Internet giant Google has just launched a new feature that will allow users to block certain sites from their search results if they aren’t providing relevant material.
But Stewart Media founder Jim Stewart says the new feature will mean businesses need to rethink how their websites appear in search results so they aren’t inadvertently assumed to be spam.
“I think businesses need to make sure their descriptions on search pages are relevant,” he says.
Descriptions are the pieces of text that reside under a URL in a Google search page. These are written by the business to show Google users what their page is about and what they offer.
“If you are heavily reliant on Flash, for instance, your description tag might read “loading, loading, loading”. That’s the first impression someone gets of your site, so if they don’t like seeing it, they may block it altogether and you’re not going to turn up for them.”
Google announced the new feature overnight in a blog post, saying it would make search results more relevant for users as they would be allowed to determine what they do and don’t like.
“Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to ‘Cached’ that reads, ‘Block all example.com results’,” Google said.
“The next time you’re searching and a blocked page would have appeared, you’ll see a message telling you results have been blocked, making it easy to manage your personal list of blocked sites.”
This feature was previously available as a Chrome extension, but is now a native Google feature.
However, there are questions about whether the data Google receives from this new feature will be pumped back into the search algorithm – this would mean that searches that are blocked multiple times may appear lower in search pages.
Google said this morning while it will not use the domains people block to power its algorithm, it nevertheless warned that it will look at the data and take into account users’ decision to block URLs in the future.
“If that were the case, that it powered the algorithm, then it could be left open to abuse,” Stewart says. “Google certainly does use a large amount of data it receives to power its search results.”
Stewart warns it would be easy to “spam block” a particular page and ensure that a competing company isn’t getting the search results it would otherwise. But as Google says the algorithm won’t be powered by the URLs people block, Stewart says there isn’t anything to worry about.
However, he says SMEs still need to make sure their sites are full of rich, relevant content.
“From a business perspective, you really just want to be ranking for things that are relevant. And if you’re not relevant, then that’s a problem. So you want to just make sure that your description tags are written well.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
