Google has disabled the ability to star search results from within the Google search results page. As you may remember, Google replaced SearchWiki with starring results back in March 2010, about 16-months after Google launched SearchWiki. Now that Google has re-introduced a way to block sites in Google, Google has determined you no longer need to star search results from the search results page. This does not mean that you can no longer see stars in your Google search results. It does however mean that you will no longer be able to star results directly from the search results. Instea [...]

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Ready for do-it-yourself spam fighting? Google has discussed giving searchers the ability to remove domains from its search results. That's according to Matt Cutts, Google's top spam fighter, who's been posting frequently in a Hacker News discussion about Google's search quality/spam blog post from Friday morning. In the discussion, Hacker News user "bradly" asks if Google would consider letting searchers remove domains from search results themselves. Cutts replies, "we've definitely discussed this," and seems to hint that some kind of announcement may be on the way: Matt, Can you spe [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: Personalized Search | Google: SearchWiki | Google: Web Search | SEO: Spamming | Top News

Google's SearchWiki, which launched 16 months ago to a mix of fanfare and controversy, is a thing of the past. The ability to re-order, remove, and comment on search results has been replaced by a scaled-down version that Google is simply calling "stars" or "starred results." According to today's announcement, the Stars feature will allow users to bookmark preferred pages so that those pages will show up when similar searches are done in the future. Google's example is a search for "nfl": Starred results will appear above and separate from Google's algorithmic results; using this fea [...]

Related Topics: Google: Search Customization | Google: SearchWiki | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search | Top News

After months of requests from its users, Google has finally added a way to turn off its SearchWiki tool. But, while you can "check out" of using SearchWiki, your customized search results don't leave. More on that in a moment. Users can turn SearchWiki off (and on) by clicking on the "Preferences" link next to the Google search box. Down near the bottom of the preferences page, you'll see a check box that disables SearchWiki. But all this checkbox does is remove the ability to use SearchWiki; if you've voted pages up or down, or left comments in the SearchWiki system, those will sti [...]

Related Topics: Google: SearchWiki | Google: User Interface | Top News

Brian Ussery noticed Google has changed the way you can share your SearchWiki notes in the search results. If you are logged in to Google and you have notes on search results, you can share those notes with friends. Here is how: (1) Search on the query at Google and the results should show up with a link at the top to "share these notes": (2) Click the link and a URL will show up in a text box, copy and paste the link and send it to a friend: (3) Here is a preview of that result for you to see: [...]

Related Topics: Google: Personalized Search | Google: SearchWiki | Top News