HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

578 points by cJ0th ↗ HN
Discovering unknown paths of the web seems almost impossible with google et al..

Are there any earch engines which exclude or at least penalize results from, say, top 500 websites?

235 comments

[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] thread
turnipla
Google used to let you blacklist websites many moons ago, that would go a long way already.

Now there are a few extensions that do that, but obviously they only hide the results from each page, so sometimes you will see pages with 2 results, if any at all.

rozab
Would be easy to just inject a negative site clause into the query, e.g. `-site:fandom.com`
chrisfrantz
Looks like google limits search query length to 2048 characters. That’s probably enough room to exclude a majority of the biggest names.
dublin
It would be nice if there were a way to make the exclusion list de the default for all your queries. For instance, I never want to see results from WikiHow again. Ever. Or the New York Times or any of the other paywalled sites...
kortex
unpinterested is an extension which simply adds -site:pinterest to image searches. I don't think it'd be hard to do something similar with a custom list.
sanqui
There is a search engine with this exact goal: https://millionshort.com/.

I haven't had that great results with it myself though.

smackay
I tried it with "waders" which are either the things that you to put on your feet to go fishing or a category of birds (shorebirds or herons). The results after going for all the options were still exclusively stores wanting to sell me the former.

Garbage in, garbage out. I guess. Still I like the idea of something to side-step the SEO perhaps with more effort they can make it work but relying on Google or any major search engine for the base results is the wrong way to go.

puranjay
I've found that you get far better results for many queries on YouTube now since it's tougher to mass spam YouTube with low quality content (compared to churning out a $5 article).
glenstein
I tested your search term and had similar experience. I have, however, had positive experience with other categories, such as philosophy. Searching Wittgenstein with the top million sites removed, I found some gems: a play, a disney character that was a supercomputer named after Wittgenstein on a direct to video movie which I learned was later partly inspiration for Wall-E, Wittgenstein-oriented societies, awards, and general philosophy references I had never heard of.

I suppose it depends on the category.

behnamoh
Man it's super fast! I wish Google were like this.
hopesthoughts
Oh, I've had epic results with Millionshort!! I mean, as far as stripping most everything away, and just surfing.
noad
This is a great question, I also want a way to search the internet but exclude all major media domains as well as any company over a certain size. So I just want to search through old blogs, SO, non-corporate social media, weird forums, etc.

There are so many cool things I remember reading on the web like 10-20 years ago that still exist that are so buried now on Google they might as well not exist. Nowadays searching any topic seems to always lead you to CNN and Microsoft and Facebook and other huge corporations. Search results are just becoming more sanitized and beige and meaningless every day.

lazyjones
This is somewhat ironic because 20 years ago, hobbyists would frequently put their obscure personal pages on Geocities and other large corporation's web space.
wolco
Memory can be foggy but the most useful were hosted on university pages or random folders off a random domains or you get a subdomain. I picked the username 'search' which gave me search.batcave.net which worked great until one day they just took over the subdomain for a site wide search. They were confused when I complained.

Sure people hosted on geocities and tripod and they were the biggest and easiest to remember. But quality of a geocities page compared to a mit student page was much lower.

CalRobert
20 years ago, it was extremely common for your ISP to give you 5MB or whatever of space to use. users.ispname.com/~yourname or whatever. It was great, tbh, since anyone with cuteftp and notepad could publish to the world.
ObsoleteNerd
Still common now, at least in Australia. My ISP gives me 1GB if hosting for a website and 10 mailboxes.
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Scoundreller
Heh, I was trying to do research on coronaviruses (of which COVID-19 is one of many coronaviruses), but Google sanitized the result and only showed me "official" COVID-19 resources and buried the broader coronavirus resources.

https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus

stolenmerch
COVID-19 isn't a coronavirus, it's the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
ganstyles
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming this isn't just pedantry, especially since you're getting downvotes (because I assume everyone thinks this is just pedantic correction) I looked it up.

In the context of "trying to do research on coronaviruses" your comment appears to be not only correct but an important distinction, rather than the pedantry it appears to be.

From Wikipedia: "...more lethal varieties [of coronaviruses] can cause SARS, MERS, and COVID-19."

