickly. That means I spend less time using google, and
| that in theory means less money for google. Unfortunately, I do
| see other more regular user types operate their computers, and
| they are less or un-descriminating about the domain name listed
| under the image. So they'll head directly into the pinterest
| waste pond anyway.
| creato wrote:
| I think they can't do anything about it. Regulators and
| lawmakers in the US and EU would be very receptive to
| complaints from pinterest if google were to act somehow.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Do you have references for this? I'm genuinely curious if
| this kind of thing is actually being done. Google's altered
| it's algorithm to remove low quality sites in the past and
| if anti-trust worries are stopping that now, well, I can't
| even.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Yeah, Pinterest is almost always disappointing as a result:
| their account requirements are annoying and it tends to
| obfuscate the source of the image or information you're
| looking for.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| A few times I've landed on Pinterest and they lock user
| copied (contrary to copyright law in my country AFAICT)
| content behind a registration-wall. They never show enough
| utility for new to register, they just tease on Google and
| then don't show what they teased.
|
| Google results would be better for me with all Pinterest
| results removed.
| Chirael wrote:
| Wasn't there an option at one time to tell Google to hide
| results from a certain domain? I feel like I haven't seen
| that in years though
| bsder wrote:
| The irritating part is that Google used to penalize
| websites dramatically if the user couldn't get to the
| content but the search engine could.
|
| I guess that interfered with Google extracting ad money.
| maya24 wrote:
| Stop using Google search. DDG works just as well
| joe_the_user wrote:
| That's problem, DDG works nearly exactly the same (except a
| bit worse imo). DDG channels a lot of Bing, which virtually
| clones Google which makes it not much of an alternative at
| all.
| fuzxi wrote:
| Would that this were true, but it's not. Searching for
| specific technical issues especially shows DDG's weakness.
| daveFNbuck wrote:
| Outside of searching for specific technical issues, DDG
| is pretty good. I use DDG for most of my searches and
| this is the first I've heard of search results being
| dominated by Pinterest, so it's at least better on that
| front.
| _AzMoo wrote:
| I use DDG search most of the time, but I find this to be
| untrue. DDG is pretty good, but struggles with context a
| lot more than Google does. For example, when searching for
| an error in a programming library, DDG is likely to return
| the library homepage, whereas google is more likely to
| return the specific github issue where the error is being
| discussed.
| ratww wrote:
| For text it depends [1] but for images I find DDG to
| range from slightly to significantly better than Google.
| Also, I have direct access to the image file URL without
| having to rely on browser extensions.
|
| [1] I wonder if the meme "DDG is not that good" is so
| prevalent on Hacker News because it sucks for programming
| stuff.
| ldng wrote:
| This used to be true. Regularly I had to use the !g bang
| to find what I was looking for. Lately, I've realised
| that I hardly use it anymore and I do results are far
| worse on Google. Your mileage may vary of course but I
| don't bother with Google anymore.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Same. I went the DDG route a couple of years ago, and
| searching tech topics made me constantly do g!. And a few
| other things. Suddenly, Google's results go so much
| worse, that the duckduckgo offering just proved to be
| actually functional by comparison. And I think it
| actually has improved over the years. It's now my default
| browser search and I'm comfortable not having to worry
| about Google capturing every feeling or thought I have
| when I google something, and storing that for eternity.
|
| Not to mention the awful vendor blogs and stores and
| secretive marketing clickbait masquerading as a neutral
| information totally dominating Google's page 1 and 2 of
| results.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Agreed. I switched to DDG a few weeks ago as a default. I
| appreciate the privacy, but for some categories (like
| tech questions) the results are just... not as accurate.
| For general queries they're comparable. For searching
| specific issues, Google is more likely to show relevant
| discussion threads of the exact issue.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I've been using DDG as my default for years and it really
| fails to provide me helpful results for programming and
| Linux questions. I know this because I frustratingly have
| to add !g to queries all the time lately and I'm
| questioning my choice to default to DDG.
|
| That said, I don't like being tracked. It's not clear to me
| if the quality of results I am seeing are due to Google's
| tracking or not. (I suppose I could research this but I've
| not done so.)
| ldng wrote:
| It has improved for me to the point I don't use !g
| anymore. Maybe subconciously I now do queries that fit
| DDG better. Anyway, I get the answer I want so can now
| live without Google.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >Google should be asking from a product perspective if they
| are providing the search results the user is most likely
| seeking.
