Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
What does Google’s Personal Blocklist mean for Small Business?
Monday, March 28, 2011 by Michael Lewis
In the last few weeks, Google has made major waves in the search
marketing world. First, they released the
personal blocklist extension for the Chrome web browser. Then,
a few days later, they
revised the search algorithm to combat the growing power of
content farms. We will be dealing with the second issue in a later
blog post. This is a complex issue that is still playing out,
however the personal blocklist is something that is affecting
websites right now.
Understanding the Personal Blocklist
What a great idea. There are just some websites we never want to
see. The personal blocklist lets you block websites from ever
appearing in search results. If you search for a recipe, you know
About.com often appears on the front page of results. While
About.com is good for lots of things, we have found that it's not
always a source for good eats. The personal blocklist allows you to
exclude those results in the future.
This is not Google's first foray into personalized search. In
March 2010, Google added the ability to "star" search results.
These stars allowed a user to bookmark websites. They also give the
search algorithm a clue to the sort of sites and domains you are
interested in. Google has also been putting a lot of weight in
location. If you search "best stuffed breadsticks," it would be a
bad user experience to return a pizza place 261 miles away.
The blocklist takes the opposite approach to the stars. Right
now, Google is not using the blocklist to influence search results,
but they can. When you install the plug-in, you are informed that
it has access to Chrome's browser history and personal data on
Google.com. There is nothing stopping Google from taking
information from blocklists. If numerous people start blocking
southernfood.about.com, this might imply they are less important
than other signals.
Blocklists and Small Business
The personal blocklist gives users power to ignore websites in
search results. It has yet to be seen if Google is going to
integrate information from the personal blocklist into search
results on a larger scale.
However, it puts search marketing into a larger perspective. All
of a sudden we have to start considering whether a new bit of
content is going to get you blocked from search results. This is
the same thing we do not think many people using social media to
market their products forget about and something television
advertisers are slowing starting to understand. Media consumers
suddenly have a lot more power about choosing when they turn off
your ads. DVRs let television viewers skip ads they do not want to
see and the block button kills over aggressive marketers. The
blocklist kills websites that are gaming SERPs.
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