On to other European problems, the EU’s antitrust authorities have opened a formal investigation of Google in Brussels. The dispute is centered around alleged anti-competitive practices and abuse of Google’s dominant market position.  A number of companies are accusing Google of downgrading search engine rankings for some of their competitors or potential competitors.  In an August post on it’s website, accusing company Foundem said “Google has always used various penalty filters to remove certain sites entirely from its search results or place them so far down the rankings that they will never be found. For you conspiracy buffs out there, it’s important to note that 2 of the 3 companies raising these allegations have ties to Microsoft, who surely has an interest in seeing Google’s dominance broken.  The plot thickens!

Back in the States, Delaware-based Xerox announced that they are suing both Google and Yahoo for e-commerce and search patent infringement.  This suit alleges that Google’s AdWords and AdSense software violate an existing Xerox patent for generating queries on an automated basis.

And earlier this month, a case was filed in Ohio by shopping search company myTriggers, alleging that Google violated antitrust laws by unfairly inflating the cost of their pay per click ads by dropping their quality score.  Google’s quality score is based on a subjective evaluation of a landing pages relevance to the keyword phrase used by the searcher.  As relevance improves, quality score increases and the keyword price drops. The suit brought by myTriggers alleges that the drop in quality score drove the price of their search ads up so dramatically that they were, in effect, forced to stop PPC advertising with Google.

The suit further accuses Google of a level of favoritism in determining quality scores for advertisers that may violate antitrust laws. “On information and belief,” the lawsuit alleges, “Google enters into agreements with a number of search websites, including rival shopping comparison sites, that allow these sites to participate in AdWords keyword auctions without being subject to the same ‘quality’ scoring Google applies to other search rivals, including myTriggers.”

Is the beloved “Do No Evil” Google brand being starting to show some tarnish?  Last year’s stealthy roll out of Personalized Search (http://www.seologic.com/search-engines/google/google-pushes-out-personalized-search/) raised some eyebrows from the search marketing community, but was largely ignored by mainstream media and the general searching consumer. More recently, the privacy fumbles around the launch of Buzz certainly generated some negative chatter.

There’s no doubt that Google is being put under the microscope more and more, and their deep-pocketed competitors are most likely stoking the flames. If this is the year that the general public actually wakes up and realizes just how closely Google watches and records their every online move, at some point we may look back at 2010 as the year of the Privacy Backlash.

My closest friends range in age from the mid-30’s to the mid- to late-40’s, and they’re all highly intelligent overachievers. So, most of them are highly specialized in their particular domains.

I’m 42 now, and have managed to become very specialized while at the same time staying relatively tapped into the larger world around me.

Recently a friend asked me how I do it. How does one manage to keep up with the rapidly changing world, in particular the technological advances as we get older, gain more responsibility, and grow more specialized?

So, I put together a simple set of links that, if visited every morning, will help all of you overachievers to keep up with the kids. You’re already visiting Facebook every day. Just add these to your list.

I visit these sites every day:

Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/)

Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/)

Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/)

Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/)

Slate (http://www.slate.com/)

Defamer* (http://defamer.gawker.com/)

Right Wing Watch (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/)

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/)

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/)

The LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/)

BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/)

The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

NPR (http://www.npr.org/)

EurekAlert! (http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php)

Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/)

Discovery News (http://news.discovery.com/)

Groupon** (http://www.groupon.com/)

* For fun!

** For interesting deals every day.

“People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?”

His response has sent shock waves through the tech community online:

“Well, I think judgement matters… If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Read Gawker’s post on the subject Google CEO: Secrets are for Filthy People.

Learn more about the CNBC show and get the upcoming schedule to watch it yourself: Into the Mystique of Google.

Follow Eric Schmidt on Twitter: ericschmidt.

Google has been moving towards personalized search for some time in an effort to deliver the most relevant results possible to users. By watching and recording what types of searches you do and the sites that you visit, Google attempts to deliver relevant results based on your past searching history. If you’re a loyal zappos.com customer that visits the site frequently, Google may rank zappos.com higher than, say, shoes.com when you search online. Over time, you’ll see more zappos.com results, and fewer shoes.com listings.

What’s significantly different is that Google has now made this an opt-out decision for users to make, not an opt-in as it was previously. From Google:

“Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition enables us to customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser. It’s completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You’ll know when we customize results because a “View customizations” link will appear on the top right of the search results page. Clicking the link will let you see how we’ve customized your results and also let you turn off this type of customization.”

Although an opt-out option exists, it’s fairly complicated and Google is doing nothing to highlight that fact and guide users through the process.  More on the opt-out process in a separate post to follow.

It will be interesting to see if there is any public backlash due to potential privacy issues. Most people probably have a limited understanding of the amount of data that search engines capture when they search. This is one of the biggest developments in search engine marketing in a decade… the fact that Google released the news in the dead zone of a Friday afternoon may point to their concern about a public backlash on privacy. A blinding introduction of new products today (Real Time Search, Google Goggles, Voice Search, Hot Topics) only adds to the suspicion that they’re trying to bury the news on personalized search.  The new products were announced at Google’s Search Evolution conference, held at their Palo Alto Headquarters.  No mention of personalized search.

