UI fun: Remove result
One request we sometimes hear is for the ability to modify Google results, especially to block unwanted sites. A few eagle-eyed people may have noticed a user-interface experiment on Google that adds the ability to remove results. Here’s what you’d see. Imagine that you did the search [lynx paw clipart], and you notice one particular result that looks spammy:
You check the cached page, and you notice that if you turn off Cascading Style Sheets, there’s a bunch of spammy text:
At that point, your options would normally be to 1) ignore that result, or 2) report the url to Google via our spam report form.
But if you’re in this experiment, you’ll have newfound powers. Click the “Remove result” link and with one click you can drop that url from your search results. It looks like this:
By default, it will only block that url for that particular search. If you’re really annoyed, you can click “More options” and you’ll get two more choices: block this url from all future searches and (my personal favorite) the ability to block the entire host from all future searches. Here’s what it looks like:
Before I tackle some questions, I want to send mad props to the people who worked on this in our New York office. This is one of my favorite UI experiments; it’s neat to give users the ability to modify some parts of Google, and I especially like the Ajax-y aspects of it. Okay, let me try to anticipate some questions.
Q: Why don’t I see “Remove result”? I want it! I want it baaad!
A: Dude, did you not read the last paragraph? It’s an experiment; if we showed it to everyone, it would be a beta. 
Oh, alright. Here’s a tip. Go sign up for My Search History/Personalized Search. You don’t have to store your searches, but you will need a Google Account.
Q: How exactly do I try this out?
A: If you have an email address like johnpublicuser@gmail.com, you should be able to go to http://www.google.com/psearch and sign in with “johnpublicuser@gmail.com” and your password–make sure to click “Remember me on this computer.” If you don’t have a Gmail account, you can create a Google Account at https://www.google.com/accounts/ . Once you are logged into your Google Account, click on “Personalized Search” on the left-hand side:
Once you are in Personalized Search, you should see the Remove Result link any time that you’re signed in.
Q: Are you going to use this data to improve general search?
A: It’s too early to say. It’s still an experiment that may not even launch; it depends on how people like it. The form or format could also change as well.
Again, thanks to the people who worked on this. I’ll be curious to see whether people enjoy it.
Zach Inglis Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 10:37 am
Great idea. I was thinking about it the other day.
Nima Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 10:52 am
Interesting and useful for personal search results. However, if you wanted to use it for general Google results, I would assume you need to have some human intervention to investigate the flagged sites. Doesn’t it need an overwhelming resources?
Matt Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 10:59 am
Just to reiterate this test, if Alice removes a url from her search results, it won’t affect Bob’s search results. Nima, you would definitely need to have a lot of trust in that data to use it for general search quality, and it’s early to even be thinking about that. For now, it’s an experiment to see how people like it.
NFFC Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:07 am
If I removed Google from Google would the universe [as we know it] cease to exist?
AltherrWeb Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:08 am
That’s nice and all, but it only helps me not see the spam. Hopefully in the near future you can see what sites get blocked wide-scale and implement your results the way you do by monitoring what sites get clicked in the SERPs. Great start, I love new Google stuff!
jimbeetle Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:15 am
Two quick questions: Is the universe of users who might see this all users or only those signed into their Google search account? And, a bit like Yahoo! My Web’s “Block” function, eh?
Matt Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:17 am
It would only disappear for you, NFFC.
jimbeetle, this is mostly for people who are signed into their Google search account. There’s some similarity with Yahoo, but then there’s also some similarities to the voting buttons we’ve had in the Google toolbar for the last 4-5 years. 
Jeremy Zawodny had a good post a while ago about how search engines often are testing ideas in parallel, and how things that look like they are a reaction to one engine are really things being developed at both places at the same time.
Scoreboard Media Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:19 am
Matt, did you really just say “mad props”? Have you been moonlighting at Oakland nightclubs lately? If I see you replacing “I’m Feeling Lucky” with “The Shizzle”, I’m going to request an intervention.
In all seriousness, great new feature and I hope it aids your team in SPAM-hunting.
graywolf Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:32 am
Let’s hope people don’t click the ‘remove’ button on their competitors. I can imagine an experiment like ‘miserable failure’ where people go on some semi organized crusade to affect the data mining that’s going on.
