Google Releases Chrome Extension to Block Spam from Search Results

Are you tired of eHow articles dominating your Google searches? Sick of that same site showing up every time you search for something? Had enough with Yahoo Answers and the inane, unending drivel it seems to drum up from the dregs of the Internet?

The Google Web search team has launched a Chrome browser extension today that will likely become your best friend then. The extension lets you block search results from showing up, meaning you never have to trudge through the murky depths of content farms again.

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There’s been a lot of hubbub lately over the state of searching for content on the Internet. According to many in the blogosphere, search has suffered at the hands of content farms like Demand Media, which produces thousands of pieces of content daily. By sheer numbers alone, the content is guaranteed to show up in  your search results.

Google recently addressed the issue, with principal engineer Matt Cutts writing that attention has shifted to this content showing up in search results and that, while “English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago", Google “can and should do better.” This, it seems, one step in that direction.

Cutts introduced the extension today on the Google Chrome Blog explaining the greater context of the tool:

We’ve been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we’re exploring is explicit feedback from users. To that end, today we’re launching an early, experimental Chrome extension so people can block sites from their web search results. If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.

The extension, available for download now, inserts a link below search results for you to block that particular domain.

From that point forward, whenever content is blocked, it well alert you at the bottom of the page. With a click, you’ll be able to see what domains were blocked and given the choice to unblock them. The extension is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

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