Google Launches Chrome Extension for Reporting Spam Websites

Google has created an extension for Chrome, which lets users easily report spam search results by adding a special link next to them.

Google Chrome is the fastest growing browser at the moment and according to Net Applications it had an 8% market share in September.

Because of it's sandbox model and other features, Chrome has seen a lot of adoption from security conscious people, if not as their main browser, at least a secondary one.

With the new Chrome extension, dubbed "Google Webspam Report," the search giant hopes to some of this security-aware user base will help it better the search experience for everyone.

The extension adds a "Report spam" link to every search result, right after the "Cached" and "Similar" ones that already exist.

Clicking this link takes users to a special form on the Webmaster Tools service, who's fields are automatically populated with the search result link, the search query terms used and the search page where the result was displayed.

Users can select from several types of bad behavior for the reported link, such as hidden text or links, misleading or repeated words, page does not match Google's description, cloaked page, deceptive redirects, doorway pages, duplicate site or pages or paid links.

If none of the above cases applies, users can check "Other" and manually describe the problem. Additional details can also be provided regar

"We thoroughly investigate every report of deceptive practices and take appropriate action when we uncover genuine abuse.

"In especially egregious cases, we will remove spammers from our index immediately, so they don't show up in search results at all.

"At a minimum, we'll use the data from each spam report to improve our site ranking and filtering algorithms, which, over time, should increase the quality of our results," Google explains.

The extension also adds spam report links to Google account search history, Chrome browsing history, as well as a toolbar button for reporting the currently opened website.

The extension sounds like a great idea and could be used to get the poisoned search results generated by black hat SEO campaigns removed faster. A Firefox port shouldn't be hard to do and we expect that some developer is already working on it.