Malevolent websites that replicate newsgroup postings which then show up as web search hits. 

Inappropriate Appropriations of Newsgroup Postings

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Evil, mostly by design   (#evildoers)

The following web sites recirculate newsgroups postings, so they show up on Google web searches.  Newsgroup postings should not come up as web pages in a search — that's what Google GROUPS search is for.  In addition to messing up newsgroups many appear to have their sole existence to reap ill gotten profits from advertising – in either case best to avoid them altogether.  Unfortunately there is no means to eliminate them from Google searches when there are a large number of such websites.  Firefox users can use Customize Google to filter out trash.
http://dbforums.com
http://eggheadcafe.com
http://forums.techarena.in
http://mail.cool-teens.com/printthread.php?t=*
http://office.meetholland.com/message/*
http://pub.pictureview.com
http://www.adminlife.com/247reference/msgs/*
http://www.all-usenet-archive.com/File.asp?
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/ng/*
http://www.excelbanter.com/*
http://www.excelforum.com/archive/*
http://www.excelforums.com/viewtopic*
http://www.exceltip.com/ng*
http://www.exceluser.com
http://www.hightechtalks.com
http://www.learncsharp.net
http://www.mcse.ms/archive*
http://www.msusenet.com/archive*
http://www.mswordtalk.com
http://www.mswordtalk.com/*
http://www.news2mail.com
http://www.officefrustration.com/*
http://www.officehelp.in
http://www.officekb.com/Uwe/ForumPost.aspx?article*
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-*
http://www.talkaboutsoftware.com/group/
http://www.talkroot.com
http://www.tech-archive.net
http://www.texasholdem-poker-tips.com
http://www3.usenetarchive.org/File.asp?service=1508
http://xlbysteph.free.fr


Advertising vehicles with distracting features (#gaudy)

You can probably come up with several that you find obnoxious, unfortunately Google limits the number of words in a search to 32 and you have to be able to include words you want to search on, so those that would be listed here are not important enough to mention vs. the evil replicators.

Eliminate these from your web search (#elim)

Include these in your web search:

-site:dbforums.com -site:eggheadcafe.com -site:forums.techarena.in -site:pub.pictureview.com -site:excelbanter.com -site:excelforum.com -site:exceltip.com -site:exceluser.com -site:learncsharp.net -site:mcse.ms -site:msusenet.com -site:mswordtalk.com -site:news2mail.com -site:officefrustration.com -site:officehelp.in -site:officekb.com -site:pcreview.co.uk -site:talkroot.com -site:tech-archive.net -site:texasholdem-poker-tips.com -site:xlbysteph.free.fr

Avoid these in inurl (#avoidinurl)

In addition to the above sites watch out for the following within a url (inurl:TERM)
-inurl:message
-inurl:archive
-inurl:public.excel
-inurl:newsgroup
-inurl:forum
-inurl:public_excel
-inurl:thread

Include this in your web search:

-inurl:message -inurl:archive -inurl:public.excel -inurl:newsgroup -inurl:forum -inurl:public_excel -inurl:thread

Generated (#generated)

Using the suggestions a search of datedif excel might be expanded to the following via a Firefox keyword shortcut, or a search entry form: 

datedif excel filetype:html OR filetype:htm -inurl:message -inurl:archive -inurl:thread -inurl:forum -inurl:vbforums -inurl:vbthread -inurl:exchange -inurl:techrepublic -inurl:public -inurl:news -inurl:cafe -inurl:banter -inurl:feed -inurl:exceltip -inurl:exceluser -site:mcse.ms -site:msusenet.com -site:mswordtalk.com -inurl:mail -inurl:talk -site:officefrustration.com -site:officehelp.in -site:officekb.com -site:ozgrid.com -inurl:thefeeddirectory -inurl:google

Shortcuts (#shortcuts)

You can check out some of the Google web searches that I've come up with in Firefox Keywords for such keywords such as: — mvp: and xlweb:

Workaround if using Internet Explorer, you can still use the shortcut as a bookmark and then change the "s" in your results to to a new series of your own search words. OR switch to Firefox for searches.

Quick, but unreliable, elimination of spammy websites (#suggestion)

Because many of the newsgroup postings include HTH in signatures, this one word would eliminate a lot of junk webpages, so can work rather well if you are just using a search bar and don't have time to set up proper filters.  But you could miss valid material.  Not all applications have newsgroups, some companies provide web based forums for discussion but not newsgroups.  If you actually discarded all web pages with HTH you would not see the page you are viewing.  It certainly would not be a best method.  From the description with a Google hit you can usually quickly identify if HTH was part of a signature or not.

-HTH

Identification of Sites to be avoided (#id)

These are just some sample searches that might help test your filters, you will have to manually check over the results to see if something should or should not be filtered.  Bloggers can create some problems especially with accumulated articles and summaries, but in general you would not want to discard them.  Finding HTH on a webpage is frequently a means of identifying newsgroup postings disguised as web pages.

examples:
HTH excel buildtoc.htm -inurl:mvps -inurl:geocities
HTH excel cpearson.com -inurl:cpearson.com


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