Google Preferred Sites

I just read over at Micro Persuasion that the Google’s experimental “preferred sites” feature is now available to all users via Google Labs. The feature allows users to specify web sites that receive preferential treatment in their personal search  results.

I like the feature in theory–it moves some of the control from Google’s black-box relevance ranking algorithm to the user, which is where I think it belongs. I would like to know exactly what “preferred” means–I still am wary of opaque personalization algorithms.

In practice? Well, I can’t tell you, because I couldn’t get the “My preferred site” links to show up, either on Firefox or Internet Explorer. Would be curious to hear from others who have.

Here’s a screen shot from Google:

It debuted in January but at the time was not available to all users. Now anyone can sign up for the feature via Google Labs.