If it makes you feel better, our first experiment along those lines was in 2001: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~cutts/toolbarbeta.html

Back then (and with "Remove result" and SearchWiki) it had issues because we were trying to get people to recognize spam, and people weren't that good at recognizing spam techniques like hidden text. The more recent complaints we've had are more like "here's content I don't like." So maybe it's time that we tried something similar again.

It's seems to me like an explicit "Report Spam" button would help. The problem with SearchWiki & "Remove result" is that they have many other influencing factors as to why people would click those buttons.

People are pretty good at recognising "scams", but you need to tell them that's what they're looking for, not just how the content makes them feel. It seems like the report spam button was a large factor behind gmail's spam filtering success. Would love to see the same approach applied here. I know I'd be hitting my report spam button in chrome pretty often :)

Here's a Chrome extension we wrote to allow explicit "Report spam" feedback: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhja...

I still feel like it's not simple enough to be practical. I'd only really use a button that submitted the form behind the scenes. I think the extra step of filling out the fields is likely to drop my submission rate down to times I really get pissed off :)

Wouldn't spammers just "Report Spam" their competitors?

If that strategy worked, spammers could use it in gmail to void spam filter utility. I'm sure the volume of legitimate requests would help drown that noise.

Once Google has significant amounts real human ratings on the usefulness of a site in general or the usefulness of the site given a specific search, machine learning techniques could then be used to predict the usefulness of unrated sites.

I just know I see a lot of worthless junky sites on the first page, and I wouldn't think it would be hard to recognize them using ML techniques, which requires training data.

So don't let just any random Joe provide feedback. Crowdsource it to longtime holders of Google accounts who've got a track record.

Recognizing that not all users are created equal is (IMHO) an incredibly powerful insight that Google and many other companies overlook. Qualified, technically literate users will be happy to volunteer, but you have to ask.

There are many dangers to this as well. Fundamentally, as soon as people are aware of the power they hold it will get abused. See: digg bury teams, reddit circle jerks, SEO link farms, etc. And the smaller the number of people that have the power the more likely, more dangerous, and more harmful their abuses can get.

I think the cases that Google breaks is that some people figure out some trick/technique that lets them become a small power circle, which they then obviously abuse. When Google works it's because they're able to algorithmically spread the power around and at scale see what is quality and what isn't. Therefore I think the better strategy isn't to concentrate power even within an "elite" class, in fact it's the complete opposite, it should be how to make sure the power is spread within the masses quite evenly.

I may come back and ask in a while, so I hope you're right. :)