What effect do the toolbar smilie faces have?

[Dpeper]

Ok, on the google tool bar if you change the options on it you can add the 2 little voting smiley faces and vote for a page when your on it or vote against a page. Does this effect PR. If not what effects does it have. Any help on this would be great. :)

-Donny

[caine]

can't imagine it would affect PR.

If it did, it would be the scourge of Google, people would be hammering the buttons, for their own sites, and against their competitors.

[Dpeper]

It just seems like it has to have some effect on something, i mean why would they put useless buttons up there.

-Donny

[brotherhood of LAN]

>useless

they could always compare the :) and :( with pagerank....and on scale, it might point out that PR is not reflecting the results that the average visitor wants

my 0.02 anyway, google cant rely solely on pagerank all its life - and lately seems to have had its ears wide open in regards to what the public wants in a SE

[Grumpus]

I read something on that the other night (I forget the source location, so I can't post it). It said something to the effect that Google is collecting the data from those votes (as to whether the site was a useful/correct site in your search term) but at the current time the are not using the data for anything. At some point they might use it for (I'm trying to remember what it was...) Something along the lines of fine tuning results, adding rank bonus, and a couple other things. Any or none of those things might ever come into use. I'd expect that the biggest problem is spamming the SMILEY on your own site and spamming the FROWNY on the guy right ahead of you in the results.

At any rate, right now it does nothing but send your search phrase, the URL and your vote to Google, but they're doing nothing with it at this time.

G.

[Dpeper]

Well, they could just log the ip of the voter and allow each ip only one vote per year per site or sumthin like that. right?

[dstanovic]

Dpeper,
<<Well, they could just log the ip of the voter >>

That wouldn't work to well on dial-up service or any other service that you do not have a long term static IP ;)

[4crests]

I heard from a reliable source that they don't use the voting data at all. But they are logging the voters ip and using it to ban sites who are voting for themselves and against their competitors.

just kidding (:

[lynxeffect]

LMFAO

[Dpeper]

Now that would be funny if they did that... heh

[martinibuster]

The voting thing is too open to unscrupulous behavior. I hope Google doesn't run with it.

[Dpeper]

So no one has any Factual Information on this? that can be backed by links? ;)