Can we teach Google Search sites that we prefer?

Question

I know we can teach Google which sites we want blocked, but is there a way to let it know what sites we prefer.

For example, when I search for a movie title I would rather Rotten Tomatoes to come up instead of (or before) IMDb.

erikxiv · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-16 07:21:37Z

up vote 5 down vote accepted

There was an experimentaly feature called Google Preferred Sites in 2009, but it seems it is no longer available.

answered May 16 '12 at 7:21

erikxiv
26716

Wow, that page shows the same movie titles example I used. Too bad they killed it. – Louis May 16 '12 at 15:04

MaryC.fromNZ · Answer 2 · 2012-05-16 11:30:31Z

You could make a Google Custom Search Engine for yourself, and use the setting to favour the sites you've listed but not restrict the search to them.

You need to access the search engine somewhere - sticking it on a blog (private if you wish) is one option.

This has been useful for certain tasks like searching for left or right-winged sources during a writing class. Just not quite for an everyday, general purpose engine.

Shyam Sunder · Answer 3 · 2012-05-16 07:44:58Z

Well there is no special feature but you can use this trick.

While searching for a movie, say "Dark Shadows" you don't want results from imdb.com then use the following search dark shadows -imdb.com

You can use this with multiple sites as well

dark shadows -wikipedia.org -imdb.com -darkshadowsmovie.warnerbros.com/ -youtube.com -www.guardian.co.uk

Further if you want to search from only one particular site then use: inurl:imdb.com dark shadows

And with multiple sites: inurl:imdb.com || wikipedia.org dark shadows

3 Answers