And...

"Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS-CoV-2] is the strain of coronavirus..."

I learned something today!

ccheney
I also had this epiphany awhile back and what helped me understand the difference was to think about how HIV (the virus) causes AIDS (the disease).
teamspirit
Further, CoViD-19 literally stands for: Co[rona] Vi[rus] D[isease] - [discovered in 20]19 - "D" standing for disease caused by this particular strain.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed when I found out, though I admit now it's a little refreshing to have be so simply named.

Theodores
Which can be further abbreviated as C19. I have seen this in personal chats and wonder how long it will be before it gets into newspaper headlines where space is at a premium in print editions.
Wistar
I already see it in publications but more frequently see the variant C-19.
jkoudys
Complaining about pedantry is the new pedantry.
docbrown
[retracted] and I hope this is just a misunderstanding. As the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) said, 2019-nCoV is a novel (new) coronavirus.[0] The CDC defines coronavirus as a virus that was not previously known — check the FAQ, “what is a novel coronavirus?”[0.5]

They changed the name of this coronavirus to reflect the disease more accurately to COVID-19.[1]

The CDC has a list of other coronavirus’ that have existed.[2]

0: https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1227297754499764230?s=20

0.5: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html

1: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...

2: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

——

Edit: Since there seems to be a misunderstanding from everybody’s part on this as it’s referred to as both and often interchangeably in a mainstream setting, take a look at John Hopkins guide: https://www.hopkinsguides.com/hopkins/view/Johns_Hopkins_ABX...

okintheory
No, the comment above is correct, and your own links show this.

From link [2]: "SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19)"

The previous comment was just making the point that the (new) virus is called SARS-CoV-2 and the associated disease is called COVID-19.

COVIDisntCORONA
Excuse the incivility, but no.

COVID-19: disease caused by SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2: strain of SARS-CoV

SARS-CoV: severe accute respiratory syndrome coronavirus

Coronavirus: virus that causes respiratory diseases in mammals, such as SARS (SARS-CoV) MERS (MERS-CoV), and COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2)

amelius
Kind of strange that the name of the virus contains the symptoms of the disease (SARS = severe accute respiratory syndrome) while the disease doesn't.
ArnoVW
I'll add that the family of viruses is called Corona virus because they are 'crown shaped'
tacon
>SARS-CoV-2: strain of SARS-CoV

Excuse the incivility, but no. SARS-CoV-2 is not a strain or type of SARS-CoV. The viruses share ancestors, but SARS-CoV-2 did not come directly from SARS-CoV. SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are in the category of beta coronaviruses[0].

"The whole genome-based phylogenetic analysis presented that two Bat SARS-like CoVs (ZXC21 and ZC45) were the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2."[1]

[0] https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0817/9/3/240/htm

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/pathogens/pathogens-09-00240/article_de...

COVIDisntCORONA
Excuse the incivility once again, but no.

While we're on the topic of linguistic pedantary, strain isn't exclusive to direct mutations from a parent genome. Strains, like much of biological taxonomy, are a human abstraction to make communication of the idea of -- in this case -- "a virus sharing similar properties to coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome" -- albeit this is a very simplified definition for the sake of brevity.

SARS is caused by SARS-CoV-1 and COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2.

Rather, if we would like to be absolutely correct about these classifications, we would say SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 are both strains of SARSr-CoV (Severe accute respiratory syndrome related coronavirus), which in itself is a species, an abstract concept used to group related organisms into a convenient umbrella term.

There is no "eukaryote" organism the same way there is no "SARSr-CoV" organism. The added "r" was a recent addition when COVID-19 was discovered.

I will cede that I didn't specify this last point, and you were correct to point it out.

tacon
>we would say SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 are both strains of SARSr-CoV

Thank you for making my point, again.

COVIDisntCORONA
I don't believe I did.

Genera -- as in SARS-CoV-2's genus is Betacoronovirus -- don't have "strains."

Only families -- such as the SARSr-CoV family -- have strains.

nulbyte
To GP's point, your initial reply said:

> SARS-CoV-2: strain of SARS-CoV

GP was pointing out that this was incorrect, and you just made that point by stating it yourself.