|
| I am cynical. Maybe Google's own experiments show that users
| click more ads when they get frustrated of the Pinterest spam
| that is technically not spam enough to be removed from the
| index.
|
| What the users are going to do? Use Bing?
|
| Google's most optimised version is probably being an Ads
| search engine where you are presented only with the most
| lucrative ads that are relative to your query. Essentially
| Yellow pages.
| mancerayder wrote:
| >What the users are going to do? Use Bing?
|
| duckduckgo isn't horrific. And certainly not for image
| searches, which is how Pinterest's pollution ends up being
| noticed.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| It's certainly going in that direction. With reverse image
| search being replaced with "Search with Google Lense" on
| mobile, the most prominent results are now all Google
| shopping ads.
| nvrGiveUp wrote:
| Bing is better than google often enough. I've stopped using
| Google.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| With Google featuring progressively more ads and Google
| content at the top of the results page, it's not clear if
| it's still in Google's self interest to give users the best
| results anymore.
| moultano wrote:
| This is why there's an aggressive firewall between the ads
| and search organizations. The ranking team isn't even aware
| of revenue numbers by ACL.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| I'm sure the search team can, erm,google for the ad
| revenue figures in the earnings release.
|
| After reading the anti trust filing it's hard to argue
| Google is anything else but evil and a lot of what it
| does is to hide its monopoly.
| kauju wrote:
| Just do -pinterest in your search to filter
| erichocean wrote:
| It would be great if Google had a little "hide this domain
| for me permanently" next to every search result. Not only
| would it improve that user's own search results, it's a
| very strong signal that other users also might not like it,
| for de-ranking purposes.
| GraemeL wrote:
| They used to offer that functionality but removed it
| years ago.
|
| I've been using this userscript since then.
| https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-
| by-d...
|
| It might be called Google Hit Hider by Domain but the
| author has expanded it to cover most major search engines
| over the years.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Thank you, but still, the regular person is not finding
| what they seek, but what SEO experts want them to find.
| smcameron wrote:
| -site:pinterest.* (there's supposed to be an asterisk at
| the end, but I have to type something after the asterisk
| for it to show up)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Clearly we should not have no include -fakenews -porn, etc,
| otherwise I might as well use bing / Duckduckgo/ whatever
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| User: This service has a problem and it's not working well.
|
| Programmer: There's nothing wrong with the service, you
| just have to use [magic incantation] to make it work right.
|
| I've been hoping for 20 years that this kind of exchange
| would stop happening. Still hoping! :-)
| tshaddox wrote:
| But no one said that there's nothing wrong with the
| service. They merely offered a very simple workaround. I
| can't imagine why you'd hope for that to stop happening.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Google: we need your personal information so we can
| improve your experience
|
| User: -pinterest
|
| Google: we need your personal information so we can
| improve your experience
|
| User: -pinterest!!
|
| et cetera, ad infinitum ...
| jedberg wrote:
| I think your premise is wrong. The service isn't broken.
| I'd assume Google has enough people and data to know that
| it's doing what _most_ people want. They were even kind
| enough to put in a workaround for the minority for whom
| it doesn 't work well (which appears to be OP).
| xg15 wrote:
| Most people want to have a full result page of nothing
| but login walls when searching for any kind of image?
| npteljes wrote:
| Services and users have different goals. Why is the
| helpful technologist the problem?
| grendix wrote:
| Your second statement is enabling bad behavior, your
| first statement is insane.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| No. They're exactly right. The root problem here is
| incentive misalignment. Both Google and Pinterest
| sacrifice value they provide to extract more revenue from
| their users.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Real answer?
|
| Because helpful technologists are the interface between
| less knowledgeable users and services like Google. We're
| the power users and "mavens" who are both highly exposed
| to the product _and_ have some understanding of what's
| going wrong and how it might be made better. We also
| spend a lot more time talking to that product's
| engineering staff than the typical user (see e.g. the
| fact that we're here on HN.)
|
| When helpful technologists opt out of the problematic
| aspects of a product by uttering some magic incantation,
| we essentially remove ourselves from having to be annoyed
| by the product's rough edges. This means we're less
| likely to help improve the service for everyone, and
| we're probably more likely to incorporate similar
| carelessness into the things we make ourselves.
