Comment by analogpixel
1 day ago
btw, if you use https://kagi.com/ , they have a workflow for this: if you are on a site, and they popup a modal asking for you to sign up for something, you click back to the kagi.com search results, click the shield icon, and then click block. Now you'll never see that site show up again in your search results.
I've found those sites that want you to sign up for stuff usually have poor content to begin with, so this is just helping you curate out all the bad content out there.
Many people forget — Google once used to penalise sites with some abusive behaviours, so webmasters had a vested interest in having decent web pages if they wanted good rankings.
Somewhere along the line (when Prabhakar Raghavan was running search maybe?) that seems to have changed. Part of it might be cookie popups (thanks EU*). Part of it might be giving networks using Google’s own ad networks a free pass. In any case, webmasters had no reason to stop abusive/dark UX any more.
*This is not an anti-EU jab. It’s a jab at an inadequate technical measure. Given how many sites people visit, cookie consent popups do not provide informed consent, and further legitimise popups.
Paywalls used to get you deranked, too. Serving different content to Googlebot than what a user would see was considered an attempt to game it, and the domain would be penalized.
sadly sometimes it's e-commerce websites where you actually want to buy their product and they interrupt you three times with "sign up to our newsletter and get 5% off with the code" modals, like they're actively trying to frustrate me into not giving them my money
It's infuriating when you click on the search box, start typing, and the modal pops up disrupting your attempt to give them money.
Back in the ‘90s and early aughts, there was a well-known book called Web Pages That Suck.
One of their biggest refrains, was “Stop interfering with your user, when they are giving you money.”
They used to regularly hold up Amazon as the platonic ideal of an e-commerce site, but even Amazon has devolved into mis-click hell. Nowadays, I often click a button that takes me to some useless page, instead of the cart.
They usually succeed with me. Or if I really plan on purchasing I sign up to get the discount only to immediately opt out, so what’s the point? We’ve been furnishing a new house and so getting usually ~15% off a high ticket purchase I’m already decided on buying just for giving them my email which I also already will be giving them when I purchase is a good enough deal that I’ll do it temporarily. So much so, I can only think about how is this a good ROI for them.
That said, the sites that employ the “spin the wheel” approach to winning a discount are too much, I bounce.
The ROI is you’re more likely to buy thinking you get a discount, and especially after doing the work to get the discount code.
The trick is it’s priced assuming that discount will be taken off.
> That said, the sites that employ the “spin the wheel” approach to winning a discount are too much, I bounce.
I get the impression that that stupid wheel is some kind of feature of one or several large e-commerce platforms shops can enable. If the shop is genuinely stocking useful products in some niche I make it a point to e-mail them and tell them how scammy it makes their site look.
It is an allusion of discount if they run those and opting out never works hr information is now stored on god knows how many servers.
They do it though because it works. Spin to win too is a total fabrication but gambling works. Just because something works doesnt mean there shouldnt be regulations against it.
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DuckDuckGo has that feature, too.
They have it hidden behind a … menu though which is unfortunate because it’s a great feature to have.
That is a decent feature.
Edit: if it influences their search ranking it may be able to be gamed though.
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I assume you mean because you have to be logged in in order to use kagi?
They do have anonimised logins for this though: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass which is a pretty good mitigation IMO. As it's a paid service of course proving you paid is a must.
And as for control, I can't agree there. Kagi offers more control than any other search engine through its lenses and the ability to influence the ranking of search results from specific sites.
I don't use their service at the moment, I'm pretty ok with my self hosted SearXNG and I like being able to customise the look and feel there too. But Kagi is excellent as search engines go.
Appreciate the SearXNG mention. Learned something new, thank you!
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How does one make a comment like this, I wonder, and not substantiate.
Say more, or say less.
why would you say that?
Uh, what? Wanna explain why?