Remember the
voting buttons that are part of the
Google Toolbar software?Actually, some webmasters are still clicking on them every day while visiting their own sites, in a shortsighted hope that it will help boost their search engine rankings.And you know what one of the ways to have happy users is? Give them the power. Of course you wouldn’t be so silly to give them the actual power, just give them what seems to be the power.That’s what seems to me Google did with their voting buttons. There are many who make their day when they can vote against the pages of their competitor. Many weirdos who spend minutes of delight every day voting against the pages of the proponents of thoughts they disagree with. They feel the power. They are happy. Google is happy. Everyone is happy.
What maybe some long time ago might have been a good idea of validating the search results, but abandoned ever since, why do you think they didn’t remove it from the toolbar already? With voting buttons, Google is making some of the users happier and emotionally more stable (for the lack of better words, but I might ask some psychiatrist for professional comment). Moreover, the toolbar voting buttons are adding to the mystery of the Google toolbar as some kind of magic ap in the eyes of less sane webmasters (those who preach by and pray to pagerank among other things).
Public appeal to Google: please let the voting buttons where they are. Do not remove them. Everytime someone clicks on the voting button, I feel relieved. Everytime they click against my page, I feel relieved they didn’t spend that time improving their own web so that it is better than mine. Everytime some psycho clicks on the voting button to put people down because they have different opinions, I feel relieved they didn’t spend their time doing something much more dangerous.
Fellow webmasters, please vote YES for the voting buttons on the google toolbar 
.