With regulatory authorities clamping down on Google from every direction, the tech giant has been scrambling to make itself as transparent as possible so that users would not have to worry about how their data is being used. The Google Search feature, the central and formative service that the company provides, is also being made more transparent with a feature that is known as “About This Result”, and it is essentially meant to give you more information about websites so that you can be sure that they are legitimate and that there would be no chance of your system getting infected with any kind of malware all in all.
This feature has been tested before, and it involved three dots next to each search result (instead of cached and similar drop down menu button) which you could use to launch an overlay that would tell you a lot about the site in question. According to SERoundtable, some of the information provided includes when the site was first indexed, whether or not the search result is part of some kind of a promotional ad campaign as well as whether or not the site has been verified by your browser as being completely secure to visit without a shadow of a doubt.
This is a very interesting move on Google’s part as the company is clearly trying to be more open with users when it comes to ensuring that they would always be in control of the information that they are receiving. However, some users are complaining about the fact that Google is not giving exact dates for when sites ended up getting listed, instead giving an approximation of how many years ago the site ended up being indexed if the period of time is that long. Still, the fact that Google is doing anything at all to improve transparency is quite heartening to see, and it will make a lot of people hopeful for the future.
This feature has been tested before, and it involved three dots next to each search result (instead of cached and similar drop down menu button) which you could use to launch an overlay that would tell you a lot about the site in question. According to SERoundtable, some of the information provided includes when the site was first indexed, whether or not the search result is part of some kind of a promotional ad campaign as well as whether or not the site has been verified by your browser as being completely secure to visit without a shadow of a doubt.
This is a very interesting move on Google’s part as the company is clearly trying to be more open with users when it comes to ensuring that they would always be in control of the information that they are receiving. However, some users are complaining about the fact that Google is not giving exact dates for when sites ended up getting listed, instead giving an approximation of how many years ago the site ended up being indexed if the period of time is that long. Still, the fact that Google is doing anything at all to improve transparency is quite heartening to see, and it will make a lot of people hopeful for the future.
