this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy

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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.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Seriously, 10 years ago, the best way to find any info on a video game was to go on gamefaqs, ign guides, the steam community or a dedicated wiki.

Nowadays, it objectively still is the exact same, but google will give results for NONE OF THEM unless if you specify. There's a truckload of those SEO garbage.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Imdb is the same if you search for a series or movie. Unless I add it to the search it's not on the first page

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah it wouldn't bother me so much if any of it was actually useful, but they all just read like a lazy student padding out the page count on a college paper

I searched for a comparison between two USB flash drive brands and the top result waffled for multiple paragraphs about the history and definition of "flash memory" before finally recommending: "just get whichever one has the best performance in your price range". Gee, thanks AI.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yep, I do this too. Reddit became my defacto search engine for anything gone wrong in my life almost because... Its a forvm...