Google’s new privacy policy and terms of use

I’ve been a long fan of short and simple. In corporate there can be so much to confuse and clutter what can still be a strong legal document without having to detail each little point. Google today has released one new privacy policy and one new terms of use to cover all of their services. They even documented this on a new page linked from Google’s home page search box.

Both the new terms of use and privacy policy go active March 1st, 2012 and use very general language about how to use their services and how your privacy is covered. But in short or in length the message is the same. There are many ways to use our services and in order to best service your requests we may need certain information from the language you speak to what ads you like (click). Like every other site in the world they too collect information like the browser you use showing the size of your screen, browser type, IP address (your internet address which can also show where in the world you live city-wise), etc. But it does extend into the information you provide in your public account with their services.

So, if you list your job, income, interests or any other piece of personal information publicly it will now be part of what Google can use to best service you. Service you can be displaying ads, content, search results and more. This is a big change and something to look into more closely. Like Google says, you are making it public so what is the harm? You’ll have to decide if you want that public information to be used to market to your or to control your online experience with their other services.

Google is not out to harm you. They make money from their services running ads. They simply want to show you the best ads based on your buying potential for certain ads. Some people get upset at such a thing. Well, that is why they are telling you now, a full month before they go live. So, just keep this in mind while you create your accounts with Google. It does however go even further into what you’ve searched online too but I don’t think that this is anything new.

Location for some people seem to be a huge conditional. Google clearly states here that your GPS address could also be used. This is great for showing you local places and businesses in their ad system. Again, you’ll have control over this by opting out of sharing your GPS. This option is usually controlled by your mobile phone however. So, you’ll need to research how to set this up. If you have a Google account, you may control this from your search home page as well.

There has also been a consistency factor. This I’ve noticed with several different accounts with Google where they have been merged together. Ever have two or more Adwords accounts or Gmail access? Google simply wants your experience to be seemless while they continue to best serve you no matter where or how you access any of their services, from browser to browser, computer to computer, etc.

Google is careful to outline that sensitive information such as searches associated to race, religion, sexual orientation or health are not stored nor are used. In a following section it states that the personal identifiable information will not be combined with Double Click (ad subsidiary) unless you’ve opt-in. You can opt-out of Google cookies by searching for “opting out of Double Click”.

In Google’s terms of use and privacy policy you’ll see links to access and control your information on your account. Here’s the link to your account settings if you’ve missed it: https://www.google.com/dashboard/

Be sure to follow with Google’s Terms and Privacy and keep yourself informed. I’ll write again soon as to how this may affect your marketing and advertising with Google.

https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/preview/

https://www.google.com/policies/terms/

What is SOPA and PIPA

There are two bills that the US house of representatives are try to pass along with the US Senate. This two bills are under the guise of Stopping Online Piracy Act and the Protection of IP Act. There is no problem with wanting to help stop piracy of software and music or even movies. Nor is there an issue with helping secure the rights to those who’ve worked so hard on creating that Intellectual property. The problem is how vague these bills are and how much power they give certain authorities or corporations in order to protect themselves.

We live in a world that relies on open and free content to discuss, share, learn, grow and create and earn as a society. More and more we rely on information that is only available online or only makes since to access via the web. Do your part today to make your voice heard so that the internet can be free and open for us, our children and generations to come. A place where they can expand their minds without fear of being shut down, persecuted or fined.

If you enjoy free internet without barriers please join the masses in making our voice heard by telling your law makers that you want to continue to use the internet without restrictions by their vague rulings. Click the image above to visit Wikipedia to learn more about these and how you can help. You’ll also learn just how wide spanning these rulings are and may impact your life.

Thanks,

Joseph Lancaster
surfingexpert.com

The year in search according to Google

Here is a quick recap of current event searches in Google. Now, it doesn’t touch any of the big news in marketing or business (other than Google+ or the Apple’s iPhone and iPad). Nor does it mention the large changes Google rolled out in it’s search algorhythm. So let’s see if we can touch on some of it in hopes of making sure you are ready for 2012.

