15 ms·
New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results
- enmanuelr 16y agoYou mean I never ever again need to see a search result pointing to experts-exchange?! This is the best gift ever! And it's not even my birthday.
- zitterbewegung 16y agoAlthough this is Chrome only this is a great extension that I believe a few people on this site wanted. I remember other people made a mashup but this looks like a slightly better solution. I wonder why they don't want to do this server side though?
- stanleydrew 16y agoI imagine releasing server-side changes to Google's core search functionality is quite a bit harder than releasing an extension. If nothing else, there are tons of tests that need to pass and there's probably constraints on speed regressions and such. This is a much quicker way to get the same data so that they can determine whether the data is actually useful as a ranking signal.
- Kylekramer 16y agoGood work, squeaky wheels. So: will this eventually be a search settings option once it is less beta or permanently an extension thing?
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoWe'll look at offering this as a more direct option over time, depending on how popular the extension is and whether the data from it looks good.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- brianwillis 16y agoSo HN, what sites are we all blocking?
- jonknee 16y agoMy first round includes eHow, Mahalo, Associated Content, Experts Exchange, Squidoo and Examiner. Update: I added answers.yahoo.com as well, which has consistently terrible content and yet is often highly ranked.
- klbarry 16y agoI really often get exactly the answer I need from Yahoo Answers, just to throw that in there...
- jonknee 16y agoI have only ever seen incorrect answers on Yahoo Answers, so our experiences definitely vary. That's the beauty of allowing custom blocklists though.
- pamelafox 16y agoI've found that there are some more taboo (but valid) questions that are only ever answered on Yahoo! Answers, presumably because people aren't worried about their identity there. For an extreme example: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071113122412AAHwZQD http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071113122412AA... (Warning: Taboo. And the answer probably isn't relevant to 95% of the posters here. :)
- jonknee 16y agoI found Wikipedia's answer to be of much higher quality (and properly cited).
- MichaelGG 16y agoExperts Exchange used to be a scam, showing fake results. But now, they just roll them to the bottom of the page. I don't endorse them or like them, but they've had decent quality answers several times.
- atomi 16y ago>...explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results Democratic censorship.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoWhat's the difference in Google censoring spam and users censoring spam?
- random42 16y agoOne is censorship. other is free-will.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI'll pass along an anecdote from Gmail, which also uses explicit user feedback to label spam emails. Some people come to Gmail and say "Why did you block the [mass low-quality] email that I sent?" It's a pretty good answer if the reply is "Enough people marked your emails as spam that the emails were considered spam." The hope is that users are savvy enough that we can get a good signal out of the block signal.
- atomi 16y agoThis would only be a fair comparison if and only if you allow users the option to view the blocked search results.
- nolok 16y agoThat's like calling the current situation "technical censorship" since websites are ranked by how they perform on the SEO level. They won't ban sites from google, they will re-arrange who is shown higher (or lower) based on what the users like. Google has always been in the business of linking search terms with the corresponding informations that users want to see, this is no different.
- arnemart 16y agoThe website used as an example in the first screenshot (http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/ http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/) just made my day.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI made the screenshots this weekend, so I threw that in there. http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/ http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/ is pretty funny.
- raintrees 16y agoI was just griping about this to my wife yesterday. The noise is drowning out the signal in my recent searches...
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoPlease install the extension and let us know what sites are annoying you. You're exactly the sort of person we want that feedback from. In the process, you'll keep them from showing up for you again.
- raintrees 16y agoWill do. It's already on three of our machines, soon to be seven.
- raintrees 16y agoOops? Maybe I am not referring to the same problem - Rather than identifying "content farms" I am hoping to block sites that are returned that do not have the search terms on the page returned, and therefore should not be in the results, in my opinion. Is this Google's intention for usage?