Assuming you are intending to engage in the conversation and not be a pedant, I might let you know that your replies are coming across quite coarsely. More specifically, as to prefaces on earlier comments, there is no need to excuse incivility, because there is no need for incivility here.

aSplash0fDerp
I found the exchange to be more than civil, with pleasantries not being taken in the literal sense.

At least this did not fall into the category of "Cold regurgitation of data" (quite popular it seems) and had a level of warmth that was an indication of passion, more than anger (from all parties).

If they added a temperature social cue to HN comments..... That would be funny.

egberts1
Wow. A civil exchange on proper use of terms by two disparate but related technological domain experts. It’ll go on forever.
acituan
I know you are relaying the public information accurately, but I wish authorities pushed better names. Like calling the virus "the virus that we know has a corona and causes these symptoms" and the disease "the disease caused by this virus that has a corona and that causes these symptoms" is circular. Also, it is not true that it is entirely a respiratory syndrome. There are serious non-respiratory symptoms, extent of which we are to discover. Finally, if it is a syndrome causing virus, by definition we wouldn't have the crisp boundaries of a disease around it, which indeed we don't.

If these were names for services and classes that came in a code review, how many would really approve?

pwdisswordfish2
American media calls both disease and virus "corona". They seem to care little about such details.
perl4ever
I've been using "covid". Don't know if it will catch on, but I feel it's important for efficiency's sake to try to save one letter.
40four
It is kind of funny that we talk about SARS-COV-2 as if it is the only coronavirus. Coronavirus, singular. If I’m not mistaken the common cold is in the corona virus family.
computerfriend
The common cold is caused by coronaviruses and rhinoviruses. The skew is heavily towards rhinoviruses.
40four
Rhinovirus, that’s right. Thanks. I saw an article recently about colds caused by coronaviruses so it was fresh in my head.
rczhang
You can just search for 'Coronaviridae' instead. The overwhelming majority of people searching for coronavirus want pandemic news.
pwdisswordfish2
"Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?"

There was "rebranded" web search that someone created a number of years ago and posted on HN that aimed to exclude the top websites from results. I cannot remember the name he gave to the project.

One way to exclude the world's biggest websites when using Google is to restrict the search to TLDs other than .com, .net and .org. The root zone is full of silly new TLDs that no one uses for large websites. There are hundreds to choose from.

https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus+site:edu

Looks like Google Scholar is including a number of "coronavirus links" on the main page but thankfully not in the results.

https://scholar.google.com

https://scholar.google.com/search?q=coronavirus

Why not skip Google and "web search" and use a database that does not include all the crap one finds on the www

Something like

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov?term=coronavirus

or

https://search.crossref.org/?q=coronavirus

nojito
Why would Google showcase non official sources?
ikeyany
In that case, I would omit webpages from the past year.
chris_f
If you are looking for a forum search, check out https://boardreader.com/.

I have a theory that web crawling alone is not the best way forward to find the most relevant results because of the volume of content continually being created, much of which is niche and sometimes dynamic.

Instead I believe linking together vertical search sources that have targeted information based on search intent will provide better results.

I created Runnaroo [0] for that purpose. If you search a programing question, it will pull traditional organic results from Google, but it will also directly query Stack Overflow for a deeper search.

[0] https://www.runnaroo.com

dorkwood
For years, my trick for finding interesting content was to go to, say, the 7th page of Google results, and start there. This doesn't work anymore -- it's SEO-optimised listicle blog posts all the way down.

My trick now is to use Twitter to discover interesting people, and follow them there. Granted, it's not a search engine, but it's at least given me the ability to discover weird things again.

gbin
I agree on the original issue but social media tailored to people's own bubble is probably not a good source for enlightenment either...
dorkwood
I think it depends how you use it.

One of the things I enjoy doing on Twitter is posting up something I'm working on, and then clicking through to all the profiles of the people who like, comment, or retweet my work. I stumble across an incredibly diverse range of people by doing this, many with conflicting opinions to my own, and many who belong to strange subcultures that I don't understand, but who were all drawn to my work for one reason or another.

