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It's kind of stupid to react positively to this news just because you hate marketers or ads. The truth is that incoming keywords from Google provide a whole hos
by gfodor 13y ago
It's kind of stupid to react positively to this news just because you hate marketers or ads. The truth is that incoming keywords from Google provide a whole host of functionality and analytics for site owners as well. (I realize they offer Webmaster Tools, but the fact is that getting incoming keywords for individual visitors provides all kinds of leverage for personalization, improving SEO, and understanding user behavior that aggregated, offline reports will never come close to doing.)
The fact Google is still providing this data to people who do paid advertising shows this isn't about privacy at all, but is about closing off a valuable source of information for some other reason, most likely just under the guise of privacy.
At a high level, it's not clear that this type of information being "leaked" to sites was ever anything other than a function of the way Google worked from v1, where the query was passed as a GET parameter. So it's debatable if this was a good design decision in the first place. But Pandora's box was opened. Due to this design decision an absolutely immeasurable about of code has been built around this source of information (for good and evil) and calling this a "data apocalypse" isn't really that hyperbolic for people relying upon it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mortehu 13y ago> The fact Google is still providing this data to people who do paid advertising By "this data", I presume you mean "traffic data grouped by keyword"? Or are you saying that the search query is passed unfiltered along with the request for individual ad clicks? AdWords can provide aggregate keyword traffic data easily without compromising privacy. In order for Google Analytics, and similar software, to provide aggregate keyword traffic data, the data would have to be bundled with each request. The more data a website receives about you simultaneously, the less privacy you have. Previously, a website would get your IP address, your user agent and your search query, and at the same time have the ability to inject a tracking cookie. The IP address I use is registered to me in RIPE, so in my case it would be trivial to connect my search term to my name and address. If I visited unencrypted sites, secret agents monitoring the Intertubes would be able to store my search queries. Is this kind of data really available in AdWords?
- gfodor 13y agoI actually haven't verified personally if the keywords are passed along with ads, I was going by the claims made in the article. If you are concerned about your keyword data being aggregated and stored based upon referrals and associated with IP, I have bad news for you. This data has been being aggregated and cross referenced not only by sites and advertisers but also third party aggregators for more than a decade.