A non-commercial Firefox extension that reads Content Labels is now available – the working name is Search Thresher.

In case you’re wondering, a thresher is a machine that sorts the wheat from the chaff ;)

How it works

When conducting a search using an engine such as Google, Search Thresher highlights Web sites that make claims about conformance to a standard, best practice or code of conduct. It does this by annotating each search result with a colour coded icon. Clicking on an icon provides more information about the claims being made. This means you can learn more about the trust that site owners wish to claim *before* entering their Web site.

In the example below we conducted a search for information about blogger and podcaster Tom Raftery. Tom’s own Web sites have been independently audited and certified for Web accessibility compliance and therefore annotated with a green tick.

Sites that don’t make any claims are annotated with a red X and sites which make claims about themselves receive an amber tick. More detailed information can be found on the Search Thresher site.

Screen shot of search results that highlight labelled Web sites with a green tick and sitse that haven't been labelled with a red x

The extension also allows you to filter the search results if you wish to only view Web sites that make claims about such conformance. In the example below, you can see that only Tom’s Web sites remain whilst everything else has disappeared. What a great way to filter out all those bogus blogs…

st-screen-shot-of-tom-raftery-filtered.jpg

It’s early days but the roadmap for the extension is pretty good.
The extension will be updated every month. Microsoft has agreed to pay for an IE plugin to be built, so it’s catching on quickly. When demonstrating the potential of Content Labels through the extension, folk at Google, Netscape, AOL, Microsoft and VeriSign thought it was hot!

Time to start updating this site – in the meantime you can learn more about how Content Labels work from the Search Thresher Web site (which is also an early draft!)

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Install Search Thresher Now!