I think there's definitely a danger of crafting a bubble for yourself if you choose to use it that way, but as a tool for discovering people making cool stuff who otherwise wouldn't cut through the noise on something like Google search, I haven't found anything better.

tomaskafka
Many times I have thought about what could happen if Twitter asked you to recommend up to 3-5 people you value, and write a tweet-sized (or shorted) recommendation.

Over time you would get a 'pagerank for people' and could do awesome stuff with that, like 'You don't know XYZ, but 3 people you trust trust her, and this is what they tell about her:' ...

edeion
I was about to ask about dmoz.org. But apparently it's dead. We could probably do something with bookmark sharing à la Delicious. Good dead things for a better future.
ryandrake
If there was a way to simply exclude from searches: shopping, news, images, videos, and “listicles”, I think that would get us most of the way.

Especially shopping. The endless stores are the worst part of search results. If I search for anything that remotely looks like a product, the results are just choked with store after store trying to sell me the thing. Awful.

type0
If you do your own search engine like that, implementing rules that block affiliated commerce blogs from appearing would help alot.
fedede
Hey! I actually liked this idea and I'm considering starting a learning project on it. I've seen a lot of interest and ideas in the comments, and decided to create a very short Google form to start gathering all the interested people so we can organise something interesing. Is anybody in? :)

https://forms.gle/5KuTYVdYaMzRD2n78

starfallg
The elephant in the room is Baidu.
dpau
Ask HN: Is there a search engine which includes only what the Chinese government wants me to see?
starfallg
That was tongue-in-cheek, but I guess some people are legitimately offended enough to downvote.
jotm
What are they blocking anyway? Anything important?

There's so many Chinese forums for hardware/firmware hacking/mods, a shame translators are still very bad...

cameronbrown
Definitely. What if I want to research information on a certain 1989 student protest to write a paper about censorship?
jotm
Look, I know it's important history and all, but looking at it realistically, it's a tiny part of the information the average person needs. Them removing Reddit, EdX, Sci-hub or the Hong Kong Companies Registry from search results would have a much bigger impact.
starfallg
You very conveniently left out Wikipedia and all of the other sites that are censored.
chaos_a
https://wiby.me/ exists to solve this exact problem. I've found some pretty neat/odd websites on it in the past.
lucb1e
The "About" information is, counter-intuitively, under "Settings":

> In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. [...] The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet.

btrettel
That makes me think: Is there a search engine which removes pages with any ads or affiliate links? That might be the easiest way to remove the commercial pages.
lucb1e
I was just thinking pages with external dependencies, in the spirit of the old web, but your idea sounds a lot more reasonable. Not sure if that exists, I'd be interested!
generalpass
It is a carefully curated directory, which is problematic.

For example, I submitted Pizza Hut's archived original web page [1], but it wasn't added.

Even for a search engine exposing niches, updating a directory manually will likely be too slow, unless the directory is maintaining a single nich (e.g., unladen airspeed of every species of swallow), but then we end up with some insane number of search engines and how to select which one?

[1] http://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html

kd5bjo
Especially if you’re focussing on evergreen information, there’s no reason why people can’t have their own personalized crawler and index— I’ve occasionally thought about rolling my own with a browser extension that lets me add seeds at the click of a button.
zxexz
I've been working on something like this for my own use - I'm not a fan of browser-based history. My home-rolled solution is starting to be good enough where I can use it to easily find exactly what I'm looking for, assuming I've previously read it, by both searching the title and URL, as well as the content on that page (my major gripe with "History" in Chrome and Firefox is that it doesn't search the page content, and if it did, syncing it would have major privacy concerns).

The problem I'm running into is that I still have to use major search engines to find new content, way more than I'd like. I hope to make my local service available open source once I have 'federated' history search working, so that we can have a primitive search engine and share with people we trust. Also need to work out some security issues - it's scary having all the content you read and see on your home network, protected only by your hackily-patched-together security.

EDIT: Actually I'd like to elaborate a bit more in case anybody actually reads this and has any ideas. On the desktop side, it's pretty easy. Initially started out MITMing my own traffic with a self-signed cert added as a root cert to all my machines. This only works on my home network, so I did a VPN thing. This was way to clunky and the security concerns are innumerable. I ended up biting the bullet and writing a chrome extension which works wonderfully, except for some slight performance issues.

