Any way to customize a browser link to give information about the site?

For background: My husband and I are looking for a new place to live and one of the sites I’m using is Realtor. So I’ve been clicking on a lot of links, trying to sift out properties that the search engine doesn’t work for. For example, most of the places say “Pet policy not provided” so I can’t filter my search to “Pets allowed.” Instead, I have to click on the link and look to see if pets are allowed (some say yes, some say no, and some don’t say at all).

The frustration is that once I click away, I have no way of knowing whether the property allowed pets unless I make a note of it somewhere else and refer to those notes. What I’d really like to do is make a note on the search page where I can see that some links are not worth following.

I tried this in Chrome with a highlighter tool, but if I clicked away and came back, the highlighting wouldn’t stay put.

I hope this explanation makes sense.

Is there anything I can use so that I can essentially put a custom label or tag or note on a link that would pop up if I hovered or would change the look of the link so that I can mark the “no pets” or “no washer/dryer” as links I don’t want to follow? Or do I have to do this the old fashioned way and (gasp) try to remember? (I’ve been looking at hundreds of places, so this option is LESS GOOD.)

Oh, and I am using Chrome and Firefox, and I can use IE if that’s where the good times are.

Can’t you just bookmark the places of interest? (set up a separate bookmark folder for them)

No, bookmarking tags the ones that are of interest, but I need something to tag the ones I never need to look at again because of dealbreakers. Which ones are “of interest” changes as new ones are added or our thinking changes. The dealbreakers are dealbreakers.

I don’t think so, unfortunately. I’d guess the reason your highlighter notes aren’t staying put is that the same place is available at multiple URLs.

It’s an interesting problem, but one that probably requires a web developer to solve. Ideally the Realtor web site would recognize the problem and provide a way to do it, but, y’know.

In theory - you can add a parameter to virtually any URL -

For example - you can add:

?dogs=yes

To the end of a URL - it will still work as long as that site doesn’t use it for something.

Example:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=707979?dogs=yes

ETA. - on rereading - I’m not sure HOW you would use it - as what you are trying to do - I don’t think you can change their links - but I’m putting it out there anyway…

DataX, I’m not super technically oriented, so I’m not sure how I do that.

Realtor generates a listing of apartments for me to click on. Without clicking, I can’t currently see whether the apartment allows pets. What do I do to use your workaround?

I would use this on Craigslist, too, though at least there you can actually filter for pets!

Yeah, it’d be nice if I could just click on something so a listing wouldn’t ever show up again.

Which highlighter did you try? If you’re using Chrome, diigo seemed to work on Realtor.com and my notes came back even when I reloaded the page.

I used “Simple Highlighter.” I tagged each listing on the first page as red (no pets), green (pets), or yellow (unknown). When I came back later, some of the ones that didn’t allow pets were marked in green, etc.

I’ll try diigo. Thank you!