There’s a funny and satirical 1989 British film called “How to Get Ahead in Advertising.” The movie focuses on an ad executive, played by actor Richard E. Grant, who experiences an ethical and mid-life crisis. He develops a boil on his neck, which grows into a literal head (a kind of evil twin) and eventually […]
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 Instant Search: The Complete User’s Guide Google Instant promises to change the way people search. Speaking at today’s announcement, Google’s Marissa Mayer called it a “fundamental shift in search.” As […]
Google recently announced a Location History dashboard that allows users to see where they’ve been, based on their Latitude activity: Today we’re launching an experimental new view in Beta for Google Location History to visualize your location history in a different — and hopefully more interesting — way than just a string of locations. If […]
Today, Facebook announced new simplified privacy controls designed to ease a settings overload problem that it admitted has challenged its users. Did it succeed? I’d give it an A for effort but a C+ to B- for actually solving the overload problem. Rather than a “one click solution” or a single-page recap, there remains a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Doodle 4 Google Winner Announced: Melton’s Rainforest Habitat Google announced the winner of the 3rd annual Doodle 4 Google competition. The Doodle is viewable above and will be displayed on the […]
Facebook is holding a special press conference today, where it will be discussing the new “simplied” privacy settings that the company has developed in hopes of easing recent concerns over privacy. I’ll be live blogging the news. NOTE: See Drill (Down), Baby, Drill: Facebook’s New “Simple” Privacy Settings Still Pretty Complex, our story after this […]
Want to see what people share on Facebook with the entire world — perhaps without realizing it? There’s a new site that makes this easy, Openbook.
Need another data point from the search world illustrating the rise of concern over Facebook’s privacy changes. How about that chart above? It shows a huge spike to traffic at wikiHow, which has a handy guide on how to delete your Facebook account. Earlier this week, I wrote about how there seemed to be an […]
It’s kind of crazy. I’ve been playing with Facebook’s “Posts By Everyone” search feature recently, and many people who hide their profile information have no problem sharing sometimes really personal updates with the world. Are there people on Facebook who don’t understand how to keep their updates out of the public eye? And why doesn’t […]
Google says it may allow people to participate in Google Buzz without having it integrated within Gmail, in addition to offering a combined Gmail service. That may be a welcome move for users of both products, especially in light of the substantial privacy concerns voiced this week about Google Buzz. “It’s clear that interest in […]
Microsoft is the first of the major search engines to agree to the European Union’s demand that data retention be cut to six months. The company will now completely delete IP addresses after six months. Here’s what Microsoft said on the Bing community blog about the move: Today we sent a letter to the Article […]
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 […]
Many B2B marketers use web forms to facilitate registrations, generate leads, or to acquire customers. Improving implementation of online forms can have a dramatic, positive impact on increasing conversion rates and maximizing ROI associated with B2B marketing programs. In my last article, Six Usability Tips to Maximize B2B Website Conversion, I briefly touched on one […]
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 […]
As was reported yesterday, Google’s browser Chrome is coming out of beta — a mere 100 days after it was introduced. When I commented to Sundar Pichai, Product VP, that this had to be one of the fastest exits from beta for Google in recent memory he explained that “Google has a very traditional approach […]
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 […]
Your privacy — and the ability to direct how your personal information is used and shared — is a priority we share. The websites and the other services we provide may gather information about you. This policy explains how this may happen, what we will do with personal information we collect, and how you can […]
The European Union has been trying to get Google to cut the time it retains users’ IP addresses and related search query logs. In response to EU requests and pressure, the company adopted a compromise position (in March, 2007). Google said it would still retain data but would make it anonymous after 18-24 months. Google […]
Google recently came under fire for not providing a link to its privacy policy right from its home page, as Yahoo and Microsoft do. Ask.com, apparently hoping to ride the issue to some consumer gains, has emailed us that it now proudly sports a privacy link on its home page, along with some new privacy […]
“We didn’t get to paid search first, and it turns out that’s the best part of the market,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Washington Post Editors as part of a meeting that explored a range of topics. Among other things, Ballmer discussed Microsoft’s strategy and mission statement, why it aspires to be competitive in search, […]
Lawmaker questions Google over privacy practices from Reuters reports Texas Rep. Joe Barton from the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee quizzed Google on how they will integrate DoubleClick’s data with their own. Some questions posed include how user data from DoubleClick would be merged into Google’s data, how that data would be […]
AdSense publishers, the next time you login to your AdSense console you will likely have to agree to new terms and conditions. The Inside AdSense blog announced that Google has updated their AdSense terms and conditions to include better verbiage for new products and features, as well as an update to their privacy requirements. The […]
As we covered earlier, US Representative Joe Barton sent Google a letter with 24 questions relating to privacy — along with a week to answer them. I was annoyed that some seemed basic and already answered in a way that one of his interns could easily uncover. But Google’s now replied to the letter with […]
The time of year when we make resolutions is fast approaching. I’m not much of a resolution-maker myself, but I’m going to suggest that small business owners make one. Namely, it’s a suggestion that you resolve to fix up your web site and pay attention to things you might’ve ignored for too long. I know […]
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that some searchers are noticing that Google is asking them to suggest search results that will “help improve search for everyone,” says the Google message.
Google is calling for a discussion on international privacy standards to take place, both through a blog post on its site today and in a speech that was given to a Unesco conference today. From the post by Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel:
Last week, Facebook formally announced that it was making millions of personal profiles accessible to the public via major search engines. As far as I can tell, Facebook members who never intended or expected to be listed this way were suddenly opted-in to Facebook’s new plan. I say “as far as I can tell” because […]
Google is getting a bit more like Facebook by enabling a Facebook-style news feed within its Orkut social networking site, while the king of the walled gardens Facebook acknowledges in actions (rather than words) that it really can’t go it alone without search engines like Google, as it prepares to let crawlers into its public […]
It’s a bad privacy day for Google, with Privacy International first accusing the company of having the worst privacy performance of any internet service company in a study it has just released and then accusing Google of conducting a smear campaign against it. But if you actually read the report, Privacy International itself comes off […]
Scary Feedburner Message At Login from Jeremy Schoemaker reported that FeedBurner placed a new message on their login page that read, in part, that you have until June 15th to opt out of “allowing Google to service your account.” Jeremy, as did others, did not know exactly how to take this. The first concern is […]