I am currently self-hosting a meta search engine instance (searxng), which allows me combine searches from different engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc), but also to filter out websites that I don't want to show up.
The only website to make my blacklist so far is slant.co (useless SEO-riddled site that always comes up when I search for software comparisons). I also automatically redirect all reddit.com links to old.reddit.com.
I'm looking to expand this list. So, which websites do you blacklist? Either using software, or just mentally.
It's tough because I almost feel like I need a whitelist at this point. 90% of the first page of Google results usually read like AI-generated fluff that doesn't actually even answer my question. There are a handful of websites I trust now to give me real information and not just clickbait SEO nonsense.
I'm at the point where I add "reddit" to the end of every search just to try and find something that was written by a real person. Maybe someday I can start adding "lemmy" instead.
codegrepper.com and all its shitty clones.
All they do is scrape websites like stack overflow and github issues and present them in a more shitty way, and they somehow manage to get ranked pretty high.
https://www.grepper.com/images/reviews/review2.png "Review" on their own page. So obviously fake (alignment is off and it doesn't follow fonts?) Plus, they misspelled their own name. This has got to be a joke
Edit: It may not be fake but i hate this website so i'd like to imagine it is
I've been using a Firefox extension instead that has fairly good filters by default, because I kept getting crap results when looking at technical questions (ie. landing on over-simplified examples without details instead of official documentation).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublacklist/
They publish some subscription lists of things blocked that you can chose from: splogs of GitHub/Stack overflow, Pinterest... And then you can add custom blocks directly from your results list (Quora...). It can be a nice point to start with to use their filter even out of the extension imo.
Pinterest. It is the sole reason I use the Google Hit Hider script.
I don't blacklist on the ip level but I do use a userscript to blacklist domains from showing up in my search results
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain-search-filter-block-sites
These are the domains currently blocked
9to5google.com about.fb.com about.instagram.com business.instagram.com cnet.com developer.android.com developers.google.com ebay.com facebook.com facebookbrand.com fileproinfo.com gadgets.ndtv.com guidebooks.google.com help.instagram.com lifehacker.com microsoft.com orangefreesounds.com research.fb.com rover.ebay.com support.google.com support.ring.com twitter.com www.addictivetips.com www.androidauthority.com www.androidheadlines.com www.collectorsweekly.com www.digitaltrends.com www.howtogeek.com www.instagram.com www.lifewire.com www.quora.com www.storyblocks.com www.theverge.com
Reddit. I blocked the domain when the blackout started and haven’t been back.
I want to so bad but i end up finding answers there so often and using it for human responses i can't. Damn You reddit.
*://picclick.com/*
Just reposts old ebay listings as far as I can tell. I guess it could come in handy if you want some historical price data or something, but it mostly just craps up the search results.
I’ve never considered black listing a site before tbh. Do you guys find it worth the effort when you could just, not click on the links?
I'd be happy if there is a way to block webshops. You can block e.g. Amazon but then there will be another shop in its place.
I wasn't so happy with Searx but I think I'll have a look at SearXNG if blocking is an option
In SearXNG you can redirect, or block domains (but you still need to define them). You need to enable the "Hostname replace" pluging in the setting.yaml
enabled_plugins: - 'Hostname replace' # see hostname_replace configuration below
And then define the rules like this:
hostname_replace: # My redirects '(.*\.)?reddit\.com$': 'old.reddit.com' # My filters 'slant\.co': false 'dailymail\.co\.uk': false
You don't want to use a wiki that makes your battery start to visibly drain away?
I never bothered actually creating blacklists for my browser. Mentally though, those weird websites that only rehost stack overflow replies.