search marketing blog: ambergreen

Google have announced that they will anonymise personal data it gets from keyword searches, a move which privacy bodies are applauding following concerns regarding how collected data could be used to monitor users’ online habits.

Previously able to hold search information for an indefinite period, Google will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 months. This does not mean that the web is now anonymous however; governments and other authorities could still force Google to keep or hand over any data they see fit.

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Viacom is suing Google over alleged breaches of copyright at its video sharing site YouTube, filing a $1 billion damages lawsuit and saying that the company has is guilty of ‘massive copyright infringement’.

In a statement, Viacom claims that YouTube’s business model “is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws,” a claim which Google denies.

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Google is testing a TV ads service based on keyword searches which will enable advertisers to effectively target users.

Currently only trailling in the US, according to the Wall Street Journal, customers of Astound Broadband are currently seeing the ads which advertisers have sold to Google during normal ad breaks.

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Google has replaced Yahoo! as the ad platform for social networking site Friendster as it ramps up international expansion plans.

One of the original social media success stories, Friendster launched in 2002 only to be overtaken by MySpace as the most popular networking site. Friendster currently has 37 million registered users in 75 countries, but has been recently been working to increase the reliability and speed of the Friendster site, citing this as reasons for users defecting to rival sites.

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Google has launched version 5 of its Desktop full of new features and updates to existing tools. The new release features a new sidebar, redesigned tools for ease of use, improved desktop search and enhanced security warnings.

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Search Engine Land is reporting that both Google and Yahoo! are updating link counts. Various partie seem to be reporting increase and others are seeing decreases from Yahoo, while an overall increase has been seen from Google.

Let me know what you are seeing.

Microsoft and Google are in the midst of a war of words as Bill Gates’ behemoth accused Google of adopting a ‘cavalier’ attitude to copyright laws, criticising Google’s use of books, TV, films and music without seeking permission.

Google has earned millions from the use of intellectual property to which they did not have rights, a situation to be discussed by Tom Rubin, associate general counsel at Microsoft, at a presentation to the Association of American Publishers in New York yesterday.

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Google has posted an explanation of how robots META tags are handled and offers a comprehensive review of what it means to Googlebot when it comes across a META tag such as ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW

Visit the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog to find out more about the NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW , NOARCHIVE, NOSNIPPET, NOODP and NONE tags really mean.

Google is testing a new version of AdSense which embeds YouTube videos in ads, and which clearly points the next steps in Google’s advertising strategy.

While Google’s 2006 take over of YouTube caused a confused response from the internet community, the revenue potential of the video sharing site is becoming more evident as Google presses ahead with a new Flash based AdSense unit which includes text links alongside an embedded YouTube video.

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US Civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation is supporting Google’s decision to allow advertising on trademarked keywords, seeing the decision as part of first amendment rights and a simple case of freedom of speech.

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