| edoceo wrote:
| How could a technologist, who's not in charge of the
| $BigTech be able to fix the problem? They can't. So, they
| offer the user a work-around. Then, the user never
| complains to $BigCo because of the Help and still nothing
| gets done. And later, we complain that we're not fixing
| $BigCo and we're all mad at "the help".
|
| How, really, could you improve the Google service for
| everyone?
| kenniskrag wrote:
| "Programmer" here is wrong. Because we are all user of
| the product "google search".
|
| But yes I see your point. I call it the "permanent
| workaround"
| IanCal wrote:
| And there's always this kind of response. They didn't say
| the service was fine, they just provided a simple
| workaround which doesn't require forcing a change to
| Google's algorithm. Hoping they don't help with this
| seems odd.
|
| So, to counter, I'm glad that they did say this as it
| regularly annoys me too.
| xg15 wrote:
| It's indeed a useful tip - and no offense to the GP - but
| this kind of reply always feels like the tech support
| equivalent of a mandatory arbitration clause: like an
| attempt to solve an issue individually with each person
| reporting it instead of giving a systemic solution that
| would benefit anyone. The blame is shifted from devs
| providing a good service to individual users not knowing
| the latest workaround.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I just wanted to mention that excluding strings has been
| broken for me off-and-on over the last month at least.
|
| Not directly relevant to anything except how lame google
| has become.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Only a month? I don't recall the last time it actually
| worked. I always end up having to do -"string" and put it
| in quotation marks, kind of like telling Google "why,
| yes, this thing I put that minus sign in front of _really
| is_ something I don 't want to see in my results."
| amelius wrote:
| It gets tiring.
| mulmen wrote:
| Google account preferences used to have an option to
| exclude domains from results. About a decade (?) ago I
| added Burleson Consulting and expertsexchange to blocked
| domains and Google was instantly useful again. In 2014-ish
| Google moved this functionality to Chrome so I lost access
| to it. Not sure if it is still there.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's not perfect, but I use the Firefox version of this
| extension. Good for blocking Pinterest and those techno-
| babble scraper sites.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-
| blocklist...
| baskire wrote:
| Or just avoid using google. The Pinterest results in google
| image search queries was a major driver to me using bing/
| duck duck go.
| zelly wrote:
| Linking directly to the image file (and in fact a cached
| version of the full image) is one of the best reasons to
| use DDG.
|
| Reverse image search is also intentionally gimped, unlike
| non-US jurisdiction Yandex which is quite good.
|
| It's certainly for legal reasons, not technical, but
| Image Search has gotten progressively worse every year.
| It used to be godly effective 10 years ago.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Both in Google, and in DDG, sometimes when I am looking for
| an image (i.e. image of a "full body workout plan") the
| images I find tend to be 'hosted' in Pinterest, but in
| reality following them links take me to Pinterest, and then
| back to the original source (which is some random fitness
| site).
|
| I find Pinterest useful as an image search engine.
| jariel wrote:
| This is a little bit like: 'McDonald's should serve healthier
| food, like Salads'.
|
| 'What Google Wants' and 'What We Want' have reached a crude
| equilibrium and it's unlikely to change that much, even if
| there are obvious improvements to make.
|
| Qualitative improvements beyond need generally require a very
| specific corporate and cultural focus. If Sergei or Larry
| 'came back' and mandated it, the system would move around it.
| Or Sundar could, maybe, pull that off, but it's not in his
| DNA really.
|
| The lack of material innovation in search stopped over a
| decade ago.
|
| Otherwise, we should be getting betas every few months, with
| all sorts of options, features, etc. Even simple things like
| 'forever blocking a site by default' would be great.
| xg15 wrote:
| Still odd that Google tolerates this. Isn't this exactly the
| kind of black-hat SEO that they are usually downranking or
| banning sites for?
|
| Pinterest landing pages are intentionally unusable for anyone
| without an account. It's hard to make a good-faith argument
| that those pages are the "most relevant result" for someone
| making a simple image search.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > Isn't this exactly the kind of black-hat SEO that they are
| usually downranking or banning sites for?
|
| How is it blackhat to do exactly what Google wants?
| ganstyles wrote:
| Using tricks at the detriment of the user to the benefit of
| the service is blackhat. Pinterest is doing these tricks to
| their benefit at the extreme detriment to everyone but
| themselves.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| Yep, exactly. I find that Pinterest is slowly making me less
| and less likely to use Google. Pinterest shows up as the
| dominating search result even or very specific long tail
| keywords where one could argue that a collection of images on
| a login-gated page is not helpful at all.