Don’t worry, I will be as brief as possible to stick to main changes you’ll want to make sure you are aware of rather than to cover every little episode.

In January 2011 major sites such as overstock.com and JCPenny began to notice penalties. Not sure if this signaled Google to crack down harder or if it was the initial phase of changes to come all year long. The companies were giving away discounts and other offers to encourage websites to link to them. Links do drive up SERPS (search engine results page) placement but this practice is in violation of Google’s terms of service. Think of what Google is or is offering. A place where you can search and find what you are looking for not one site who wants to offer it all. The leason here is that though there are ways to cheat the system, you won’t always win. It can take months to get back in good standing with Google at a waste of time, money and sales. If you put that same amount of resources into creating better products, customer service and engaging your customers they will naturally want to talk about you online and maybe even link to you as well.

At the end of January Google wanted to stop sites from copy and pasting content (scraping content) just to have more text which is considered content spam. Google will find duplicates of the content and only give one site the credit for it based on their own logic. So it is important to write your own content which only serves you better. Yes, larger companies have paid top writers so you think yours won’t be as good. But you can glean from it what you might want to write. After all, everything you write or say is a regurgitation of what you have read or heard before with YOU added to the equation. Take the time to write about YOUR company and offers. The way you write it will also help explain the differences between companies and THAT is the key to advertising — standing out in the crowd. All mobile phones are about the same coverage, about the same dependability, about the same costs but they don’t argue, “no, WE are the fastest”, they separate themselves and find how and what they want to promote to diferenciate. Only you know your company and how it’s story should be told and sold to the public.

The end of Feburary Google made one of the biggest algorithm changes (Panda) focusing on what would be coined “thin content”. Content pages just to be pages that had little writing. Google stated that the change affected 12% of all sites. This was to deal with low quality sites offering little conent to either bolster ad click through rates or where fly by night sites offering nothing worth while but stealing placement online. As above, real well written content is the answer. Sites that took the time to have great content (not too much or it would be seen as keyword spam) remained unaffected.

At the end of March Google unvieled it’s Google+ button +1 to compete with Facebook’s Like button directly in searach results. This would allow searchers to see if anyone in their Circle had clicked it showing that it might be a good search result based on their liking (sorry to use the Like term, it just works (kudos on that FB)). Google now has many Google+ features for businesses and we’ll discuss them later as they became available.

Mid April through June, three version of the Panda changes were released to include information of sites that were blocked by users via browser tools or in search results. When you do a search and click on a site, see that the site is not right for you and click back to search results you’ll see a new links, “block all pages from this site”. Google sees your click and takes it into consideration for not only your future searches but others as well.

Late June Google finally releases it’s next attempt to compete with other social media sites with the public release of Google+. It grew fast within the Google fan base but those on the fence were very vocal about their disbelief it would be a worthy adversary against existing social media giants. (Yes, I used the term Giants in opposition to Google. That is how the public saw the match up). 10 million people did join within the first two weeks and continues to grow especially within the technical and marketing groups.

July and August saw more Panda releases in other parts of the world.

In Mid August they released expanded sitelinks (the additional links you’ll see below the main link when performing a search. They have been around for a while but here Google expanded them to 12 then back down to 6 where it was just a line of 3-4. You can’t control it but Google picks up on what it determines to be your main links. If your site is products, services, contact us, that is what you’ll see. If your site has dozens of links, it will post the most prominent based on rankings similar to pagerank. Make sure your top pages to market are easily linked to from all pages and your navigation is well optimized.

Mid September they released an update to allow you to use rel=next and rel=prev in your links for pagination. This is where you can jump forward and back in blogs and here Google wanted to know more defined what the conetent relationship was to it would not see them as duplicates in more places on your site. Structure in navigation as above is all you’ll need to address here. Navigation makes it easier for your viewers too.

Additional Panda changes or releases where rolled out but no details where released by Google. Talk is that is was to address large player sites who seemed to not be affected by previous released changes in order to address some of their specific tactics that cheated the search systems.

