exclude youtube

DEVONagent Tips
1

Hi,

may I ask how to exclude YouTube site in search results in DAgent? I do research and YouTube is very annoying because it turns up with every search but is good for nothing (sorry to the youTube fans out there)?

cheers,
George

2

Try Preferences > Search - exclude domain.

3

oh, that easy … sorry for the trouble

thank you

4

Just out of curiosity - I’ve noticed that DevonAgent preferences are already set-up to exclude:


sciencemag.org
arxiv.org
microsoft.
ebay.
amazon.

Any reason for this? I’m certainly not complaining, just curious.

  • Ryan
5

Those are sites that either block “search bots” or request developers to exclude them. As a practical matter, that exclusion list saves users time and effort.

There are actually some sites that are paranoid about search agents and which jump up and down, screaming, yelling and threatening retribution if they detect a search agent. I once got an angry email from a little site that had traced me, noting that I was excluded from access to that site for two weeks. It was a nutty little site (junk science) administered, as it happened, by a guy who really was paranoid. :slight_smile:

Generally, though, persons who put content up on the Web (assuming it’s not corporate or governmental secrets, or services that are subscription-only) want others to know about the content they hold. They depend on the big search agents like those used by Google and others to bring people to their sites.

Why would Amazon want to block search agents? I think there are two reasons. First, they want to learn something about the individual who accesses their sites. They provide very good search tools, and when they are used Amazon analyzes the person’s potential interests and starts offering up suggestions that might tempt an impulse purchase! They make money that way. Second, they may have thought about how much business information an outside person could gather about them by hammering away with agent searches. Several years ago I was amazed to see how much information about a retailer’s suppliers that a marketing analyst was able to gather from their public Web site by hammering away at it with tricky DEVONagent searches. The retailer would have regarded that as highly confidential business information, and had no idea how much information about their operations could be gleaned by a clever person.

6

“The retailer would have regarded that as highly confidential business information, and had no idea how much information about their operations could be gleaned by a clever person.”

Hmmm. Comments like that put ideas in my head. That is now on my to-do list. Just kidding (sort of!)

I do plan on putting Amazon back on my personal DevonAgent search list. It’s a very useful site (as is the google book search thingy) for research.

I will assume it’s not a problem for DevonAgent if I do so - i.e. that if anyone gets blocked it will be me.

Thanks for your reply.

  • Ryan
7

How would one filter youtube in and out on the fly?