From an SEO perspective, this could render ranking reporting obsolete. Although there have been minor variations on rankings from one user to the next in the past, this move will wreak havoc in the marketplace as there will be significant variations in rankings from user to user. Most SEO professionals know better than to focus obsessively on rankings, and most SEO professionals have worked with otherwise intelligent clients who insist on focusing obsessively on rankings. As much as we counsel clients to focus on lead volume, conversion, and revenue generation, we’ve all felt the heat when a client drops a spot or two on a key phrase. This latest move by Google may ultimately force clients to turn their focus from rankings to revenue, which may actually be a good development for the SEO industry.

Watch the Google Video Announcement

1. Yesterday, Google launched “Site Performance,” described as “an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools that shows you information about the speed of your site and suggestions for making it faster.” See How fast is your site?
2. Google announced today the introduction of Google Public DNS. See Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google

Google’s search maven Matt Cutts confirmed in an interview at a search engine marketing industry event last week that driving improvements in page speed is high on Google’s agenda. Although Google has not historically used page speed as a ranking signal in their algorithm, Cutts said that ” a lot of people at Google feel that the web should be fast”, and that the feeling at Google is that if your site provides a good user experience and loads quickly, “maybe you should get a bonus”. Larry Page is on record as saying that the web should be as fast as flipping through a magazine, and that a faster web is good for Google’s business.

The speculation is that Google will soon use page load speed as a direct factor of their ranking algorithm.

The latest feature to be added to the Toolbar is a new application called “Sidewiki,” which essentially allows anyone to post comments in a browser sidebar on any website on the web. Once someone has signed in to the Google Toolbar they can post comments and read comments that have been posted by others.

Screenshot of Google Blog with Sidewiki turned off.

Screenshot of Google Blog with Sidewiki turned on.

Rather than posting the most recent entries in chronological order, Google is using an algorithm to promote the most relevant “useful, high-quality” entries to the top. Details on the alogorithm are, of course, not revealed, but Google has noted that they will include “use of sophisticated language”, “user reputation”, and “user history” to determine rank ordering of comments. Importantly, Google will decide which postings contain inappropriate content, not the owner of the site.

The first step is to “claim” your site’s Sidewiki as the owner of the site… you can do this by installing the latest Google Toolbar with Sidewiki installed. As the site owner, any comments that you post will be displayed at the top of the list. Look at this as an opportunity to talk to your website visitors, point out useful features, highlight what separates you from your competition, etc.

Depending on the adoption rate among consumers, Sidewiki may be a significant and concerning development as it essentially takes control of some of the presentation of a company’s website out of the hands of its owner. While Google has published Editorial Guidelines, the potential for abuse is certainly out there. A competitor could post a bad review or negative comment about your business… on YOUR site. There is no system currently in place to notify site owners that comments have been posted on their sites, so monitoring comments will be a manual effort.

Google has not allowed site owners to opt out of Sidewiki… at least not for now. The good news is that Google has a track record of launching new applications and services, getting feedback from the web community, and adjusting their offerings based on that feedback. As an example, Google has historically had serious accuracy issues and spam problems with their Maps product. When they began serving Maps more prominently in results for localized searches earlier this year, there was an outcry from the SEO community regarding the quality of the data. Google took a number of steps to develop tools to enhance listing accuracy, ultimately resulting in a “white listing” process for national clients.

Like other forms of social media including Twitter, Facebook, etc., it’s a good idea to have someone dedicated to monitoring the online conversations about your brand, and engaging in the dialog in a genuine and meaningful way. Time will tell whether Sidewiki will be a compelling new social media dynamic like Twitter, or a relatively benign solution in search of a problem.

More details can be found at The Official Google Blog.

To install Sidewiki so that you can monitor and participate, visit Google Sidewiki on Google.com.

Watch Google’s video about Sidewiki below.

This could be a test to see how people will respond to iGoogle as the default page at Google.com. Or it could be a technological goof— perhaps someone was “fiddling” with the URL rewrite rules. We think Google may be looking at completely changing their home page to default to the iGoogle home page in the near future. After all, Bing has been getting a lot of attention lately.

To see how the new home page might look, visit iGoogle at http://www.google.com/ig.

Although Caffeine was not an algorithm change, there have been some minor fluctuations in organic search rankings.  According to Google’s Matt Cutts, in order to “minimize the stress on webmasters”, Google is waiting until after the holidays to fully roll Caffeine out to all their data centers.

In the meantime, clients are advised to continue to focus on the essential foundation for SEO as Google continues to alter the playing field in order to maintain their dominance in search… focus on quality content, clean code, and maximum link popularity to drive organic ranking and maximum lead generation.

Here’s a quote from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog announcing the news:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

This is not a change directly related to Google’s user interface (see Bing) or their search algorithm… it’s focused on improving their infrastructure for the way in which they index websites. Cutts recently said Google’s indexing needs to be more “powerful, flexible, and robust”… setting the stage for possible future improvements like real time and semantic search.

As usual, Google is not very forthcoming on specific details around the indexing changes, and they expect the impact on organic rankings to be minimal. It’s a refreshing change for Google to provide a developer preview and to solicit feedback from the online community as mentioned above. They have not yet confirmed when Caffeine will move from the beta stage to full launch.

We’ll keep you posted as the beta test moves forward and details emerge. In the meantime, you should continue to do what we’ve always recommended as Google continues to alter the playing field in order to maintain their dominance in search… focus on quality content, clean code, and maximum link popularity to drive organic ranking and lead generation.

Visit Google Caffeine now.