[jazzyjackson]

omg they let me apply from/to dates on search results, I'm in love

just got my invite after a couple days of signing up, will be trying it out, but so far no stackoverflow/github issue clones, and they allow setting "preferred" and "muted" domains, I might pay whatever they ask

I'm keen to know their business plan however. Hope they don't get acquihired for the algorithms, never to offer these features again...

[machiaweliczny]

Yeah I wonder why google doesn't allow to blacklist domain for users. They could basically use it for ranking (eg. include paying, long-lived accounts to prevent abuse). Especially on youtube. They only have blacklisting in news but it's too dumb (eg. I want to block gossip but it's about sport person so instead it thinks I'm not interested in sport).

Wait I know why, because somewhere they have retarded KPI that will go down if people stop clicking on ads from spam websites that only show ads. Who would imagine

[aemreunal]

To be fair, Google also lets you filter search results by time ranges. The muted domains sound awesome, though!

[nprateem]

If I tell you you just need to put a - in front of a domain on Google to mute it will you also pay me whatever I want?

[LQexplanation]

Try to mute this way 10-20-100 domains in the same time, preferably on mobile. True, you can copy-paste this litany, but the whole process would be a misery.

[j-james]

I keep a running list of blogspam/SEO sites and use uBlock Origin's custom filters to remove them from Google/DuckDuckGo.

ie. google.*##.g:has(a[href*="realpython.com"])

duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(a[href*="realpython.com"])

[jazzyjackson]

I just wonder why Google has never offered me to never show x domain again.

[skinkestek]

Probably because many of those domains are the same who contains most of their ads?

The rest is a bit tongue-in-cheek but I also can't think of better explanations:

Maybe because letting people block useless sites automatically means useful sites end up on top and giving the best results on top would mean users only stay on Google for 2 seconds and don't come back for that particular query while showing a mix of useless and ad laden non sense is pure brilliance:

- user need to stay longer on front page to decide which result to click => more ad exposure

- user goes to ad laden site => more ad exposure

- user comes back to try another result => more ad exposure

- user tries another etc etc

The whole thing seems to be a balancing act of how extremely bad they can make this slot machine before people revolt.

That said I'm open to alternative explanations:

- maybe they aren't that greedy, everybody smart just left as kt became harder and harder for non-SJW and those who are left either don't have time or are unable to fix it and it currently happens to work extremely well economically in the short run so nobody looks into it?

- or maybe as someone mentioned the other day everyone's search results are adjusted by an end-to-end optimizing AI which gets a digital dopamine hit everything an ad is shown or clicked and all good Google engineers have been struggling for years to get it back under control without breaking the cash cow in rhe process?

[jazzyjackson]

I like this line of thinking, that there’s something up with the paperclip optimizer. Google has always insisted that search engineering is different from ad auctions but I don’t buy it. If there’s a KPI for “dwell time” on the sponsored search results that ads up as you come back and try a different link, that would dive bomb the usefulness of the page.