Remove and promote buttons - Google goes social

[johnnie]

I am seeing 'remove' and 'promote' buttons throughout the SERPS. They only appear when searching with &hl=en. Anybody knows what effect they have on rankings?

[James_WV]

They're a new feature from google - there's also a comment button to leave comment. At the moment all they do is put a site up or down a list depending on the user (you have to be signed into google to use this I believe) - they don't affect normal rankings. Google say they don't affect normal rankings, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that at some time in the future they will do - after all what better way to test relevance to users queries!

[Shaddows]

but I think it's a pretty safe bet that at some time in the future they will do

Sure they will, and when they do my competitors will start getting nuked. Mwahahah.

Think thats easily blockable? Then I will set up a company with employees who use an anonymised proxy service to set up accounts and kill competitors, gold farm stylee.

I can refine further until it becomes obvious that G would be STUPID to incorporate into results.

[skipfactor]

Surprised this isn't getting more play, FYI:

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[Quadrille]

but I think it's a pretty safe bet that at some time in the future they will do

Sure they will, and when they do my competitors will start getting nuked. Mwahahah.

That's exactly why it's a totally safe bet that at no time in the future will they influence the 'general' serps - popularity buttons are so, so easy to manipulate, as has been understood since the dawn of the web and latterly ignored by social networking sites; Google has much more sense than that.

Mind you, I am fairly sure they will use the information in some way ... if only to identify incurable popularity clickers ;)

[edited by: Quadrille at 5:30 pm (utc) on Dec. 2, 2008]

[tedster]

Since we have another thread about this, let's take all the remaining discussion there:

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