Google’s new privacy policy came into force last week but the internet giant’s new terms of use are still the subject of wide debate among those involved with search engine optimisation and website design in the information technology industry.

Google will also be concerned about the worrying question mark still hanging over the legality of the changes within the European Union.

The changes to Google’s privacy policy have been widely advertised by the company in advance. It has  involved the replacement of over 60 separate sets of terms for the use of its many different services and their replacement with a single unified policy applicable across its full range of services.

Google claims that the new policy clarifies its position on privacy and how it collects and uses personal data. According to the company, the new policy does not alter any existing privacy settings or collect any additional data. The company also emphasises that is does not sell user data to third parties. Google insists the change is beneficial for service users and will provide a ‘simpler, more intuitive Google experience.’

However, critics of the change are concerned that Google can now track the data of internet users across the entire web. Privacy campaigners are growing increasingly concerned about the vast amount of personal information Google retains and worried that this will be utilised to force targeted advertising onto people’s computer screens.

The concerns have certainly been noted in Brussels. As a result, the EU has launched an investigation into the legality of the change.

Worries centre on whether the unified policy is compliant with data protection and privacy legislation. The EU Justice Commissioner, Viviane Redding, has already publicly stated that in her opinion the policy violates EU law and lacks transparency.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has launched a new initiative designed to help users personalise their search results. The Linked Pages feature allows users the opportunity to customise the results of their personal profiles.

The move follows Google’s release last month of its ‘Search Plus Your World’ and is evidence of the further evolution towards greater personalised search as the engines try to incorporate the mass of data in social media networks into their results.

The new feature requires users to visit Bing’s Linked Pages site and log in with their Facebook account. They can then begin adding links to their name. Once completed, when a Facebook friend searches for that person on Bing, the result displayed will show the linked pages that they have selected. The search return will display the top three links selected, but a fourth link will direct to a Linked Pages profile page where the person’s Linked Pages are displayed.

According to Bing, the Linked Pages feature allows users more control over their public profile and will help ‘your friends find the interesting stuff that you want them to see’. However, the Linked Pages are currently only displayed on searches performed by Facebook friends and some internet users have criticised the new feature as being overly Facebook centric and not taking into account people who use other social networks.

Another feature that has drawn fire is that it is possible to link people to pages that they have not authorised. While Bing counters that it is possible to remove a page to which people are linked, it would soon become a tiresome chore if the site had to be continuously monitored to remove undesirable links.

Despite all the bluster in the tech community about Google’s algorithm change in January, it appears the search engine giant remains as popular as ever. Figures released this week by digital analytics firm comScore revealed that in the United States, Google actually increased its market share by 0.3% to capture 66.2% of the search market.

The results did, however, show some movement in the market with Microsoft’s Bing engine extending its lead over Yahoo in second place. Bing, which registered an increase of 0.1%, commanded 15.2% of the market in January whereas Yahoo slipped by 0.4% to 14.1% of total searches. The Ask network recorded 3% of total searches and AOL just 1.6%

Although the results underline Google’s dominance of the search market in the United States, the search engine holds even greater pre-eminence worldwide. Stat Counter reported that in January, 91.53% of all searches in January globally were performed on Google.

The results underline the importance of companies making sure that website designers and web copywriters optimise their websites for ranking on Google. This includes undertaking effective keyword research, ensuring sound technical website structure, on page optimisation and link building campaigns. In short, good SEO practice.

Although there has been significant growth in companies using social media as part of their online marketing strategy, search remains the most popular way for internet users to find good and services. It is therefore paramount that companies that want to maintain a strong online presence continue to pay attention to the optimisation of their sites.

The new version of Firefox has just been made available for download – and it includes Twitter search navigation.

The latest version of the popular browser, which is made by Mozilla, was posted to its FTP servers last week a few days ahead of its official release.
Firefox 8 is available for PC, Mac and Linux computers.

The most notable development to this latest version of Firefox is that it lets users search Twitter directly. Users can search the microblogging site by selecting it as an option in a drop-down search box or alternatively by highlighting some on-screen text, right-clicking and selecting ‘search Twitter’.

Firefox users can search Twitter for people, hashtags and topics.

The new version of Firefox also disables all third-party add-ons in a bid to offer extra security. Should users want to enable third-party add-ons, they can do this manually.

Tab loading is also different in Firefox 8. When a user selects ‘show my windows and tabs from last time’ as the default start page, instead of trying to open every tab at the same time when the browser starts, it simply loads the one currently selected by the user and then loads the others when the user switches to them.

Other improvements include changing the animation when tabs are re-ordered or detached.

Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox around every six weeks, earning them a reputation for rapid-fire web development.

The new Yahoo!/Bing search collaboration seems to be working.

The latest stats from the USA show that the Microsoft’s search engine is finallly beginning to catch up with Google.

The new combined search site has won a four per cent market share within Stateside search, mostly at the expense of its rival.

