Personal Blocklist - a new useful Chrome Extension

Finally a way to block Expert’s Exchange and Facebook from showing up in Google’s search results (well at least on my computer), the rest of the world will have to have to soldier on or take the same action as me and use Google’s new domain blocking extension for Chrome.  It’s called Personal Blocklist and it’s available on the Chrome Web Store.

I spend a lot of time searching each day and in particular search for quite a lot of techy programming and web design stuff.  One thing that really bugs me is seeing the same sites pop up again and again and when I click through to the result (sometimes accidentally), not find the information I was looking for.

Expert’s Exchange is probably a great site if you subscribe and have access to the solutions you’re after.  But I’m the kind of person who doesn’t want to subscribe to a site just to find something out.  There are plenty of other sites out there that will no doubt have the same information and will provide the answer to me immediately, no messing around, no signing up or registering first.

I stumbled into another site today as it happens hoping to read a story about a bunch of new HTC smart phones that are about to be launched.  I had read a different version of the story on Tech Crunch and then clicked on a link to FT.COM and lo and behold, no story and was instead met by a “subscribe” button.

Personally, I don’t think subscription only content is the way forward.  Generally speaking (and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking this) people searching for stuff on the Internet want information for free.  In fact easily accessible information is one of the founding principles of the Internet and to my mind, placing a subscription page directly behind a search result is exactly the same as having a locked door behind an open door - which is exactly the same as a locked door and that really isn’t very helpful.  Another candidate for the personal blocklist would be some of the big recipe search engines.  You're looking for a recipe and end up in the same recipe search engine - not helpful at all!

Whoops, went off at a tangent a little there.  Back to talking about this domain blocking extension.  If you haven’t already checked out Google’s Chrome extensions then head on over to the web store and have a look.

I think it might be an idea to use this one carefully though.  Whilst a page from a site might not be of any use to you there may be other pages that are and blocking the whole domain may not be the best idea.  As you’ve gathered though, subscription only info sites are a personal bugbear and I’ll be sure to use this extension to make my search time a little more productive.

Matt Cutts has also indicated that Google might one day use personal blocklists as a ranking signal in future versions of Google’s search algorithm.  One of a vast number of parameters I’m sure, but it would be interesting to see how direct feedback from the searching public in this way could effect the search results.  It sounds to me like a truly democratic tool but I have to wonder if it may be open to abuse in some form or other.

Finally, I have to point out that there’s one drawback with this extension.  It currently doesn’t save your blocklist with you’re Google account.  As someone who uses multiple versions of Chrome on multiple machines this is quite a big stumbling block.  Having enjoyed carrying my bookmarks, apps and settings around with me for some time now, it just seems to make sense that your personal blocklist should follow you around too.  Let’s hope this feature is added later though as it certainly seems a few people are asking for it.

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