Online Real Estate Technology

Google has been accused of bypassing the privacy settings of users of the Safari web-browser.

The Wall Street Journal said Google and other companies had worked around privacy settings designed to restrict cookies.

Cookies are small text files stored by browsers which can record information about online activity, and help some online services work.

However Google says the story "mischaracterises" what happened.

Advertisers can use cookies to track online behaviour, helping them to target the commercials they show to internet users.

Some think this use of cookies erodes online privacy. In May, European Union laws are due to come into force which will restrict the use of advertising cookies.

But cookies are also essential to some web services like those Google offers.

Cookie control

The Safari browser is produced by Apple, and is the browser used by the iPhone.

By default Safari only allows cookies to be stored by the web page a user is visiting, not from third parties such as advertisers.

However, Stanford University researcher Jonathan Mayer found that advertisers were still able to store cookies on the computers of internet users browsing with Safari.

It was his discovery that formed the basis of the Wall Street Journal’s story.

Many Google services use cookies, for example to remember when someone is signed in to a service, but they are also used by the firm to help personalise advertising.

It was when Google attempted to find a way to enable some of its services and personalised advertising to work on Safari that, Google says, it inadvertently stored cookies.

Side-stepping Safari

In a statement, senior vice president Rachel Whetstone said that last year the company had decided to "enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalised ads and other content".

She added: "To enable these features, we created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalisation."

Ms Whetsone said the company had created new systems to make sure the information it collected was anonymous, but this had led to unintended consequences:

"The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser.

"We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It’s important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google "disabled the code after being contacted by the paper".

Google declined to provide further comment to the BBC.

Privacy warning

Online privacy advocates were highly critical of Google’s actions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote: "It’s time for Google to acknowledge that it can do a better job of respecting the privacy of web users."

Although much of the criticism has been directed at the search giant, the Wall Street Journal said that in addition to Google, a number of advertising companies had been using the work-around which had been known about for some time.

An Apple spokesman said in a statement: "We are aware that some third parties are circumventing Safari’s privacy features and we are working to put a stop to it."

Story source: www.bbc.co.uk

A Google search has helped tracked down an Australian girl US police believe was one of many young victims of alleged child predator Stephen Vosilla.

US Authorities recognised a logo on a video of one of Vosilla’s victims and logged on to the internet search engine, Google, tapped in the logo, and within seconds he was able to identify the logo was Australian and the young victim was likely from Australia.

Officers tracked the girl down in Australia, who then provided a statement for Tennessee investigators.

An investigation was launched that led investigators to Vosilla’s residence in Talbott, Tennessee,

A grand jury in Tennessee has indicted Vosilla on two counts of especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. He remains in Tennessee’s Hamblen County jail in lieu of $US100,000 bail.

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Software engineers reverently refine Google’s search algorithm so consistently that it often ends a day a tad different from when it started.

Scott Huffman’s team tested ‘many more than’ 6,000 changes to its search engine in 2010, with 500 of them passing the grade to become permanent.

‘We have changed engines on a flying plane so many times it has become second nature to us,’ Google fellow Amit Singhal said, referring to how internet firms modify services while they are live online.

‘Alongside changing the engines, the plane has become quieter, the ride got more comfortable, and we even changed your seat while you were sleeping,’ he continued.

‘We just do it in small steps that go unnoticed.’

Singhal said Google’s search is tweaked, on average, twice in a working day.

‘On the one hand, we want to be moving quickly and we want to make great changes,’ Huffman told AFP.

‘On the other hand, we don’t want people to come to Google and say they don’t recognise it.’

Google in February took the unusual step of spotlighting an improvement to its secret search formula in the United States.

The move was part of an ongoing duel between the search titan and low-quality websites that feature only content copied from elsewhere on the internet or use techniques to trick their way to scoring high in results.

‘The feedback has been tremendously positive from users,’ Singhal told AFP at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

‘Overwhelmingly, the change raised ranks of high-quality sites and dropped ranks of low-quality sites.’

