Beginning today, Google will now personalize the search results of anyone who uses its search engine, regardless of whether they’ve opted-in to a previously existing personalization feature. Searchers will have the ability to opt-out completely, and there are various protections designed to safeguard privacy. However, being opt-out rather than opt-in will likely raise some concerns. […]
Google is introducing their own public DNS (domain name system) today named Google Public DNS. DNS is basically the Internet service that converts a web address (i.e. searchengineland.com) to an IP address of a server. Google says in many cases, DNS can be slow and we all know how much Google is obsessed with speed […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Switzerland Suing Google Over Street View Switzerland is taking Google to court over privacy concerns related to Google’s Street View service. The BBC reports that Swiss privacy official Hanspeter Thuer is […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: An Open Letter To Derek Powazek On The Value Of SEO Derek Powazek launched an attack on SEO yesterday that really said nothing that others haven’t ranted about before. I’ve responded […]
Get ready marketers: a credible new report with sweeping implications from the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley is likely to be the nail in the coffin of self regulation of online advertising. Specifically I’m talking about behavioral targeting, which largely concerns online display advertising but does marginally touch search at Yahoo and Google. The […]
Google Sidewiki is a new feature being added today to the Google Toolbar that allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web. Love something you’re reading? Hate it? You can share your views with others who visit the page and who also have Sidewiki enabled. Share, that is, if Google thinks […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search Month: European Edition There’s a lot going on in the European search market. Starting today we will bring you a monthly update on Search Engine Land of European search news, […]
There is a much longer post to be written on Google’s privacy policies and its history of combatting or complying with government requests for information and those of third parties using the courts to get access to user data. But I’ll take two recent items to illustrate the complexity and potential contradictions here. Google was […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Debunking The Italian Newspapers’ Antitrust Allegations Against Google May it please the Italian court. Google does not ban newspapers that opt-out of Google News from being in Google at all, as […]
Just days after it was launched, Google Street View is now under attack in Switzerland. On Friday, a Swiss privacy official issued a statement demanding that Google “immediately withdraw its online service Google Street View concerning Switzerland.” Thuer apparently did some Street View browsing of his own and felt that Google hadn’t adequately blurred license […]
We have been following the case of where model Liskula Cohen sued Google to reveal the identity of a blogger who used Google’s Blogger to call her a “Skank.” Google was ordered by a US Court to reveal the identity of the blogger, so Liskula Cohen can sue her. I, like many, were shocked that […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Maximize The Impact Of Your Top Performing Keywords Behavior is unique for these high volume/value keywords and as a result, steps need to be taken to make these terms […]
This is now a familiar story: European privacy concerns and complaints against Google Street View. From angry mobs to European regulators, Google is confronting many more objections as it tries to visually map The Continent than it did in the US. This installment involves German “data protection regulators” in Hamburg who object to the way […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Employee Required To Hand Over AdWords Account Details We obtained documents on a court order, where the judge issued in the Jeremy Schoemaker case against a Google employee for trademark […]
Why exactly are you searching for “headache” or “ear infection” at Google? Do you have one of these illnesses or are you researching them? Google wants to know, and will find out by asking a small number of people directly within the search results, beginning today. It’s part of a process that Google hopes will […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Optimize For Conversion In Organic Search Results In the past, SEO success was measured by rankings of target keywords; then the focus moved to traffic; today we have moved […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
AT&T which has publicly advocated on behalf of relatively stringent rules and opt-in requirements around behavioral targeting (BT) appears to have been working with BT firm Audience Science (formerly Revenue Science). Wendy Davis at MediaPost has written two related stories on the issue. Here’s her summary of the apparent contradiction between AT&T’s public position and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Call it the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of online advertising: consumers and publishers are increasingly at odds over online ad targeting and behavioral targeting (BT) in particular. While that may be a hyperbolic characterization, the majority of US internet users appear uncomfortable with online tracking and targeting at a time when publishers and search engines are […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Maybe that headline overreaches a little but not entirely. For those that have been wondering whether Google’s GrandCentral acquisition, which the company made in mid 2007 and thereafter seemed to neglect, would suffer the same fate as Dodgeball or Jaiku . . . wonder no more. Using the GrandCentral infrastructure, and currently only available to […]
Google today is launching a form of behavioral targeting advertising named Interest-Based Advertising. Interest-Based Advertising allows advertisers to deliver ads based on hundreds of interest categories and previous interactions with those users. The beta is opening to select advertisers at first but will be expanded in the upcoming months. Brad Bender, Google’s Product Manager in […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Since it launched a couple days ago there have been several predictable responses from persistent Google critics who regard the new location-aware Latitude service on Google Maps as a threat to privacy. The phrases “tracking,” “stalking” and “Big Brother” popped up in a range of articles in mainstream news outlets. Those stories were quickly written […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google StreetView has been a controversial offering since its launch, with privacy at the core of both individual and regulatory concerns. It’s also enormously practical and useful in many cases. But governments from Canada to Europe have sought to gain privacy concessions from Google in its international rollout. Google has also been sued a couple […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Yahoo has announced they will be anonymizing their user log data to 90 days, compared to Google’s policy of 9 months. The data policy is not just inclusive of their search data but also their page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. Yahoo does reserve the right to retain data longer than 90 […]
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Google is negotiating with ISPs for “a fast lane for its own content” and is backing away from net neutrality. However, Google vigorously disputes this characterization and explains that instead it is seeking to “‘colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities,” which has the practical effect […]
Responding to European demands that the major search engines cut the length of time they store records of web searches, Microsoft said on Monday it would only store that data for six months as long as Google and Yahoo follow suit. The New York Times reports, however, that neither Google nor Yahoo are ready to […]
From the “How Not To Promote Yourself” file: Google is advertising its Google Maps service on the New York subway system with a few well-placed ads that give directions between points of interest in the city. Only the directions they’re giving aren’t always right. As AdAge points out, one ad tries to help people find […]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed on a common set of principles governing how they intend to do business in countries that restrict free speech and human rights. All three companies have been criticized by rights groups and the US Congress in the past for putting profit over principles […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Back in March 2007, Google promised to begin anonymizing log data to better protect user privacy. That kicked off a wave of privacy pledges from competing search engines. In addition, by agreeing to limit itself, it inadvertently got the European Union to demand even faster data destruction. Below, a look at Google’s progress toward its […]
Below is live coverage from day two of the 2008 Search Marketing Expo East conference.
Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback program has failed to grow the company’s search traffic significantly (as I expected), so now it’s try again time. Out officially today is SearchPerks, a program designed to be easier to use and more broadly targeted than Cashback.
The initials for British Telecom (“BT”) might now come to stand for “behavioral targeting” as the company prepares its opt-in trial with Phorm. Phorm is a UK-based firm that seeks to tap ISP behavioral data in an effort to serve more relevant ads to end users. The BT-Phorm “Webwise” test begins tomorrow and promises both […]