Omid Farhang
A website reputation tool (often called a site advisor) warns whether a site looks safe, questionable, or risky — commonly shown as green / yellow / red next to search results. These programs usually install as a browser add-on and surface ratings while you use engines such as Google or Yahoo.
They typically flag sites associated with phishing or scams, viruses or spyware, spam, browser exploits, and similar abuse.
How ratings work
Reputation metrics are usually collected from other users who have interacted with the site. Each user indicates whether they were satisfied or not. In the simplest model, reputation is an aggregate of those past ratings.
No reputation tool is perfect — combine it with cautious link habits (phishing, reduce online fraud risk) and a real antivirus.
A practical pick (2009 context)
At the time this note was written, WOT (Web of Trust) was a common recommendation for browser-side reputation ratings. Prefer whatever reputable, actively maintained reputation or safe-browsing feature your browser ships today — the job is the same: get an early warning before you click through.