The page explains that Google wants to create a panel of people to help it “learn more about how everyday people use the Internet.” It explains that panel members have to be at least 13 years old, have (or sign up for) a Google account and use the Chrome web browser. They also have to be willing to let Google track their web surfing activity:

As a panelist, you’ll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.

In exchange for that, panel members get a $5 Amazon gift card code for installing the browser extension, and then can earn another $5 Amazon code for every three months that they continue in the Screenwise program. The sign-up page advertises a $25 max total payment, but the fine print says Google will decide later what payment, if any, will be given for panelists who continue longer than a year.

Amazon isn’t involved in the promotion; Google says it’s using the online research firm Knowledge Networks as its “panel management partner” for Screenwise.

The timing of this program seems odd, especially considering the backlash that Google has faced over the upcoming changes to its privacy policy. Even though this Screenwise program is completely opt-in, some critics are bound to question why Google needs more data about web searchers and the websites they visit.

We’ve reached out to Google for more information about the Screenwise panel/program and we’ll update this article if we learn more.

(tip via @centernetworks)

Postscript, February 8: Google has replied to us with this official statement about the Screenwise program:

“Like many other web and media companies, we do panel research to help better serve our users by learning more about people’s media use, on the web and elsewhere. This panel is one such small project that started near the beginning of the year. Of course, this is completely optional to join. People can choose to participate if it’s of interest (or if the gift appeals) and everyone who does participate has complete transparency and control over what Internet use is being included in the panel. People can stay on the panel as long as they’d like, or leave at any time.”

Postscript #2, February 8: It appears this isn’t the only piece of Google’s Screenwise program. As Ars Technica has learned, there’s a more extensive version of the program in which web surfers participate by installing a “high-end router” called the Screenwise Data Collector.

Ars Technica has several images of the signup process and legalese for the Screenwise program, including this shot of the data collection device.

(image via Ars Technica)

This version of Screenwise pays better: $100 on signup, plus $20 per month up to one year’s involvement.

The legalese also reveals that Google may share the data it collects with “academic institutions, advertisers, publishers and programming networks,” in addition to sharing it with Knowledge Networks, the program’s manager. Google says that “generally” its data won’t be linked to individual users, but it “may share anonymized individual-level Panelist data with academic research institutions.” It also says that “Google will attempt to remove personally identifiable information before sharing Panel Data with third parties.”

Panda In The Pipelines

There’s a mention of the Panda algorithm update that we wrote about last week, but it also includes a somewhat cryptic reference to being more integrated into Google’s “pipelines.”

We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines.

Sounds like Panda is baked into things even more firmly than before, which I guess is bad news for any sites that were affected negatively over the past year.

Fresher Results

Google says it made several “minor updates” to the freshness algorithm update that happened back in November.

Date Detection

On a somewhat similar note, the update also says that Google has improved how it detects the date of a web page (document), and that means searchers should see “fresher, more timely results, particularly for pages discussing recurring events.”

Autocomplete

There are two updates related to autocomplete: Google says it’s now faster at delivering predicted queries, and the spelling corrections are now “more consistent with those used in search.”

Speaking of spelling…

Google says it’s doing a better job with “full-page replacement” — i.e., showing an entire page of results for a correctly spelled word and ignoring the searcher’s misspelled word/query. There’s also a change that Google says will help it give more accurate spelling corrections for rare queries.

News queries

Google says it’s improved how it decides when to blend news results into the search results page. The change makes Google “more responsive to realtime trends.”

That’s a quick overview of about half of the January tweaks on Google’s list. Here’s the full list on Google’s Inside Search blog.

From Search Engine Land:

• 5 Common Tracking Problems: How To Troubleshoot & Fix Them
  

  I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with some clients’ analytics installs. Unlike types or broken code, or misspelled words – issues with tracking scripts don’t always raise their hands and scream, “Hey dummy, you deleted the </script> tag!” I thought it would be handy for the beginners [...]

