Google Personal Blocklist Chrome Extension Fights Content Farms

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Google took another step to stomp out content farms Feb. 14 by launching a

small application for its Google Chrome Web browser that lets people block

Websites from their Web search results on Google.com.

When installed by a user, the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension will let users click

the “block url” button to block a site so they won’t see results from

that domain again in their search results on Google.com.

Personal Blocklist users may also undo blocks and edit blocked sites by

clicking on the extension’s icon in the top right of the Chrome window.

What clicking the block URL does is feed Google information about blocked

Websites. Google will study the “resulting feedback and explore using it

as a potential ranking signal for our search results,” wrote Google Principal Engineer Matt Cutts.

What Cutts means is Google is asking for users to help weed out content

farms, which he defined as “sites with shallow or low-quality

content.”

For more, read the eWeek article: Google Chrome Extension Punts Content Farms in Search.

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