How it works
For Beginners…
Search Thresher is a cool firefox plugin that enables you to filter search results. Filter is a dirty word to some people, but it’s a word that everyone understands, so we’ll use it for the sake of simplicity.
Without the extension
Without the extension, the search engine of your choice will return a list of search results with the results at the top belonging to companies that paid the most to be there – these are called sponsored links. Each result contains a title and description with a hyperlink from the title to the site. That’s it, nothing special and no element of trust is associated with any of the Web sites in the search results.
With the extension
With the extension installed, you get an icon beside each search result. Each icon is hyperlinked to a page which provides even more information about the site prior to entering it. Generally, this information will be related to industry standards and best practices that have been adopted by site owners.
Providing additional information to the title and description of a site in search results is useful for users who want to see if a particular site is accessible to them, independently verified by a medical authority, claiming to follow a code of conduct for advertising and so on.
Getting this additional information before wasting time wading through lots of inaccessible sites, or being exposed to inappropriate content, is the most powerful, scalable and standardised method of enabling trust on the Web. Thus making search results more meaningful and trustworthy.
These are just a few use cases of why enabling more trust on the Web is becoming increasingly important. Users may also wish to know:
- which sites claim to be mobile friendly (mobileOK), or
- which professional bloggers follow a code of conduct - how do you know that John the blogger isn’t really Mark who works for John’s competitor…
Can you think of other codes of conduct to help enable more trust on the Web?
www.contentlabel.org will soon be up and running - where you will be able to contribute to the Content Labelling / Search Threshing cause!
How can you tell if a site is trustworthy?
There are currently 3 different icons to help differentiate each level of trust. We’ve chosen to use the traffic light concept as it’s understood universally. That is of course, unless you drive in Italy where all colours equal ‘go faster’.
- So, search results with a green tick means the claims being made by the Web site owner has been verified by a trusted independent third party.
- Search results with an amber tick means the site owner is giving you their word that they comply with a specific industry standard, best practice or code of conduct.
- If a search result contains a red box with an X, it means that the owner hasn’t provided additional information, so you may or may not wish to trust it.
In our opinion, self-regulation (self-labelling) doesn’t work, or at least, enable ‘trust’. However, some people think it does so it’s important to support it by allowing Web site owners to make claims about their own content.
Make Sure you Adopt Standards and Best Practices!
It doesn’t matter if a site spends millions of dollars on search engine optimisation if they don’t enable users with more trust using a Content Label.
Before Filtering the Wheat from the Chaff…
The first screen shot shows how O2 demonstrates its commitment and conformance to Web accessibility standards. o2.com has been audited and certified by an independent trusted authority (Segala) in this space - hence the green tick.
The rest of the search results contain companies that do not demonstrate their committment and conformance to accessibility standards. These companies include T-mobile, Virgin, Nokia and Vodafone - all with a red X.
So, let’s see what happens when users choose to only see the sites which promote their committment to accessibility!
Show Me the Wheat ONLY!
The next screen shot shows what happens to Web sites that don’t use a Content Label to demonstrate their committment or conformance to industry standards or best practices. Even sponsored links dissapear from the search results. So, there’s no point in companies like T-mobile spending all that hard earned cash if users choose not to find them.
NB. not only are T-mobile, Virgin, Nokia, Vodafone and all other sites filtered out, but the T-mobile ‘paid for’ link dissapears also.
Content Labelling - For the Slightly More Technical Readers…
In its earliest days, W3C recognized a need to be able to describe content according to a defined vocabulary. This could be done for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, Web accessibility. The result was the PICS system which, despite early promise, has achieved limited support.
Content Labelling is being proposed for the W3C Mobile Web Initiative mobileOK, to help users find mobile friendly Web sites.As the use cases provided as Additional Information below show, the scope can be broader still encompassing digital rights management and metadata that allows a user’s choice of resource to lead reliably to related content.
Taking this a step further, we would like to enable trust for people through the use of unique online passports using Friend of a Friend (FOAF).
In essence what’s required is a way of making any number of assertions about a resource or group of resources. In order to be trustworthy, the label containing those assertions should be testable in some way through automated means.
These issues have been addressed in a variety of ways, notably in the W3C’s Semantic Web Activity. The development of RDF picked up where PICS left off (indeed, PICS-NG was an early moniker for RDF) and the potential for Content Labels, especially where the assertions they carry can be cross-checked by database look-up and other validation processes, now exceeds the early concept embodied by PICS. The need for a system to make assertions about a group of resources however means that RDF is not an “out of the box” solution (see Additional Information).
Search Thresher dynamically reads Content Labels based on the Semantic method RDF (Resource Description Framework). The extension automatically alters search engine results within the browser software based on personal user preferences, empowering users to see filtered results from any search engine based on Web sites that carry Trustmarks such as Segala’s for accessibility compliance, as adopted by organisations such as O2 and E-Consultancy.
How the Extension Reads Content Labels
- User searches a keyword using Google
- Before Google returns the results page, Search Thresher checks to see if any of the Web sites contain a Content Label link tag (see below) in addition to the title and description tags.
< link rel="meta" xhref="http://www.segala.com/labels/tcuk_label_001.rdf" mce_href="http://www.segala.com/labels/tcuk_label_001.rdf" type="application/rdf+xml" title="Segala label" /
- Pages that contain a link tag with Segala’s name space are highlighted with a green tick, all other link tags are highlighted with an amber tick. Sites that don’t contain a link tag are highlighted with a red box containing an X.
- Each search annotation (icon beside each search result) is hyperlinked to a page, providing more information about the site.
- Firstly, you’ll need to download and install Search Thresher, done? excellent!
- Next, Open www.google.com
- Search for mobilefriendly.org
- You should see the same results as the screenshot below
Content Labelling providers that independently verify a specific standard, best practice or code of conduct may wish to apply for a green tick to represent their conformance claims.
Fraudulent claim
It is possible to try and trick users into thinking a site has been independently verified. All that’s needed is a reference to the Segala name space in the link tag. However (and this is where the Trust comes in to play), if the Web site is making a fraudulent claim, Search Thresher prompts the user before the site is opened. Search Thresher checks against Segala’s data source to verify each Content Label to ensure they are legitimate labels before users enter a site. If a Web site doesn’t map to a valid Content Label a fraudulent warning page is displayed before you even enter the site.
Want to see how it works?
Notice this site is displaying a green tick which indicates it has been independently verified, so you would be inclined to trust this site. Fact is, this Web site is making a fraudulent claim. This is a Segala site which is real. However, we have purposely not created a Content Label for it to help demonstrate this functionality. The site CAN be trusted! 
To encourage mass adoption, Segala has launched a Segala-Certified™ Partner Programme which enables agencies and freelance developers to certify clients Web sites for accessibility compliance and soon, W3C Mobile Web Best Practices. This will help with the process of labelling as many sites as possible in a short time frame. We will soon launch Contentlabel.org to encourage industry to create new codes of conduct to enable better trust on the Web.