Ed Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:36 am
Really, please: do this for real! I get so annoyed by the spammy links that come up some times. I just want real information, not an advert for an unsafe version of whatever I’m looking for. Could it be tied up to the spam report fundion (which should be more prominently displeyed on search results anyway)?….So that you could have a “Block this link and report as spam” button
Nima Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:39 am
I understand that it is an experiment. But I thought the ultimate objective is to recognize the spam sites and phase them out which is a step to the right direction. Even though it may be too early to trust the accumulated data and have it implemented.
So, what if I remove a site from my search results, and then that site fixes the spam problem (either they just fix it by will or thanks to your new re-inclusion program after they get banned)? Would that site be listed in my personal search results again or I have lost that site for good?
Tobias Kluge Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:45 am
Matts, I like this idea. This should be working - and be used to remove the trash of the web.
Hope, you’ll get it working in a usable way asap.
So a normal user - like me - can work against this spam poluters.
Is there another way where “we” as normal users can help Google to clean the web?
Best regards,
Tobias
Matt Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:53 am
Tobias and Ed, I just added an extra question with more info and a screenshot for people who want to try this out. graywolf, we’re definitely aware we’d need to be able to handle that kind of thing without problems.
DaveN Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 11:54 am
what if 10,000 people removed google.. methinks a test is inorder
DaveN
Wit Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 12:00 pm
Are these “blocked” urls fed to the various serps quality control teams perchance? Hope they don’t get overworked
Harith Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 12:03 pm
ok.
what am I doing wrong here (:(
I only get this menue without “Personalized Search” link:
—————–
Edit Personal Info
Email address
Password
Try New Services
Gmail
orkut
Google Alerts
Froogle Shopping List
Google Groups
Google in Your Language
Delete Account
Delete all account info
Delete Personalized Search
—————
anybody of you guys can help.
Thanks.
GoogleFan Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 12:14 pm
Hi, I use Personalized Search but I am not seeing “Remove Results”, although I really would like to. However, even though I’m using the US interface I’m in Europe, could that be a reason? Thanks in advance for an answer.
Matt Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 12:44 pm
Harith, it looks like you’re already signed up for Personalized Search, because you get the option “Delete Personalized Search”. You and GoogleFan may want to make sure that you sign out and then sign back in again.
Andi Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 12:54 pm
If you must have an account and accounts can be evaluated (profiled)according to the liklihhood that they are real people, then the aggregate data will work well for cleaning up spam entries, far better than any profile produced on the sites in question. People 1, Bots 0.
The Y toolbar can unblock sites very easily, I found this out when I accidentally blocked my own site while testing the toolbar. I would guess that “unremove” is a feature of remove…
Beth Abernathy Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 1:10 pm
When I search for “search engine” I got 463,000,000 results. Then I removed “google” using “For all searches, remove all pages from http://www.google.com” and I got the same number of results with Google removed. Maybe I am doing something wrong - prolly so.
Harith Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 1:18 pm
Hi Matt
Thanks. Did as you said and now I see it “Remove result”. Great option!
Wish I have another link which read “Remove result and submit a spam report”
Steve Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 1:25 pm
I think BetterSearch 1.9 is blocking it from working in Firefox, nothing happens. It works in IE. I like it.
Andrew Hitchcock Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 1:47 pm
Hey, this is pretty neat. I did the test query that you showed and went through and removed some results. Hopefully this information will eventually be used to thwart spammers. Right now I’ll probably only block sites that are easily recognized as spam (like http://buy-viagra-online.example.com/), because some sites might repent (if they have hidden text).
Also, I’m not sure what you can share, but I’d love to hear more about the infrastructure that allows all these personalized searches. I’ve read the PDF about the Google search cluster design, but it seems like it wouldn’t work as well when you get highly personalized results. I have some ideas about how it works, but if you can tell us about anything, that would be nice. That said, personalized searches are really working well for me now. I occasionally get some really valuable results that would otherwise be way down in the search pages.
Andrew
IrishWonder Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 2:01 pm
This reminds me of another infamous “experiment” on Blogger with the Flag button - I can bet the result will be just the same.