Huffman’s team is responsible for ensuring that ideas for improving Google search results do just that.

‘People are not just expecting a search engine to return every document that has most of the words typed in a query box,’ Huffman said.

‘They want the context understood; there are a lot of nuances hidden within that.’

For example, someone searching with the word ‘Japan’ is likely interested in real-time news about the tsunami tragedy there as well as other information about the nation.

One of Huffman’s favourite ‘broken queries’ from a couple of years ago was the term ‘Thai restaurant.’

General web searches kept giving top rank to a Thai restaurant in the upstate New York city of Schenectady.

‘I used to go complain to the ranking people,’ Huffman recalled with a laugh.

‘I’m in Mountain View. It might be a great Thai restaurant but I’m not going to Schenectady to get Pad Thai.’

Google began letting users set locations so the search engine could factor proximity into results when appropriate.

Proposed changes to Google’s formula are first tested on a separate set of computers that imitate real-world search.

Those deemed worthy are next sent to evaluators around the world who act as online searchers and rate the relevance of results in various languages and regions.

Google then does live testing, with promising algorithm enhancements carefully blended into results served up by the main search engine.

‘At any given time, some percentage of our users is actually seeing experiments,’ Huffman said.

‘It is interesting because users don’t know what is happening,’ he continued.

‘Of course, we don’t put things out there that are terrible; we have filters to know when something is bad.’

Plenty of improvements are ahead, particularly regarding the ability to understand and derive inferences from the world’s many languages, according to Huffman.

He bristles at any suggestion by Google critics that results are tampered with to favour advertisers or achieve other business goals.

‘If you think of the scale of what we are talking about, it is almost absurd to say we could rig results,’ Huffman said, noting that Google handles more than a billion searches daily.

For five and a half years he has run weekly meetings at which changes to Google’s search algorithm are decided.

Revenue implications of changes have never been brought up at those meetings, according to Huffman.

‘Not only do we not make decisions that way, we don’t even look at those numbers,’ Huffman said.

Google believes that delivering the most relevant search results to people as fast as possible is best for the California company’s bottom line and, by extension, steers away from useless ‘spam’ websites and ‘content farms.’

‘If we care about our users – don’t care about money – everything else just falls in line,’ Singhal said.

‘A healthy Web and happy users are key to our future.’

Singhal pictured a day when search engines understand users so well that they predict what people wanted to know and cue them with messages on smartphones.

‘That is the ultimate dream,’ Singhal said.

‘We are nowhere close to that yet.’

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According to the American Express OPEN and Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) “Small Business Search Marketing Survey”, US small businesses recognize word-of-mouth as the top way their customers find them, followed by the internet and search engines.

The reliance on word-of-mouth—likely along with the low cost in dollars of participating—has led small businesses to make social media their No. 2 online marketing effort, after company websites. As of March 2011, 44% of respondents to the survey used social media for marketing, vs. 28% who used SEO and 21% who used paid search. Looking ahead, more small businesses planned to add social media marketing this year than either search tactic.

Other research supports the finding that small businesses have made social a top priority. A February 2011 MerchantCircle survey found over 70% of US local small businesses used Facebook for marketing, while only about two-thirds used Google and one-third used Bing.

While 57.2% of small business respondents told Ad-ology that social media was at least somewhat useful at generating leads, the MerchantCircle survey found local small businesses were more likely to say search engine marketing was an effective channel than social networks, at 40.2% vs. 36.7%.

Social may have an easier learning curve and require less direct spending by small businesses that are less experienced with online marketing—and the “must-do” factor helps as well—but time-tested online marketing methods like search should not be ignored. Search, in particular, unquestionably helps businesses get found by consumers right when they’re looking to buy.

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There are a number of factors that search engines use to rank a web site, and as search engines often change the algorithms used to determine rank it can sometimes be very difficult to keep up to date.

One of the factors that Google for example uses to rank web sites is back links, or the number of incoming votes from external web sites or domains to a web site. The more votes for a web site, the higher Google and other search engines will place your web site in the SERP’s .

