This week we’ve all been waking up to this blue banner across Google’s homepage.
What is it? Well If you click learn more, then you’ll find information on Google’s updated Shared Endorsements. From 11 November Google says “we may show your name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads.” Shared Endorsements cover comments, "follows" and other actions people do on Google+ a development from their 1+’d “likes” on ads that have been in place since 2011.
As you can imagine the notice of the updated policy has gone down pretty sour with many of the public, including a protest involving people swapping their profile photos to Google boss Eric Schmidt - just so his image appears on ads instead.
Google have assured users that they can opt out, however, if you do, the warning comes up:
“When you disable this setting, your friends will be less likely to benefit from your recommendations.”
Hmm. Let’s see what Google has to say regarding the protests, so far it’s been radio silence.
On that Google note, Secure Search is still causing waves, with the news that encryption on all natural searches has hit an average of 80% of agencies’ traffic - it’s even been said that it could rise to 100% by mid-November.
People using Wordtracker for their keyword research are not affected - our keyword database is totally independent of Google.
App of the week - meet CoBook. If you’re like me, you’ll relate to the frustration of searching for a particular contact and finding the same contact e.g. John, stored under different categories on your iPhone - iCloud, Phone and Social. But John’s email is on iCloud, his mobile is under Social, and his home number is on Phone - very confusing. CoBook eliminates that hassle by combining your contacts, so you have the one contact with the one contact card. Thanks guys!