Richard Evans Lee Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 2:52 pm
An attractive idea but how often do you conduct the same search? And how many irrelevant junk results do you get?
I repeat few searches, except for news. When I get hit with junk sites it is often pages and pages of them. It would only add to my annoyance to spend time eliminating them from future searches.
Worthy and interesting effort though. Maybe it’ll help others more than myself.
Liam Morrison Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 2:57 pm
I think its really useful. But its use goes beyond removing spammy sites. You can remove links that may not be spammy but are just not relevant to the context in which you are doing the search. I’ve already noticed that doing this can surface useful stuff that you may not have noticed because it was buried further down the serps.
Proud Canadian Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 3:50 pm
Hummm….
So maybe it is time to remove the not-so-smart filter you just introduced a day ago. It improves quality very little if any….
Example: KW: sex
http://www.google.ca/search?q=sex&filter=0
http://www.google.ca/search?q=sex
What has changed?
Hummmm…
Same Sex site (www.samesexmarriage.ca/) removed…
Money other examples of “improved quality” can be found with almost any search….
JamesL Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 3:53 pm
I like this, I like it a lot. A step in the right direction.
Tant Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 4:01 pm
Matt just out of curiosity, and as you you have been using the voting buttons for the last four years or so.. do more people hit the smiley face, or the sad face? I don’t think you’d be given too much away and I’m more interested in human nature than machines.
GoogleStockIsAGreatShort Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 4:01 pm
Ooo you should get the Noble prize. Bad bad bad extra text. Crush those small businesses and poor people Google. Crush them!
I use yahoo and msn search. They are superior to the extremist, ant-small business censored results at Google.
J de Silva Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 5:45 pm
I am one of those people who requested this “remove result” feature many months ago and I am really glad Google has implemented this recently.
I wanted it quite badly because there are a handful of web sites that keep popping up in the Google SERPS for my searches that have banned users from my country.
Thank you for this very useful option.
Dan Thies Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 9:36 pm
Matt,
I will definitely enjoy this. As I mentioned in Berkeley, I see a lot of these “keyword driftnet” sites clogging up search results across all the major search engines, and some types of search are nearly impossible. Give me the ability to permanently remove domains from “my” search results, please.
Try searching for a PHP script to do *anything* - outside of a few (identical) listings on the big script archives (please donate a Google appliance to Hotscripts!), you get nothing but robo-spam. The new robo-spam trick is to scrape the software archive sites and throw a big Adsense box on top of the thing… please thank the paid search guys for buying all that spam, BTW.
Just don’t let anyone talk you into baking this into the regular search results without some serious thought about the concept of a “trusted user.” Community spam filtering works marginally well for email spam. Community filtering would work fine for search, for about 2 weeks, until someone starts a sweatshop in Jakarta to filter out their competitors… all of them.
NullVariable Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 10:33 pm
Ok I don’t understand why no one understands this feature yet. Nearly every comment refers to this as a way to block spammers for everyone else too. This type of system would be flooded almost immediately with spammers trying to take down sites that rank above them. Its possible that this removal could be a tiny factor in the results or perhaps Google could go towards a more SlashDot style method where you can filter at certain levels based on moderation and friend links.
But I still don’t understand what wasn’t clear about this post in that this is a ‘personalized’ result! Oh well its no wonder the spammers abound. People are still stupid enough to click on thier links.
NV
Connie Said,
September 23, 2005 @ 10:37 pm
Frankly looks like a waste of Google resources to me. How many average searchers are going to look at a cached page? Then change their browser settings to look at the page again? Thats something only webmasters would do IMHO.
Harith Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 1:10 am
Matt wrote:
“At that point, your options would normally be to 1) ignore that result, or 2) report the url to Google via our spam report form.”
Talking about reporting spam
The straggle between Google´s engineers and spam sites or sites which are not in accordance with Google´s quality guidelines has always fascinated me. Whenever there is an algo changes or implementation of new spam filters, I spend sometime studying the final effects. You develop a passion for finding spam sites which escape Google´s filters …”You filthy spammer they gonna get ya” you think.
It seems our friends at Google Quality Search Team are really good at hitting sites with advanced spam techniques; hidden text, doorways, redirect javascripts, duplicate contents, scrapers… etc..
