Google’s My Search History – Big Bro is watching
The short story is that Search History saves every search you make, no matter which computer you make it from, and lets you go back and view and use that history. The long story reveals far more staggering implications.
Very staggering. Daniel Brandt confirmed that
The proper interpretation of this page is that Google tracks everything to the maximum extent possible, and always has. If you sign up for My Search History, you can choose to delete some of the history that Google makes available for your viewing pleasure, but it still exists on Google’s computers. If you don’t sign up for My Search History, Google is still collecting that information, but you can never see it. This is what Google’s cookie is for that expires in 2038, which Google has been using for at least five years now. Delete your Google cookie regularly, and you’ll be much safer because it means that Google has to give you a new unique ID the next time you visit any of their sites.
They’re tracking us as aggressively and thoroughly as they can. It makes sense, given that the more they know about you, the more they can offer what you want. This is the same reason grocery stores give you a discount card if you let them track your every purchase and compile it along with your address to figure out what to stock. That information is freakin’ valuable. You have got to wonder what it’s worth to them. Does that mean they’re selling your private info, or using it in any remotely evil way? No, and I doubt they are. But I’ve had a problem with the grocery store cards for years, and gotten around it by giving them totally false and misleading info. I’ve talked to at least 20 other people who do the same thing, and this is not a topic that comes up regularly in chats with friends and colleagues. If we’re all lying, then the demographic information they’re collecting is bogus. Think about it: are the grocery stores more likely to have exactly what you shop for now than they were fifteen years ago, before the Great Discount Card Circus? For me, they’ve gotten worse. They’re stocking fewer items, thinking those are the ones that sell the most. Customers like me, who don’t buy what other people buy, can go take a flying leap. You have to ask yourself: is the tracking of all this data – huge amounts of data, expensive to collect and store and analyze – helping Google provide better search results? It seems more targeted toward making SEO obsolete, as Gurtie pointed out at Theadwatch:
imho the best way to ‘get rid’ of seo is to make the SERPS so personalised that no site can hope to be ‘top’ in any measurable way. If Google start down the ‘customers who liked this site also liked’ path (can anyone say Urchin?) then everyones SERPS will be unique. Once it becomes impossible to show a client they’re top of page 1 a lot of the ?100 a month type SEO contracts will surely crash and burn.
Now, you and I as people who are trying to build sites that rank well may find that alarming. But is it good for the searchers? I tend to agree that some aspects of SEO make results worse on searches. But what’s the alternative? Every sensible form of advertising online has been killed by spammers and abusers. Direct email marketing, for example, which should have been the online equivalent of direct mail. How does a valuable new site get anywhere these days, anyway?
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