- jmillikin 16y ago1. Does this remove results from each page, or from the resultset? In other words, if 7 of the first-page results are blocked, will I see only 3 results on that page? 2. Any plans for a Firefox extension? I'm willing to install Chrome just for running Google searches, but would rather add it to my main browser. e: After a month or so, I would absolutely love to see the top 10 or so blocked domains. It's OK if you can't do this, but it would be interesting/amusing.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoRight now, you'll see only three results. We'll look at refreshing, but in answer to #2, we're also looking at putting this more directly into Google's search results. I think having block options directly on Google's search results is the right long-term answer. But this extension lets people clean up their personal results while sending block data to Google that we might be able to use as a signal to improve overall search quality. Thanks to everyone at HN who poked us by asking for this, by the way.
- jmillikin 16y ago> We'll look at refreshing, but in answer to #2, we're also looking at putting this more directly into Google's search results. Don't worry about refreshing -- I'd much rather see three good results than 7 bad ones. The idea of being able to block content farms entirely is literally making me giggle at my desk. Focus on that! Thank you, thank you, thank you x1000 for this.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI've been using it for a few weeks while we tested it, and it really does feel nice to block a site that you never want to see again. :)
- ryanhuff 16y agoAfter integrating this feature into Google search, a nice enhancement would be to allow sharing of people's personal exclusion list. Let the community help clean search!
- Jem 16y ago"If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results." If that happens, what's to stop this being used by companies to influence the results to get rid of competitors?
- ceejayoz 16y agoI imagine that's where the "we will study" bit comes in.
- stanleydrew 16y agoDid you even read the snippet that you quoted? They will "study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results." They are well aware of the ways in which such a signal could be gamed. That's why they will "study" and "explore" ways to use the new data as a "potential" signal.
- Jem 16y agoWas the twatty attitude really necessary? I asked a simple question expecting someone with industry-appropriate know-how to expand further on Google's theoretical/possible intentions. We already have an entire industry dedicated to gaming the search engines ranking signals/etc; we have some very talented black hats who undermine existing attempts to keep SERPs clean. I don't think it was that stupid a question.
- donbronson 16y agoWhen I first read the headline, I assumed it meant blocking all of Google's sites from the SERPs (Youtube, blogger, etc). Perhaps this would be a nice way to rule out any potential nepotism.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoYou can block google.com in the extension if you want (we didn't put in any code to prevent that), but your search results might behave in weird/unexpected ways if you do.
- macrael 16y agoWhy make this a Chrome extension rather than a google labs type feature?
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoThe Chrome extension was faster to roll out and lets us iterate faster as well because it's outside of front-end pushes. We're looking at offering block links in the search results too, but that code takes longer to write, test, and launch.
- rbranson 16y agoIt seems we've come full circle -- features easier to push out in client software than through modification of server code.
- dsl 16y ago1. http://bit.ly/gTADhE http://bit.ly/gTADhE 2. Click Install, close page 3. Open each of the links below in a new tab, click block on the first result 4. Win. http://www.google.com/search?q=Mahalo http://www.google.com/search?q=Mahalo http://www.google.com/search?q=ehow http://www.google.com/search?q=ehow http://www.google.com/search?q=experts-exchange http://www.google.com/search?q=experts-exchange http://www.google.com/search?q=livestrong.com http://www.google.com/search?q=livestrong.com http://www.google.com/search?q=answerbag http://www.google.com/search?q=answerbag http://www.google.com/search?q=bills.com http://www.google.com/search?q=bills.com http://www.google.com/search?q=chacha.com http://www.google.com/search?q=chacha.com http://www.google.com/search?q=associated+content http://www.google.com/search?q=associated+content http://www.google.com/search?q=efreedom http://www.google.com/search?q=efreedom http://www.google.com/search?q=questionhub http://www.google.com/search?q=questionhub http://www.google.com/search?q=squidoo.com http://www.google.com/search?q=squidoo.com http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com http://www.google.com/search?q=yellowpages.com http://www.google.com/search?q=yellowpages.com ---- Edits: fixed formatting, added suggestions This method is fine. The actual data sent to Google when you block a domain does not contain the search query (or the referrer). This is what gets sent when you block a domain: http://www.google.com/gen_204?atyp=i&oi=site_blocker&ct=addToBlocklist&ei=[CSRF-cookie]&cad=mattcutts.com and unblock: http://www.google.com/gen_204?atyp=i&oi=site_blocker&ct=deleteFromBlocklist&ei=undefined&cad=mattcutts.com (Interestingly the CSRF token is broken when unblocking.)
