Special Delivery: A Second Look at Search News

By Brooke Nichols

From privacy policies to understanding how data is used, the experts added their insights into this week’s popular topic. Beyond the privacy theme, the search news was as varied and plentiful as always…

And although this message may not be relevant to your query, and it might be interruptive to reading your fill of the week’s news – I’d like to say ‘Congratulations’ from all of Resolution Media to Aaron Goldman who became a proud papa today! That is, indeed, a special delivery.

Privacy Policies And Search Engines
Do search engines care whether or not a web site has a privacy policy? Is the content of a page less relevant or more relevant if there's a link on it to information about how any data collected about visitors might be used? Probably not.

But it's possible that a search engine might consider that the source of content is more trustworthy and more authoritative if it does include such a page. And that may make a difference...

Peeing Into The Privacy Wind
If it manages to pass into law, the net effect of Richard Brodsky’s bill — which mandates that the likes of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft provide the ability to opt out from tracking — is likely to be minimal.

Before moving forward with any laws, we need to consider the ability to opt out and the ability to manage personal history and data security standards and the benefits of personalization and behavior tracking.

Comcast To Stop Slowing Peer-to-Peer Traffic
Faced with pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, cable company Comcast said Thursday it will end its practice of slowing traffic to peer-to-peer sites. The company said it will work with BitTorrent to develop and implement a new "protocol agnostic" system for handling Web traffic by the end of the year.

Landing page optimization: Testing your way to higher profits
In the online marketing world, a lot of time and resources are spent driving traffic to a Web site or landing page. You analyze campaign performance with almost religious fervor in order to extract the last penny of revenue and profit possible from each Internet visitor. But all of your hard work comes down to the few precious moments that the Internet visitors spend on your landing page.

If Black Hat Equals Cool, Then White Hat Equals Paid
Affiliate marketing is a search industry niche that often gets a bad rap from both the engines and search pros--warranted or not. Chad Frederiksen wonders whether the benefits of being a "black hat" affiliate are worth the time spent evading discovery and the possibility of having all that work nullified. "People seem to associate black hat as the 'cool guys,"' Frederiksen says. "But the ultimate question to me is what is your goal? To be cool or to make money?"

I Want My Empty TV: Google's Play For Broadcast 'White Space'
Days after losing a bid to acquire a valuable portion of U.S. broadcast spectrum auctioned by the U.S. government, Google has called on federal regulators to gain access to another, "unused" part of U.S. TV signals to provide wireless Internet access. Google called the signals, known as "white space" in the TV industry, an "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans."

Loladex: Local Search On Facebook Steroids
Loladex is a local search application that runs within Facebook and taps into your contacts' recommendations to rank results. The engine crawls through some 16 million business listings, including restaurant info from OpenTable, and combines voting and notification features to create a highly social, local search experience.