However when it comes to some sites with primitive blackhat SEO techniques, I guess there is still a looooong way left to go, IMO.
What did I mean by “primitive blackhat SEO techniques”? Allow me to illustrate that:
While I was searching for ways to treat acne (for my daughter) I run a query (acne treatment) and found this site listed as #16 (depending on which datacenter your google.com hits). At the bottom of the front page you find the followings text in
Whether you call it acne, adult acne, acne rosacea or acne vulgaris one thing remains constant, the desire to get rid of acne through treatment, control and management of your acne condition. The successful treatment and management of acne, acne rosacea, acne vulgaris and adult acne can be accomplished through an understanding of the various medications and treatments used in the control of adult acne, rosacea, acne rosacea and skin conditions that co-exist with acne, such as lupus, eczema, psoriasis and seborrheic dermatitis. The information on acne, acne treatment, and acne-related lifestyles on this web site can help in the treatment of acne and acne rosacea. Acne sufferers who modify their lifestyles can experience a greater degree of acne clearing. Acne prevention and skin care involves the treatment of the symptoms of acne. In the treatment of the acne symptoms that are most visible and distressing, one must always seek a solution to their acne by treating the cause of acne! If we find and treat the cause of adult acne, then the symptoms of adult acne can be managed through proper acne control! Positive acne skin care can lessen the need for harsh, aggressive, and sometimes dangerous acne treatment medication.
Its something like such bla..bla..bla text that I consider “primitive blackhat SEO techniques”
Moreover and just under the said text, I found two links pointing to the same front page which they are on, something like this:
link#1
Rosacea, Acne Rosacea, and Ocular Rosacea
xxxxxx-Ltd III effectively improves the appearance of rosacea. Rosacea Skin Care and Acne Rosacea Treatment information and pictures available.
link #2
Dermatitis and Lifestyle Treatment Information
xxxxx-Ltd III effectively improves the appearance of seborrheic dermatitis, eczema, and psoriasis. Skin Care and Acne Rosacea Treatment information and pictures available.
You see what I mean?
Its my hope that Google´s engineers will be soon able to write algos/filters to remove such sites from the index.
Matt, Thanks for the bandwidth.
GoogleFan Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 2:48 am
Thanks, Matt! That worked. I had signed into another account and then signed back in to my old one, without actually sigining out.
Submit Shop Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 3:15 am
This option gives us the right to see what we want. If we do not like something we should not be forced to see.Great option
Web Design Ireland Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 5:13 am
This sounds like a wonderful feature, however I wonder will Google see it as a downvote for a site and alter its results based on the removal of such sites.
Nathan Lanier Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 8:40 am
I like the idea, but I don’t know that I would use it enough to warrant its existence in general search results. I’ve developed a pretty keen eye for simply ignoring spam/extraneous websites as I scan results. It certainly can’t hurt, though.
Nice work.
Sun Kim Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 9:53 am
Yahoo! has had a “block” site feature for many months now. I think blocking the whole site makes more sense than blocking just the page by default.
> what sites get blocked wide-scale
You are assuming that users will block a site because it is spam. There are many other reasons besides spam why one would block a site. It could be a porn site, it might be a competitor, etc.
TDavid Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 10:28 am
Just a head’s up for Opera users: the “Remove result” link doesn’t show up there for some reason. So if you don’t see it then switch to Firefox or IE.
Stan Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 2:02 pm
Does anyone know how to bring back a link that you have removed from your results?
I removed a site as a test and now there seems to be no way to undo the operation.
Joan Said,
September 24, 2005 @ 2:43 pm
what if 10,000 people removed MSN.com… forever ban
Andrew Hitchcock Said,
September 25, 2005 @ 12:29 am
Connie, do you propose that Google only ads features that benefit the mainstream users? As I power user, I would hate that. That said, I wish there was a way to block higher level domains, and not just the subdomain. All the spam sites have names like cheap-hotel-rates.hotel-sites.biz, where each result has a different subdomain, making it really hard to block with this scheme.
