On Valentine’s Day, Google released a trial extension for Chrome which allows users to block any website from showing up in Google’s search results. The love-hate relationship with some search results has bothered users in the past. I know I’ve come across many sites before, wondering why they would ever show up in search results. With this extension, my search problems will hopefully go away.
The new extension, dubbed Personal Blocklist, will allow users to block any search result they feel that shouldn’t show up in search results. If you block a result, it will end up blocking all results from that domain. Don’t worry, they aren’t gone forever. You can easily unblock any blocked domain by clicking the extension’s icon.
You can also have the blocked results show on the search engine result page by clicking the “show” button. This show button is similar to the feature that Google has when it finds duplicate results i.e. “repeat the search with omitted results included”.
This experimental extension will only affect your search results, but could be deemed as a possible source of input for search engine rankings in the future. This extension is a good way to block sites that don’t provide any useful results or just seem like spam.
Do you think this will help Google cull out the spam? Or is it another tool people can abuse to improve their search rankings?
