Google Toolbar to Combat Scraper Sites
A few weeks ago I downloaded Google Toolbar Version 4. 2 new features struck me:
- The toolbar can store your bookmarks if you have a Google Account.
- The toolbar has a type of predictive input (or autocomplete), so that when you type part of a keyphrase it will automatically suggest similar searches that have been conducted in the past.
The bookmark feature is a huge development for the toolbar. I have always toyed with the idea of creating a search engine with a toolbar plugin (big call I know 
). Users could rate a site, blacklist sites, highlight potential threats on sites etc.. This information would be fed back to the server to weed out the good from the bad based on human input. The biggest hurdle would be abuse of the system.
The new Google Toolbar may in fact work on a similar user rating system by monitoring bookmarks people add. This is fantastic as it could finally mean the end to scraper sites and automatically generated sites (ie. botsites, machine-generated etc).
Here’s hoping the system is in fact working this way. Perhaps in the future it can be expanded with the whole blacklist/threat warning ideas.. 