• Chrome’s Market Share Drops In January; Was It Due To Google’s Penalty?
  

  After 17 straight months of gains in market share, Google’s Chrome web browser dropped 0.17 percent in January, and the company that tracks browser market share suggests that it’s because Google penalized Chrome after a botched sponsored blog post campaign. The figures come from Net Applications, which says it tracks about 160 million unique visits [...]

• Czech Republic Gives Google Green Light To Resume Street View
  

  After more than two years, and a few important concessions from Google, the Czech Republic is letting the company resume its Street View service. As Czech Position reports, Google has agreed to several conditions put forth by the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection: Google will take photos closer to ground level to avoid photographing [...]

• StumbleUpon Responds To Concerns About Links & Iframing
  

  On Wednesday, Feb 1, 2012, we published an article discussing some changes StumbleUpon made during their recent redesign which removed source links from their content pages and forced all users to view content from the site through an iframed toolbar, which they could not close if they were logged in. One of the things I have [...]

• Recent Findings On Captcha & The User Experience
  

  The opinions on what makes a form or Web application user friendly may vary but most everyone dislikes Captcha fields. Some Captcha’s are so difficult to decipher they actually increase form and page abandonment. Along with the freedom the Internet provides humans, it is unfortunately humans who also created barriers to our free flow of [...]

• How To Use The AdWords Search Term View To Optimize Keywords & Negatives
  

  Optimizing Keywords and Negatives is a task I recommend to my clients that they do regularly. In this How To, I will include some real-world experience along with the basics of how to use the AdWords Search Term View to optimize keywords and negatives. What Is Search Terms View? The AdWords Search Terms View shows [...]

• Search In Pics: Obama’s Google Hangout, SEO Cake & Zuckerberg’s Desk
  

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Bing Drink In A Glass: Image via Flickr. Behind The Scenes On President Obama’s Live Google [...]

• Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says
  

  Several members of Congress continued to express reservations about Google’s new privacy policy after a closed-door meeting on Thursday, with one House member saying that Google’s handling of sensitive medical searches may violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Members of the House Energy and Commerce committee grilled Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Social Media Ad Spend: 89% On Facebook, 39% On Twitter & 18% On Google+
• Europeans, EPIC Bring More Scrutiny To Google Privacy Changes
• 5 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Affiliate Program Today
• Study: More Facebook Users Comment Rather Than Like Content & Power Users Drive Activity

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google changes enable ‘per country’ blog takedowns, BBC News
• What is the mystery “entertainment device” Google is testing?, GigaOM

Business Issues

• Facebook Is Valued at $94 Billion in Auction on Private Market, BusinessWeek
• The New York Times’ About.com: From All-Star To Albatross, paidContent.org
• Zuckerberg Tops Google Founders With $28.4 Billion Facebook Haul, BusinessWeek

Paid Search & Contextual

• Finding Lost Impressions with the Share of Voice Report in Microsoft Advertising adCenter, adCenter Blog

Searching

• Analyzing Super Bowl 46 with Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Bing: Our Favorite Features, www.bing.com
• I Switched to Bing on the iPhone and It Didn’t Kill Me, thenextweb.com
• New England Patriots Rush Ahead of New York Giants with 50% More Yahoo! Searches, Yahoo Search Blog
• Why Google Thinks SPYW is a Good Idea and You Probably Don’t, www.wolf-howl.com
• Yahoo! Brings the Super Bowl to You, ycorpblog.com