- jonursenbach 16y agoDon't forget about http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com
- lurker17 16y agoWhat's wrong with about.com? I generally find about.com has high-quality content giving an overview of a topic, much more in-depth than mahalo or eHow.
- 16y ago
- algorias 16y agoLooks promising, but I'm unsure about the security angle. Google has just added a way for anyone to "DDos" competing websites into oblivion. I hope there are measures in place to prevent that.
- stanleydrew 16y agoThey aren't yet using the data for ranking.
- paraschopra 16y agoThey are or probably would be doing that. See this comment by Matt Cutts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218531 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218531
- nolok 16y agoAnd you really think no one in the google search team has thought of how it could be abused ? Come on let's be serious here, they are not going to use these results verbatim or even block websites for everyone just because some users wanted to.
- AlexBerger 16y agoEven at that, just look at all the problems Reddit etc. have had with bury brigades working to game the system. I imagine with the reputation defender styled companies out there right now, this would be a natural service.
- jellicle 16y agoFree karma points to whoever creates a corresponding Firefox extension...
- chromic 16y agoThere are a few grease monkey scripts that the same thing. I wrote my own that does this and also fetches more results to fill in the gaps left by the "This site has been blocked" entries, but sadly I forgot to back it up before I upgraded hard drives and wiped the old one.
- ScottWhigham 16y ago"There are a few grease monkey scripts that the same thing." Not quite. This sends the info to Google whereas the GM scripts just CSS display:none the links. In theory this is different since the optimist in me hopes that Google will do something positive with the "downvotes".
- toni 16y agoThere is a Greasemonkey script[1] which does blacklisting. It works by sending "-site:example.com" with every search query. The script does a lot more cleanups like removing link tracking and ads, so if you don't feel like using all the functions, look in the code and check out "RemoveBadLinks()" function. Maybe you want to comment all other public functions in init(). [1] http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/79742 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/79742
- shadowpwner 16y agoWouldn't that reach a limit pretty soon? I've commented on this before, but there's a max character length for the search box.
- toni 16y agoMaxLenght of the input field is 2048, so you can put lots of domains in it. Of course, it's not a complete solution but it works to some extents, specially because it filters out stuff on server side and not with a css' display:none.
- saturdaysaint 16y agoNice. My first target - every local restaurant result I get that appears before either (1) the official restaurant website or (2) Yelp. Local search results are always gunked up with yellowpages.com and local newspaper spam. Also, I find it highly suspicious that urbanspoon has consistently better placement than Yelp, despite having consistently weaker content.
- ck2 16y agoWhy do I need to use Chrome and then an extension if this is being offered by Google? Make this a google labs feature directly for Google itself in the personalization options. (also please make it available via a URL option, not just cookies or javascript)
- scott_s 16y agoThis is step 1. You're asking about step 5. They'll get there, but they have to go through step 1 first.
- JoelSutherland 16y agoI'll take the version that walks today over the version that runs in 6 months.
- WesleyJohnson 16y agoAssuming it's a normal extension and has to abide by the same rules that Non-Google Authored extensions do, the extension manifest indicates the extension doesn't have access to do any cross domain posts so all the filtering is done client side. Digging a little deeper, it looks like the blocked sites are stored in Chrome's LocalStorage, which if memory serves me correctly is somehow isolated per extension. It should be relatively easy to listen in on the background page while the extension is running and write a script to extract the list of blocked sites or update it with a master list so you don't have to block dozens or hundreds of sites manually. Not that I think everyone should blindly block everything everyone else does on HN; I personally loathe Experts Exchange, but I do find an answer I needed from them now and then. I was more curious than anything. Update: As "dsl" posted above, it does look like the extension makes a call out to a Google Endpoint to record the block as well, but I don't believe that call actually filters the data for you. That's still done client side. So it's probably best not to call the end point directly or update the blocked sites list directly, but actual use the extension as intended?
- nolok 16y agoYes they block client side (several posts from matt confirm it in this thread). But you mention something important; for me I don't want to 100% block most of those websites, but to give them lower priority (never in my top 10 for exemple). Like you, as much as I hate Experts exchange sometimes they do have the answer when no one else does. This extension sems to solve that by giving a "show" link to display hidden results (when there are any).
