Google Enables Search Result Kill Switch

[Resurrection]

Google Enables Search Result Kill Switch -- InformationWeek


Web spammers, beware. Google users can now filter unwanted domains in search results lists.


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Google says its mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. But having recently acknowledged that much of the world's information is useless or worse, Google is now providing Internet users with the means to bury the world's information.

Capping months of search quality adjustments designed to penalize content farms and those who violate Google's search rules, Google on Thursday said that it will provide a way for users to hide unwanted search results.

"You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for," explain Google engineers Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang in a blog post. "Many times you’ll head right back to Google. Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality. For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results."

Google has promoted various methods of search personalization over the years, through services like Search Wiki and location settings, but last month it introduced a Chrome extension called Personal Blocklist, a tool that falls somewhere between personalization and personal protection against junk content.

With over 120,000 users already, Personal Blocklist appears to have been well received.

The new search result blocking will be available as a link that accompanies each search result listed. Selecting the block link will prompt the user to confirm his or her choice. Thereafter, the blocked domain will no longer appear in future searches.

"This feature is quite similar to the functionality we introduced with the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, but for all Google users," a Google spokesperson said via e-mail. "We were thrilled by the feedback we got about the extension, so we are pleased to bring this functionality to everyone who uses Google."

When users search using keywords that return blocked domains, they will be notified that some of their results have been blocked and presented with the option to show blocked results and to manage their list of blocked sites.

Site blocking requires a Google Account. If site blocking tempts more users to use Google while signed in, it will increase the volume of useful analytics data through which Google can improve its services. Google says that while it's not currently using site block data to influence page rankings, it does plan to look at whether the data may be useful for improving search result relevancy in the future.

Initially, site blocking will be made available to those using Google.com in English with Chrome 9+, Internet Explorer 8+ or Firefox 3.5+. Google plans to expand availability to other regions at a later date.

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My brother worked for a Content Farm.He explained to me how these companies work.They basically employ people to write articles that have many words or tags that satisfy algorithms that the Search Engines have.They want to make money by accumulating Page Views.
Although not all of them are spam , a lot of them do need to be banned.
This is a great initiative by Google to filter out the bad apples.

[LuluShoutX]

Google will have to close this project or several botnets will turn off many domains.

[grebetu]

What are you talking about? How would botnets turn off domains using Google search results filter?

[Resurrection]

What are you talking about? How would botnets turn off domains using Google search results filter?

His last few posts on this forum have made no sense to me...

[LuluShoutX]

What are you talking about? How would botnets turn off domains using Google search results filter?

Its easy to remove domain from SERP: "people" will blocklist site/domain and google will remove it from search results. Blocked domain is useless because 80-90% of traffic comes from SE.

[grebetu]

Search result filter is tied to an account - you block results that you don't want to see, it has nothing to do with other people.
Google repeatedly stated they won't be removing sites from search results based on usage of filters.

[slikrapid]

Search result filter is tied to an account - you block results that you don't want to see, it has nothing to do with other people.

that may be correct for this particular case, but there are other examples that show how big search engines are voluntarily censoring online contents/sites by accepting such demands from various countries/organizations, an example for germany:

Germany has more or less banned Isharegossip.com, a cybermobbing website aimed at school children and youths. The country's censor body "Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien" (BPjM) ("Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons") put the site on the so-called index list, meaning the site is only supposed to be accessed by people over 18 and may not be advertised.

Due to a non-binding agreement, a "voluntary commitment" with the BPjM, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing will erase the site from their indexes, yet only this time next month when the indexes are updated.

Use of Isharegossip.com became contagious under pupils in Germany this year. The site provides a list of schools by town and federal state, angry kids can make anonymous entries by school saying their classmate or teacher is a rotten egg or even viler claims.

The site quickly became famous for racist slander and cybermobbing of pupils. Last week, a 17 year old "peer mediator" was assaulted and hospitalised after trying to mediate between fellow pupils in a case of cybermobbing sparked through comments posted on Isharegossip.com.

Germany's Federal Ministry for Family Affairs asked the BPjM to put the site up for review in early February. Teachers and parents had asked for a call to action and to ban the site entirely, taking it offline. However, the site's owners have so far managed to stay anonymous, despite investigation by prosecuters.

Banning the site from search engines is more of a display of helplessness and political actionism designed to make voters happy than it is a viable strategy to counter cyberbullying and mobbing.

http://www.techeye.net/internet/germany-blacklists-cybermobbing-site

another interesting element here is how people alone are calling for online censorship (undoubtedly instructed by their political care-takers), which shows how the desired 'more-freedom' paradigm is turning into 'less-freedom', substituting it for an illusory sense of security, which may be interpreted as wanting to live in a prison as long as it feels safe enough

finally, if there is to be any kind of filtering, it should be under user control, ie. the (adult) user alone (not the state or some other organization) should make the decision on what he/she wants to filter-out and what not

[LuluShoutX]

Search result filter is tied to an account - you block results that you don't want to see, it has nothing to do with other people.
Google repeatedly stated they won't be removing sites from search results based on usage of filters.

I have a favorite star next to each search result and I don't have google account. If I click this star, clean cookies, then open google and do the search - I see star marked result on top of SERP.
I have dynamic IP and it changes everyday. It means that other users who will use my ip tomorrow will see marked result on top and most of users doesn't know anything about this favorite star. They will just click first result. Don't you think it affects site's traffic?

UPD I'm not from USA, maybe they test this system with my country only.