Monthly Archives: January 2012

Facebook Timeline Becoming Mandatory (How to Opt Out)

Last year we posted about the brand new Facebook profile layout “Timeline”. Back then it was an opt-in feature however, in the next few weeks it will become a mandatory update. If you don’t like it you can opt-out by sending a request to delete your Facebook profile.

As much as everyone complains about new Facebook updates and layouts I’d have to say this is one of the worst. It’s not just a small change it’s a whole new profile design and if you use it to its full potential, a new way for Facebook to gain more information about you. It also means that some unwanted or purposefully forgotten updates could reappear.

What do you think? Will you be boycotting Facebook, or have you found a real opt-out?

Let us know in the comments ( :

New Google Privacy Policy 2012 (60 in 1)

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Google managed to update it’s Privacy Policy model today. This is what you can come across when you login to Google from today (if actioned this message will disappear)

GoogleNet is almost here?

Over the years company took over a lot of businesses many with existing customers. Online services from YouTube, DoubleClick to Feedburner and many more had there own set of legal documents in place. During last 12 months we can see extra effort in bringing all these services in to one manageable system. This of course is not very smooth operation and Google managed to upset few people and institutions in the process. However difficult gradually whether we like it or not we are closer to Googlenet then ever before.
Google claims is managing currently over 60 privacy policies and is willing to replace them from 01/03/2012 with one which will serve everything from searching to sharing and browsing (You can read new policy here). Of course we can imagine all this is to do with cutting budget measures but we must mention recent advance of https in Google’s infrastructure as one of the elements which will show interesting results in the near future especially for online marketers. From beta version and english based only service Google over ssl is now spreading to other languages

Encrypted search available on new regional domains. Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users, but it’s not the default on our other regional domains (eg: google.fr for France). Now users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr. [more about Jan 2012 Google update here]

We can soon expect many comments from legal and from technical gurus about one Privacy Policy changes from Google.

There are no shocking statements here but we must remember this page https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/ is perhaps now guarding Privacy of the biggest human database in the world!

Keyword Tool shows up as Untitled in Google SERP

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If you Google Keyword Tool today instead of the usual “Google AdWords: Keyword Tool” title showing up in the SERPs a less helpful and informative “Untitled” appears.

Going to the page reveals that the page title is not blank or set to untitled.

Any ideas why this would happen? Let us know in the comments!

UPDATE:
I found another!

While search in for “diamond football international” I found the title “nbsp; | &nbsp – Diamond Football International”. I now think Google is changing the way results appear in the SERPs, instead of just the content from the title tag appearing as the result title it take content from other sources including the H1 tag of the page and content from other pages.

Google Algorithm Changes 2012 – Results :-o

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It always makes me wonder how some companies perform and I’m jealous when I see all their operations are glossy and smooth. If I forgot to email customer or project schedule is off by few days I blame myself and feel low. I think how on Earth others are able to be always 100% on the highest level of performance – silly me – of course they not! I should learn this already after 14 years in business but somehow I fall in to this same trap over and over again. Recent well commented Google search improvement post get my extra attention today from end user point of view.

Days like today just give me this extra confidence schedules, implementation dates and always growing lists to do is not only my problem. Last week Google announced latest updates to their algorithm:

More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename “concepts”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We improved our algorithm for picking sitelinks. The result is more relevant sitelinks; for example, we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.

All great, smooth I love this open cards policy where they work hard on communication with users and developers to let you understand what they completed, worked on. On official search blog they say “We improved”. On Google UK I see:

of course as you can see I was so shocked I visited landing page. “Good” – I think viagra content is not there

a bit of hesitation and Ivisited cached version. Oh, Noooo! 08/01/2012

Is there, is official – black-hat trick works and on I assume improved sitelinks algorithm too!!!

From one site I’m frustrated to see legitimate very resourceful website with UNESCO logo on explored by spammers. This is charity based organisation – What is wrong with you people? – Disgusting on multiple levels.

On the other hand on the back of my mind I remind myself my today’s concern how all this glossy and 100% confident PR bit from Google Search Blog is far from reality- good remainder – even for huge company with lots of cash and human resources each day list to do gets longer and job is far from being completed!

Does Site Links update needs another update? How about scaning sitelinks content on Google servers before serving them to the end user?

Do you know black-hat technique used on ihcn.in? Comments always welcome. Maybe Matt Cutts or someone from quality search will post here one day ;-)? Never mind I am going back to work my list to do get longer and longer!