New Chrome extension blocks sites from Google results

[Josh]

With Google making efforts to improve the quality of its search results, it is now giving users the opportunity to block certain sites from search results. The extension would be available for its Chrome browser, and user's actions in blocking sites could become part of Google's fight against spam content.

"We've been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content," principal engineer Matt Cutts explained. "One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users."

Cutts is the same person who had earlier opined for Google that spam was becoming an increasingly bigger problem for the search site. "We have seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months, and while we've already made progress, we have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality," he said in a blog post last month.

Source

[JavaJones]

Interesting indeed!

- Oshyan

[Renegade]

VERY interesting... I wonder how long it will take the black hats to abuse it...

[f0dder]

A browser extension isn't good enough, though - something needs to be done against the problem, instead of applying symptomatic treatment. And I've got concerns like Renegade.

[mouser]

Seems like a good idea although as Renegade points out there is going to be some strong incentive to abuse it (and will it be impossible to get a straight answer from google if people are using it against you?)

There is also something unpleasantly ironic about the idea that google is going to start telling people that the way to get the best results from their search engine is to use their google branded browser in order to get rid of the junk in the google search engine..

[zridling]

If they can't change their algorithms enough to detect this cancer, then a crowdsource effort is a good start. At the least, you won't see the same stuff over and over.

[Renegade]

There is also something unpleasantly ironic about the idea that google is going to start telling people that the way to get the best results from their search engine is to use their google branded browser in order to get rid of the junk in the google search engine..

Good point.

[mahesh2k]

If they can't change their algorithms enough to detect this cancer, then a crowdsource effort is a good start. At the least, you won't see the same stuff over and over.

If this is the way they want to correct their mistakes then even this attempt can be gamed. Many black-hat users now can create a job on microworkers/elance/mechanical turk for small or big bonus and will ask to filter competitor websites. If the new algorithm is going to detect the pattern of users then sure we're back at square 1.

[Edvard]

Blekko does this already.
Check out their video.
It only gets interesting towards the end, where he talks about the 'spam' and 'SEO' buttons.
http://blekko.com/ws/+/press-videos?h=1