A couple of new engines (actually they’re pulling results from GYMA) have come out that show trust scores for search results.
Compete - uses three visual icons next to the results:
-
Trust - a check mark means the site is trusted. An exclamation mark means to be cautious.
Traffic - shows traffic rankings, but only for popular sites.
Deals - shows if the site has some kind of shopping deal available.
Scandoo - focusses specifically on security risks. They also offer topic categorization info. Look out for the little spider, that means “use caution.”
This is a pretty useful idea, though I wonder how most users would respond to it. Will they never click on a site if it is tagged as suspect? And if so, is that the correct way to handle security issues? Might it be better to continue with the current method of integrating trust issues into search results and demoting risky sites?
The other thing that’s tricky about something like this is the added visual cluttering of the UI. If you’re going to add something to the results, it better be very useful. For instance, I don’t think knowing about deals is useful. I also don’t think traffic rank is useful on a regular SERP. And do safe sites need a safe icon? How about just pointing out the very risky sites? And maybe instead of putting an icon, how about circling it and writing “danger”? Don’t make users read the legend to understand what the icons mean.
But it’s good to see companies tackling this issue. I hope both companies are successful in their efforts.