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.
A few random thoughts, as I don't have the time at the moment to go back through
8 pages of posts and respond to specific comments.
Along with all the other interesting happenings at G lately
- Remember the plan for offshore servers. Nice way to sidestep any government controls/rules for privacy. Can a government force them to give them data off those servers. Can a government force them not to store data on those servers.
- As far as clearing cookies, there is hidden bunch out there that you can't normally see. I suggest that you lookup "flash cookies". The thing is these flash cookies can be used to reinstate html cookies. Maybe you should even stop by Macromedia, and take a look at their web storage tool for displaying/deleting them. You can also check them for some of those Gorg properties.
I would imagine there is a ramp up period where they collect data for a few days/weeks before we start to see some changes.
If the history COLLECTION were tied to this change, I'd say yes. But Google has been collecting the logged-out history (cookie based history) for a good while. The difference is that now they are using it for logged out search results as well as logged-in. So I'm not expecting much, if any, ramp-up.
They may look at and respond to their user satisfaction data and tweak the way SERPs are being personalized - but again, they've already been doing that too for logged in users and presumably feel they have a handle on user satisfaction, too.
Only the guilty have anything to worry by this
That is a quintessential Orwellian (1984) statement.
Can you imagine that as the anchor text of a link on Google's "personalized search" homepage? :P
Webmasters have to realize we make up less than a fraction of a percent of the general user population.
Interesting read. Kept quiet so far since I don't have as many income producing dogs (sites) as others, but the above deserves a comment.
Webmasters might be a fraction of percent users on the web, but we are 100% of what google monetizes. And therefore, these "personalized searches" loom very large in how we produce product the goog and users want to slurp (grins, there's other se's out there).
Meanwhile, I find this interesting that Yahoo! has announced the following: TRANSPARANCY
[webmasterworld.com...]
This does has the potential to improve the SERPs for some users/keywords.
But the backlash potential is just huge. Once this gets out, the public outcry will be huge (someone remember Beacon?) and G will have to back-out.
Very stupid move IMHO. The managers that allowed this should be fired, immediately. And if the whiz kids and Schmidt were aware of this, and they gave it the Go, then they should re-consider their capacity to lead this firm.
Meanwhile, I find this interesting that Yahoo! has announced the following: TRANSPARANCY
Yahoo! does cynicism better than Google does.
Based on comments that we've seen about the new Yahoo Ad Interests Manager that we've seen so far, Google can silence all but its most vocal critics by:
- Creating a busy-looking opt-out page with more text than most people want to read;
- Posting it one link away from a "privacy policy" page that's linked in tiny type from a footer;
- Issuing a press release.
Cynical? Yes. But it seems to be working for Yahoo! :-)
[edited by: signor_john at 9:49 pm (utc) on Dec. 7, 2009]
From The Register:
[theregister.co.uk...]
OK leaving aside the privacy angle - this is going to make new sites more difficult to find. I even found one of our managers typing in our website into Google as he didn't know about typing it direct into the browser bar.
[edited by: tedster at 1:26 am (utc) on Dec. 8, 2009]