Other factors also come into play, the age of your domain name, the older your domain name is the better as search engines will trust your site more than a newer site, how much authority or page rank your site has, how may web pages are trying to rank in the top 10 for your keyword and even how long your domain name is registered for are all factors.

The reason back links are important, is the more votes a site has usually indicates the popularity of that site and its content with other web users. Search engines love popular sites.

It is harder to generate votes for a static web site than it is for a blog based site such as WordPress, due to the fact that most blogs are updated on a daily basis whereas most static based sites often get few or no updates.

One of the techniques that you can use to generate back links for your site is by placing comments on blogs that you either read or follow on the web. This is even better, if you can find a blog that allows for a “follow” link back to your web site.

What is a follow link? Some time ago Google invented a piece of code that can be inserted into a hyperlink that tells search engines “not to follow” that link from its place on a web page.

This essentially stops most search engines from following the link, so it effectively stops the link juice, it does not however stop the traffic from following a link on your site.

Web pages that have 100 or more links on them can be penalised by search engines and in this, read Google, so if you have a web page that features a lot of advertising links, say for example on your home page, then you could be penalised for having a lot of links, this is usually one of the tell-tale signs of a spam site.

Likewise, having no code placed in the link means that a search engine will follow the link and discover in some cases new web sites. You can also use this method if you’d like to get your web site indexed quickly in the search engines, as placing a link on a web site already in Google’s index will result in your site being indexed quickly as Google will “follow” the link.

Creating votes or back links for your web site, whether you use a blog based site or a static web site is not easy, there are some web masters who believe that the process of link building is easy, that’s because they like to use paid link building services and a quick search on the web will uncover a number of these services on the web. But you need to be very careful with buying links, Google frowns on this and will penalise your web site if it catches you doing it.

One of the ways you can build back links to your web site is by commenting on other writers or companies blogs, most of these blogs still allow follow links back to your blog, and if they happen to have a very high page rank with Google, this adds considerable SEO value to your blog.

If you have a blog and want to start building links this way, one thing you do not want to do ever, is to use automated blog commenting software, I find with my blogs, I constantly get comments that are generated by these stupid software programs.

These comments often have no relationship to my article, are blatant advertising or add nothing to the discussion and it’s very obvious that they have been generated by a software program because in most cases we humans do not speak this way.

I will delete them without a second thought as they add nothing to my blog.

So when creating your comment, always make sure that you make it relevant either to the content on the blog or the story you have been reading, if you do this, the blogger will appreciate that they have a real person taking the time to comment and you’ll always get published which includes your link.

Search has become a nearly ubiquitous online activity and Google remains the undisputed king—receiving the largest share of search ad revenue and traffic. But an eye-tracking study by user experience research firm User Centric adds a new perspective. Its research indicates that most search users overlook search ads almost entirely.

The findings showed organic search results were viewed 100% of the time, and participants spent an average of 14.7 and 10.7 seconds looking at organic search results on Google and Bing, respectively. However, only 28% of participants looked at right-side ads on Google, and just 21% did the same on Bing—spending around 1 second viewing all ads combined on each search engine. To put this in perspective, searchers who viewed the left-hand site navigation spent more time doing so than they did viewing ads on both search engines.

One caveat to the study: It was an artificial search environment. The participants were given search terms to use and may not have been using their preferred search engine. However, participants searched on both sites in this study, and the results were statistically significant.

With users spending nearly all their time viewing organic search results, Hitwise’s latest numbers give some further insight. Bing and Yahoo!’s success rates, meaning searches that resulted in a click, are just over 81% whereas Google sits much lower at 65.6% in December 2010 and January 2011.

Although the sheer volume of searches Google handles may bring down its success rate, the difference been Google and Bing is still large enough to draw conclusions. First, users were shown to spend the vast majority of their time looking at organic search results on both search engines, and Bing’s success rate is 16 percentage points higher than Google’s. Therefore, even though Google has more traffic than Bing, the Microsoft search engine generates a greater share of relevant traffic per search.

