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Loren Baker | Search Engine Journal | @lorenbaker

Loren Baker is the founding editor/creator of Search Engine Journal and remains an advisor and Editor In Chief to this publication.

Consumer Watchdog Uses Google Analytics to Track User Behavior…Wait, What?

Yesterday I posted about a video being shown on a jumbotron in Times Square that showed Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a privacy peeping Tom; gathering information from unsuspecting children as he offered them "free" ice cream in his Google ice cream truck. Well Business Insider made an interesting discover today that calls out Consumer Watchdog for their hypocrisy. What did they do that is hypocritical you may ask? They use Google Analytics...

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Google Brings “Search-to-Store” to the Mobile Web

Google Maps for Mobile has a new feature that could help you get exactly where you want to be. Earlier this summer they introduced Expendable Map Ads that appeared in both applications and mobile web. This app provided a banner from paid advertisers that once clicked on, a user would see a map with options to call the business or get directions to it. The only thing that could have been a problem with...

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Google Makes Changes to Their Privacy Policy That We Can All (Almost) Understand

Google has decided to give it's privacy policy a little bit of a makeover. According to the Google Blog they are not changing any policies, just combining some of its more redundant product-specific policies and making their main policy a bit easier for users to understand. Some of the policies to get combined with each other are: Gmail, Calendar, Talk and Docs, since contacts are shared between all of these platforms. Also they are cutting...

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Reddit Prospers From Digg v4 Debacle

Since the release of the newest version of Digg, v4, launched last week, the less-than-warm reception has caused a massive influx of traffic to their rival - Redditt. Launched less than a year after Digg, Redditt hasn't been as popular, but they did have very loyal users. However, starting Sunday night, the four-person team has seen the amount of new users, uniques, and page views increase in staggering numbers. Senior programmer, Chris Slowe, states that the...

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Google Opens Local Merchant Inventory Feature to All

In June Google started beta testing it's Local Shopping inventory feature which allows merchants to submit a list of products that they currently have in stock so that users can easily locate these goods when performing a search. They have since received a lot of positive feedback from searchers and have an influx of retailers that want to participate. With all that said, they announced on Wednesday that they were opening up...

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CEO Eric Schmidt Creepily Portrayed in Consumer Watchdog’s New Anti-Google Ad

On a 540-square-foot jumbotron in Times Square an ad by Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, is playing 36 times a day. The subject of this giant advertisement? Google's invasion of the public's privacy. The video portrays Google's CEO Eric Schmidt as the creepy driver of an ice cream trunk, branded with the Google logo. Schmidt extracts personal information from children under the guise of giving them free ice cream. These claims are based...

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Yahoo Search Gives Users Geographically Relevant Suggestions

Yahoo Search blog announced today that it is introducing a new Search Assist that is enhanced with the ability to provide users with geographically-closer suggestions as you are typing. This new feature is suppose to help searchers save a little time while typing their query because Search Assist will take into account the location you are searching from. The office where I work is located in the Citrus Park/Carrollwood area of Tampa, Florida so I...

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SVG Files and Documents Are Now Indexed by Google

Google has announced that they are now going to be indexing SVG documents and files. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based graphics format specifically for vector graphic, both dynamic and static and graphics can be made and edited in any text editor since they are XML files. You can, however, block your SVG files from being indexed by using the Robots Exclusion Protocol. Their Webmaster Blog says: "We index SVG content whether it is...

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Happy 2nd Birthday, Google Chrome!

Two years ago, Google launched Google Chrome - a browser based around the open-source program Chromium. Today, the latest version of the browser was released making it the sixth version to date. Google reports that today Chrome is now three times faster than when it was released in 2008 when it comes to JavaScript performance. Among the new features introduced in version 6 are: auto-fill and auto-fill synchronization and more than 6,000 extensions; all of...

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Google and AOL Renew and Expand Long-Time Search Partnership

After almost a decade of being in a search partnership, Google and AOL have announced this morning that they have come to a five-year contract renewal and expansion agreement. With this partnership, Google will continue to power AOL's searches in addition to providing mobile search. Also, YouTube has agreed to to bring AOL videos to its site as part of the expansion. This renewal can definitely be seen as a win in Google's...

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