Yahoo News reports that Google will be storing patients’ medical records while testing a health service. Health profiles will include prescriptions, allergies, and medical histories, and will be password-protected just as your Google Account is.
Naturally, this is having a backlash since it’s Google, after all, and it’s privacy. But some forum members suggest that the reaction would have been different if the company storing your medical history was not Google. Others feel that this is a bad idea overall and even if it wasn’t Google, they’d disapprove.
But some point out that this is an opt-in only program, so your health records won’t be available unless you want them to be.
For those who have opted in, however, there is raising concern that this is tied to your Google password, and Google doesn’t encourage separate passwords for any of their accounts.
This is not new news but I wanted to demonstrate how Google AdWords tailors ads based on your past searches, since it has been coming up more often in the forums.
I conducted a search for basketball shoes and the ads were for Eastbay.com, Nike.com, Finishline.com, Final-Score.com, and so on, all with titles targeting my search (here is a picture of those results). Right after that search, I decided to search for “searching for love” based on our Valentines Day theme. What came up? Three ads, one from eHarmony.com with the title “Look For Local Singles,” then an ad for Like.com/Shoes with the title “Basketball love shoes.” Here is a screen capture of that ad, to see a full search results screen capture, click here.
This clearly demonstrates how Google is using past searches to help generate related ads for your next search. Basketball shoes doesn’t seem related to searching for love, unless you really love basketball shoes. But this demonstrates what Google is and has been experimenting with for a while now.
I first covered this at back in April 2007 but this is the first time I am showing you a clear cut example of it in action.
It’s with a lot of sadness that I report about the ongoing Yahoo layoffs that have begun occurring yesterday. Danny has aggregated the news stories and headlines, and we’re even seeing a Facebook group called “I worked at Yahoo until today” that has some familiar faces.
At Search Engine Roundtable, we’re really sad to see this happen. All of the Yahooers have been played an important role in the search space, but many of you have also been very wonderful to us whether at conferences or with proactive approaches in the forums and blogs, and we’re really sorry to see you go. We wish you the best in the future.
Numerous reports at Google Groups from several users of Google Reader say that they are unable to manage their friends who maintain a googlemail.com account. To be specific, one member says the following:
I’m having the exact same problem - I have @gmail.com address, she has a @googlemail.com. She can see my shared items on her reader, but I can’t find her name among my reader friends.
This is indeed a bug for the time being, and as Google Reader Guide points out, it’s currently being investigated.
Here’s one new piece of information which has been confirmed by numerous webmasters:
Since the ‘rollback’ to fix #6 glitch my site dissapeared back to the sandbox but still shows up well on all the other DCs ….[Google] has discounted all links with less than 6 months of age.
Others, however, dispute the claim:
…this can’t be the case. 6 months ago my pages were #9 and dropping in a specific search term. 6 months ago our link profile was abysmal.
One webmaster notes a “significant” drop in traffic since January 30th.
Another notices that Canadian results are differing from US results and has tested the theory with a proxy server.
Perhaps the strangest revelation of all is a weird caching issue:
I have most of my pages not indexed due to redirects (aka se friendly URL’s), and my cached index page is that of another site completely which has nothing to do with me.?
Nobody can reproduce that, however.
On that note, I noticed that I did a site: search using a specific domain and a result came up that had no association at all to the domain I queried. I tested this a few weeks ago and then again just a few hours ago and the problem remains. Strange.
Why is Yahoo having such a hard time? According to Roger Montti, it’s because they are unable to attract teens and young adults. They also are taking in more money but are turning less profit.
Is Yahoo going to go down for good? No, forum members don’t think so.
I think Yahoo has lots going for it with regards to content. It has the best email — way better than Gmail or MSN Hotmail. The New version of the Yahoo mail (I pay for mine yearly and get the premium).
I was watching MSNBC the other night and they were talking about Y Answers and you keep hearing about their OMG site. I think its a great time to invest in Yahoo while their stock is down.
Y! is not going anywhere.
