Way back in 2008, Google had a feature called SearchWiki that let you X-out or upvote search results. It was little used, but apparently the most frequent usage was to delete ExpertsExchange results. IIRC we ended up making some changes to webspam that resulted in ExpertsExchange links falling off the front page, and then SearchWiki was unlaunched because it was no longer necessary.
Sadly Google seems to have dumped SearchWiki. I noticed last week that the "X" button (which removed a particular page from the resultset) is no longer there. You can only upvote, not downvote ... which is stupid. I used the "X"-to-remove far more (generally to remove spammy SEO garbage) than I used the upvote box.
Unless it was being gamed by the SEO crowd, I can't understand why Google killed that feature ... it was the best thing they'd added to the core Web Search in a long time, and was a big step towards a sort of Customized Search which I've always thought could be Google's killer app. With all the information they have about accountholders, it would make sense to customize results depending on who's searching. For some reason they seem to be opposed to per-user customization of results, though.
At one time google did provide this, if you were logged in , there was an [X] option to remove that result from your searches, as well as a voting up and down mechanism. I think it was just an experimental feature, but I wish they would of kept it, and expanded on it. If google is reading.. please bring it back
How long did it take for expertsexchange to finally stop showing in Google results despite being super obnoxious? Yeah you could scroll way to the bottom, but that only worked if you came there direct from Google.
One of the cool things that Google provided during their SearchWiki experiment was the [x] button. An option to remove a site from further search results.
This could easily give some power back to the users to not get hassled by such spammy site, as well as give Google some inputs to take action against such sites.
According to that article BMW was breaching Google's guidelines. No such thing can be said for Experts-Exchange. The simple fact that you don't like Experts-Exchange should not be any reason for Google to remove the page.
I personally don't mind the EE pages. They tend to have good answers from time to time. I have a bigger beef with sites like mysqlperformanceblog.com that frequently get their search result pages indexed. Pointless crap.
Google used to have a forum tab for search results with only user generated content among discussions and forums! Damn, I still remember how sad and frustrated I was on the day they removed it with no explanation.
Having a big company behaving like a local one-- listening to the customer's opinions is really nice.
However, this is a feature that Google actually had. Why did you remove it? I accept the Search Wiki was not particuarly a success[1], but the remove option was very nice.
Alas, thanks for listening. I'll be waiting for the server-side option.
They use to for a short time, I don't recall if they ever said why they removed the feature from google search itself. This extension came after they removed it.
I used to maintain a website that gives simple definitions for terms, before Wikipedia was well-known. It had integrated Google Search, specific to the site. I just checked now (the site is still up, though unmaintained for a decade and a half) and the Google Search feature in fact does not work anymore. I have no idea for how long that has been the case. I'm apprehensive about clicking the links to AskJeeves and Fark still on the sidebar!
I remember you used to see experts exchange or the like come up in search results and you could block it right there, in your search results without having to go to a separate page. Since they've hidden it, I honestly thought they'd removed the ability to block websites. Thanks for letting me know I just have to hunt for it.
I wonder why they removed that option from search results?
This was a marketing feature more than anything else so google could boast about how fast their search engine was. However, it always had tons of usability problems for no added benefit to the user, especially when refining a previous search, or trying to retype some funky word you found in the results.
It was amazing to see similar code and to see how they approached things. Of course, if only really worked with snippets, but as a learner it was truly amazing.
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