Comments on: Blocking Content from SERPs

By: Naveen

Naveen — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:07:00 +0000

There is a nasty aspect to this new feature. Assume that i have friends across different geographies and can get about 200 of them to block some particular site, presumably my competitors. If that is to affect the SERPs, then my competitors too would be interested in knocking me off by getting, say 500 people, to knock me off. This will lead to witch-hunting and instead of focusing on creative and positive energies for doing the SEO, the focus will be on saving oneself (which will not be possible) and inflicting maximum damage to the competitors (depending on your networking strength).

So, definitely NOT a good idea if this is to affect SERPs. Now, let us look at the other side of it. Considering that there are many SEO companies around the world which can make even the insignificant websites to rank higher (we all know that this is possible), the genuine user is left aghast if he does not find the right site for the first few SERPs. Then, there would certainly be some site which he or she would never like to see again in SERPs and that space can be utilized by the other ones. So, Google gives the handle to the users to determine which sites are unnecessarily occupying the SERPs space for him and block them.

So, the conclusion is that if this feature is to be retained, it shall not be allowed to affect the SERPs.

By: Ramesh Sanapala

Ramesh Sanapala — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:05:00 +0000

It’s a surprising news for users, google is playing around with giving users the privilege to block a site from the serps

By: Chris Butterworth

Chris Butterworth — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:05:00 +0000

It wouldn’t be surprising if Google was using a whole range of usage statistics collected from Chrome browsers to in some way shape ranking. This is just another form of social. Though it would be concerning if ranking could in some way be negatively influenced.

By: Zac Grace

Zac Grace — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:02:00 +0000

as it states in the blog post already :) we were corrected by Alistair a while ago

By: Pieter van Diggele

Pieter van Diggele — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:56:00 +0000

This was announced on the official Google Blog on March 10 2011: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-more-of-what-you.html

By: Alistair Lattimore

Alistair Lattimore — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:21:00 +0000

Zac,

I don’t think it is a test, that blocking functionality was first rolled out as a Google Chrome extension and then appeared in the search result directly later.

In an interview between Danny Sullivan & Matt Cutts at SMX Seattle this year, Matt confirmed that having a high number of blocks will affect your ranking. I doubt you can just buy 500 blocks and have an impact, as Google more than like take into account your past behavior as a trust factor.

Al.

By: Amardeep Singh

Amardeep Singh — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:38:00 +0000

Wow….It could be a great signal for Google to identify usefulness of a site to users. Google is really working hard to show quality results to their users and this will help them….