Take a Company Out of Your Search Results!

By on 02/17/2011


Did you search for something and up came something else totally irrelevant? That’s because there are a lot of companies out there that are good at tricking the search engines.  You may have heard about the JC Penny black hat search issue last week where they paid a company to submit hundreds if not thousands of links back to their website.  They came up number one for a multitude of basic search terms before Google dug them a one way hole down to page 85 in the search engine results.

Now, Google Chrome is offering a new plugin to help users combat this type of behavior.  But here is the big question, are they doing this to help the user, or is that just a spin to get users to help Google offer better search results.  You have to imagine you are searching and finding things irrelevant, deleting them in Google Chrome, and automatically sending that to Google.  Shouldn’t you be getting paid for that!

Here is a quote directly from the google blog:

We’ve been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we’re exploring is explicit feedback from users. To that end, today we’re launching an early, experimental Chrome extension so people can block sites from their web search results. 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.

So here is my concern.  What if you don’t find a result you feel is relevant, based on the search you entered.  Maybe you block that result, and Google gives that site has a mark against them.  Or maybe someone starts using it for the wrong reason, competition even, and Google penalizes your site.  Or lets go a step further and you make a client angry, they block you from their result.  If all these ‘marks’ add up, before long all the hard work you put into building an online presence is damaged.

So there are two sides to every story.  This can help users and Google deliver a more personalized search result, but when you take it out of a 100% computerized algorithm and start putting in emotion, the landscape changes a little.  Good or bad, not sure yet?  This might be a step to help the small business, but might end up backfiring just as easily!

6 responses to “Take a Company Out of Your Search Results!”

  1. Great write up indeed! You touched on points that most of us don’t even consider. It’s really an amazing time in their lives, but they must be prepared as you mentioned. Keep up the fantastic blog, and God bless.

  2. Great write up indeed! You touched on points that most of us don’t even consider. It’s really an amazing time in their lives, but they must be prepared as you mentioned. Keep up the fantastic blog, and God bless.

  3. Sami Date says:

    hi

    i read your notion; i haven’t used the extension, but i know there is this feature of blocking sites in search results of google; and to use that, you need to be logged on to your google account. and i think that’s where the results are customized for you and the blocking is not going to effect others’ search results.

  4. Sami Date says:

    hi

    i read your notion; i haven’t used the extension, but i know there is this feature of blocking sites in search results of google; and to use that, you need to be logged on to your google account. and i think that’s where the results are customized for you and the blocking is not going to effect others’ search results.

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