>The “spammy” results are when Google indexes a page full of images and picks a “representative” image.

No the spammy results are when I search for something on google, it gives me a Pinterest link that matches my search term exactly, the link has absolutely nothing to do with what I was actually searching for and if you click onto it, you're met with a page full of random Pinterest crap for about 3 seconds before it busts out a signup wall in your face and to top it off it'll take you at least 5 clicks of the back button to actually get off the page. I find it happens a lot searching for tutorials for things.

ETA: to address the original question, I find quora annoying, but a lot less than Pinterest. I actually do get decent results when I can view a page. It just seems to be random whether it throws an account wall up or not. I find copying and pasting a link to a related question into a new tab will sometimes work if I close the original tab first, but not always.

Just add a share=1 to the link and it will work

You are suggesting that Pinterest change the structure of its entire website to cater to Google's search algorithms. Doesn't make much sense to me. Why is it Pinterest's responsibility to change their whole website to cater to Google? Google could fix their search, instead. Pinterest offered to work with Google on this and Google refused.

So on what planet is Pinterest the bad guy, here? Because they didn't completely knee-cap their traffic because Google was too preoccupied to work with them on this issue? No. It's just a popular opinion to hate on Pinterest on HN and people like Google so the facts don't matter.

As far as the signup wall goes, well, that's on Google too. They could stop indexing sites that require registration at any point after clicking through. Goodbye Quora, goodbye Pinterest, goodbye New York Times.

I just checked and there's still a sign up wall. It is not as blatant as it was before, but I can't spend more than 10 seconds or click on anything without getting it. Can't even enlarge the picture or visit the original website.

The spammy results problem is super easy to solve from Pinterest's side. Just make pages full of images non-indexable and provide simple pages with one single image and there will be no more spammy results.

By "easy" I mean technically. Pinterest is a scummy company and I doubt they'd lift a finger to make things better for the web and its users.

With all due respect that doesn't seem like goggles problem. It's their game. Seo hacking and optimization is a thing and Pinterest has failed so bad at it as to have turned entire classes of potential customers away from their site. Same as quora. If we're, the customers that'd sooner leave a site than capitulate to unreasonable demands, known of and written off then so be it. However it is ignorant verging on dishonest to blame Google for Pinterests inability to optimize their site for Google and all of Pinterests customers.

How is this not a failure on Google’s part? Isn’t it a failure for Google to give me results from an unoptimized website? If I click on a Google search result and it takes me to something irrelevant to me, how has Google not failed?

I am very confused by your argument.

The grandparent post's content was deleted, but it pretty much said that the main reason Pinterest serves "spammy" results (where clicks don't lead to the clicked image) is because Google doesn't send them additional metadata telling which image was clicked.

Instead of fixing the structure of their goddamn website, they wanted Google to give them special treatment.

Btw, I agree with you however that Google serving garbage results was 100% Google's fault, though.

Oh, that makes a lot more sense now. Thanks for the clarification!