Google on September 14 expanded the ability of users to veto search results that aren't useful. An option launched early this year allowing people to block unwanted results served up at Google's main search page was expanded to most of the Internet giant's online venues, according to search quality engineer Johannes Henkel.
"We've also started incorporating data about sites people have blocked into our general search ranking algorithms to help users find more high quality sites," he said. The option managed from a dashboard lets people block results so that links from that online domain will not be provided in response to future queries. "Sometimes you'll click on a result, find that it's not what you wanted, and head right back to the search results page," Henkel said.