Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Today we're helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide
That's a staggering statement meaning that every computer accessing Google is now being personalized, signed in or not, so any desktop, laptop or kiosk will start tracking everything everyone does and you won't be able to access the same search results from any two machines.
The possible impact to all is staggering.
Typical users do not seem to use the browsers bookmark function for whatever reason,
There is no savior on this isue coming from Redmond.
Not in the USA ..but in Europe they have been repeatedly smacked on the nose and brought to heel ..so they would'nt dare ..here ..
Goog have yet to learn that you cant buy ( whoops ..lobby ) 27 differing heads of state or governments ..
edited ..@davelms ..you had n't posted when I started typing ..so that was not meant to reflect upon you ..( but I would suggest that you try to get your kids to understand that the pictures in their heads are better when they read books or listen to the radio than when they use the web ) ..
My comment is based on what I suspect is common to all of us here..if your acquaintances ..get to know you use the net for business ..you get asked to "take a look" because "it isn't workin"/ "kids broke it" /"has maybe a virus" ..
Usually the result of pron or P2P ..
But the same people are customers of someone ..and they think books ..are for school or "intelekchewuls" ..and ( especially the idea of you possesing thousands in your own house ) is weird ..
But they have disposable income ..credit cards ..cars outside ..and computers with internet access ..and are someones customer ..and GORG knows them and loves them ..just like a farmer loves his cows ..
and knows that they wont opt out ..even if they knew they were opted in ..because it would mean understanding too many long words ..and "anyway ..if they can get youtube and pron and warez and ripped movies ..and GORG helps them find all that and more ..including the illegal stuff ..why do they care ..
"The new Article 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC (Directive on privacy and electronic communications) will thus read:
“Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his/her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing. This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.”"
The EU has already entered the second phase of legal action against the UK government re: DPI, opt-in and directed advertising methods (and yes, again a UK ISP is intending to implement non-opted-in DPI, apparently with the UK Gov's blessing).
Google's action is likely to infringe along similar lines but as cookie-based revenue generation (which has been foreseen!): A guy has asked for ABC several times, let's reinforce the adverts for it - and charge for adwords based on this targetting 'cause the adword will get higher click-throughs so the guy will pay more.
The crux for EU/UK will doubtless be the opt-out default: only those in the know will bother and most people will simply wonder why the ads are targetting them more closely.
And, as several here have pointed out: most households probably use a single computer for all the family, so targetting search results, even without targetting adverts, is likely to cause unrest when junior's search for "paper strips" gets daddy's (or mummy's!) search results preferences.
I think the EU is going to be looking at this one: they already dislike google... and MS... and probably most of the USA. :)
Quote above is from the nodpi site. See also Privacy International.
I have a question I can't find a ready answer to. Do these cookies retain or transmit the "search history" restricted to google queries, or the browser history itself? Maybe that's a dumb question. But I can't find out. One of the story source links above has a link for 'search history', but it gives an 'information not found' error ;S There's a difference between a cookie and a trojan, right?
Anyway, as for the efficacy of personalized serps, I share the misgivings of posters here. I do alot of academic type searches. I have spent decades searching for data in non-digital media of every possible kind. I have gotten very good at this ( I was once hit square on top of my head by a very large copy of 'the History of Greek Thought') and bring those kinds of skills and instincts to the web. Could there possibly be an algorythm that can out guess me? I like to think not, at least.
However, it occured to me that there can be benefits. For instance, while searching even the most arcane historical, literary, or other types of academic subjects, my serps have alway been crammed full of MFA scraper sites, all using the same trifling tid-bits of information 'content' to hang their ads on. If Google personalized search can tell that I have learned to detect these, and tend always to click on sites with valuable and original content, and it magically rearranges it's serps so that these appear on the first pages, and the phony scraper sites are at the nether end, this would be a technological advance indeed.
Google knows me too well.
To my lady friends: I will not be buying Victoria Secret equipment this Xmas!
[edited by: sailorjwd at 11:47 pm (utc) on Dec. 5, 2009]
It just became more important to attract search traffic that has no monetary value because that will help you rank better for money terms
That was my thought also. I personally don't have the energy or inclination to worry about the privacy issues - will leave that to others. Being lazy, I wonder will this affect me much, and how can I make it benefit me?
Keep working to make my sites informative and getting more traffic for the less competitive terms, and with this change it may do better on the money terms.
Personalized search should work against the keyword in domain, one page wonders (good), but help the article directories and social sites (bad). Net effect on smaller but informative niche sites? Impossible to predict I think.
Well, sorry, but no we're not. We're a bunch of reverse engineering grafters trying to fiddle our websites to the top of the serps. The "market" is not webmasters, it's the 99.9999 percent of joe public who aren't webmasters.
Anyways, I'm hoping that this new intiative of Omni Consumer Products, oops, sorry, Google, will get Adsense's "interest based" stuff working - or wroking better.
Check it out:
Interest-Based Advertising Survey [webmasterworld.com]
66% of people don't want interest based advertising, and over 50% don't even want interest based news, so Google is going to give them Interest Based SERPs instead... What's the problem with that?
And lots of employees will be embarrassed (i.e. fired) when their boss happens to use their machine for a minute.
Sorry, but what if I'm schizo? Sounds like dissability discrimination to me.
:Edited to replace non-"dirty" word, which was censored by WebmasterWorld, whilc missing the MORE dirty one :).
I think they have just done it so that webmasters see their site at #1 all the time and stop trying to beat the algo.
How many webmasters click on their own site when researching their rank? I don't.
Do these cookies retain or transmit the "search history" restricted to google queries, or the browser history itself?
Good question - and as far as I can tell it's not the browser history. No web server has access to browser history.
Google is keeping two kinds of history: search history tied only to the cookie and search history tied to a specific, logged in user. I am wondering if there is or will be an cross-infouence between the two. Given that the same computer and cookie is often tied to more than one user and more than one Google account, I assume there will not be any cross-influence, but you never know, do you?
I've also been noticing how search suggestions are becoming more of a factor, and search suggestions can also be personalized. Another factor to keep in mind, I think.
