Link farms frequently make the top of the search engine ranking results by using what’s known as “black hat” tactics. While they may have had a little success in the past, Google is seriously cracking down on this kind of spammy activity. A link farm is a site set up specifically to place links on other sites in an effort to boost search engine rankings. When an SEO company tries to establish multiple blogs or sites for the purpose of spamming those links and raising the ranking of other sites, it is used primarily with the aim of improving search engine rankings.
The overall intention is to fool the algorithms used by Google into thinking the site receiving all those one-way links is actually a site of importance. However, Google now seriously police this kind of activity in an effort to uncover these kind of tactics. When they do catch someone using similar blackhat methods, they’re likely to ‘slap’ the guilty party – or penalize their rankings dramatically.
Google Personal Block List
In an effort to combat this kind of activity, Google has released a browser add-on named Google Personal Block List. This add-on is designed to work for the Chrome browser and allows users to block results they don’t want to see. At this time the extension isn’t available to those people using browsers other than Chrome.
For example: if you are searching for a relevant site for something, you might happen to stumble across a link farm filled with spammy links. You can use the Google Personal Block List to block those sites from appearing in your search results in future.
This is a similar tactic to programs you can use to block certain email addresses from sending spam into your email inbox. The same technology has now been designed for search users when browsing through search engine results, if you happen to be using Google Chrome.
Types Of Sites Google Wants To Stop
Webmasters and SEO companies have learnt over time that Google values content-rich sites over all others. In an effort to once again beat the algorithms used to determine ranking results, many webmasters immediately began using computer software to generate barely-legible content that contained the keywords they wanted to target. This content is often so poorly written that it contains no value to the user at all, but helps the webmaster to achieve the rankings they wanted only.
Stumbling onto sites that contain this kind of garbage is frustrating for users seeking real information. Google’s objective with the Personal Block List is to try and reduce the amount of SEO content farms filled with badly-written content and replace them with sites of relevance to users.
Will Google Personal Blocker Work?
So starting with Google Chrome, users will now be able to block sites they find to be spammy in some way. Those Websites that are flagged will be tracked and investigated by the big guys behind Google’s search algorithms thus making it possible for search users to contribute to helping the organisation reshape the way search engine results appear on SERPs and hopefully increase the quality of search results. Furthermore, this move will give the search engine giant a bit of insight into which sites are little more than link farms or SEO content farms and which ones contain useful content.
So, what about the millions of users who surf the net using other browsers? In time, Google will no doubt release further extensions for use in other browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. This should hopefully speed up their efforts to weed out bad websites and increase the relevance of search results.
This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a css company, and who also consults for a company that offers a to do list application for businesses and individuals.
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fantastic sams
April 6, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Thanks for making understand the real meaning of black hat techniques. If Google will stop them, they will open another door. I think it is regular fight.
Francesca StaAna
April 6, 2011 at 8:33 pm
I agree. Users really need to utilize these blocking tools in order to help Google bring useful websites to the forefront. Time to banish those spammy sites to search results page #25 or something.
Admin
April 14, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Why page 25? Lol
Mag
April 7, 2011 at 11:16 pm
I like the idea of this, but the legitimacy of it’s use is a little weary of the consumer. You know, because so often the added security measures sometimes backfire. But, if they can get it to work hopefully it will really cut down the amount of spam we see on the regular.
Jane Cooper
April 8, 2011 at 11:11 am
There is no point in doing this, if they will block this then people find something else, there is many ways to optimize your site in search engine that it won’t be enough to stop seo guys.
Luqman
April 14, 2011 at 9:49 am
I hope Google will release the extension for other browser’s as soon as possible.
lizard wijanarko
April 16, 2011 at 12:37 am
@ luqman : for firefox and internet explorer i use http://www.kynetx.com/personalblock/ (alternative). but it can only work for google in .com. You can also use in Yahoo and bing…
Larry - Maryland Web Designer
April 23, 2011 at 6:15 am
It’s like anything Google puts out…it’s done with good intentions, however, how well it works will remain to be seen…Using the end users to flag the spam sites is probably a good idea, but what is put in place after that from the back end…We’ll have to see how well this works out.
Rita Dawson
April 30, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Block list can be a great tool and can prove something good if used. Hope people use these tools. Thanks for sharing such informative post.