Google Finally Discontinues The Blocked Sites Feature

After over a year of the blocked sites feature not working, Google has officially declared they are discontinuing the feature — two months after Google promised it would return.

Google introduced blocked sites in March 2011 after struggling with various ways to allow searchers to block sites from showing in the search results. Google has tried browser extensions, SearchWiki and several other methods over the year.

Now, the only way to block search results is with Google’s official Chrome extension, or maybe some unofficial extensions for Firefox or Chrome.

Google said:

The Blocked Sites feature is no longer available. To block particular sites from your search results, we recommend the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension from Google. You may also download your existing blocked sites list as a text file.

For more details on how this feature worked, see this blog post.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: Blocked sites data had been used as part of Google’s Panda Update to fight against low-quality content. It wasn’t the only thing used, and Google still has some data from those using the Chrome extension. But given that people haven’t been able to use the blocked sites feature for over a year, it’s pretty clear that what was already a secondary factor in the Panda Update must have long since been reduced to practically no factor at all.

Related Articles

• A Year Later, Google’s Block Sites Feature Remains Blocked
• Google SearchWiki Launches, Lets You Build Your Own Search Results Page
• New: Block Sites From Google Results Using Chrome’s “Personal Blocklist”
• New: Google Lets You Block Any Site From Search Results
• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”
• Google: Ability To Block Sites From Search Results Will Return, But When?
• Panda 2.0: Google Rolls Out Panda Update Internationally & Incorporates Searcher Blocking Data

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.