Now it’s possible to block sites from search results

Over at Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz wrote about Google.com’s new feature which allows searchers to block specified sites from appearing in search results. Here’s an example image, taken from the article:

As you can see, the ‘Block all mattcutts.com’ results has appeared next to the cache links. I searched for Matt Cutts in Google.co.uk to see if anything similar has rolled out, but there’s nothing as of yet (11th March 2011). Here’s the image from Google.co.uk.

This is Google taking closer steps towards greater personalisation, but forum opinions suggest that this could be used as a weapon against competitors if Google factors this into its ranking algorithm: if a site is blocked by huge numbers of people, what’s wrong with the site?

On the plus side, it’s good that we’re allowed more freedom to choose which site we want to block and it’s timely with the latest Panda update. I personally don’t like to see masses of spammy content and would gladly block a number of sites that appear in search results.

If this serves to improve the quality of results, then so be it. It’s a good thing and I look forward to it being rolled out in the UK.

Article source: Google Lets you Block any Site from Search Results