The SiteAdvisor browser plugin for IE and Firefox seeks to answer the question: is this website safe?

It has deployed (or will) a bot to join email programs on the site and see how much email is sent, as well as what the spamassassin score is for the emails.

digg story:

SiteAdvisor is testing all Web sites for spam, spyware, & safety threats. You browse and search as normal and their empirical data (green=good, yellow=caution, red=bad) appears in an icon in IE or Firefox & next to results in Google, Yahoo, & MSN. Every site gets its own site details page w/ in-depth analysis. They launched a slick redesign today.

The screenshot above (#2 and #3) shows what happens when you conduct a Google search with the siteadvisor option setting “display safe search URL highlighting” turned on. After installing in Firefox, I had to manually go in and turn this option on. Interestingly enough it even spiders the Google Adwords URLs and returns siteadvisor listings.

Aside: #1 shows a vanity search for my name now results in 200,000 results, next stop a quarter of a million (thanks for the love, Google!).

Owners of websites can register and leave comments about their sites. Registration allows leaving comments on other sites:

Our volunteer reviewers rate sites for downloads, e-mail practices, shopping experiences and more. (Become a reviewer) Reviewer comments will be posted below and can affect a site’s overall rating.

Other similar programs like Alexa which allows comments/reviews of websites can offer a third party perspective, but I often wonder how many of these reviews are truly unbiased. For example, there were three volunteers that marked google.com as spam? Huh?

The more reviews you write/submit the closer to becoming an advanced reviewer. There is also an option to skip the vetting period and become an advanced reviewer sooner which gives additional weight to those who specialize in spam, phising, fraud and the like. These people need to prove their qualifications by providing relevant links and max 100 words why they should be declared an advanced reviewer. I was tempted to fill this out just to see what it would take, but ultimately passed.

If I’m going to write a review of something it will show up here or on one of our other blogs where I can reference it for years to come and not depend on whether the site goes out of business, decides it is no longer an important feature, etc. If I was able to easily export functions like this, I’d be more likely to use them. I still registered but didn’t try leaving comments on any sites. It took me three tries to get past their hard to read CAPTCHA.

A confirmation email was dispatched which I clicked on and then went to a screen to edit my siteadvisor profile. I didn’t see much in the way of profile, only the ability to add a brief signature (links discouraged). I just put the words “Google me” because if somebody reading did, that would lead to learning more about me.

Overall SiteAdvisor does what it sets out to do pretty well. I found ratings for most of our websites (not all), the plugin design is clean and the integration with search is useful and non-intrusive. For newer netizens especially who are looking for additional information about sites as they surf them before submitting email or downloading this could be real hand.

The primary thing that keeps me from giving this an A grade is how reliable can this information be? Only as good as the bot’s last scan. A site could have a good rating but then change ownership or have some rogue element that still puts the surfer at risk. If they tackle this issue then they’ll really have a winner here. Grade: B+

• Ask.com worst, MSN best in safe search results study
• McAfee SiteAdvisor gives PCmag.com yellow warning rating
• PR agencies missing the boat on product reviews?
• Review: A bit clumsy and awkward hovering with Cooliris
• Helpful security, recovery and protection-related Firefox extensions
• Google’s “newfound powers”