| rasz wrote:
| What they are doing to get into google search is not the
| problem, the problem is all their links are scams, clicking on
| pinterest google images link lands you on a login screen, or on
| a farm of similar/adjacent images. Nowhere do they have the
| content you were actually looking for.
|
| TLDR: they are gaming google
| chefandy wrote:
| It is there-- it usually just takes pages of scrolling. I
| heard a 2nd-hand account which said their product team
| leadership knows this annoys the hell out of people, know
| it's an easy fix, but they do it anyway. If that's true, I'd
| guess they're ignoring Goodhart's Law with their engagement
| metrics and need to re-focus on their UX, though I don't have
| any first-hand insight into it.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Not if you don't have Pininterest account. then you can't
| scroll more than half a page.
| swyx wrote:
| i specifically hate how they hack slap a login wall on images,
| and dont allow you to right-click+save on mobile. they're intent
| on breaking the mobile web for their own self interest.
|
| if you're going to SEO yourself to the top of google, good for
| you, but please dont use google as non-optional lead capture for
| your app that I don't want.
| jldugger wrote:
| Are we using different googles?
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| I see Pinterest appearing disproportionately in image search.
| oneplane wrote:
| I practically never see Pinterest in the results. I suppose
| it really depends on what you are searching for.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| We might be doing very different queries :) If you search for
| makeup related content, Pinterest comes up a lot because people
| tend to pin and curate makeup related stuff there
| jonas21 wrote:
| If lots of people have spent time curating the Pinterest
| content, and searchers are likely to be looking for curated
| content, doesn't it make sense that Pinterest would rank
| highly in the search results?
| perardi wrote:
| I'd love to be able to block a domain from showing up in my
| search results.
|
| Pinterest being an obvious offender, but I can imagine people
| wanting to block certain news sites, or Fandom/Wikia sites, or
| all sorts of link farm spam sites.
| partingshots wrote:
| Pinterest spends a large percentage of their budget on gaming the
| search page.
|
| Though I'm sure you've noticed in recent years that Google has
| begun to replace many search results with answers directly from
| them instead of redirecting you to places like Pinterest. For the
| better I say. Companies like Pinterest are parasitic and degrade
| the overall ecosystem of search.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| Yeah - I've just been reading some of the Pinterest engineering
| blogs linked above about their sophisticated SEO
| experimentation framework and ugh, I think it's time to load up
| my browser with extensions or move away from google completely.
|
| Image search has been borked due to Pinterest results for a few
| years now, but now my text queries have also started being
| dominated more and more often by their search results. I'm
| bummed that Google doesn't count the different Pinterest
| country domains as duplicates and remove them. instead there is
| like pages upon pages of the same Pinterest result.
| underseacables wrote:
| There's a great Chrome extension that will remove those from
| search results.
| ffpip wrote:
| google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:upward:(1)
| google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."])
|
| Add to uBlock Origin. in the "My Filters" tab. This will
| completely block pinterest. No need to use more extensions that
| can access your cookies and history.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Should be pretty simple to make a browser addin that adds
| "-pinterest" to search queries (I very often add that and search
| again, if I get a Pinterest result at the top).
| rdlecler1 wrote:
| Another example about how google is broken. It has great
| difficulty distinguishing noise from signal.
| blunte wrote:
| It's also another example of how modern tech companies are
| broken (or lacking ethics).
|
| Currently, many big tech companies do basically whatever they
| want. Facebook and other ad companies have been caught
| knowingly defrauding ad spend customers, Amazon has been
| knowingly permitting counterfeit sales for years, Uber has been
| ignoring regional laws globally, Airbnb was (and may still be)
| ignoring or hiding data that illustrates their connection with
| increased housing pressures, and on and on.
|
| Doing what you can get away with (because the cost of the
| penalty is lower than the profit that results from the bad
| behavior) is not ok. It doesn't contribute to an improved
| civilization, it pushes civilization back down toward a zero-
| sum, selfish survivalist mentality. I know it sounds corny or
| hippie, but if people can try to better balance their own
| desires against the good of the community, the end result will
| surely be better.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The economy is meant to be built so that anything harmful to
| the rest of society is either unprofitable, or criminal (i.e.
