Google this week updated its Google Toolbar, an add-on to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and although it retained the controversial AutoLink feature, the San Francisco-based search company modified some AutoLink characteristics to mollify Web site owners.

AutoLink turns some Web page information--such as addresses or book ISBN numbers--into links to other sites. An address, for instance, is linked by AutoLink to a Google Maps.

When Google first released Toolbar 3 in February, it faced criticism from Webmasters who didn't like the idea of the search giant altering content, or creating new links, on their sites without their permission. Microsoft had put up a trial balloon in 2001 for a similar feature based called Smart Tags, but dropped the idea after similar heat from users and site creators.

Google Toolbar now shades AutoLink-made links blue so that they better stand out on the page. Toolbar 3 also lets users change the default provider of the information from these links. For instance, users can switch from Google Maps as the supplier of address AutoLinks to MapQuest or YahooMaps.

The changes, while not entirely cosmetic, haven't gone far enough for some. "I think Google should provide an easy opt-out that publishers can implement to block AutoLink," wrote Danny Sullivan, the head of SearchEngineWatch.com, in his blog. "Opt-out gives any publisher seriously concerned with the tool the ability to control it on their site."

Some site publishers have already figured out how to block AutoLink on their own, Sullivan also noted. Not long after Toolbar 3 debuted in beta in February, 2005, Barnes & Noble made sure that all ISBN numbers on its site linked to its database, not Amazon's. (Amazon then was the only, and now remains the default, supplier of data for Toolbar 3 for ISBN data.) One of the country's largest independent bookstores, Powell's City of Books in Portland, Ore., however, still hasn't figured out how to do that. Visiting a page on Powell's Web site and clicking on an ISBN takes the user to Amazon.com.

Current Google Toolbar users can wait for the automatic update of their software -- Google should begin upgrading in the next week or so--or download the new utility from Google's Web site.