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoAs nolok mentioned, the blocking in Chrome takes place on the client side. We're looking at adding block links to Google's search results along with server-side code (which would let your blocks work on any computer you logged in on, for example), but that code takes longer to write and test than the Chrome extension.
- jjcm 16y agoAny chance we can get the blocklist transfered via sync in the next iteration of this plugin?
- WesleyJohnson 16y agoI second that suggestion. It would make the extension that much more awesome to not have to block sites on each device. Might also help to lower the noise on Google's end, so they're not seeing multiple blocks on the same domain from the same users, though I'm sure they account for this already.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI think that's a good longer-term option. We wanted to get the Chrome extension launched to start getting data though.
- aboodman 16y agoIt's a bit difficult to implement sync of arbitrary data in a Chrome extension now. The extension developer has to setup their own storage and implement their own sync code. Either that, or some developers just store their data in the bookmark system, which has its own problems (please don't do this Matt!). We (the extension posse) are working on making this really easy to do [1], but nothing exists yet. [1] http://crbug.com/47327 http://crbug.com/47327
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoAaron, thanks for stopping by with an update on Chrome sync--much appreciated. And thanks for making Chrome extensions fast/easy/powerful to write.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI just wanted to say thanks to all the people on Hacker News who asked for this option. We'll look at offering a "block site" option directly in the search results over time, but it takes longer to write, test, and launch that code. In the mean time, use this extension to clean up your own search results and tell us which sites you don't want to see in Google.
- blehn 16y agoThanks for listening to our requests!
- demetris 16y agoMatt, I don’t understand why Google need to offer blocking as a user option. Any web netizen with some experience can tell at a glance the spammy and low-quality results on a SERP, but Google, with their vast knowledge and experience and their ability to monitor all sorts and aspects of user clicking behaviour, cannot?
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI alluded to that in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218627 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218627 . People feel comfortable with Google removing blatant spam: hidden text, cloaking, sneaky JavaScript redirects, etc. People tend to feel less comfortable if they feel like Google is making an editorial decision. If we get a good signal from this extension, or from offering block links in Google's search results, then it's much more similar Gmail's spam algorithm, where an email is labelled as spam partially because a lot of users say it is, rather than because of some editorial decision on our part.
- aubergene 16y agoI'm really glad this extension exists. However, if it is built in to the general results, could you also add a metric to Webmaster Tools showing the frequency with which your domain is reported. It would also be good if the blocking could have timeout period so that sites can be given a chance to improve their behavior, rather than just deleting that domain forever.
- vaksel 16y agowould be cool if there was a subscription option where you can subscribe to some master list that gets updated by people you trust. or just simply a bulk insert
- badwetter 16y agoDoesn't WOT (Web of Trust) attempt to do this?
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoOr at least an import/export option. But we'll need to see how popular/useful the extension is first.
- evilduck 16y agoMy concern with an "AdBlock Easylist" style centralized block list is that it removes, or at least blurs the consensus feedback to Google of what is a content farm, what is a low-quality non-farm site, and what is useful. A user above listed about.com as something they wanted to block, while I find them to be not very in depth, I wouldn't classify it as useless, and certainly not a content farm like livestrong.com.
- nooneelse 16y agoHey, I think I "called" this a few days back... yep: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2199498 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2199498 This little bit of successful nerd prognostication cheers me up more than perhaps it should, but oh well.
- stcredzero 16y agoI'm going to try it first thing. I hope all of my Chrome instances sync the block entries.
- hackerku 16y agoI know this is a legit extension from Google. By why is this extension not marked as Verified author? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbd... The "nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef" makes it look suspicious as well.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoHmm. I'll ask if we can fix that.
- rsoto 16y agoHaving a big company behaving like a local one-- listening to the customer's opinions is really nice. However, this is a feature that Google actually had. Why did you remove it? I accept the Search Wiki was not particuarly a success[1], but the remove option was very nice. Alas, thanks for listening. I'll be waiting for the server-side option. 1: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-searc...
