Google was recently the center of negative attention when it was brought to the publics’ attention that they did not have a link to their Privacy Policy readily available from their homepage. Yahoo! and MSN both implemented the policy on their respective homepages and in an attempt to ride the wave, Ask.com has recently added a link as well.
While the title of this post makes most reminiscent of George Orwell’s “1984″ it also fits the tune of the intentions of Google’s eye on searchers. Debates have surfaced throughout the SEO world recently on how in-depth search engines such as Google should delve when monitoring searchers and providing personalized results. In essence, they are simply trying to provide a more personalized set of results for the respective searcher. Some may add that it is an infringement on privacy to monitor a searcher to this degree, but on the other hand, it is currently warranted by the searcher since they must log into their Google account to receive these tailored results. Search monitoring is as old as the engines in that keyword searches are have always been tracked and are an essential analytical tool for search marketers targeting keyword phrases for an SEO program.