Mar 11, 2011 10:09 GMT  ·  By
Matt Cutts' site probably isn't going to be one of the most blocked domains
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   Matt Cutts' site probably isn't going to be one of the most blocked domains

It seems that the fight against poor quality and down-right spammy websites is heating up. Google is now rolling out a new feature that enables users to permanently block domains from search results. Google already experimented with this via a Chrome extension, but the new feature is now built into the search engine.

"You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. Many times you’ll head right back to Google," Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang, Search Quality Engineers at Google, wrote.

"Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general," they added.

"For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results. Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to 'Cached' that reads 'Block all example.com results'," they announced.

Once you start blocking domains, they will no longer show up in your search results. However, you will be notified each time results are pulled from the list. You can also manage your blocklist via a Google dashboard.

The new feature works in Chrome 9 and above, IE 8, Firefox 3.5 and all newer versions. Google plans to expand to other regions, it's only available in the English version of Google.com, and support other browsers in the future.

It's important to notice that the Block link doesn't show up all the time and for all domains. This means that it won't clutter up the search results even more.

Instead, Google is taking a smart approach and displaying it whenever you return to the search page, a good indicator that you didn't find what you were looking for.

Once people start using the feature on a regular basis, and there's no reason why they wouldn't, some sites may start to see a big difference in the amount of traffic Google sends their way.

Clearly, if a good number of people use the Block link, it's going to have a much bigger effect than the "Farm" algorithm update that demoted poor quality sites.

For now, Google is not using the block data for ranking or as a direct indicator of quality. It didn't do this for the Chrome extension either, but it found that sites affected by the algorithm update were, in general, the ones that people blocked.

Google is keeping an eye on the new data as well. If it determines that it could incorporate it as a ranking factor, it could have a big impact.

But as with anything else that involves humans, this could be abused so maybe it's best that Google simply monitors how the feature is received by users and what sites are blocked, perhaps looking at other ways it can improve its algorithms to demote those sites.

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Matt Cutts' site probably isn't going to be one of the most blocked domains
You can manage the blocked sites via this Google dashboard
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