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI think users are more savvy about recognizing spam/low-quality/content farm sites than a few years ago. At least some of the previous features also had unfortunate UI issues, e.g. the default was to block a single url for that single query.
- kaffeinecoma 16y agoThank god. Goodbye to: devcomments.com. osdir.com, and mail-archive.com!
- catch23 16y agoosdir isn't actually too bad -- mailing lists are very poorly indexed by google and osdir exposes some of the data to be indexed.
- mythobit 16y agoI created a site on app engine that essentially does the same thing via Google Custom search engine. Granted mine isn't as integrated or user friendly but still. The site is: http://blacklist-search.appspot.com/ http://blacklist-search.appspot.com/ Why can't Google offer something like this rather than only allowing it via a Chrome extension?
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI think we can, but that sort of code takes longer to write, test, and launch. You'd want it to be really robust before you showed those sorts of options to 1B+ people a day. So the Chrome extension is a good interim step to see how much traction it gets and what sort of data emerges as a result
- measure2xcut1x 16y agoIf this ends up being used as a "voting" system that factors into determining what sites show in public SERPs, folks could crowdsource competitor blocking using say Amazon's MTurk to knock competition off of Google, no?
- narkee 16y agoWhy should I have to be signed in to my Google account to be able to use this functionality?
- aubergene 16y agoTo attempt to prevent people gaming/spaming the system
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- EastSmith 16y agoI know this questions is asked in different forms couple of times in the comments, but here it is again: 1. Will there ever be Firefox extension which do the same?
- ChuckMcM 16y agoI note with mock irony that this works fine on blekko.com in any browser. You push the "this is spam" link in the SERP results and poof, its dead to you. (Disclaimer: I work at Blekko)
- jonmc12 16y agoGoogle should make one of these for Bing also - with the option to send google my Bing blocklist.
- natmaster 16y agoSounds like an excellent feature. Just seems kinda weird that Google would start using user-click data when they were complaining so much about Bing using it.
- ericd 16y agoThis is not comparable, at all.
- hedaru 16y agoIs it also integrated with WOT (Web of Trust) way to block and report bad sites? How if so?
- billmcneale 16y agoanswers.yahoo.com, here I come.
- Upset 16y agoI think this tool will be "Very Misused" by a lot of people just to SQUASH their closest competitors. I can see some companies hiring "paid blockers" to squash competition websites and even in the Search Engine world you watch Microsoft and Google block and report each others sites in an even continuing search engine war what a sad day for free speech George Orwell 1984 :(
- Upset 16y agoEnlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility. George Orwell
- Upset 16y agoFreedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. George Orwell
- Upset 16y agoIf you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. George Orwell
- Upset 16y agoOne does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. George Orwell
- Upset 16y agoProgress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing. George Orwell
- Upset 16y agoThere are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them. George Orwell
- Upset 16y agoWhat can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? George Orwell
- SwellJoe 16y agoI feel like I just got a new upgraded Internet.
- lawfulfalafel 16y agoIsn't anyone else kind of bewildered by this? I mean this is kind of like if a kid pissed all over the floor in wal-mart, and when you notified an employee about it they gave you a mop to clean it up yourself.
- alanh 16y agoI just know you’re going to get downvoted for being unappreciative, but I love the analogy (for its color). And you’re right, it’s a striking “solution.”
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- georgemcbay 16y agoIt is more like being in a Walmart full of zombies and having all the Walmart employees killing zombies as fast as they can but then when you ask what is up with all the zombies they hand you a shotgun so you can help them by killing the zombies in your immediate vicinity. On the one hand, in an ideal world there wouldn't be a large and ever growing number of zombies at Walmart, but on the other hand, thanks a million for the shotgun because I'd rather get to killing some zombies myself than whine about the fact that the Walmart employees aren't killing them fast enough while they are eating my brains.
- lawfulfalafel 16y agoReally? This is kind of like some sort of weird time warp, and the Yahoo mentality of "curating" the internet is back in fashion. Which is weird, because Google came to power because that strategy doesn't work.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- georgemcbay 16y agoWell played, Google. Not only did you just make your search engine 50 times more valuable to me, but you've just ensured I'll be spending almost all of my browsing time inside Chrome.