Harith Said,
September 25, 2005 @ 1:10 am
Intelligent Remove Result
That’s what I wish to see
Its a filter that remove and mark “Offensive” in future, for example all results of the kind:
- If the page contains more than 4 of the searched keyword/keyphrase in my query
- If the page has more than one link pointing to itself
- If the page has a hidden text
- If the page is a duplicate of other existing pages on the web, then I wish to see ONLY the older version (original).
- If the page is just a scraper (I can see that Google Team has already developed great “Scraper-filter”
- If the page contains any javascript redirect
- If the page has more than one [h1] [/h1] tag
- If the title tag of the page contains more than one of the searched keyword/keyphrase in my query
- If the meta description tag of the page contains more than one of the searched keyword/keyphrase in my query
Any other suggestions to be added to my Intelligent Remove Result
Martin Said,
September 25, 2005 @ 4:42 am
Thanks for the info TDavid. I was wondering why I do not see anything. Matt, what’s up with Opera support?
I would like to see this expanded with a forth option:
For all searches, remove all pages from logicway.com
Sites doing this subdomain styl spamming usualy have a horde of these. This way, one can get rid of them in one operation.
I would also welcome a way set one of the advanced options as the default. So I could remove the suckers with one click instead of four.
BTW: please get rid of the onload handler in the body tag of the result page (and the start page). I am on dialup. If I search and see, that I have misspelled something, every change I do in the search field be nulled when the result page finishes loading. This document.gs.reset() is just plain annoying, I fail to see how it makes google better for its users.
GoogleFan Said,
September 25, 2005 @ 7:49 am
I seem to have the exact opposite problem from Stan. I’ll remove a link, but as soon as I redo the search, it’s there again . I’m using Mozilla 1.7 if that’s any help, but I think I had the same problem in Explorer too.
GoogleFan Said,
September 25, 2005 @ 9:14 am
Just an update: I’ve tried it with two other Google Accounts I have , in which personalized search wasn’t enabled so far. When i enabled it there, it worked. However, when I use the account where it’s been enabled for a long time , it doesn’t work. I would rather use that account though because it’s got all my other history and stuff. Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know the bug exists and I hope it gets fixed soon.
Another suggestion I would is to include the option “remove all pages from this site for this search”.
Matt Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 1:26 am
I’ll ask about Opera. I’ve used it in Firefox quite a bit with no problems.
Also, it might help to sign out and sign back in again if you don’t see the test the first time.
John Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 1:39 am
I’ve removed results for several months using the CustomizeGoogle extension for Firefox. It also lets me import and export filters from friends. Using it’s powerful features makes me also use regular expressions to remove spam in a more general fashion.
And best of all - It lets me remove Google ads! LOL When are Google going to implement this as an option????
Christopher Oezbek Said,
September 27, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
How about a small usability improvement for this UI experiment?
More specifically:
After pressing remove result it is highly likely that the users wants to remove all pages from the webaddress. It is really awkward to move the mouse from all the way to the right (”More options”) to all the way to the left to “For all searches…”.
There are a lot of sites that I would like to remove from my searches and at the moment it is very painful.
It would be awesome to share the “removed site knowledge” = anti-del.icio.us.
And yes: Great feature! Make it a beta and give us Opera support!!
Bob Aman Said,
September 27, 2005 @ 5:40 pm
Oh, delightful!
Now, to remove all instances of shoptag.com from my search results as punishment for sending me an unsolicited request to link to them in return for a list of “101 job interview questions most often asked by potential employers.” (?!?)
Why would I even want a list of job interview questions? Oh well, it’s a huge improvement over penis enlargement offers anyhow…
First spam mail that Gmail missed in ages. Kudos to the googly guys for the great record. Now if only I could use a bayesian classifer to sort my mail (like Popfile) instead of all of these crazy filters. That would truely be email heaven…
Sebastian Said,
September 28, 2005 @ 12:52 pm
OT: It would be nice to have a way to consolidate different accounts. Is’s a mess to sign in to groups, sign out and sign in to mail/talk, then sign out to check AdSense (soon) … and every once in a while the cookie launches unexpected prompts like the superfluous questions whether I’d like to move all group subscriptions from account1 to account1 or not, with both buttons not functional
Dave Said,
September 28, 2005 @ 5:56 pm
The feature is a step in the right direction. Of course, the next phase would be a tool that once you hit a page from your search results you could rank your own percieved relevancy from what you were looking for to what Google found.