In the middle of October, Google changed their searched to be encrypted with SSL usage. This made it more difficult for some data companies to pull organic keyword referral data and was thought that only Google would be able to provide statistically or anylitical data about search. The number of affected analytical data companies affected continue to increase.

November was all about freshness. You can have a great site, lots of content and everything perfect but if there have been no changes recently, your site will be hit (35% of sites where). So, keep writing even if you just have one simple product or service. Talk about it, the industry, staff changes, what ever you can to keep it fresh. An easy way to do this is to have a blog too. Engage with your customers or potentials by being a leader in your industry. But you have to get it all online and out there.

In November Google released a list of changes to show it is being more transparent about changes made. They are still a bit vague (they don’t want to release all their secrets). In December Google release another set and stated they will do this each month to sharing all some of the changes released.

No doubt it was a huge year of changes for Google as well as all of us working online. I’m happy with the changes because it keeps us focused on good positive change and keeping fresh and creative. It’s exciting to see what solutions are to come of it all and how sites improve making all of our online experiences better.

How has your site been impacted this year? And what did you do or need to do about it?

The Amazon Script – Clone Amazon’s Success

Want a site like Amazon? What can you learn from them?

Jeff Bezos shared six thoughts on his success with Amazon during an interview on Forbes. Let’s break it down for small internet businesses and see how well WE can do in our future’s too.

1. When you have a window of opportunity, go for the jugular – even if you have to exhaust a huge number of resources.

The internet is a very fast environment for business in all terms. Growth, death, leaders, followers, etc. So moving fast into the opportunity is key. However, it’s also paramount to take your time to do the research and make sure it’s a real opportunity and not something else. He mentions resources too. Small businesses might not have all of the same resources at the fingertips of larger corporations. Resources also are more than just capital. It could be time, equipment, personnel and more. If you are operating a home office make sure it’s all worth it before spending the nest-egg or quitting your day job. Or find ways to keep costs down such as with affordable seo.

2. Think long-term meaning 5 – 7 years, not 5 – 7 months.

I say this to many clients who are seeking quick financial salvation in internet marketing. Yes, there are some marketing tecniques such as social media marketing which provide quicker results but it is not lasting. Got a rush from a Groupon campaign? It too will fizzle once the coupons are spent. Every other part of your day to day business is going to shore up your future. Marketing simply gets people to your door or website. It’s now up to your business model and daily practice that will help turn them into customers who stay with you and support you as well.

Planning for the long term also means changing and growing your business to stay relevant and profitable. Be open to new ideas, pay attention to your industry, keep overhead in check to remain agile and, as Drucker would ask, question segments of your business (services or products too) and determine if you should keep them, kill them or revamp them all together.

Dell’s early success was based on people and businesses seeking to replace or purchase cheap computers. After a huge growth and sales term for a short number of years growth slowed down. Corporations were still growing and expanding but not at the same rate as they were. Plus after all major corporations upgraded, it would take a few years for them to need to be replaced.

My point is the need to be honest with yourself in terms of growth and potential. If you won’t need the large staff after a 12 month marketing cycle think about short term leasing and contract hires or what ever fits your model to remain open to change, good or bad.

3. Long-term market share is more important than short-term profits because without long-term market share there will be no long-term profits.

Market share might not sound like something small businesses have to be too concerned with at first thought. Someone who sells solar gadgets just wants to sell them but might not be thinking or knowing who else sells them, what is the demand, what is my competition like and is it increasing? If you just want to sell 100 units so you can make rent, that is nice this month. But what about next month’s rent?

Think about your marketing and spending on growing your brand and long term standing as a business in your market. Think about getting customers to return for this or related projects. Find ways to interact with them so that they refer friends or others. Keep up with changes in your industry and markets. I don’t mean jump from trend to trend but build with confidence after research forging a path based on your strategy.

4. It’s ok to make mistakes but it’s not ok to be timid.

Mistakes are part of life. The mistakes that have been made before and documented are lessons we can learn beforehand and avoid. But don’t let the possibility of mistakes prevent you from taking the next step. Notice I didn’t say taking risk. It makes it sound as if every next step is risk. If the later was true we’d never learn to walk, run, jump, and so on that would have gotten us to the moon, invent the internet, cook with fire… you get the point.