- runevault 16y agoNormally I don't post this sort of thing (try to focus on valuable content) but dear god THANK YOU! I'm cackling maniacally while I block expertsexchange, Mahalo, and several other sites. I'm so happy right now.
- barista 16y agoIs it possible to block Bing from copying search results using this? ;)
- presto8 16y agoAwesome extension! An option to hide the icon from the toolbar would be nice.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoTo hide the icon, you can right-click on the icon and select "Hide button." To bring it back, click Wrench->Tools->Extensions and click the "Show button" link. I love Chrome. :)
- presto8 16y agoI don't see that option on Linux v.8.0.552.224. But maybe I need a Chrome upgrade. Thanks for the tip, I'll try and get it working!
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoI'm using the dev version of Chrome on Linux, currently "10.0.648.45 dev". The developer channel has always been surprisingly stable for me.
- RazorSky 16y agoI was just bitching about experts-exchange last night and wanted this feature. Thanks for sharing.
- ramki 16y agoI thought i was the only one doesn't want to see "experts exchange" in google search results. No, i'm not alone... :) :) Looks "experts exchange" is annoyingly very famous...
- tuhin 16y agoFinally Google accepts the elephant in the room. Just a few days ago a friend while being interviewed had mentioned about search being ineffective for content farm sites and the Google employee was like "No Search is fine. Nothing wrong there". Finally e-how, about.com, expertSEXchange.com can RIP, atleast for me. I also hope that over time, Google will use this data from users via Chrome to somehow incorporate crowdsourced search results in it's results not just for one user but all of them.
- topcat31 16y agoA few thoughts and requests: 1) I'd love to use this tool but because of my job still need to look at the "official" search results from time to time. Is it possible to allow &pws=0 override the blocked sites so &pws=0 both session-based and browser based personalisation? 2) There's a lot of talk among startups about ignoring what users want because they don't know best. I worry that this move from Google might actually be detrimental to user experience. If you end up blocking a bunch of thin sites then the chances are high that you're not going to get better results for your search query, you'll just get fewer results (since usually Google only returns these thin sites when there's little else to offer). Also - as users get trigger happy and block a bunch of sites they may well be harming their own search experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how Google can mitigate against this? Especially when this rolls out to your average user rather than just the tech-savvy HN crowd. Tom
- ydant 16y agoIf you don't allow the extension to work in incognito mode (it's opt-in by default), then you can just open up an incognito / private browsing window instead (which Chrome makes pretty low-cost). This might have the benefit of removing any influence on your search results due to Google cookies that would otherwise be sent.
- topcat31 16y agoI don't think the plugin works via cookies though does it? Might be wrong....
- ydant 16y agoBy default Chrome does not allow plug-ins to run at all in incognito mode. You have to explicitly allow the setting highlighted in this screenshot (available from the URL "chrome://extensions") http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/0om09caa/20110215_135721_Selection_001.png http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/0om09caa/20110215_135721_Sel...
- arkitaip 16y agoIs there something similar for Opera 11?
- freddealmeida 16y agojust wondering what happens if you block google.com? is that a meta-block
- jackcat 16y agoPositive move by Google, which should help the best content to rank in search. However when Google start using this feedback data directly in their algorithm there are two dangers, which both can be overcome: 1. Abuse by SEOs trying to get their competitors blocked 2. Bad use of block data on a site wide basis in the search algorithm. Eg just because certain pages on a site cause users to give block data doesn’t mean other pages on that site contain unique useful content. High volume publishing or community sites will have a large degree of noise, but due to nature the cross section of society as members there will be also valid useful content in the seams. One approach is to let individual users block sites forever (as the extension now) but use the block data on a page, not domain basis in the search algorithm. Individual pages can also increase in quality over time (the qoura business model) so changes in page content needs to be considered too. The Internet is a better place with non editorial user generated content (hacker news is user generated) after all the human race mind based knowledge is a not all published online. Google just needs to figure out which pages really add value in that specific search no matter which domain they sit on.
- username 16y agoFinally I can block ycombinator.com Thank God!