Although the change has happened very slowly, it could point towards long-term challenges for Google as it finds itself with a more equal competitor.

According to figures from Experian Hitwise, Bing searches accounted for around 28.99% of all US search enquiries last month – an increase from 28.05% during the previous month.

Hitwise also says that Google’s market share currently stands at around 65%. Just over a year ago in August 2010, just before Yahoo! and Bing merged, Google had a 71.59% market share.

Microsoft have previously commented that they would keep “working and working”  to win their battle with Bing, rather than having expectations of a quick win over the search engine giant.

The news has ramifications for SEO specialists, as they will now need to factor Bing/Yahoo! increasingly into their strategies, rather than solely focusing on optimising search within Google.

Experts are now watching to see whether the trend will be replicated in the UK.

Google’s so-called ‘sandbox’ is one of the search engine giant’s many tricks to ensure their results remain relevant and of good quality. While this is excellent news for those searching, it does present a potential pitfall for new sites. Newly hosted sites can be placed temporarily by Google in a ‘sandbox’ while their quality is ascertained. Release can take anything from a few days to a couple of months, causing a major loss of traffic to new sites. So how can you avoid the sandbox becoming a sandtrap?

Run a soft launch: Putting your website live a few pages at a time can help avoid the sandbox. Pages are indexed as they appear, so by the time the whole site goes live Google is familiar with much of the content and less likely to sandbox the site.

Use an existing domain: Using a domain name which is already familiar to Google can help you avoid the sandbox, meaning your site is available to your market far quicker. However, using an existing domain for a new business will greatly limit the addresses available and your branding opportunities. It is also potentially very expensive to acquire.

Choose your keywords carefully: It’s great to compete on popular keywords, but very difficult to make a high-rank. Competing on less popular keywords will secure you a higher ranking and make the site appear more relevant.

Content is king: As with so many parts of Google, if you provide what they’re looking for – excellent, relevant content – you’ll be left alone. Make sure your site contains high-quality, original content and it is likely to be released quicker, or avoid the sandbox altogether.

With time being one of the business world’s most precious commodities, it is important that websites load quickly and completely – or you risk losing the prospective customer. As search engines like Google continue to develop their ranking algorithms, evidence is emerging that loading time is now included in their scoring systems. Consequently, how fast your site loads will have an impact on your site’s position in the search results.

The easiest and quickest way to reduce your loading time is to limit the number of web elements on each page. Elements include items such as scripts, images and any Flash components. Each element requires an http marker within the page’s code, creating http requests to the server for each component. The more elements you have, the more requests and the slower the page will load.

Ask yourself – for every piece of your webpage – what value does it add to my site, to my SEO and to my customers? If the answer is low or none, then cut it.

This doesn’t mean images should be avoided completely, but if they are essential, make sure they are optimised. Images should not be written into your code as they stand, but should be saved as suitable for web, with a screen-only resolution of 72 dpi and in GIF or PNG format. It also makes sense to resize the images so they reflect the size on screen.

For more information and advice on how to optimise your website design for the search engines, and ensure it loads in the shortest possible time, contact NSDesign for a free no-obligation consultation.

With very little fanfare, Google has added a feature to their Search Engine that could have a big impact on how people use and “influence” the results.

Searchwiki is a new feature available to logged in Google users, which allows you to add, remove and “promote” any of the returned results from a specific search.  You can also add notes to any of the results, allowing you to leave little reminders about what you think of the site.

To see this in action:

Sign into your Google account (you’ll have one if you use GMail, Adwords, Google Calendar, or any of the online Google tools that require a login).  Then on the Google search page, do a search for “Glasgow Web Design“…  Then scroll right to the bottom, and click “See all notes for this SearchWiki” 

What you should see is our “notes” that we left for our own site, and confirmation that we “promoted” our link under this search term. 

Only you (while logged in) see the results re-organised the way you’ve specified, but other Google users DO get to see your comments, and also get to see which sites have been promoted or removed by other users.  Which brings up some concerns… 

What if someone writes a nasty (or libelous) note tagged to your site.  Eg: “don’t use these mechanics – they ripped us off”…  How does the owner of that garage reply, or ask Google to remove these comments?  What if he doesn’t even know such comments exist?  Will the volume of visitors slowly decrease until Google sends him no traffic?

If Google’s SearchWiki is indeed a wiki, then where are the methods to complain about a note, or request that factually incorrect notes be taken down.  Personally I think this new feature may do more harm than good…  and it’ll be interesting to see how Google deal with the barrage of complaints that they’re sure to get! 

Also – how long before the organic results (those that everybody sees on Google) actually start being influenced by “promoters” of sites?  If we get all our customers to “promote” the NSDesign website under the search term “web design”, will the fact that 1000′s of people have gone out of their way to tell google it’s a better site than the rest actually see Google move it up the organic results?  They say NO, but for how long…?

Read Google’s own announcement of SearchWiki at the Google Blog.