| theft).
|
| Obviously we have a new frontier of digital stuff, but the
| law and economic incentives are still ignorant of it.
| ffpip wrote:
| google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."])
| google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1)
|
| Add to uBlock Origin. in the "My Filters" tab. This will
| _completely_ block pinterest
| blunte wrote:
| Unfortunately this did not work for me. I added these two, and
| then I did a search on images.google.com for "custom carved
| door frame".
|
| 5 of 7 images on the first row of results was some pinterest
| site.
| ffpip wrote:
| Can you try this?
| google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."])
| google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1)
| boraoztunc wrote:
| Thank you that works, eliminated Pinterest results.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Thank you so much! A very quick copy paste into uBlock and
| it works wonders for Google & Google Image searches.
|
| I wish I had looked into this before! :-)
| ufmace wrote:
| Weird, I don't do anything at all to block pinterest, and I
| just did that same search on Google Image search, and
| pinterest results are 6 out of 20 on the first 3 rows, and 1
| per row at most for all of the rows below that.
| leppr wrote:
| This userscript is very useful for hiding pinterest search
| results: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-
| hider-by-d...
|
| I also use it for w3schools and a few other common search
| result spam sites.
| justnotworthit wrote:
| extension for firefox that puts "block thisdomain" under thre
| results: https://github.com/wildskyf/personal-blocklist
| heyoni wrote:
| I miss the days when google had an option to block entire
| domains. So sad that they removed it.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| -indomain:pinterest
| DangitBobby wrote:
| As a configuration, not per search.
| ehsankia wrote:
| This answer has never made sense to me. Pinterest breaks the 2
| signals I would assume Google search to use:
|
| 1. Often, the image I'm looking for isn't the main image on the
| page, just one of the small thumbnails and very hard to find on
| the page
|
| 2. Almost every single time I click on a pinterest result, I end
| up going back because it doesn't help me, i assume others do the
| same.
| alkonaut wrote:
| If Google decided tomorrow that Quora and Pinterest is spam and
| should basically never be in the top 10 results pages, couldn't
| they just fix it? What's the worst that could happen?
| bra-ket wrote:
| Facebook users are linking a lot to Pinterest
| knuckleheads wrote:
| One big reason why Pinterest ranks so highly, and why you are
| seeing different tld's in the results, is because they have a
| variety of tld's that they use and those tld's all have separate
| crawl budgets from each other. So Google crawls Pinterest about
| an order of magnitude more than most other sites. You can read
| more about this here: https://medium.com/pinterest-
| engineering/how-switching-our-d...
|
| Source: I run a think tank focused on Google's web crawling
| advantage and have been studying stuff like this for a couple
| years now.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I think others here have alluded this but the thing is that
| once, doing everything you need to do to get listed but
| actually being crap was enough to get you de-listed. The
| criteria wasn't "do what Google wants", the criteria was "be
| good and also help the algorithm determine that you're good".
|
| Only running the right SEO wasn't sufficient then and I certain
| wish that criteria remained.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| Who determines what is the best ranking? Who was defining
| what was "good"? There isn't some abstract, mathematically
| verifiable best ranking, a platonic ideal that all search
| engines should aspire to. Google has always made choices
| about how to rank that trade off the interests of various
| groups of users, from the very beginning. The complaints that
| you and I have about pinterest being ranked so highly come
| because Google has decided that our desires for how the
| results should look are not important enough compared to how
| other, perhaps larger, groups of users want them to look.
| Maybe Google deranks pinterest tomorrow, but they've made the
| choice to keep it as such for a couple years now. Whether
| it's because they think they have better ways to spend their
| time or because they like it the way it is, it's not really
| possible for us to know without somebody leaking that
| information. But, I imagine, there would be a group of people
| who would be as disappointed as we are elated if Google were
| to change this.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| This I did not know about and I'm surprised they don't get
| penalised by Google in some way at the display of search
| results stage. I mean sure, I suppose one can do the -pinterest
| trick, but it's still a bit weird that Google thinks search
| results that are pretty much the same site but from different
| tlds are not spammy. Do you think they will change this to
| prevent Pinterest from essentially spamming some search queries
| by using the tld hack?
