Tag Archives: site blocking

Google

Build your own web naughty list on Google

4 Comments

Google first announced that it was introducing an option for users to exclude web sites from results in March of this year (Google lets you create your own naughty list http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/03/12/google-lets-you-create-your-own-naughty-list/). Then it disappeared, reappeared, disappeared and then reappeared for some people and only if you were logged in to a Google account. Now it is back for everyone. Run a search, view a result and then use the back button to get back to your results list. You should now see a link next to the result offering to block all further pages from that site.

Google Blocked Sites

If you are not already logged in to a Google account you are prompted to do so.

Next time you run a search that would normally include pages from a blocked site Google displays a message at the bottom of the results offering you the options to show the blocked results or to go to ‘Manage blocked sites’ where you can unblock them altogether.

Google Blocked Sites

You can also manage your blocked sites by going to your Google account dashboard.

Google Blocked Sites

Be warned: this does not only affect your results. Google.com is using this data as part of their general search ranking algorithms “to help users find more high quality sites”. This may be extended to other countries in the future. So don’t block sites unless you really mean it. If you want to remove a site from just one particular search then use the site: command prefixed with a minus sign in your search strategy. For example -site:wkipedia.org

The original announcement can be found at “Hide sites from anywhere in the world – Inside Search” http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/09/hide-sites-from-anywhere-in-world.html

 

Google

Google lets you create your own naughty list

8 Comments

You may have picked up the news that both Google and Bing have admitted to having whitelists of  ‘nice’ sites that manually override their search and ranking algorithms (Google, Bing Have White Lists Of Sites Not To Be Impacted By Algo Changes http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110310-175043 and Google contradicts own counsel in face of antitrust probe http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/11/google_admits_search_algorithm_whitelists/). No big surprises there, as many of us have suspected that was the case for some time, but Google now also lets you set up your own naughty list and block selected sites from your search results. (We’ve already been able to set up nice lists for about a year – Google SearchWiki replaced with starred results http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/03/12/google-searchwiki-replaced-with-starred-results/)

You first need to sign in to your Google account and then run your search as normal. For each entry in your results list there should now be a ‘Block’ option for the site.

Google Block Sites

Click on the block option and you will no longer see pages from that site in future searches. If you carry out a search that would normally contain pages from a blocked site you will see a message saying how many results were blocked. You can manage your naughty list and unblock sites by going to your Search Settings or clicking on the “Manage blocked sites” link that appears when you block a domain. Google says that it is not currently using blocked domains as a signal in search ranking but it may do so in the future.

Yet another way for Google to thoroughly mess up our searches.