Google tests voting toolbar

November 20 2001

Google has for some time now had a special Windows toolbar, a browser plug-in that enables Internet users to search for information with Google's search engine from the browser window itself.

The company is now testing a special version of this toolbar that lets surfers vote for the sites they are visiting.

If you find a good site relevant to your search, you may click a "happy face" logo. If you do a Google search and the results are really useless, you may click on a "frowny face" on the results page. The "frowny face" may also be used to report spam.

At Webmaster World a representative of Google writes that "[Google] wanted to give webmasters a chance to play with this. We won't use this data if would hurt innocent sites, but the hope is that it's a much easier way to tell Google what you like and don't like. We're trying to open up better channels so webmasters can give us feedback."

Google apparently has "several interesting tricks to prevent vote stuffing", there is no point in trying to manipulate results. For the time being, the voting will not affect the search result algorithm.

For more on the original Google toolbar, see Pandia Post No. 6
Google Toolbar
Google betatest toolbar

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