| knuckleheads wrote:
| Live by the SERP updates, die by the SERP updates. It's been
| at least two years now and Google seems fine with it (until
| maybe one day they aren't). I know it might annoy folks like
| you and I to get reposted pinterest images in our results but
| it might be that Google has done research and found that
| people like seeing pinterest in images and so that is why
| they are keeping them around. It's hard to say why they are
| there until Google says something about it, Google rankings
| are a black box at times.
| marmaduke wrote:
| Does your think tank come up with any ideas on how to keep
| companies like Pinterest from peeing in the pool so to speak?
| They made it impossible to find DIY craft stuff that I used to
| search for, and I can't imagine it's the only site doing it.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| We are pursuing ideas that we think will increase competition
| in the search engine market. Our main focus right now is
| making Google's index of the web available for use by
| competitors, since no one other than Google is really allowed
| to crawl the web. If people were allowed to use the index to
| build what they want, then you or somebody else would be able
| to build a search engine that avoids the Pinterest cruft and
| would be more suited to your needs, instead of Google's one
| size fits all approach. So, to answer your question directly,
| yes we do have some ideas about how to do this.
| marmaduke wrote:
| > making Google's index of the web available for use by
| competitors
|
| That does seem like a good idea since it amounts
| essentially to a database of stuff that Google does not own
| (by construction) and is of public utility.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| Exactly. Everybody always talks about turning tech
| companies into public utilities without really explaining
| what the utility would be. A public index of the web
| would be an amazing utility for many of the reasons in
| this thread and would spur on a ton of new innovation and
| businesses.
|
| If you would like to read more about all this, please
| checkout https://knuckleheads.club
| burnthrow wrote:
| > making Google's index of the web available for use by
| competitors
|
| What incentive would Google have to continue populating
| that index?
|
| Would I be breaking the law if I independently crawled and
| hosted an index without publishing an API for it?
|
| > since no one other than Google is really allowed to crawl
| the web
|
| Maybe this is the problem that needs solving.
| [deleted]
| djrobstep wrote:
| > What incentive would Google have to continue populating
| that index?
|
| Not going to jail, presumably.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| > What incentive would Google have to continue populating
| that index?
|
| Presumably they would still want to run google.com and
| make money off of it.
|
| > Would I be breaking the law if I independently crawled
| and hosted an index without publishing an API for it?
|
| No. You would not get the advantage that Google gets when
| it crawls the web and so would not have access to a large
| amount of data that nobody else has access to.
|
| Updated based on edit of parent post:
|
| > Maybe this is the problem that needs solving.
|
| Why have websites waste the money to serve all those
| requests all over again? Why don't we have Google share
| the results and we can use that money to do more
| productive things than recreating that work? I don't
| think website operators would be happy if there were a
| hundred more crawlers out there crawling as much as
| Google does now.
| lopmotr wrote:
| Do any site operators actually block non-Google search
| engine crawlers because being listed DDG/Bing/etc isn't
| worth the extra cost of serving the crawler? It sound a
| bit ridiculous unless they actually don't want to be
| found. Maybe they only allow GoogleBot because that's all
| they thought of and the extra cost is in researching what
| all the other search engines call theirs.
|
| Perhaps other search engines should spoof GoogleBot.
| Browsers have being doing that since forever spoofing
| Netscape (Mozilla), Safari, etc. for the same reason.
|
| > Why don't we have Google share the results and we can
| use that money to do more productive things than
| recreating that work?
|
| This sounds like a common fallacy of people criticizing
| the free market. Duplicated effort looks wasteful but
| turns out to be far more productive than the lack of
| incentive that comes with not being able to profit from
| your work/investment.
| Someone wrote:
| I would think the site owner's cost of being indexed is
| the same for every search engine that indexes the site.
|
| The benefit varies with the quality of the search
| engines, and that will vary between search engines, but
| it does get larger the more a search engine is used, so a
| cost/benefits analysis may show Google and a few other
| large ones are the only ones worth supporting.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| Yes! Exactly!
| loeg wrote:
| Yes, site operators actually block non-Googlebot
| crawlers. See the example [0] from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25538842 .
|
| Spoofing crawler identity completely defeats the point of
| the honor-system robots.txt.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| > Do any site operators actually block non-Google search
| engine crawlers because being listed DDG/Bing/etc isn't
| worth the extra cost of serving the crawler?
