The new privacy policy, which is available for preview now, is short and wonderfully free of legalese. That’s not to say that there’s nothing troubling in the new policy, there’s a couple of sections that have me concerned. The first (not necessarily in order of appearance) talks about how Google is moving to track your behaviour across all of their services. As a Google fan (and I am), I think this is a good move for personalized search. However:

We may use the name you provide for your Google Profile across all of the services we offer that require a Google Account. In addition, we may replace past names associated with your Google Account so that you are represented consistently across all our services. If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.

So, if on Google Docs, you’re Sean Enns (as I am) and on YouTube you’re Harbour City SEO (as I am), they’ll replace one to make it synchronous with the other. That’s fine, so long as I have the choice. The troubling bit is here: “If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.”

Emails are easy to get, most people have their email posted publicly somewhere (their Facebook page, for instance), so this represents a privacy nightmare and a goldmine for phishers and data miners. Google would be smart to dress this up a bit, perhaps by offering a link to some advanced privacy controls. I, for one, would like to be able to tell Google exactly how many connections someone should have with me before they’re able to see my personal profile.

The second bit needs some serious clarification, in my opinion. It reads:

We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users

The word that has me concerned is “protect”. It’s a powerful word, and it’s unclear (in this iteration) exactly whom Google is protecting their services from, and whom they’re protecting me from. Terrorists? Microsoft? Twitter? Google needs to clarify what they mean here.

The answer

I’ve always said this about Google. Because Google is a private company, their first responsibility is to the shareholders, not to the user. Based on my readings, Google seems to try quite hard to find the balance between the two, but their sole purpose is to increase market share. They don’t owe me anything, and anything they give me (such as free traffic from organic search results) is a gift, not a right.

If you don’t like the scope of what Google is doing with your info, while you can’t necessarily opt out, you can log out. When you’re finished checking your Gmail, log out. Surf anonymously, disable cookies on your browser. It’s the best tool you have to ensure that your personal information isn’t being collected and used across platforms. Your search results won’t be as relevant, or as rich, but your personal information will stay that way.

Related content:

Google’s New Privacy Policy Raising Questions in Washington

Feds launch Google Probe

Google’s New Terms Of Service & Privacy Policy: Anything You Do May Be Used To Target You?

Personal results
Google+, “plus one”
It affects your SERPs

The intern looks over Dexter’s shoulder, and, well, here’s the dialogue.

Louis: “You know, Google’s kind of 5 minutes ago right? Try Eliot. It uses a targeted algorithm to aggregate content without getting tripped up by all that sneaky SEO bullshit.”

Ok. So, hurt feelings aside, (sneaky?), he’s kind of right.

Some SEO is sneaky, sure. Buying domains for their link profiles is sneaky. Using redirects, cloaking, also sneaky. Most SEO is hard work, research and creativity.

If it were easy, we’d all have #1 rankings after all.

Big picture, I remember when Google was a bit player to Yahoo, Microsoft, metacrawlers like Dogpile. Now they dominate the market, but they might not always. Companies like Wolfram offer a different kind of search. Social layers, mobile devices. All give reasons for Google to watch their sizable backs.

The cameo on Dexter should also give Google some motivation to stick to their mission of “don’t be evil”, because we know what Dexter does to evildoers, don’t we Google?

When Klout hit the market, I admit the idea of measuring influence piqued my interest. Building one’s influence for the sake of free perks seemed like a great idea, and if Klout could become (as they claimed) the “Standard for online influence”, then finally we’d all have something to work toward. A way to counteract the million-a-day marketing messages we’re exposed to and place more power in the hands of the consumer.

Of course, I assumed that they were using a complicated algorithm to measure true reach. That they had subtle methods of measuring the relevance and value of conversations.

When you assume though, well, you know.

I just read this post on gaming klout, and this follow up that includes more examples of gaming klout. And my heart sank.

I’ll show you the most nefarious examples. Mi has a Klout score of 72. The Borg Collective has a Klout Score of 57.

In the first case, user Mi has 2 tweets, no fans and no followers. The Borg Collective, conversely, has thousands of tweets – but all of them are the same, they read @someusername: YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED (apparently they can’t even be bothered to add “resistance is futile” every now and then).

So, for everything I’ve added, my tweets and my Facebook pages and my blogs and my Google+ profile, it seems I’ve been wasting my time. I should really have just set up a bot to tweet the same thing over and over again.

This is my quandary, I really do think Klout is a good idea. I think measuring online influence is a big part of the future of social media and social signals in SEO. But not when the scores come from a system that’s so obviously broken.

Not such a freak for the technical discussions, which are occurring elsewhere, I’m interested in the philosophical discussion. What does Facebook want from us? What do they think we want? Can Facebook and Google+ share the same mindspace?

My initial thought is, yes, and no – there’s currently room for both – but eventually people will leave one for the other, depending on how much they want to share and how they want to share it.

Facebook wants your whole life. They want your recipes, your running routes, your work information and your personal and professional history. They want your hobbies, your musical and movie interests, all for the sake of helping categorize you and helping others similar to you discover new things. (They also want to sell you more relevant ads, but that’s another topic)

It’s a good plan, and it fits with Facebook’s mission which is to “Make the world a more open and candid place.”  I’m just not sure I’m comfortable sharing that much (or using a system where I have to opt-out of sharing).