SEO & SEM

• 4 Social SEO Mistakes to Avoid, Search Engine People
• Exclusive: Amazon.com buys TeachStreet, GeekWire
• Google News Submissions Can Take "Several Weeks", Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Plus will build your search traffic, Conversation Marketing
• How Ads Can Affect Organic Search Results, Search Engine People
• How Affiliate Sites Can Best Exploit SEO, Search Engine Watch
• Keywords Tool Update, Wordtracker
• Kick-Start Your PPC Campaign in 6 Easy Steps, Search Engine Watch
• SEO – The Optimized Future: SEO in the Year 2022, BruceClay.com
• SEO Impact of Google’s Search Plus Your World, www.practicalecommerce.com
• Small Business SEO: Bridging the SMB/Vendor Gap, Outspoken Media
• The Hidden Factors in Accomplishing Your Online Marketing Goals – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Video: Google Webmaster Report, Title Tags Missing, AdSense & Facebook IPO, Search Engine Roundtable
• What Time Does The Super Bowl Start, He Wrote As A Headline To Game The Google Results, deadspin.com
• Why Aren’t More People Talking About Google+ Direct Connect?, www.portent.com
• Why Focusing on CPL is a Really, Really Bad Idea, PPC Associates

Social Media

• Facebook Tests Photo Viewer That Encourages Comments, Google+ Comparisons, TechCrunch
• The Super Simple Guide to Using and Marketing Through Pinterest – Part Two, Search Engine Guide

Video, Music & Image Search

• Flickr Trends – January 2012 (page 1), www.flickr.com
• Flickr Trends – January 2012 (page 2, www.flickr.com
• Trover: Local Search and Discovery Through Images, Search Engine Watch

Web Analytics

• Super Cool Data Visualizing Tool Views for Exploratory SEO Analysis, internetmarketingninjas.com

The figures come from Net Applications, which says it tracks about 160 million unique visits per month to a worldwide network of more than 40,000 sites.

According to Net Applications, Firefox and Safari also saw market share losses in January. While they were declining, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer gained 1.09%, its biggest monthly gain in at least two years.

One possible explanation is that a lot of people bought new PC computers over the holidays, and Internet Explorer’s market share grew in January because it’s the default browser there. But that didn’t happen a year ago; in January 2011, Explorer’s market share declined nearly a full percent. (IE did gain in February, 2011, as shown above.)

Net Applications ties Explorer’s gain and Chrome’s decline to the Google penalty which removed Chrome from search results for a number of browser-related search terms. Google penalized Chrome in early January after the company’s own botched sponsored blog post campaign ran afoul of Google’s search/webmaster guidelines.

In my searches this morning, the main Chrome page doesn’t appear on page one for “browser,” “web browser,” “download web browser,” “chrome,” “google chrome” nor “chrome browser.” I’m not sure that’s why Chrome’s market share dropped in January, but it’s an interesting theory to consider at minimum.

(tip via Computerworld)

As Czech Position reports, Google has agreed to several conditions put forth by the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection:

• Google will take photos closer to ground level to avoid photographing personal property over fences/walls.
• Google will give Czech citizens a method to demand that their property be removed from Street View.
• Google will blur license plates/registration information on vehicles.
• Google will pre-announce when it’s planning to photograph in Czech towns and cities.

The concessions are similar to ones that Google has made in other countries.

Google began Street View operations in the Czech Republic back in the spring of 2009, and put images online in the fall. But by December of that year, government officials shut down the service over privacy concerns.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce committee grilled Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, and Google attorney Michael Yang for about two hours. After the meeting, several of the Representatives expressed their unhappiness with Google’s answers on a variety of privacy issues — questions brought on by Google’s recent announcement that it will combine all of its privacy policies into one, which will allow the company to share user information across its services.

That last point, according to Representative Mary Bono Mack, may leave Google in violation of HIPAA, a law that protects how personal health information may be shared. Bono Mack explained her concerns to USA Today:

“…say you do a Google search for cervical cancer and you forget to sign out. Are you being tracked across all of the other products, and if so, that’s a violation of HIPPA. We’ve gone to great lengths in our society to protect people’s medical information. That question was raised.”

Bono Mack is suggesting that Google might be violating HIPAA if it remembers the “cervical cancer” search after the user moves on from search to another Google product, like Gmail or YouTube (or any other).

But is Google actually compelled to follow the HIPAA requirements? According to the Health & Human Services website, the law applies to groups that meet the definition of a “covered entity” — health care providers (like doctors and nurses), health plans (like insurance companies and HMOs) and health care clearinghouses.