|
| Many website operators do actually block crawlers from
| non Google search engines and it's because the cost of
| being crawled isn't worth it to them. Here's a good quote
| from one such webmaster: As a webmaster
| I get a bit tired of constantly having to deal with the
| startup crawler du jour. From law firms
| looking for DMCA violations to verticals search engines,
| to image aggregators, to company intelligence
| resellers... It feels to me that everybody and their
| brother has gotten into spidering sites.
| With 10,000s of pages that have content that is only
| relevant to a targeted audience who is perfectly able to
| find us on the majors, I do not hesitate to block (and
| possibly ban) when I see an aggressive crawler that does
| not provide me or my customers with direct benefits.
|
| Taken from http://www.skrenta.com/2008/04/cuill_is_banned
| _on_10000_site...
|
| > Perhaps other search engines should spoof GoogleBot.
| Browsers have being doing that since forever spoofing
| Netscape (Mozilla), Safari, etc. for the same reason.
|
| People have tried this and it doesn't work. Google
| provides ways to check to make sure traffic is coming
| from Google IP addresses and practitioners and academics
| study how to spot fake Googlebots. https://developers.goo
| gle.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/...
| https://blogs.akamai.com/2014/07/search-engine-
| impersonation...
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8421894
|
| > This sounds like a common fallacy of people criticizing
| the free market.
|
| I am asserting that crawling the web is a natural
| monopoly. This means that the free market has failed and
| that it is not possible for the market to heal itself in
| this regard. There is significant evidence that this is
| the case and I imagine you'll be hearing more and more
| about it soon.
| [deleted]
| aleph_naught wrote:
| > since no one other than Google is really allowed to crawl
| the web.
|
| ??
| knuckleheads wrote:
| There are two main reasons why I say nobody besides
| Google is really allowed to crawl the web.
|
| The first is that Google gets much more access to pages
| on websites than everybody else. You can see this by
| examining the robots.txt files of various websites[0].
| I've been doing this for several years now and Google has
| a consistent advantage across many thousands websites
| that I've looked at. This adds up to a significant
| advatnage and many search engine operators complain about
| how it hampers their ability to compete with Google[1].
|
| The second is that Google gets to ignore crawl delay
| directive in robots.txt while other search engines
| don't[2]. Website operators cannot tell Google how fast
| they want their website crawled, they can only request
| that Google slow down. If another search engine tried to
| do what Google does, they would likely be blocked by many
| important websites.
|
| If you would like to read more about this, please
| checkout https://knuckleheads.club/
|
| [0] https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/robots.txt
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/technology/how-
| google-dom...
|
| [2] https://www.seroundtable.com/google-noindex-in-
| robots-txt-de...
| grishka wrote:
| So, uh, don't respect robots.txt in your search engine?
| It's not like there's a law that you have to, and that
| you can't pretend you are Googlebot. The only _real_
| obstacle I can imagine is that some firewalls might be
| configured to be more permissive with traffic originating
| from Google subnets.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| You would be blocked fairly quickly by many website
| operators and no longer able to access those websites if
| you straight up ignored robots.txt files. You also might
| even end up being served cease and desists by some
| websites and sued if you continue to persist and try to
| find ways around it.
| grishka wrote:
| And what if you do respect it but follow Googlebot rules?
| knuckleheads wrote:
| Applebot was able to get away with doing exactly this but
| I imagine that's because it's Apple and websites knew
| that Apple was about to send them enough traffic via
| Apple News to make it worth their while. I don't know if
| other search engine operators have tried this but I would
| imagine they would get caught by rate limiters set for
| non Google IP's and then they would be blocked.
| grishka wrote:
| Still, you keep saying all that as if most websites even
| _notice_ that they 're being crawled, and that their
| operators are very aware exactly when by whom they're
| crawled. Like as if the admin gets a notification every
| time a crawler comes by or something, with precise
| details about it. I don't think it's nearly as serious as
| you're trying to make it look.
| knuckleheads wrote:
| I've been a part of a team that operated a large website
| and I've been paged before because of the issues that
| somebody was causing because it was being crawled too
| much. Many people in the web operations field have had
| the same experience. Generally speaking, the larger the
| website, the more sensitive they are about who is
| crawling and why.
| [deleted]
| joegahona wrote:
| I do not know whether Google gives Pinterest preferential
| treatment. That said, I'd like to know: What are you searching?
| Results will be different depending on if you're searching "cute
| bedroom ideas" or "epistemology in pre-Socratic Greece."