Google+, on the other hand, has a different approach to sharing and discovery. I believe that Google, like Facebook, wants all the world’s information. But while Facebook wants to use that information to provide answers to questions we haven’t asked yet and open the books of our lives for all to read, I think Google will stay on path to “organize all the world’s information” and ultimately, wait until we ask the question.

I like Facebook, but I’m concerned that the new changes are based almost entirely in sharing and discovery and not enough in conversation, which Google+ has a definite advantage with. Facebook’s take on personal privacy is equally off-putting, and it seems as though if you have something to hide, then Facebook doesn’t want you in their sandbox.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.

It’s not that they don’t understand semantics, I think they do a fine job of interpreting queries and suggesting alternative meanings, but they do an awful job of organizing results from synonyms and related terms in a uniform manner.  My evidence suggests that Google can understand terms that are actually synonymous, but not implied relationships that exist only in human language.

In their example, they cite that they glean the relationship between photos and pictures as applied in 2 queries, photos developed with coffee and pictures developed with coffee.  The results jive for me, but then again – If I just search developed with coffee, I get the same results once again.  One could infer from this that Google is not actually understanding anything, but that they’ve cherry-picked a site that happens to have great presence for a shorter phrase.

It’s not a stretch to say that film developed with coffee is synonymous with photos developed with coffee, but for this query the results are different.  Imagine my surprise when a thesaurus shows me that “film” is not necessarily a synonym of “photo”.

Perhaps that’s why Google didn’t give me the same result they favoured for the #1 position for three other queries.  One could also infer that the site, optimized for “photo” and “picture”, didn’t have the same optimization for “film”.  My conclusion, unscientific as it is, tells me that while Google can use a thesaurus as well as anybody, possibly better, they’re no closer to understanding natural language.

I’ll let you read the article, because I want to talk about something different.  There’s a new feature that allows you to embed Google Earth into your webpage via an iframe.  It lacks some of the major functionality of the full version but it beats Google Maps hands down for a rich user experience.

In addition, Google has their eyes on the Island streets as they troll the towns from Duncan northward for street view footage.  While heading out to visit my folks in Duncan, I found myself driving behind a Google car on Herd Road – this was about a week before I read the article in the PQB News.

As a small business, you can use these tools to give out of town clients a better picture of your business.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, it makes you wonder what an interactive 3D map is worth.

If there’s a downside to running Google Earth off of your site, it’s that visitors have to download a plugin (on demand) before it will work.  Since I have to do the same with Flash though, it’s hardly an inconvenience.

Visit earth.nanaimo.ca for the City of Nanaimo’s KMZ files.

The screenshot of the search result below was taken about 5 minutes ago.  I’m not certain why this post was indexed so quickly while others remain un-updated. It definitely calls for experimenting.

Search Results from June 5th, 2009 at about 12:45 pm PST

I do know that blogs tend to get indexed a bit more quickly than standard sites with a fixed navigation path to static content. My theory is that blogs are current, and so, more relevant. It seems to be working for me, which is exciting. I’ve seen nothing but steady growth since I started this blog a couple of weeks ago.

It’s true, folks.  I did a search using their suggested phrases.  “spice market review shrimp starter dessert” yields results, one of which had a 312 character snippet.  It should also be noted that Google pulls the snippet from the <meta name=”description”> tag.  If you don’t have one of those, it will use the first snippet of content it finds on your page.

Google also says:

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need.

Sounds like they’re trying to push forward on semantic understanding.  And here I thought they’d given up.

Time will tell if either of these additions turn out to be particularly valuable.  It will mean a change in the way a site is optimized, as individuals try to increase relevance across a broader contextual understanding.  For relevance, I still like Wolfram’s odds of providing the best answers to my questions and queries.

Acme wants to have a website so customers can read about them and submit orders online. Most of their new business still comes from referrals so it’s important to show up when people type in their name, address or phone number.

Right, so, there’s things Acme can do. They can use their page titles to emphasize their company name first and follow it with their regions… something like this

Acme Widgets Inc. – Widgets to Nanaimo, Ladysmith and the Comox Valley.

The formula isn’t set in stone, I would recommend that Acme experiment with different combinations to see which work best.

Once a site is optimized, there’s  a certain amount of ongoing promotion that has to take place.  Depending on your business and targets, the costs may be free or they may be in the thousands of dollars.  It may take one person a few hours a week, or it may be an outsourced job.  If you’re just concerned with minimal, basic SEO have a read through some of the things I do when I’m starting an SEO campaign.

I have a Google account and I recommend that every business owner get one master account for their business.  It gives you access to Google Docs, gMail, Google Analytics, AdWords, AdSense and anything new they crank out.  You need one for a Google Maps Listing and I recommend that every business have one of those too.  If you’re serious and want all the tools in the Google toolkit, check out the Google Dashboard on Techcrunch.

I advertise in local directories.   Be wary of any costs or listing fees.  I don’t spend a cent until Ive done the research to see if it’s a good link and if I even need to buy a link to get to the top position.

I participate on the web.  I blog,  I forum (is the verb forumming?  foraging? I was foraging in the forum?).  I facebook and twitter.  I don’t linkedin, but I should.  Extreme enthusiasts might consider adding a YouTube channel, a digg profile, an eBay store and a yahoo! store.

You may only get to a few of these things, and you may not need to spend much time on SEO.  If you want some advice on your current SEO or have questions about local search, let me know.