What the search engines know about us

Online Information, London, 2011Karen Blakeman

karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk http://twitter.com/karenblakeman

http://www.rba.co.uk/ Slides available at http://www.rba.co.uk/as/ and

on authorSTREAM and Slideshare

This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Personalization is commonplace

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AmazonOnline shopping (Ocado)

Targeted advertising

Search engines personalize too

“Dear Bing, We Have 10,000 Ranking Signals To Your 1,000. Love, Google” – http://searchengineland.com/bing-10000-ranking-signals-google-5

5473

– over 200 hundred “signals”, many have over 50 variations

“Bing Adds Adaptive Search, Customized by Your Search History” – http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109647/Bing-Adds-Adaptiv

e-Search-Customized-by-Your-Search-History

Emphasis on Google in this presentation because Google is the most open about what it does!!

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Your browser, device, operating system...

Panopticlick https://panopticlick.eff.org/

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Where are you?

• IP address location on desktop or laptop

• Mobile devices

• Present you with what they think is the relevant country information

– “local” content is given priority and more emphasis

– access to some sites and information blocked to those outside of local “region/area”

• Actual location is not always correct – some hotel broadband networks give the wrong country for user’s physical location

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Search engines remember what you’ve done

Results change depending on

activity

So do ads

– for your “ad preferences”

in Google go to

http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

– gives you a clue as to what

Google (and other search

engines) thinks you like to

see

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Facebook remembers you...

....even when you think you’ve deleted stuff– europe-v-facebook.org http://europe-v-facebook.org/

– europe-v-facebook.org - Data Pool http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html

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Google knows us so well

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Google personalizes and tailors

your results depending on your

location, computer, browser, past

searches, what you have looked

at in the past, your +1s, your

blocked sites, your Google+

account, your other social

networks, what you had for

breakfast...and anything else it

can find by rummaging around

in your Google dashboard

They all do it

Google personalization

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Your social networks

Logged in to a Google account? Your social media connections may be given priority

Used +1 to “approve” a page or posting?

Blocked sites from your searches?

Google says it may use all of these as “signals” for everyone, not just you

Check the dashboard on your Google account http://www.google.com/dashboard

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An identical search run at the same time by several  people with differing social network connections and on different devices will come up with different results.

Presents problems for those of us who help and advise others on effective search strategies. We can no longer say that a particular search strategy is the best approach for dealing with a specific type of search.

You see what you want to see

Google can seriously damage your news

Experiment by Mary Ellen Bates

Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune

http://www.librarianoffortune.com/librarian_of_fortune/2011/09/is-

google-really-filtering-my-news.html

Highlights

More than 25% of stories showed up in only one searcher’s

results

Almost one in five searchers saw a story that no one else saw

Only 12% of searchers saw the same 3 stories in the same order

And it’s about to get worse – “Google News Launches "Standout" Tag

for Featured Content” http://searchengineland.com/google-news-

launches-standout-tag-for-featured-content-9425611/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 13

Do you know what you’re sharing and with whom?

Facebook news apps

“Read" in Facebook - It's Not a Button, So Be Careful What You Click!

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/read_in_facebook_social_news_apps.php

Google profiles can no longer be private

Google+ circles

Android Google+ by default uploads photos to your album (thankfully doesn’t automatically share – at the moment)

Google+ taking over share functions e.g. Google Reader

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Do you know what you’re sharing and with whom?

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• Logging in to sites with email address, user name and password disappearing

• Log in with Facebook or Google+ account

• Log in with Facebook and you automatically "like" the page or site, with Google+ you +1 it

De-cluttering your Google dashboard maynot be possible

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More dashboard clutter....

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Note: Secondary connections are included in determining relevant search results

Do you have any control over personalization?

• Not entirely but damage limitation sometimes possible

• Decide whether or not having a web history is going to be a help or a hindrance

• If you have a Google or Bing account:– log out of it when you don’t need it

– regularly check your dashboard and privacy settings

– delete “stuff” and clear histories if you don’t need them

• Use Google Verbatim when necessary

• Check your ad preferences in Google and also consider using Network Advertising Initiative http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

• Cookie management (but remember if you delete all cookies you will lose opt-out cookies as well)

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Reject all cookies?

• You won’t get very far on the internet without cookies

• New European legislation “Cookie laws” http://www.out-law.com/page-5486

• Active management of cookies? Can be time consuming and may lose opt-out cookies

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“Normal” search Verbatim (identical to &pws=0) Chrome Incognito

Google searches

Go undercover?

• Anonymous proxy servers?• Browser tools

– Firefox – Tools, Start private browsing – Chrome has an incognito mode - still has localisation– Internet Explorer – In Private Browsing

• Scroogle.org – anonymised interface to Google– no cookies, no search-term records, access log deleted within 48

hrs– web search only and no verbatim search

• DuckDuckGo.com – does not keep your web history or personalize

• Blekko.com – http://help.blekko.com/index.php/what-do-the-privacy-options-in-

prefs-do/

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