Web Surfing

There is a lot of controversy brewing lately over the actions of Google regarding an individual's web activity. First of all, based on your prior web searches, Google is now ranking websites for you when you perform the same search the following time. In other words, if you had chosen to search for “jewelry,” the results would be displayed and you would choose the suitable choice. The next time you performed the same search, instead of the results being displayed based on “adwords,” they will be structured according to the websites you last visited when searching this same topic. This new practice takes place regardless if you are logged in or not, and Google considers it to be more of a helpful tool rather than a nuisance. This video explains this process further in depth.

In addition, the little cookies that are on the Google website also allow perspective companies to strategically place ads based on your web profile of user activity. This new cookie based personalization feature does allow users to opt out, but because of the value we place on our time and the lack of knowledge needed to execute this process, more than likely this won’t occur. Many have commented that they fear users will not discover new sites if they are continually ranked in order based on past preferences. One more thing that Google frequently does is to place search results of companies that they are in partnerships with, without disclosing that information. Google claims that they never manipulate data but some, think otherwise.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Google needs to take into account how others perceive what they are doing and ensure their customers that they are committed to providing them best service possible. It would be very easy for a current Google customer to switch to another search engine and not think twice about it! Who will win and who will lose is the biggest question now. I hope you have a moment to decide what you think about this new feature.