Search Engine Optimization Help

A couple called “Boring” (yes, that’s their surname) sued Google in early 2008 for taking pictures of its suburban Pennsylvania home. The claim was their house was on a clearly marked private road (“Private Road, No Trespassing”) and Google’s Street View mobile trespassed by entering and taking the images of their home. There was also [...]

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Although the phrase “Google yourself” has become part of our culture, a new survey suggests that less than half of Americans have actually done it.

The numbers come from a December survey commissioned by Microsoft on the subject of online reputations. The survey polled about 2,500 consumers and recruiting personnel in the US, UK, Germany [...]

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Ben Edelman uncovered evidence that even if you disable the Google Toolbar, Google may still be tracking your web browsing behavior.
Edelman documents how he disabled the Google Toolbar within the preference, then visited a web page and captured how Google was sending browsing data from the toolbar to Google’s servers. Edelman first [...]

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Last week, in a German magazine interview, government minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger suggested that Google was “becoming a giant monopoly.” She casually asserted that government action might be coming at some point if Google didn’t become more “transparent” and responsive to government concerns. Almost on cue a number of companies have filed diverse complaints with Germany’s [...]

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Many headlines yesterday about two bloggers who received visits — and subpoenas — from the Transportation Security Administration after publishing a security directive that was emailed to them anonymously. The source used a Gmail account. So did Google get a subpoena, too? The company says it can’t comment either way, sending me this statement:
We don’t [...]

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One of the big themes of the week is privacy. Facebook just did a major overhaul of its privacy settings to promote more public dissemination of user information and updates. There was an immediate outcry from some quarters as the site was a bit aggressive in setting users’ defaults to “everyone.”
In addition, Yahoo got called out [...]

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Telecoms, cable companies and search engines are fairly routinely asked to divulge information about their users’ activities (and even location in the case of wireless carriers) by the government and law enforcement. Disclosure of this information and the fact that they charge for these “spying” services would potentially upset or outrage users and badly damage [...]

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Yahoo has introduced what it’s calling “Ad Interest Manager.” It’s a new kind of privacy and advertising dashboard for consumers where they can opt-out of behavioral targeting or, alternatively, indicate to Yahoo what they’re most interested in. Here are the features according to the press release out this morning:
Yahoo!’s new Ad Interest Manager tool:

Provides a [...]

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Google has launched a new privacy dashboard — technically just called Google Dashboard — that gives users quicker access to, and more control over, the personal information stored in Google’s databases. The dashboard is a one-stop shop for managing this data and the settings that are associated with the Google products you use when [...]

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Is Twitter allowing search engines access to protected tweets or not? Not, Twitter tells me, though the company probably needs to do a bit more to prevent this type of confusion in the future.
The LA Times reported yesterday about a “Twitter hole” that it believed allowed Google special access to protected [...]

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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 NY [...]

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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 just [...]

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Facebook has been working with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to come up with solutions to concerns that the office has. The updates will take up to 12 months to implement and involve three types of adjustments.

New Notifications

Facebook will work to encourage users to review their privacy settings. The goal is to help members make sure that they’re aware of the default settings and to change the settings to reflect their own preferences.

Additions to Facebook’s Privacy Policy

Facebook’s Privacy Policy will be updated to provide descriptions of a number of privacy practices. Included will be reasons for date of birth data collection, account memorialization for deceased users, the difference between deactivation and deletion and how Facebook’s advertising programs work.

These updates will be subject to a notice and comment period by Facebook members.

Technical changes for third-party data collection

A new permissions model will require third-party applications to inform users about which types of information they want to access. It will also require third parties to get consent before data is shared. Users will have to approve access to their friends’ information. However, friend data would still be protected by their individual privacy settings.

What do you think of Facebook’s plans for privacy updates? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Google is now using location-enabled mobile phones that have Maps for mobile installed to improve its real-time traffic data. According to the Google Blog:
If you use Google Maps for mobile with GPS enabled on your phone, that’s exactly what you can do. When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends [...]

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Google Watch points out a job posting on the Google site for “Privacy Policy Counsel” based in Washington, DC. Given that Google is under much more pressure and scrutiny from the US Department of Justice these days, this kind of hire makes sense. Google is recognizing that it’s got to build direct relationships with legislators [...]

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IxQuick, which bills itself as “the world’s most private search engine,” has changed its name to the much-easier-to-remember Startpage.
Startpage is a meta search engine that’s tried to differentiate itself from the pack by using privacy as a marketing feature. In 2006, shortly before the mistaken release of three months of AOL search data, the [...]

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In January, four trade groups announced that they would be developing behavioral advertising standards. The groups are The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The standards have now been released and are as follows:

The Education Principle calls for participation in efforts to inform individuals and businesses about online behavioral advertising. The industry intends, in a major educational campaign involving over 500 million ad impressions over the next 18 months.

The Transparency Principle calls for clearer and easily accessible disclosures about data collection and use practices. The result will be a new notice on the page where data is collected and will occur via links embedded in or around advertisements, or on the Web page itself.

The Consumer Control Principle expands the consumer’s ability to opt-out of data collection. The opt-out will occur via a link on the page where data is collected. This principle also requires service providers such as Internet access providers and desktop application software companies to obtain consent of users before engaging in online behavioral advertising.

The Data Security Principle calls for reasonable security and limited retention of data.

The Material Changes Principle calls for the acquisition of consent for any material change to data collection and use policies as well as practices to data collected prior to any change.

The Sensitive Data Principle requires parental consent for consumers known to be under 13 on child-directed Web sites. This Principle also calls for heightened protections to certain health and financial data when attributable to a specific individual.

The Accountability Principle calls for the development of programs to monitor and report uncorrected non-compliance to appropriate government agencies. The CBBB and DMA will work cooperatively to establish accountability mechanisms under the Principles.

A new study published by graduate students at University of California, Berkeley showed that Google is the leading footprint on the top 100 sites in their study.
As you can see from the chart below, Google Analytics was found on 81% of the top 100 sites, while DoubleClick (owned by Google) was in second [...]

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