Additionally, this data indicates that SEO is more essential than ever. Users have learned to overlook search ads, and they will continue to ignore such ads as they become even more search-savvy over time.

SEO will become increasingly challenging as users start to rely on search engines for different reasons. A recent study from Forrester Research found that internet users were 22 percentage points less likely in 2010 to rely on search engines to find websites than they were in 2004. Although this doesn’t mean people are using search engines less to find information about product types or branded goods, it does mean that they are relying on search less to find websites specifically.

Perhaps this change is because internet users are becoming more knowledgeable and do not need to rely on search to find popular sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Also, they may be relying on social media more to find websites. No matter the reason, this data indicates that search users’ behaviour is in constant flux. As search users continue to change their behaviour, marketers will need to adjust their SEO strategy to keep up.

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In contrast to the year-over-year (YoY) declines experienced in 2009, punctuated by a nearly 10% drop in Q3, YoY search spend based on a same-client basis increased by 18.5% in 2010, setting up a positive start to 2011.

Growth of about 35% in Q4 2010 (see more detail below) brought up the overall average, as increases in the first three quarters ranged from roughly 5% to 15% (based on MarketingCharts estimates of SearchIgnite graphical data).

In 2010, Q4 saw particularly strong growth with 35.3% YoY increase in search spend (Q4 2009 YoY search spend was flat). All other underlying metrics in Q4 2010 show positive results, with 20.6% YoY increase in clicks, 2.3% YoY increase in impressions and 17.9% YoY increase in clickthrough rate (CTR).

In particular, search momentum built up throughout the quarter with accelerated spend (YOY Oct +25.4%, Nov +35.3%, Dec +44.8%).

The retail vertical reported even greater increases in search spend (36.6% YoY), average order value (AOV, 31.3% YoY) and conversion rates (22.5% YoY) for Q4 2010 based on same retail spend. Consumers are spending more per order compared to the Q4 2009 holiday season, which SearchIgnite says signifies an improvement in consumer sentiment.

Notably, AOV was up 48.3% YoY in December 2010. This is a significant improvement from 2009, when Q4 AOV declined by 13% YoY.

The top five rankings for total core search queries and total core search share were identical in December 2010, according to new data from comScore. However, Microsoft was the only search provider that saw its share grow, rising 6% from 11.3% to 12%. Google stayed flat with 64.3% share, while Yahoo lost 2.6%, dropping from 19.3% to 18.5%.

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Overall, Americans conducted about 18.2 billion total core search queries in December 2010, up 3% from about 17.7 billion the previous month. Top core search query provider Google experienced 3% month-over-month growth, from about 11.4 billion to 11.7 billion queries, while number two Yahoo stayed essentially flat with 3.43 billion queries. Number four Ask Network (-1%) and number five AOL LLC (-5%) both had fewer total core search queries in December 2010 than November 2010.

The top five rankings for total core search queries and total core search share were identical in December 2010, but Microsoft was the only search provider that saw its share grow, rising 6% from 11.3% to 12%. Google stayed flat with 64.3% share, while Yahoo lost 2.6%, dropping from 19.3% to 18.5%.

Microsoft had the highest percentage growth of explicit core search queries among any of the top five explicit core search providers, rising 4% from 1.88 billion to 1.97 billion. Google retained its number one spot with 3% growth, rising from 10.62 billion to 10.95 billion. Yahoo’s explicit core search query total remained essentially flat at 2.63 billion.

Overall, Americans conducted about 16.44 billion explicit core search queries in December 2010, up 3% from about 16.04 billion the prior month.

Explicit core search market share results did not change dramatically between November and December 2010. The top five ranking stayed the same, with Google having the largest growth, increasing its share 0.6% from 66.2% to 66.6%. Microsoft also incrementally grew its share from 11.8% to 12%, while Yahoo lost about 2%, dropping from 16.4% to 16% but remaining in second place.

comScore is also providing data on the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer. Google’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo entities.