A 1-10 relevancy slider could be pretty useful to do the trick… It’d be a challenge, but imagine unique algorithms for each search user based on their search techinique…
Lenny Said,
September 30, 2005 @ 8:24 am
Important:
I found that I can restore a result by searching for something that would normally yield that result and clicking “show omitted results” at the bottom … then it will show the removed link and give you an option to restore it.
Black Hat Seo Boy Said,
October 3, 2005 @ 7:44 am
Looking at the way it is done it shouldnt take to long to write a script to interfere with the results like the G-Man did with the ridiculous flag blagger failure.
Jack Judy Said,
October 4, 2005 @ 2:36 pm
I accidentally hit “remove result” for a result I use all the time.
Now I find I cannot “undo” my errant “remove result”.
Can anyone tell me how to fix this?
Joachim Said,
October 7, 2005 @ 7:26 am
I definitely want this.
Registering an account to get this feature did not work for me :-(.
Will Hunting Said,
October 7, 2005 @ 8:46 pm
Cool! How many people do I need to use remove result to get my competitors wacked? I need to know so I can start recruiting now.
Gianluca Brugnoli Said,
November 19, 2005 @ 2:20 pm
I dont’t know if it’s a coincidence, but in January 10/2005 I sent this email to suggestion@google.com:
“Hello everybody,
My name is Gianluca Brugnoli, and I’m a senior Information Architet and Researcher Professor in Milano, Italy. I have a little suggestion to improve your service.
When I do my web searches sometimes I need to exclude some sites / domains (the whole URL) from my results. There’s a lot of garbage and fake pages around the web that makes some searches really boring and difficult.
This function/option will be really useful the refine the search, in order to cut-off some garbage, fake pages, or useless domains.
On the user side, this function should be used in the same way I can see more results from a specific domain. For example, with a message like: “[Exclude all results from: http://www.thisdomain.com” under the single result line.
An improved way to access this function is to create / save a personal
black-list of domains I don’t want really to search at all.
I wish you will find this useful.
Best regards
>>> Gianluca Brugnoli”
Ok, I agree that this not the invention of the wheel, and that many people made the same request. But finally, they did it! Almost in the same way I’ve described it in my email. It’s a nice surprise for me.
Thanks everybody.
Ciao
jesus Said,
November 24, 2005 @ 8:50 pm
I SPEAK SPANISH BUT PLEASE TALME HOW I CAN RASE MY SAERSH
Arcade Games Said,
November 29, 2005 @ 8:42 am
Seriously, lol, to compete for keywords like Arcade Games is crazy now days because of all the black hat sites that are flooding the comptetion, making it really hard for us real people to rank NORMAL.
Does anyone know how FAST that remove result page works? Like if you submitted a TRUE spam result, how long would it take before they are out of google?
Sarkis Said,
January 3, 2006 @ 12:43 am
I don’t understand what wasn’t clear about this post in that this is a ‘personalized’ result! Oh well its no wonder the spammers abound. People are still stupid enough to click on thier links.
Chung Said,
January 4, 2006 @ 6:15 am
Matt,
Considering that most people don’t even know how to use a search engine yet. Giving more options for people its a good idea but they won’t know how to use it anyway.
bob Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 11:33 am
Hi. A great idea. but I am puzzled. An I working this feature wrong because I still get the same sites appearing in searches after I remove them.
e.g. Search for ‘excercise dvd’ say
results include a page from Amazon.
Click on the page, go back to search page.
Go to Search History. Click remove on the left margin, Tick the Amazon box
Is told ‘One site is removed’.
Redo search. Still Amazon appears.
Ideas anybody. using firefox or Opera, No difference.
ta
BOB
Bob Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 12:51 pm
Hi.
Pardon me if this repeats.
I may be using this feature wrong because I cannot seem to get it to work.
If I conduct a search on Google. I see some site I don’t ever want to appear again in my searches. so I open that link. Then when I next look in Search History I will see the search I did and the site I visited. So I check the Remove box and I should never see it again.