However, I wish to also archive my phone content - I read just as much on my phone as my computer. I can do it on Android with the MITM process, but the same issues as above still apply, and it doesn't work with iOS (at least I can't find a way).

I'm thinking of taking an open source project, like Firefox/Fennec and building it in to the app itself. In that case it may make sense to forgo the browser extension and just roll my own forked browser on every platform, even iOS. I don't know much about iOS dev though.

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ehonda
I clicked your link, but I don't see an archive, its redirecting me to their main website.

Wiby is based around two main things:

Non commercial content (1) that does not rely heavily on excessive javascript and CSS (2).

http://wiby.me/submit contains the submission criteria.

bsanr2
I tried this yesterday. It seems biased towards the interests of the curators, and, like Google in regards to "some ideal average consumer", is therefore useless if you fall outside a certain level of similarity to the target demo.

For example, I enjoy weightlifting and strength sports. I did a search for "muscle", and every result but one was using the word "muscle" as a figurative metaphor. Barely anything about actual muscles. Searching "funk" was just as bad. One page about Motown and a LOT of midis.

keenmaster
What if Google Advanced Search produced a visual network map which showed you the salient clusters of terms related to your search? You’d then be able to click on a cluster and the search results would change to adjust to what you’re really searching for.

Ex: The network map for “weightlifting” would include many clusters, but 2 big ones would be the hypertrophic cluster (surrounded by a bunch of related terms) and toning cluster (calisthenics would be under this cluster for example). Click on either and the results will change accordingly.

This would actually work even better for subjects you don’t know much about, because Google will teach you about the salient clusters in that field. The clusters could be enhanced with popular images associated with each term. Popular clusters would display as larger than others.

miek
I like this idea a lot. Wonder if anyone is working on this.
keenmaster
No one that I’m aware of. I wouldn’t mind if Google hired me to help make it a reality. I have an email address in my bio (lol).
ehonda
Hi, just wanted to clear something up. Wiby is biased towards the interests of those who submit websites to it.
Aeolun
But to add my site I have to add every page individually. Nobody ain’t gonna use thst.

I’d have to submit every blog post?

ngold
Can't wait to try this search engine. Thank's for the link.
EmilioMartinez
Just added wiby.me/surprise to the bookmarks bar. Amusingly, the icon keeps changing every time I use it.
chasd00
in the same vein, it would be awesome to search for a product to buy with the results being ecomm websites owned by people in my area. A way to "shop local" online.
technotarek
ATTIC: A visual search and discovery engine to help you find the latest products from small, unique businesses near you.

https://attic.city/

Currently for three product tiers (furniture, home decor, and fashion/clothing) in 14 major US markets, where stores within ~100 miles or a ~2 hour drive are considered as part of the market.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders.

derision
How do you curate the stores?
technotarek
Aside from the constraints we apply to market/geography and product type? If that's what you mean, then technically it's a matter of whether the store's ecom platform is compatible with our indexer, which supports ~20 different platforms (and hundreds of variations). Otherwise, we do some light curating for product quality to include, but not limited to, the accuracy of meta data (titling, description) and image quality.
alibaba_x
Shopify released a mobile app recently for this exact purpose.
technotarek
...but only for stores using Shopify as their ecom platform. That misses A LOT of what's out there, probably 75% or more.
fomine3
I'm curious how English speakers (especially not in US?) finding national shopping websites because I live in Japan so never find foreign website written in Japanese
Cyclone_
Seems like a browser plugin might be a quick and dirty way of just filtering results to achieve the goal.
dangoljames
Is there a search engine that actually combines selective search logic with reductive logic, so that can be used to actually search topically?
methou
I used a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) to remove results from Softonic and alikes, it works well, but still very Google.
petra
Google CSE is a great idea.Tried it in the past.

