There is a brilliant new guest post up over at ProBlogger.net by Alister Cameron titled How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words!
It’s a long post, and very technical. Alister analyzes some of the wording found in Google’s patent application a couple years back for their Blog Search and he brings up several interesting questions.
Here’s one of the things he brings forward that might be a little disturbing for some folks.
Apparently, according to the patent application, Google goes through folk’s GMail and Google Talk accounts looking for links and somehow incorporates that data into their search algorithms. They also apparently use data gathered from their Google Reader users accounts with regards to feed viewing and clicking habits.
- If you are a user of one of these services (I use use all three), how do you feel about Google looking over your shoulder to glean information about your habits?
Do you think Google culling your email or IM conversations for links is an invasion of your privacy?
If you don’t use these services, does knowing Google is watching what you do discourage you from ever using them?
Food for thought.