| nullsense wrote:
| "epistemology in pre-Socratic Greece." has a few results from
| Pinterest.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| Ha good question! I run a company that builds visual search
| engines and one of the sites I build and develop is a colour
| search engine for lipsticks. One of the main ways people
| discover it is through Google searches so I was studying which
| sites rank highest for queries like "nyx budapest lipstick
| dupes" etc. So yeah, for sure, queries for stuff that lends
| itself well to visual curation will be full of Pinterest
| results unlike stuff about Greek philosophy.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Give it a few days and this page will be the #1 hit for "pre-
| Socratic bedroom ideas"
| [deleted]
| victor106 wrote:
| Wondered the same about Amazon as well. They show up first for
| most products.
|
| Are those organic results? Or do they have a kickass SEO team
| that games Google's algorithm.
| [deleted]
| g051051 wrote:
| I can't think of the last time I did a search and got any
| pinterest pages in my results. It must be more a factor of what
| you search for.
| pkamb wrote:
| Are you referring to web/text search, or image search?
| g051051 wrote:
| Text, but on the rare times I do image search, Pinterest
| results don't "dominate" my results as OP suggested.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Is there a ddg bang for search without returning Pinterest? (I
| mean I think -pinterest should work but maybe fewer characters,
| and I'm not even sure "-" works anymore.
| intrasight wrote:
| It does dominate image search which sucks. I instinctively add
| "-pinterest" to my search. I don't have this problem on text
| search.
| shmerl wrote:
| You can search with adding `-pinterest` to remove all that noise.
| burnthrow wrote:
| And the Pinterest pages have no content! They've beaten Google or
| Google doesn't care anymore, either way, plummeting result
| quality is a strong signal that Google Search is ripe for
| disruption. Ten years ago, Google would've punished all Pinterest
| properties for this.
| bserge wrote:
| Well, Google and Bing do favor big or older/established websites.
| And Google's search is trying to be smart when it clearly isn't.
|
| I'm getting sick of my searches being "corrected", sometimes they
| even ignore the quotes.
| tomaszs wrote:
| I read the question as follows: how to rank so high like
| Pinterest does?
|
| The answer is: you should not spend any second on SEO. It is time
| and money wasted if you are a SMB. Anything else, including
| taking a walk is better for your business than going into SEO
| optimization.
|
| Your clients are people who buy your stuff. Search engine robot
| is not your client. After years of working with SEO it becomes
| clear for me, if you satisfy a robot, you don't satisfy your
| client. These are two different things.
|
| The bright side is that when you will serve your clients, robots
| will catch up eventually. But it is search engine problem not
| something you should spend time on.
|
| There is no magic bullet method to rank high. No special hack you
| can use. Everything you will read about SEO is smokes and
| mirrors. If you have million dollar company and did everything
| else right - sure, you can throw hundreds thousands dollars into
| SEO and pray search engine devs won't change their minds.
|
| But as a SMB company, counting each dollar, just leave it. You
| won't win over search engines and people with bulk of money.
|
| Spend your time and effort on clients. It is the only way to
| spend it right. If search engine will change mind - so be it. You
| won't be dependant on it. And your clients will come to you
| because they love your product, it is stronger than being number
| one in a twisted search ranking.
| teunispeters wrote:
| I occasionally do copyright searches for owners of images (it's a
| thing in online groups where "do not post images without
| permission" is a thing) pinterest is full black hat when it comes
| to image ownership. It owns nothing it has on its site and
| without an account, there's no way to trace ownership using its
| links. And usually there's so many duplicates of the same images
| (without credit) that it swamps all search results.
| jeffbee wrote:
| How much of the bafflement stems from the fact that Pinterest's
| own audience is overwhelmingly women, while the general search
| audience is 50/50 and the HN audience is, judging by the
| character of the comments, 99% men?
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I am curious how your site accounts for different screens
| representing colors differently. It seems like it would be a hard
| problem to solve for this use case.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Pintrest has the worst UI/UX of any website. It is a cancer of
| the internet, contributes nothing and allows re-aggregation and
| front-running in Google search as a feature. It baffles me why
| people use this piece of shit.
| udioron wrote:
| I feel like pinterest is being a
| "placeholder"/"fallback"/"default" of the web. Each time I
| encounter quora or pinterest search results I am getting the
| feeling I was looking for something that does not have good
| online answer/content.
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