[Smirnoff]

I really would like to see Google penalize websites that force you to login after google showed these websites in the results.

1. Take Linkedin for example: you search for a person on google; google shows a linkedin result; you go to linkedin but you are greeted with giant popup asking you to login to view info. Ridiculous.

2. Same with Quora: they come in results with basic info, but when you go to their page, they forward you to registration/login page.

These practices are not ok in my book. Surely, they can do whatever they want on their websites but if Google indexes you and shows some info in search results, then you better show that info on your page without forcing me to register.

PS: To be clear -- this behavior happens on mobile version of their websites. Not sure how it plays out on desktop.

[cygned]

Pinterest is even worse - in Google Images, images are listed but once you enter the site, you're blocked from accessing whatever you have been looking for.

[alphonsegaston]

What's even worse about Pinterest is that almost all the images are derived from an outside source, so you're following this insane route to get at the original content:

source image-> indexed by Pinterest -> Google index of Pinterest index -> Pinterest page -> source image.

I can't believe that Google is incapable of navigating around this, but Pinterest would probably block them from indexing if they did.

[frandroid]

Pinterest would be foolish to block indexing by Google, though.

[alphonsegaston]

Yeah, I would think so too, but if you spend any time with their apps, you can see how user hostile they are. The UI is awful, data is incredibly difficult to export. They really want to lock you into their narrow channels.

[dazc]

I also think Google should do a better job of promoting the original source of the image, since the originator is unlikely to ever get credit.

[JTxt]

Yes, or at least also point to what it believes is the source. "Original copy. Corrections?" or something.

Sometimes the original may not be able to handle the traffic.

[athenot]

Ebay does the same trick… leaves images of old items up and then link is actually a listing of (very loosely) related items, but not the one that was original sought.

[type0]

There should be one button option to exclude pinterest from search results, a workaround is to add -site:.pinterest.com to the end of the query when searching for images.

[ThisIs_MyName]

There is an official Google extension which does exactly that: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...

[dredmorbius]

I've firewalled it for just that reason.

[jakubp]

Unfortunately the info typically is on that page, just not complete - and you want more and Google knows it's the way to that information, so results are largely correct, no?

If those sites show something else to you than they show to Google Bot, that's against Google's policy and they should be penalized, so I'm assuming they aren't.

If energy required to get to the information you need through that path is too much (i.e. lots of people bounce on that page), that will again, generally, result in putting it lower in search results.

So either most people agree on putting up with the login page (or are logged in already), or some other factors which I assume you'd like to discount keep those pages so high.

[Smirnoff]

Let's take a look at Quora's case. Please do the following:

1. Open your mobile browser.

2. Ask a question on Google and add "quora" so you get some results.

3. Open Quora's result link

4. See that result for a brief second and

5. Be forwarded to registration page, which doesn't have any close or cancel out buttons.

6. Try tapping back and you are back to Google results

7. Curse at Quora and never tap on their results again.

That last point is only for me. There is a choice to register. You are free to choose.

PS: You are right, the information that Google showed/indexed is there on Quora. But for regular people (not Google bots), it's there for a second. IDK about you but I'd place this behavior into dark pattern UX book.

PPS: For people, who don't believe this behavior, you can see the video of my experience on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiOMwRwXLcg

[mulmen]

For a short(?) but wonderful period of time it was possible to blacklist sites from your Google search results. As I recall Google moved this functionality into the Chrome browser several years ago.

When it was still available as an account setting I used it to filter out the awful "resources" like expertsexchange and that one Oracle consultant site with the hilarious pictures. When I see Quora results I long for that feature to be returned.

[lorenzhs]

There's a chrome extension for that now, it's called "Personal Blocklist" iirc. There might be something similar for other browsers.

[jjgreen]

Do you have a link for the Oracle consultant site? I'm intrigued ..

[Spooky23]

This is the one that comes to mind.

http://www.dba-oracle.com/

[throwaway1892]

I remember that one because of the offer to learn Oracle during a cruise, complete with the important part "Convince the boss" : http://www.dba-oracle.com/BC_cruise.htm

[nommm-nommm]

Huh, that site has always been helpful to me.

For example, I just searched for a random ORA-number error and got this in the results: http://dba-oracle.com/t_ora_12514_tns_listener_does_not_curr...

That looks useful, no?

I admit, I've never gone to that site directly or clicked any links only ever saw what showed up on my search results.

[JimmyM]

Theoretically 6 & 7 should be a big red flag (the biggest possible UX red flag) to Google regarding the specific Quora page visited - I know that I almost never see Quora results in search, for example.

