Google Tracks Your Searches

[rezzy]

After completing something for thegypsy, I noticed Google has been tracking my movements since 2006! The history feature actually shows when you are logged into any other features.

I have quite a histroy of searches. This makes me nervous about contiuning to use Google in searches. To see your history go to: google.com/history.

[vangogh]

The search history thing has been there awhile. You can turn it off by clearing your history, but then you can't use the history anymore. The easiest thing is to sign out of Google when you don't want them recording your search history.

Still they have so many ways of tracking you as do the other search engines, your ISP, and who knows who else.

It's a difficult issue. On the one hand I value my privacy and don't like the feeling of big brother watching me. On the other hand I know that collecting all the data has useful applications, more so for the person collecting the info, but if they use it well they can create applications that work better for each of us.

Still I lean toward the privacy side of thing and don't like how much bog companies likely know about me.

[Spider]

As far as I am aware, Google have been doing this since inception (1998, I believe.) One of the reason I refrained from using Google, until I learned that all the SEs do it, too.

There is one that doesn't, though - and I have mentioned them several times to this discussion board - Ixquick.com - the world's most private search engine. (http://ixquick.com)

That's the only SE I use now.

[rezzy]

I looked back and found results back as far as 2006. I was surprised to see simple searches for images on there. I was a little scared to see everything I have searched for being saved.

On another note, how much storage does Google have?

[vangogh]

Frederick the search history thing Bryan is talking about is more recent. A couple years at most. It only happens if you have a Google account and are logged in while searching. If you use gmail or analytics or pretty much anything that needs a Google account you probably are logged in most of the time.

The idea is that Google stores your searches for you so you can easily look up things you searched for yesterday or last month.

What you're referring to is a little different. All the search engines do store searches, but they're supposed to anonomyze them to strip what's stored of personally identifiable information. Whether or not they really do anonomyze things is another source of contention.

Bryan I didn't think it was as long ago as 2006, but they could be right. I was thinking it was 2007. Google has a lot of storage. And if they come close to running out they buy more.

[billbenson]

Just got an email from G saying they are going to be serving adsense ads to site visitors based on their search history. If you do a lot of searches for sports they will serve you a lot of sports ads.

I don't know if that is something I would want on my adsense page or as a visitor. I was searching for a tool last night called a biscuit joiner. Does that mean if I search for a biscuit recipe I'm going to get tool ads?

[vangogh]

You'll probably get offers for biscuits. I received an email about it too and was told I need to change the privacy policy on my site to reflect the Google changes. I'm going to look at their privacy policy tomorrow to see what they want me to change, but I may consider just removing AdSense and finding a replacement.

I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere I go online, but I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that it's going to happen. I know I can find ways to be more anonymous should I choose. The ads could turn out to be more relevant and could end up being more useful. That's clearly what Google is hoping for. I'll probably let the ads continue to run to see if they do end up leading to more clicks and more revenue, but I don't like another company dictating what my policies should be. That doesn't sit well.

[billbenson]

I'm betting its going to be lousy until they sort it out or silently drop the idea. It's really going to mess with people with MFA sites I suspect as they will have to re optimize everything.

Then again, for something like eborg's diet site, it could help? I don't run content ads with my adwords campaign, so it shouldn't affect me.

[vangogh]

Given that 100% of MFA sites are spam, I'm not sure why Google would care much how this change affects those sites. I'm not sure why anyone other than the site owners would care since the sites are worthless.

The idea with the change is that some think ads targeted specifically at the individual will ultimately perform better. I don't think the plan here is never to show ads based on the content of the site, but rather to mix in ads targeted to the individual. In theory it should result in more clicks on the ads. We'll have to see how it works in practice.

The issue is that to better target the ads Google will be tracking us more. They'll know you've searching for the last hour for auto parts and now even though you're on a movie review site they'll still send some ads for auto parts your way. To do that they naturally need to know what you've been doing the last hour, which is certainly a bit unnerving.

[rezzy]

When I visited the history page, it showed what I searched for back in Sept 2006 at 7:42 am. Apparently, I was searching for some images, and it even shows which images I looked at. I have a snapshot of those images in the history.

I find it a little unnerving Google has silently been tracking my every search. I imagine this is built into their other products too, ie) YouTube and other products that have.

Is Google going to become the new force everyone fears?

[billbenson]

I disagree with you that 100% of the MFA sites are garbage VG. You can't get away with that anymore - not for long anyway. Some news sites heavily use Adsense for example. If I was going to do a MFA site, I would do a very good informational site on a subject that works well with Adsense. They are out there as well!

[vangogh]

Is Google going to become the new force everyone fears?

A lot of people have been thinking that for some time. I don't see Google as evil, but I do seem them as a company motivated by the bottom line. They still come across to me better than some companies, but they're still a large company.

What can be frightening about Google is all the information they collect and can potentially collect. All that data in one place can lead to some great tools, but it can also be used in malicious ways. I don't see Google as malicious at all, but their still a danger having so much data in one place.

[vangogh]

Sorry Bill I missed your post before. To me the site you describe is a real content site that uses AdSense as a business model. I consider an MFA site as one that exists only for the ads and could care less what the content is. Maybe the the distinction seems subtle, but there is a difference.

The site you describe is still thinking content first. Most MFA's aren't concerned at all with their content. I don't think that just because a site uses AdSense (even as it's primary source of monetizaton) it's an MFA site.

By the way you can opt out of showing interest based ads (https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=140379&topic=20310) and only show those based on the relevance of your content.

[orion_joel]

I have just made a thread about the interest based advertising and find it hard to go one way or the other on it. http://www.small-business-forum.net/website-management/1213-interest-based-advertising.html

[billbenson]

No problem VG; I think we pretty much posted over each other.

I guess its a matter of semantics. I think starting a site today by your definition is increasingly difficult to get traffic to. Somebody reports a scrapped site that made it through the cracks to G and it will no doubt get banned.

On the other hand, a lot of blogs could probably benefit from it. They can get pretty big and are on a central theme.

[Spider]

...By the way you can opt out of showing interest based ads (https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=140379&topic=20310) and only show those based on the relevance of your content.Of course, that doesn't mean they will stop collecting the information about you (unless other wording somewhere says something to the contrary) - it just means they aren't going to use it for you. They could still collect it and use it for other purposes, whatever those other purposes may be.

[vangogh]

Absolutely. I doubt they'll stop collecting the info since it's so valuable to them. They may perhaps take your data out of one system, but I'm sure they'll still be collecting the data. In fact the solution to not showing you interest based ads is yet another cookie you must keep permanently.

Bill sadly many MFA sites as I define them still exist. I see sites scraping my content all the time. I'm not sure interest based ads actually hurts these sites. In the past it was important for them to generate content for the ads. Now they won't even need to do that. The ads will be served by the content residing on other site. If anything this could make it easier for spam sites to profit.

[royhunters]

I hope my wife does not find out about this!

LOL

If I get more click through's on my site and the ad rev goes up, I am happy. I dont like it, I do agree with Vangogh about the whole thing but what can we expect? Imagine search 10 years from now....

Maybe then they will at least sort the blonds from the brunettes for me ;-)

[Spider]

Repeat

Ixquick Metasearch (http://us2.ixquick.com/eng/)

They do not store your data.