Is that right?
Here is my experience.
I do a search for “ecercise DVDs” say ,and get results including Amazon.com.
Just suppose I don’t want ever to see Amazon’s site in my hits. I click on the hit link, go to Amazon. Back to the search and open Search History.
I click on Remove in the left margin and check the box next to Amazon.
Now I do the search again and Amazon is still in the results.
so what am I doing wrong? Or did I not understand what this feature is doing?
thanks
BOB
Andrew Said,
January 24, 2006 @ 12:53 pm
For Stan and Jack Judy:
Here’s how you undo/de-remove a result:
http://www.google.com/psearch/remreshelp.html#how2
Bob Said,
February 4, 2006 @ 9:35 am
Hello again.
Can anyone explain why I am not seeing any box marked ‘remove result’? I see ‘remove items’ at the left margin. But so far it does nothing
to my searches.
Nor do I see a yellow box with the options outlined above.
BOB
vikas amrohi Said,
March 22, 2006 @ 8:32 pm
Hi Bob ,
Well this becoz of different Datacenters of Google I also came across with the same prob and found on one IP I m able to see the remove results box and on the another IP I m not . Well this is a good technique to show the bin to all the non satisfying results.
Cheers
VikasAmrohi
Indoxyl Designs Said,
April 29, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
Wow. This is a great feature that I did’nt realize until today (D-oh!). Anyways, this is a great feature.
I think that Google should penalize sites that use ‘display:none’ for more than ‘x’ amount of content, this way, users dont end up going to spam filled site!
Cheers!
Paul
Al Fox Said,
May 9, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
I enjoy its ability to kill spammy stuff as well as some parody websites I’d rather not run into (take for example a .org that parodized a well-known .gov). Unfortunately it hasn’t been showing up lately, even though I am logged in. I hope it hasn’t been removed.
norz Said,
May 29, 2006 @ 11:05 am
It’s not showing anymore (but I see the “note this” link). What’s going on?
Isulong Seoph Said,
June 13, 2006 @ 1:43 pm
Great feature! I was a bit confused to make this thing work but eventually, I’ve made it through. I’ve been seeing a lot of spammy search results and it’s been always a pain hitting on the back button. This thing will save so much valuable time and a lot of bandwidth
gio Said,
June 23, 2006 @ 1:45 am
But how would you know the real result if you keep on removing search result items? is this one of Google’s plan to push the relevancy issue by involving searchers(feedbacks) in judging what is relevant?
Eric SEO Said,
June 29, 2006 @ 10:18 pm
IMHO, the experiment only shows the limited capacity of google to filter out spammy sites and to directly point who are good ones. This only means that black hat seos can still prevail and control search engine rankings. I wonder there are still a lot of spammers around.
alex seoph Said,
July 5, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
i may say with that google feature only shows that google as of now cannot exactly determine a spammy site.
just my ops..
Benj Arriola Said,
September 6, 2006 @ 5:41 pm
DaveN always cracks me up, on podcast or even on comments. Funny guy.
black hat seo Said,
September 11, 2006 @ 2:33 am
I hate google - and all the sites are full of spam - have a look at this website about black hat seo Black Hat SEO, you can see everyone is filling google with spam and they do nothing about it, because their google adwords appear on all the spam pages and get clicked so google are making money out of all the spam and scraper sites.
Benj Arriola Said,
September 15, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Does this still go through some type of manual approval and inspection? And not just based on a restriction result algorithm? Maybe people are still needed so they can check if their site is being SEO Sabotaged. And maybe the site of the reporter should also be looked into.
user Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
its not working…
instead of remove result i see note this…
fletcher mak Said,
June 25, 2007 @ 12:34 am
This is greate idea to filter spamy results, can i ask when such type of features come in effact.
norz Said,
July 5, 2007 @ 11:46 am
I still don’t see it. However, there’s a firefox extension that about the same: customizegoogle. Its settings are stored locally (within firefox) but can be exported.
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
Blake Newman Said,
December 26, 2007 @ 8:41 pm
I apologize in advance if I missed a comment or response. But, what stops a competitor from removing their competitors from the results page? Is there any type of appeal process or moderation?