Learn as much as you can even WHILE you take the steps to launch and operate. Fear is there to tell you to learn and be ready, not sit and do nothing. In business and especially as a leader, having your long term plan will help you know what to do in a situation that requires you to think and act fast. So plan but then act upon that plan.

5. Obsess over Customers.

Most small businesses are not spending tens of thousands on an ad campaign so we can sit at our monitors and watch sales go from zero to 100,000 units in seconds like television ads propose. So those five customers you have to day are extremely important but also valuable. In “Crossing the Casm” Geoff Moore drew out a curve graph showing how an innovation moves through time. The number of clients increased through four groups. Innovators, early adopters, early and late majority, and laggards. Your first five customers are links to many more potential clients and prospects. It’s like sales people that have first hand experience with your product, have a better trust relationship with prospects and can provide real world testimonials about your business.

Conversely they could be billboards of how well you are not doing as a company. OIl industry can be seen as a product we need to move away from but everyone still goes to the pump each week. BP had an accident and tarnished the company and brand moving car owners to fill up across the street at another gas station even if it was a few cents more per gallon.

What about the value of your customers? At first glance it may appear that the value is clear. Purchases over time minus cost to acquire, etc. But how else can you extract value from them? Surveys, questionnaires, feedback, really engage with them and learn from their perspective. What did they think? What was missing? What was right and what was wrong? Is there something that can be improved? The answers could be simple. Add more color options or more ways to ship. Gift wrapping or personalize. Other insight might not be that simple but could spark value addition to your current offering guiding you towards revisions or future changes to put on the market to help bolster growth again. Can improvements be an addition to existing customers, etc.

Your customers can be creative and see your products in whole other ways you might not. Without creative outside thinking we’d be missing a lot more than just Slinkies and Silly Putty (which were accidental discoveries for different intentions).

6. Be first in a big market.

Anyone who’s ready any business book has heard this. Anyone who’s read a few of them as also read that if you can’t be first, make a sister market and be first in it. I like to think of it in these terms; followers get leftovers, and I don’t want to live on leftovers. Gift stores are everywhere. Be the one that offers all eco friendly products and recycled stationary. Find a niche for your business and be the leader in it. We offer internet marketing. But we are top at simple pricing and easy to understand packages for small businesses.

Ask yourself about your idea or current business. How is it special? I mean really different? Not crazy outlandish but unique from the others yet accessible of an idea enough to create real demand. Then make it your focus to let that market know you are first and there for them. As the market grows so will your profit based on market share. Nurture it, create a place to educate and communicate such as a forum or open blog. Become the Xerox in your industry or market.

In closing you need to be passionate, hungry, and want to hunt over gather. If you want to succeed then go succeed. It’s a verb. And if you need help, or just want to brain storm, I’d love to talk.

Can’t manage my Facebook page

Facebook makes so many changes that it can be difficult to manage. Here you simply want to access your page, make changes, review statistics, get your ID numbers correct while linking FB pages to applications, etc. Well, you are not alone in your frustration. Now with Google even more on their heals with Google Plus, FB has to make constant changes to keep fresh and relevant.

So, back to the issue. You can see all of the pages you LIKE but every time you click on Page I Admin, you either get nothing more than the page refreshing or you get a blank page. There’s no fix to this. There is no trick. Simply wait for their team to fix it. We and numerous others have sent reports so they know what’s going on.

But there is good from this. I promise. Other than taking the time to meditate to prevent frustration or anger (patients) you can also do what most people do when one service is not available, – look for greener grass. Google’s Plus network is growing fast. Google has ensured it’s success since they’ve publicly addressed it’s use in search and factoring in search results. Wow, that’s huge.

So, while you wait to get back into tricking out your Facebook page, don’t forget to give some serious time to creating a business page on Google Plus. It’s nice to show how many people LIKE your page on the currently largest social network but stacking up your Google Plus page and Plus Ones are going to become extremely important before you know it and it would be nice to have put this early time into great use and action.

https://plus.google.com/