by Thomas E. Foss

Created on: March 13, 2011

Google recently introduced a new feature that allows people to block websites from showing up in search results. This feature has long been demanded and is surely a result of the increasing tendency that spam websites have developed solutions that make them show up as relevant results to searches, even if they are not.

To use the new block feature, you must be logged in to a Google account. When logged in, each search result should come with the option “block all domain.com results” (right next to “cached”). Click on that and you’ll first get a confirmation message, or the option of regretting what you just did. If you choose to block the website, it will no longer show up in searches on Google.

The next time you make a search where a blocked site would have showed up, Google will inform you that a number of hits have been removed because the websites have been blocked. You will even be able to look through the blocked results to see if you made a mistake. If you realize you’ve made one, the link to “manage blocked sites” will be right next to the information on how many results have been blocked. It is also always possible to click on “search settings” in the top menu of Google to get into your Google account where you can modify the list of blocked websites.

Google’s primary argument to implement this new feature is – as stated on Google’s blog on March 10, 2011 – that it will “provide an even more personalized and enjoyable experience on Google.” Google also reveals on their blog that they will look at what people block, to see if the new feature could be used to improve overall search results in Google. The idea here is clearly that websites that are blocked on a large number of computers are blocked for a reason. This could be true in a number of cases, including blocking of the previously mentioned spam websites.

It is likely, however, that people will block out a lot of other things. People who are into black metal may wish to get rid of search results that deal with pop music, for example, while people feeling conservative, may wish to filter out the most radical left-leaning blogs. Pornography, moreover, would also likely be filtered out.

 If this would be used by Google to rate what search results the search engine should return, we might end up with a search engine that is very politically correct, that is too main stream and that is eventually also not as rich as it could be. If Google is to do this, finding the right balance will therefore be very important.

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