Google is certainly not a health care provider or a health plan, but is it a clearinghouse? My non-expert reading of the definition suggests the answer is “no.”

Google has been involved in health information via its Google Health product, but that just shut down on January 1st. Even when it was active, Google said it wasn’t bound by HIPAA. Here’s the opening sentence of the old/current Google Health privacy policy:

Unlike a doctor or health plan, Google Health is not regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that establishes data confidentiality standards for patient health information.

Furthermore, Google’s new privacy policy, which takes effect on March 1st, includes language that seems to say ads won’t be personalized based on health-related activity:

When showing you tailored ads, we will not associate a cookie or anonymous identifier with sensitive categories, such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health.

Bono Mack tells USA Today that there will be more Congressional hearings about online privacy and that she “pressed” Google to be there. But, based on my non-expert reading of the law, the HIPAA angle may not get very far in those hearings.

We’ve been covering the non-search elements of Google’s new privacy policy on our sister site, Marketing Land. See below for several related articles offering background and other angles.

Related Entries

• No, You Don’t Need To Fear The Google Privacy Changes: A Reality Check
• Google “Myth Busts” Microsoft’s Privacy Claims
• Microsoft Slams Google Privacy Changes With “Putting People First” Ad Campaign
• Google Tells Congress: Users Can Opt-Out Of New Privacy Policy By Not Logging In
• House Committee Has Privacy Questions For Google; Google Says Bring It On
• Google’s New Terms Of Service & Privacy Policy: Anything You Do May Be Used To Target You?

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

According to The Economic Times, the French commercial court “upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses.”

Bottin Cartographes provides mapping services for a cost, and its website boasts several business clients such as Louis Vuitton, Airbus and several automobile manufacturers.

The French court ruling requires Google to pay $660,000 (500,000 Euros) in damages and interest to Bottin Cartographes, along with a 15,000 Euro fine. That means Google’s total cost from the ruling is about $680,000.

A Google France spokesperson says the company is still studying the court’s decision and reviewing its options, adding that Google is “convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both Internet users and websites.”

As you can see from the related stories listed below, this is far from the first time that the French have raised legal issues with Google.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Cutts is in South Korea this week and, in a presentation Monday night for about 80 government officials, webmasters, lawyers and journalists, managed to singlehandedly convince some government reps to let Googlebot crawl and index their websites.

One of those in the audience was Kang Min-koo, a senior judge in the Seoul High Court. When he saw the court’s Web site was on Mr. Cutts’ list of government sites that couldn’t be indexed by Google – and thus couldn’t be found on a Google search – he sent a text message by phone to the court’s webmaster ordering it to be changed.

Since the change can be made by altering just a few lines of software code, the webmaster had it done in no time. When it came time for questions, Mr. Kang asked Mr. Cutts to check if the High Court’s site showed up on Google – and it did.

Cutts’ visit to South Korea comes on the heels of tension between the government and Google. Earlier this month, the Korean Fair Trade Commission accused Google of interfering with its Android antitrust investigation. The commission alleges that Google deleted documents pertinent to its investigation into whether Google is limiting access to local search engines on Android smartphones.

There’s also the matter that South Korea is one of only a handful of countries where Google isn’t the dominant search engine. And, as the WSJ points out, Google isn’t likely to gain market share in Korea if prominent websites aren’t in its index.

While Cutts may have the title of being Google’s chief spam cop, he’s long been one of the companies go-to public faces. A little more than a year ago, Google sent him to Washington, DC on an “educational tour” aimed at telling government officials that Google’s search results don’t need to be regulated.

From Search Engine Land:

• Search In Pics: David Beckham At Google, Google’s Moscow Office & Bing Bar
  

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. David Beckham At Google: Google’s Moscow Brick Desk: Bing Bar at Sundance:       Bing [...]

