Google Toolbars Voting Buttons

In December 2001, when there was no Digg or StumbleUpon, Google Toolbar launched a beta version:

A new version of the Google toolbar now in beta testing sports a new look -- happy and sad faces that let toolbar users rate web pages. (...)

Google says that excessive clicks are watched for. Google also assures that it has mechanisms in place to ensure good sites don't get penalized by competitors voting against them.

Here's how Google describes the feature: "Use these buttons to vote for or against a page or search result. Click the happy or unhappy face to tell Google that you like or dislike a particular page. You can also use these buttons to report especially good or bad results after you do a search with Google."

Matt Cutts explained at that time: "Right now it's just an experiment. Worst case, it's an easy way for people to report spam that we can handle automatically. We might see if we can improve our search with this data."

In 2003, when Google Toolbar 2 was launched, Google was still undecided: "This feature is currently in test mode, so you will not notice any immediate effects based on your action, other than experiencing a warm sense of satisfaction from having shared your feelings with people who really do care."

The tests must have been positive since the feature was included in the next version too. It's interesting to note that the mysterious feature continous to be available in the Internet Explorer version of Google Toolbar (Settings > Options > More > Voting), but it hasn't been included in the Firefox extension.


This small feature may have been responsible for detecting spam sites or for changing page rankings, but Google could resurrect it and make it a part of Google Personalized Search. They already show interesting pages related to your interests, these voting buttons could refine Google's data and improve the personalized search results.

Tips for Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar is one of the most criticized software created by Google (competing with Google Desktop), mostly because of the privacy issues generated by some advanced features. But Google Toolbar is also pretty useful. Most of these tips work with the latest version of Google Toolbar for IE (v4) and Firefox (v3).

1. I'm Feeling Lucky. Type your query in the search box and press Shift+Enter if you want to bypass the search results page and to go directly to the top result.

2. A new tab for my search results. To open the search results in a new tab, press Alt+Enter after you type your query. You can combine this with the previous tip: Alt+Shift+Enter will open the top result in a new tab.

3. Focus on search. If you want to go to the search box without using the mouse, type Alt+G (G is from Google).

4. Search Slideshow. If you want to move to the next search result without going back to the search results page, enable the Next / previous buttons:
Settings > Options > More > Even more buttons > Next & Previous

5. A better find-in-page. Most browsers have pretty poor options to find some words in a page. Firefox and Opera have inline search, but that's not pretty helpful if you want to find some words in a page, but you don't want perfect matches. Enable in Google Toolbar:
Settings > Options > More > Page Tools > Highlight search terms AND Word find
Now when you visit a page, type what you what to find in the search box, and click on the yellow crayon from the toolbar. The words found in the page will be highlighted in different colors, so it's easy to discover the interesting sections at a glance. To move to the next instance of a word, click on that word in your toolbar. To disable the highlighting, click on the crayon icon again.

6. Translation. Do you visit a German page that offers some interesting details about the latest Google Desktop vulnerability, but you don't know German. Just right-click anywhere in the page and select:
Page Info > Translate Page Into English
This should work for most languages available at Google Translate and Google automatically detects the language of the page.

7. Fixing typos. Maybe Firefox shows you the words that are misspelled, but Google can automatically fix the misspellings in a magical way.
Settings > Options > Features > Spell checker
Next time you type something in a text area, right-click on the arrow next to "Check" on the toolbar and select "Autofix". The green words are fixed by Google, while for the red words Google couldn't find a fix. You can click on the colored words to choose another suggestion.

8. Privacy alert. Google Toolbar pings Google's servers automatically to check for updates. If you don't want to send Google additional information, disable this features:
* Google-account related services: Bookmarks, Send to, Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail button
* PageRank (option when you install the toolbar; to show you the PageRank of each page you visit, Google Toolbar needs to send it to Google)
* Send usage statistics to Google (disabled by default)
Google says in the privacy policy that, except for the Google-account features, no other information is connected to your Google account, even though they store it in their logs.

9. Customize the toolbar. In Firefox, you can customize the toolbar to occupy less space.
Settings > Options > Layouts
A good idea is to select "Replace Firefox search box and hide Toolbar". How to restore Google Toolbar icons? Right-click on the toolbar, click Customize and drag the icons to Firefox's toolbar. This way you can occupy a single row for the toolbars. But what about other search engines? See the next tip.


10. Add any search engine. You just have to right-click on any search box, and select "Generate Custom Search". Any search engine can be added to Google Toolbar. Click on the arrow next to search box and select one before or after you type a query.

11. Built-in calculator. Type "87/9", "12 kilometers in miles", or "e^2" and Google shows the answer directly under the search box. (This option is available in the regular search box included in Firefox 2).