But i find the search is at a much lower quality than Google.

crawlcrawler
I built a search engine for this and other, similar purposes. With Crawl Crawler you start out by searching the meta data of a Common Crawl ("CC") crawl. Then you define a sub section of that data collection by designing a query which search result includes your favorite sites. Then you enrich that sub section by linking those meta data documents (that come from CC's WAT repo) to full text extracts or HTML from CC's WET repo or the WWW. Then you set it to recurringly refresh that section. Voila! You have created a search index that includes your preferred sites. https://crawlcrawler.com
chris_f
This is pretty cool. I always wondered why there wasn't a user interface search somewhere for the CommonCrawl data.
maayank
I'm intrigued by actual use-cases for it except exploring, i.e. where it would give better result for a query than the common search engines.

Anyone reading this, please post if you find any

crocodiletears
Big ones:

1. Looking for niche domain or institutional/social knowledge produced by experts or insiders for an informed audience that isn't necessarily available in a scientific journal.

Especially with respect to the social sciences and literary analysis, there's a wealth of intelligent commentators that don't surface well on Google without very specific search terms, and the willful subtraction of domains like quora, medium, and tumblr.

They're usually contained on poorly maintained WordPress sites that the author has long-since forgotten about, or as invalid, handcoded html docs hidden in the personal subdomains of university professors and students.

2. Finding online communities that aren't a part of Reddit or a similarly prominent platform

dangoljames
There used to be java applet embedded in altavista.com's website that could be run against search results. It would do semantic processing on the results and present a list of generated terms, each with a checkbox. Checking a box would pull any returns which contained the topic from the remaining search results.

This was fire. If a topic were being discussed on the web, you could find it with this tool. Unfortunately, it did not fit the vision of the parasitic overlords who bred us to produce and consume for their benefit.

visarga
Altavista itself was a junk search engine though, especially after they sold out and the new owner stuffed it with ads.
igammarays
DEVONagent is a highly configurable search utility which can be used to combine and de-duplicate results from multiple search engines at once, exclude sites or keywords from a blacklist, follow deep links within search pages, and perform some filtering logic on the text of results.

Before I knew about DEVONagent I would often just search multiple engines and sources trying to find something particular (e.g. a particular PDF) or unique results.

https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonagent

lemonberry
Thank you for the link. This looks really cool. I used DEVONthink years ago. It seemed like a great piece of software but I didn't have a great use case for it. Looking forward to checking out DEVONagent.
brightball
This does look really interesting. Thank you.
petra
It looks really interesting. Sadly, it's Mac only.

Does anybody knows of something similar for Windows or Linux ?

amelius
If only Google allowed us to omit websites from search results.

Google says they need our information to "improve our experience", but we can't tell them what to omit ...

rsoto
They used to allow that, it was very useful. But as with almost everything Google does, they killed it.
dennisy
I think you could get good results if you just penalise sites for the number of third party JS. Which shows by proxy a more established site/corp.

You could add a bunch of heuristics such as size, number of links etc.

Maybe even train a classifier to select the “smaller” part of the web.

tlarkworthy
I made a script on ObservableHQ to surf YouTube psuedo-randomly https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/random-place-on-yout...

I do a random city + documentary as the search term, it's taken me all over the world and seen some very strange things.

One of my favourites was Aarhus, which had a Danish language rapper proclaiming he was putting Aarhus on the global map (I have never heard of the city of Aarhus). https://youtu.be/WSZxuzgImLo They dis Copenhagen a lot too, lol. You get a more intimate YouTube experience with the low view videos

But I also seen amazing religious rituals. An excellent documentary on Karachi.

Because it's observable hq you can fork it and figure out your own algorithm for biasing the random.

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allwynpfr
You should try million short. As the name suggests, it takes our the first 100 / 1k / or a million results so you're left with those that aren't all that popular. That seems to be what you're looking for. https://millionshort.com/
moreWeed
Man you read my mind, just starting thinking about this. From a search censorship perspective, the BBS's we were building in 93 would be better than what we have now.
dhbradshaw
I've wondered too about something similar to that. Basically, I'd like sessions for searching.

Each session would have an updatable list of sites that are favored, whitelisted or blacklisted for a particular class of search.

blondin
omg yes please.

can google allow us to exclude certain sites? i was surprised to see w3school showing up above official documentations for pandas and numpy. this is simply ridiculous!!

jotm
the "-" operator still works. E.g. "weird stuff I found interesting -reddit.com -youtube.com -wired.com -w3schools.com"