Google is Yahoo’s biggest competition. And Yahoo needs to up their game, according to others:
The problem with Yahoo isn’t that they soley need something new or some updates, its that they need to do something to actively shore up their % of users, right now google is pickpocketing them. Then they need to start actively competing with google, taking their users.
Now that Barry is adding video to the buzz roundup (a move which I totally disagree with (since I like reading more than listening, hehehe), I have to be on my best behavior. Without further ado, here’s what you missed this week.
Your New Google PageRank Isn’t Really Visible
There’s much going on about the new Google directory update since it’s not consistent with the PageRank score that you see. Now if only DMOZ accepted my website so that I can find out what my “real” PageRank is. This little four keeps bugging me. I want a perfect ten. kthxmatt.
Yahoo Files Revised “PageRank” Patent
Bill Slawski discovered an interesting Yahoo “PageRank” patent that illustrates the problems with Google’s PageRank. The goal is not so much about just links but about user behavior and whether they stay on your page. Users suspect that Google might be pumping out the same thing, so we’ll see who gets it done first.
If you’re a Google AdWords advertiser, you might feel good to know that Google stores the history of your ads in every single edit. However, each edited ad is treated as a new ad. As Barry notes, “that is why when editing an ad, it may not impact the quality score as much as starting a new ad from scratch.”
Google Partners with The Weather Channel to Provide Data on Maps
Google broke up with IncrediMail last week, when it stopped serving AdSense ads on IncrediMail’s site. This is a publicly traded company so the news is not good for investors. In fact, their stock went down 45%. Not good indeed.
Better news for AdSense publishers: Google has come out with a glossary of terms if you’re starting out with AdSense. This is great… now if only Google would come out with ways to make $10 million a month with AdSense with little to no work. Thank you in advance.
Something’s up with AOL UK search: it’s missing probably billions of .net domains. If you do a search for site:.net, you’ll only see a little over 200 results. I just ran this query and found only 203. Poor .net holders….
If you were wondering, a lot of webmasters have reported January Yahoo updates. Looks like Yahoo is doing something behind the curtain.
SEMMYs
As you may know, the SEMMYs have been announced. This is a new award based on Matt McGee’s favorite blog posts of the year. We’ve been nominated for a few blogs and hope to see which win. Good luck to all!
I Dare You to Stay Away from Search News for a Week
Donna dared you to stay away from search for 24 hours. I up the ante and ask you to stay away for a week. I bet I can do it (as long as Barry doesn’t make me blog). I’d probably feel swamped after the week is up, but if someone wants to bet me $$$ to do it, I’m game. Maybe I’ll even put up a webcam.
Moderator, Discovery at Search Engine Watch Forums received an email from Google on how to block his ads from being displayed on Google’s Gmail.
By default, most, if not all, emails you received contain ads along the side that are or should be contextual relevant to the content in your email. Here is an example email from our Search Forum Recaps, which you can also subscribe to over here.
What if you, as an advertiser, don’t want your ads to be displayed in people’s email? Well, in the past, the only real way to exclude those ads from showing in Gmail would be to opt out of Google’s whole content network. That is no longer the case.
To stop your ads from displaying in Gmail, you have to go to the Site Exclusion tool and enter in gmail.com as a site you want to exclude in Google’s content network.
But as we reported on December 28th, there has been bugs with video AdSense units that has been restricting many users from signing up. In fact, the bug was first reported on December 21st, and then acknowledged by an AdSense representative. The bug appears to have never been resolved.
A new Google Groups thread started on January 3rd, reports a similar, if not the same, error when signing up for AdSense Video units.
I am seeing “Your account is still pending approval” and underneath that, “Adsense error: An internal error has occurred. Please retry your request.”
This time a different Google AdSense representative saw the report, on January 9th, and replied:
Hi all,
Thanks for updating us on this issue. I have passed on to our engineering team all the information that you have provided. Thanks for your patience while they investigate this matter,
Now that Barry is 
This blog is here to bring you the best and most relevant blog articles related to internet marketing