Following Bartosz Goralewicz's post about how well botting works to manipulate Google in...2014 I think? there's a small black hat industry that's sprung up around imitating this kind of user reaction, and it does reportedly work to remove pages from Google. I've had my suspicions that it's been used against sites I've worked on a few times (2 or 3).

TL:DR; Quora should generally not be ranking so well (but Google's complex enough to be unpredictable on a page-by-page basis these days).

[Angostura]

I'm not seeing that behaviour at all direct from Google. I do get the registration overlay if I subsequently click another Quora article page from the original Quora article. The behaviour I'm seeing is reasonable, if slightly annoying.

[Smirnoff]

Here, I quickly recorded the above-mentioned situation and posted it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiOMwRwXLcg

[jakubp]

I do not see steps 4-7. After 3, I stay on that page. Sometimes in the past I would see an overlay on that page. I don't get redirected anywhere, and I'm 100% sure I never was (there was only popup). I wonder where's the discrepancy coming from.

Also, google bot would be redirected too, unless of course it's simply logged in :)

[Smirnoff]

I could make lots of guesses why you don't experience Quora the same way I do. None of that would change the fact that I can't see the information I am being promised to see on Google.

Here is a screenshot of the page I am being forwarded to automatically: http://pho.to/Aatuj

It is a disguised register page because after you make 10 selections, you are forced to sign up.

[koolba]

That's because you got fooled into making an account. It's trying to get you to complete the registration process so they can pick questions to show you.

If you clear your cookies and go from a Google search result to Quora, you can read the answers on the page that you're on. If you navigate to any other question, say via the links at the bottom of the page for similar / related questions, the answers will be blocked by the signup popup.

If, instead of signing, you go back to Google and search for the same "<question> quora" it'll work again. The thing to remember is only the first page you navigate to from Google will display properly.

[nommm-nommm]

That's because you seem to be halfway through making an account and they want you to finish.

The actual behavior of Quora, if you aren't midway through account signup is:

if you go through Google search it shows you the page promised.

If, from that page, you click on another question it will open the second question but give you the sign up modal. You can bypass a signup modal and get the normal page by appending ?share=1 to the end of the URL.

I don't even have a Quora account but I read the ?share=1 trick a while ago on hacker news.

[Smirnoff]

Please see the posted video above. It's very clear how Quora forwards me to sign up page right after I open the link on Google.

I never tapped on anything after I got to that page.

The behavior that you guys are suggesting is mostly how it works on Desktop computers. Try searching for the same on Mobile phones.

PS: Also, do you really expect users to alter the link on tiny mobile screens?

[xkiwi]

When I made that quora complain before, HN readers are kind enough to show me how to avoid it. Without the ?share=1 trick, I probably don't even know how Quora looks like.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483049

[MarkMc]

I don't get see steps 4 to 7 (not claiming that you don't see it)

[loup-vaillant]

How about disabling JavaScript on Quora? Should block step 5, right?

[alphonsegaston]

I frequently have to delete these kinds of HTML nodes off the page just to see if it actually has something I want. I debated rolling my own extension for the common sites where I run into this, but ended up just throwing up my hands at the absurdity of the situation.

[squarefoot]

Same here. uBlock Origin works nice to remove the nags, but some sites just recreate them automatically using random identifiers so that they keep throwing the nagscreens at you at each page reload. Maybe it's time to put those recent AI wonders to some real useful work, say an embedded hardware proxy or an extension that recognizes and deletes nagware on the fly.

[nommm-nommm]

I just hit CTRL-U to read the pages source which contains the text content. Now that I think about it I wonder if reader mode would work. Hey, maybe you can just set your user agent to Google Bot.

[yellowapple]

Reader Mode is invaluable for sites that use Javascript to throw up paywalls when you're in the middle of reading something (Wired does this, last I checked). Sometimes you have to refresh the page for it to fully work, but once you do, the full text is right there, in a format that's much nicer than the original could ever strive to be.

[alphonsegaston]

Yeah I do this too for text stuff. I'm an artist, so I'm often times looking for images though.

[NoGravitas]

It might be worth maintaining a cosmetic blocking list for uBlock that you could share and that others could contribute to.

[alphonsegaston]

That's a great idea! Completely forgot uBlock had this feature:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-picker

[dredmorbius]

Installing Stylish and rolling your own styles for those sites with copious "display: none !important;" rules works.

Or console-mode browsers.

[visarga]

Elsevier, who indexes the text of the article in Google but requires $35 to show it to visitors.

[dredmorbius]

Sci-hub

[edwinyzh]

Totally agree! Those kinds of behavior waste time of visitors - when the info is protected by a login, it shouldn't be indexed by search engines in the first place.

[hising]

That is cloaking in my book - Video on Matt Cutts explaining Cloaking - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHtnfOgp65Q