In December, 69.4% of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 24.4% of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

The query volume for Bing-powered search engines (which includes Microsoft Bing as well as Yahoo) grew 4.3% from October to November 2010, increasing from about 4.38 million to 4.57 million, according to recent data from Compete. As opposed to October 2010, when dramatic 16.2% growth in month-over-month Microsoft query volume (almost 1.9 million to 2.2 million) drove most of the Bing-powered query volume increase, Yahoo was the catalyst in November.

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Microsoft sites, which have recently shown impressive month-over-month growth in core and explicit search queries, backslid a bit in November 2010, according to new comScore qSearch data. In particular, total core searches conducted on Microsoft sites (primarily representing the Bing search engine introduced earlier this year) dropped 10% between October and November 2010, from 2.3 billion to a little more than 2 billion.

Americans conducted nearly 17.8 billion total core search queries in November 2010, down 4% month-over-month from 18.4 billion in October 2010. Google sites ranked first with 11.4 billion searches (-4% from October 2010) followed by Yahoo sites with 3.4 billion. By remaining virtually flat, Yahoo was the only one of the top five total core search query providers to avoid losing core search queries from the prior month.

In terms of core search market share, little changed from October 2010. Google remained on top with flat performance of 64.8%. Yahoo grew its share about 4%, from 18.5% to 19.3%. Number three Microsoft lost more than 6% of its share, dropping from 12.1% to 11.3%.
comScore also tracks market share in terms of “powered by” search. Google’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo! entities.

In November 2010, 69.2% of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 24% of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

Although Microsoft saw its total number of explicit core searches drop 2% month-over-month, from 1.9 billion to 1.88 billion, Microsoft’s explicit core search market share improved more than 2%, from 11.5% to 11.8%.

Otherwise, Google sites led the US explicit core search market in November 2010 with 66.2% market share, followed by Yahoo sites with 16.4% and Microsoft sites. Ask Network accounted for 3.6% of explicit core searches, followed by AOL LLC Network with 2%. Fluctuations were minimal.

More than 16 billion explicit core searches were conducted in November 2010, down 4% from October 2010. Google Sites ranked first with 10.6 billion searches (down 4%), followed by Yahoo sites in second with 2.6 billion (also down 4%) and Microsoft sites in third. Ask Network accounted for 580 million explicit core searches (down 3%), followed by AOL LLC Network with 327 million (down 5%).

Wealthy Americans are more likely than middle- and lower-economic class Americans to conduct web searches for a variety of data, according a recent study by Pew Internet & American Life Project. On a given day, 40% of wealthy Americans research a product compared to 19% of other Americans, and 20% of wealthy Americans will search for a map, compared to 12% of other Americans.

When it comes to seeking health information online, once again the highest income bracket has the highest levels of engagement in areas including medical issues, treatment and facilities, doctors and test results; while the lowest income bracket has the lowest levels of engagement.

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Is 2011 set to be the “year of Facebook,” even among search marketers? Based on what US advertisers told search marketing agency Covario, it’s definitely the year of social.

Search marketers have discovered how social media marketing can help build their search engine optimization efforts, and respondents to the Covario survey said their No. 1 priority for SEO next year was integration with social media programs. According to the report, “leveraging social media for scalable link-building efforts is a major initiative for advertisers.”

Social media will also play an important part in paid search efforts next year. Search ad campaigns on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn were top of mind for nearly half of advertisers surveyed—far ahead of priorities like local search or dealing with recent changes to major search engines (for example, Google Instant and Yahoo!-Bing integration).

The report noted that major spending increases on Facebook search advertising are planned for 2011. Covario estimated many advertisers would be spending 10% to 20% of their pay-per-click budgets on Facebook next year, giving the social networking site a major share of that market. The report also indicated that rather than pulling dollars away from other paid search spending areas, these would be additions to the search budget coming from display or offline budgets instead.

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