• Report Affirms Strong Q4 Search Growth In 2011, Offers Additional Insights
  

  Marketers have had a couple weeks to digest their fourth quarter numbers and assess their successes and failures from a period that can be a whirlwind, particularly in the retail sector. Now, with Google’s Q4 earnings report and Yahoo’s out, we’re getting a chance to compare our own performance to data put out by some [...]

• Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search
  

  The debate about what should — and shouldn’t — show in a Google search result for “santorum” has been well-documented, at this point. But I’d like to use this now famous search to illustrate something else: how it appears Google is taking its eye off the ball of being a search engine. Searching For Santorum: [...]

• Google’s “Trusted Photographers” Turns Business Photos Into A Self-Serve Product
  

  Google is hoping to expand its Business Photos product with the launch of a new service called “Trusted Photographers” that essentially makes the process entirely self-service. Local businesses that are interested in having interior photos taken can use the new Business Photos website to find a “trusted photographer.” The business owner and photographer are supposed [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Infographic: Most Popular Conversion Tests
• Facebook Says Subscribe Button Has Been Good For Media, But One Journalist Has Doubts
• Let Affiliates Pave The Way Into New Markets
• Report: Twitter Will Begin Enhanced Profile Roll-Out In February
• House Committee Has Privacy Questions For Google; Google Says Bring It On

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Google taking over Mountain View: Office space expanded by 67 percent in 2011, Mercury News
• Google: "Ads Are Just More Answers", businessinsider.com
• Berry Acquires Webvisible Assets, blog.kelseygroup.com
• Copyright Industry Calls For Broad Search Engine Censorship, torrentfreak.com
• Could Our Immigration Laws Prevent the Next Google?, huffingtonpost.com
• Google Spent Nearly $2 Billion On 79 Acquisitions In 2011, TechCrunch
• Google’s Head of Consumer Payments Vikas Gupta Resigns, allthingsd.com
• Page Rage Escalates As Google Cancels Twitter Android Meeting, PandoDaily

Link Building

• A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Links: How To Find and Cite Images, blueglass.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Apple Estimated to Retake Title of World’s Largest Smartphone Vendor, MacRumors.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Microsoft pubCenter Payments Undeliverable Bug, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• PPC & Time Management: A Make-It-Better Checklist, PPC Hero
• 5 Big Reasons You Should Start Using Q&A Sites Immediately, StayOnSearch
• Bing Moving content? Think 301, not rel=canonical, www.bing.com
• Debunking the Myths of Quality Score, PPC Associates
• Everything You Need to Know About Ad Position in AdWords, PPC Hero
• How to Create Truly Effective Long-tail, Query Matching PPC Campaigns That Sell, Search Engine People
• Lies Writers Tell To Cripple Your SEO Copywriting, Outspoken Media
• Measuring ROI: How to Collect Meaningful PPC Conversion Data, Search Engine Watch
• Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 3: Keywords to Content, www.practicalecommerce.com
• The Ultimate Google+ SEO Guide, blindfiveyearold.com

Social Media

• How to Increase the Odds of Your Content Going Viral – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Tweets still must flow, Twitter Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google rolls out new Music Manager with options to download songs, YouTube integration, 9to5google.com

Local businesses that are interested in having interior photos taken can use the new Business Photos website to find a “trusted photographer.” The business owner and photographer are supposed to negotiate prices and schedule an appointment directly. After the shoot, the photographer uploads the images to Google and they’ll appear in Google Maps/Places “shortly thereafter.”

Google’s FAQ says that the business owner will not be able to review the photos before they’re uploaded to Google. But they can, after the fact, request that certain images be blurred (for privacy reasons) and request that the entire panorama be removed. The panoramas can also be embedded on the business’s own website.

Google says Trusted Photographers is currently available in 14 US cities, and in the UK, Australia, France and New Zealand. The 14 US cities currently showing in the trusted photographers directory are: Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco/Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, DC.

Google began shooting interior photos in early 2010, then formally launched Business Photos last May.