Hello,
I have read the references. However it cannot be correct that “no” users of Avast have rated our sites because:
A) I, and all my employees have rated it safe, so for a fact there are ratings.
B) Our websites receives 15 million visitors viewing 35 million pages per year - and nobody, not one person has ever rated our site - ever? I find that very unlikely that NOBODY has ranked the site not even once. If we add that up the traffic over 4 years that is 60 million visitors looking at 140,000,000 pages and in all that time not one single person has ever ranked our site as safe with AVAST?
In addition whether someone has rated it or not there should not be a greyed out question mark against the search results and green tick boxes against others. This is unfairly and negatively damaging our site reputation since it is causing doubt when there is no reason to cause doubt. What it also does also negatively prejudice small niche businesses over large organizations.
The 3 websites that all have green tick boxes, and are below us in the rankings are Google maps, Tripadvisor and Virtual tourist.
Avast is causing doubt on our business which can only influence people not to visit small niche businesses who create authentic and original content but encourage people to go to big brand names - most of which are American companies with big green tick boxes next to them. What makes the internet of value are the small unique businesses producing original and authentic content so by causing probable doubt Avast is also destroying the quality of the internet.
If Avast does not change this policy I will not be buying AVAST again. I will also not buy AVAST for all our employees. I will also need to make this issue clear to our 15 million readers per year by producing a series of educational youtube videos showing how this feature could be damaging small businesses and benefiting large businesses.
This service has little to do with increasing security for avast users but is an effective way of transferring search engine traffic to the Big Brand names who are lower down on the search engine results.
If I was cynical I would say it is almost like a marketing strategy for big brands to get search engine traffic whether they are lower in the search results or not.
Most average internet users don’t know what sites are safe or not - the rely on the software. And if the software is giving GREEN safe ticks next to some sites and Greyed out question marks to others which ones do you think they are going to click?
It is almost like this “feature” might possibly be a marketing strategy by Advast to promote the big brand names.
Have you noticed that large software downloads e.g. Java and Flash nearly always offer another Big Brand name as an optional download (usually already ticked as default) e.g. Download Google search or Install Yahoo with this download? This to me looks like a marketing strategy to unfairly promote big brands.
I cannot support this type of behavior. If this is not dealt with in a professional manner i.e.modified so that it really does only dangerous sites I will cancel the AVAST subscription and not purchase this software for any of our staff. In addition I think other small online businesses need to be aware the potential damage that this AVAST “feature” is causing them and I will create a series of Youtube presentations going through this feature and showing the potentially damaging affect it could have on the hundreds of thousands of small businesses. I also think that our 15 million viewers per year ought to be educated on this so I will be directing them to the videos. I think people have the right to know our site is safe and that some software such as AVAST is unfairly calling ours and other small online businesses reputation into doubt by this feature.
or else we cant rate it 
;D