Do you have a Google account? You may not think that you do, but if you have any of the following, then Google has assigned you an account:
- Gmail account
- YouTube account
- Adsense account
- Adwords account
- Analytics account
- Google+ account
You may have signed up for each of these accounts separately, but if you sign in to one of them and do not sign out, then Google will consider you signed in to their one and only, integrated Google account for you. And if you go and look for things on the Google search engine, they will know who you are and will use the information from the other accounts in refining the search results that you get.
You may not think this is a bad thing. After all, Google is doing this the better to serve us, right? But any information that they amass about us in their vast databanks will be available for sale to the highest bidder, and it will also be subject to government search, should the government obtain a search warrant or court order.
Google itself has suddenly taken an interest in protecting the privacy of searchers, and it has recently announced that it will not share search terms with Google analytics users:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-accessing.html
However, all this really means is that they will not share this information free of charge. They are hording it all for themselves, under the pretext of maintaining user privacy.
So, what should you do if you want your searches and your interests to remain truly private? There are two things you can do:
- Sign out of every Google account as soon as you are done using it.
- If you want to remain signed in to YouTube or Adsense, while searching Google privately, then open a different browser to conduct your search.
If you just open a different window in the same browser, then you are still signed in to the Google account you were last using. But if you view YouTube in Mozilla Firefox, while using adsense in Google Chrome, then you will be able to be signed in where you want, and signed out where you need your privacy.
Privacy is a personal matter. Many users may not care what Google knows, or they may trust the big G with their secrets. But to be forewarned is to be forearmed. If you do feel you need more privacy, this is one way to get it without forgoing all the services that Google provides.
© 2o11 Aya Katz
I was skeptical about why they were taking away the free search word information from Google Analytics, but still providing that information for people who paid for it. Honestly, I think they just want people to pay for a service that was once free. I also use the feedjit widget on my website, which gives me more information than Google Analytics. For instance, I know which search engine or key words people used to find my website, and I can see it instantly without logging into Google Analytics.
Thanks, Sweetbearies, for sharing this information. Is feedjit a free plugin for WordPress?
Feedjit is just a free widget for any site. You got to widget.com to get it, but some people do not like how it looks. I like it because it gives me quick information about where and what searches come to my site, and spares me the time of logging into Google Analytics.
Yuck, I was really tired when I wrote that url above. It is feedjit.com, not widget.com lol.
Thanks, Sweetbearies. I’ll check it out!