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On a client phone call this morning, one of the gentlemen we were speaking to was talking about how frustrated he is with Google’s new personalized settings because it is effecting people, like many of our parents or grandparents, who actually have no idea that it is affecting them. I agree that it does seem counter intuitive.
According to Google, their encrypted search feature was originally set in place to allow users enrolled to search more securely. When first launched in June of 2010, there was a special search engine URL at https://encrypted.google.com/ that you could go to in order to know that you were using the encrypted search feature. At this time, the Google logo would change so you knew you were searching under the encrypted terms. Back in November, however, Google changed their encrypted search feature to affect all logged-in users. They began encrypting search sessions of any user that was logged into their Google account. This sounds simple enough, but as our client made a very valid point this morning, many people don’t actually know that they are logged into their Google account. This, in turn, alters the data being delivered to you from Google, when you may not want it to.
Sure, you can go to Google’s home page and click log out in the upper right corner, but then, later in the day, you may check your Gmail account, Google Maps, Google+, YouTube or any of the other Google properties you can sign into. With Google popping in and out of our lives so often every day, I myself am guilty of not logging out after I check my Gmail account and frankly, it makes it less convenient for the next time I want to check my email if I do so. I know there are a wide variety of people out there who fall into this same pattern.
For example, my husband just bought a Netgear Push2TV HD router which allows you to wirelessly view your laptop screen on your HDTV. As crazy as it seems, we canceled our cable over a year ago to save money. So now, we watch most of our programming through Netflix, or directly through this device from Hulu and network station websites such as abc.com. Once in awhile we will have a “YouTube night” as my husband would say, where we watch endless videos of performances from our favorite song artists, cats acting crazy or cute kids babbling at each other in toddler speak. Since my husband is usually the one that is running the show, I can’t say for certain if he ever actually logs out of his YouTube account, which means he is technically always searching under Google’s encrypted search feature, when I know he wouldn’t want to be limited in terms of his searching behavior.
Since Google still allows Advertisers of Google AdWords to see these encrypted search terms, many have been skeptical from the start as to the motive of Google. Are they really concerned with blocking referrer data from third parties or are they really just pushing all website owners towards spending more money with them in order to see this data.
Although this all certainly has an effect on SEO, we still don’t know how much. Even with the major inconvenience being the loss of some data within our ROI Trax analytics, we still continue producing amazing results for our clients with the same SEO strategies we always have.
How do you feel about Google’s new encrypted search? Do you feel more protected or more exposed?
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