SeoAlchemist

On a 540-square-foot jumbotron in Times Square an ad by Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, is playing 36 times a day. The subject of this giant advertisement? Google’s invasion of the public’s privacy.

The video portrays Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt as the creepy driver of an ice cream trunk, branded with the Google logo. Schmidt extracts personal information from children under the guise of giving them free ice cream. These claims are based on the cookie-tracking issue (which allows for personalized advertisements based around a user’s browsing patterns), that Business Insider states is “overblown”.

At the bottom of the video a phone number is provided for those people that want to obtain more information about the issue, but the reply you will get asks for your name and email address. Odd? I would say so.

What do you think about the issue? Are you afraid of Google acquiring all of your personal information for malicious intent?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

CEO Eric Schmidt Creepily Portrayed in Consumer Watchdog’s New Anti-Google Ad

Yahoo Search blog announced today that it is introducing a new Search Assist that is enhanced with the ability to provide users with geographically-closer suggestions as you are typing. This new feature is suppose to help searchers save a little time while typing their query because Search Assist will take into account the location you are searching from.

The office where I work is located in the Citrus Park/Carrollwood area of Tampa, Florida so I begun conducting a search of the closest mall – Citrus Park Town Center. I typed out “citrus p” and the first two results were for the place I was seeking; three out of the five results listed had something to do with my query.

This enhancement seems like it will be pretty useful and will definitely shed some seconds off of your search time. Getting back even just a few seconds of our lives here and there could be pretty beneficial to most of us in the long run.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Yahoo Search Gives Users Geographically Relevant Suggestions

Google has announced that they are now going to be indexing SVG documents and files. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based graphics format specifically for vector graphic, both dynamic and static and graphics can be made and edited in any text editor since they are XML files.

You can, however, block your SVG files from being indexed by using the Robots Exclusion Protocol.

Their Webmaster Blog says: “We index SVG content whether it is in a standalone file or embedded directly in HTML. The web is big, so it may take some time before we crawl and index most SVG files, but as of today you may start seeing them in your search results. If you want to see it yourself, try searching for [sitemap site:fastsvg.com] or [HideShow site:svg-whiz.com]

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SVG Files and Documents Are Now Indexed by Google