Green and red lights in searching.

I have collected links for 10 years, http://www.multifinanceit.com/. It started as a hobby, but as more and more asked for my collection and updated versions, I used the opportunity to build an ad driven website round the collection. What are my tools to uncover the net? I use so many, that I do not remember, and the tools differ all the times. Sometimes I follow links from great sites, and then I may find great sites. If I should search for African sites, I would start on the Central Bank web pages and follow links. So what does pagerank and Google mean to me? Google is my work horse, and I mostly find what I am searching on Google. In finance we used to use Yahoo, and when I doublcheck, http://www.twingine.com/
Search term: “Financial stability” I used to like the first hits by Yahoo best. I am told that the Yahoo directory is the best on China, and it was when I checked half a year ago. It was better than the Google directory and dmoz. But more and more young people (they are the future) told me to use Google, and now it is a great workhorse. I had other toolbars installed, but I now only use the Google toolbar http://toolbar.google.com/ Do not mix that with the Google deskbar http://deskbar.google.com/.

What does that toolbar with the green indicator ( if it is not installed, install it from the options menu) and Googlerankings http://googlerankings.com/? Mean to me?

1. First of all, when Google dance its wildest dance, during the great updates, like the Florida http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3285661 and last http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20050602ClinkGoogleGuySpillsBourbonCheers.html burbon update, I may turn it off.
2. Google rankings is mostly for SEO’s so I do not use it, since I am not in that business. If you are in that business, Marketleap http://www.marketleap.com/ is another great toole where I may check my position every half year.
3. The green indicator tells the following. It may tell that a site is stable and mature and most probably not a spam or scam site. But it may also tell me that the site is made by SEO specialists, specialists in manipulating the SE’s and has little value. Sites in dmoz, the largest human edited directory in the world SHOULD be better, but that is not always my experience. To use the language of an economist, ceteris paribus the more green the indicator, the better.
4. Contact information on a site is very important if it is a cite offering financial services and or an ecommerce site selling goods and services. But it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for inclusion in my collection.
5. Bad sites are never included. By a bad site, I mean a site where I am told by Spyware Docotor (real time) ongard guide, that the site may contain harmful content. For example that applies to some (especially Asian) SE’s and directories.
6. There are some sites with no contact information beyond an email address. The site owners participate in Google AdSense https://www.google.com/adsense/ . I will never know how Google do their Due Dilligence http://duediligencechecklist.com/ . Mostly the sites are not included. In the words of dmoz, it MAY be sites that offer not net value to my linkcollection’s real estate.
It may even be a negative factor.
7. Spam emails is a great tool to find spam sites. I have my own list with 16 categories where one category is “email spammer.” Unserious emails from even large companies, should I include a new category, unserious companies? Do you remember the movie: “Far from the madding crowd” by Julie Christie. Time for a new movie. Far from the mobbing crowd” with Dustin Hoffman etc.
There is a tool for developers, the Google Deaskbar plug-ins.
“With the Google Deskbar API, you can write plug-ins to add your own features to the Google Deskbar. Plug-ins can be written in any .NET language, such as C# or Visual Basic.NET.”
http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/help/api/index.html

And if you are a mobile surfer, try

http://www.google.com/mobile/

And do not forget to check the Google sitemap http://www.google.com/sitemap.html, at least every half year.

But there is much more under the sun than Google. My preferred tool for site search is the http://www.mamma.com/ search box. It is a Canadian SE. One obvious advantage for future development, Canadian’s are bilingual and mamma is related to the professional Intearctive Marekting Agency company http://www.digitalarrow.com/ . And their SE may be very good if you are building a directory, a portal or working in the SEO business.

“Mamma.com is a "smart" metasearch engine — every time you type in a query Mamma simultaneously searches a variety of engines, directories, and deep content sites, properly formats the words and syntax for each, compiles their results in a virtual database, eliminates duplicates, and displays them in a uniform manner according to relevance. It's like using multiple search engines, all at the same time” http://www.mamma.com/info/about.html
Eliminates duplicates, that increases efficiency.
But their rSort ranking algorithm (based on the Condorcet Method) uses duplicates when they rank results.
“Spammers often have difficulty spamming more than one engine at the same time, as different spamming methods must be used for each search engine. Spam results will tend to receive fewer votes from multiple sources. A spammer may have top ranking on one search engine, but they won't achieve it on Mamma unless they're able to spam ALL of our sources, an insurmountable task for even the best spammer”.
http://www.mamma.com/info/about.html
Should I use you more mamma? Checked the KW’s, when I last visited my daughter. One of the most used KW’s was mamma.