Google Maps Ghost-town Tours, Fukushima Nuclear Wastelands

Internet behemoth Google has launched a virtual tour through the nuclear wasteland surrounding Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

Virtual tourists can now take an eery tour through the deserted streets of Namie, one of the towns abandoned after the Fukushima meltdowns spewed radioactive fallout across a large area.

The site reveals streets overgrown with weeds, and time appears to have stood still since Namie’s entire population of 21,000 people was evacuated two years ago.

Fifty percent of the town on the Pacific coast sits within the 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the nuclear plant, which was crippled by Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami ::  Read the full article »»»»

Google Maps Gulags

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The internet behemoth that is Google, has rolled out a super detailed map of North Korea, which even labels some of its remote and infamous gulags. Until now North Korea was pretty much a blank canvas to users of Google’s Map Maker, which creates maps from data that is provided by the public :: Read the full article »»»»

Google Loses ACCC Australian Federal Court Case

The Australian Federal Court has ruled against Google, stating the search behomoth breached the law by displaying misleading sponsored links at the top of its search results. Last Year the court found that Google wasn’t liable for ads that appeared as search results. Consumers who used Google to search for Harvey World Travel, Honda, Just 4X4  Magazine and Alpha Dog Training were presented with ads that led to rival websites.

In appealing the Federal Court’s decision, The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission - ACCC – took the view that Google’s key word insertion system, plus the role of Google staff, were fundamental to the false representations being made. In a statement the ACCC said It was significant that the previous Federal Court decisions considered by Justice Nicholas related to publishers of advertisements in traditional forms of media, such as print and television. The reasoning in those cases is not easily translated to the practices of search engine providers such as Google in publishing sponsored entries as part of search results.

The ACCC appealed last year after Justice Nicholas ruled Google’s conduct had not been in breach of the Trade Practices Act. Justice Nicholas found that although a number of the advertisements were misleading or deceptive, Google had not made those representations. Read the full article »»»»

Dating Sites Betting on Location Tracking

While Apple and Google are desperately trying to reassure U.S regulators that location tracking is a harmless pass-time, as well as soothing iPhone and Android handset users they aren’t tracking their locations. Online dating companies are betting their bottom lines on doing just that.

Meetic SA, the French owner of the European operations of Match.com, is joining start-ups including New York-based MeetMoi in offering location-based dating services. Meetic will introduce features this year that let handset users find out real-time who’s around them and interested in meeting, and match potential soulmates who, for example, frequent the same gym, managing director Philippe Chainieux said in an interview.

Taking advantage of smartphones’ location data is a logical step for dating services, whose users are increasingly accessing their matches from handsets. The number of European web users visiting a dating service “almost every day” through a mobile device rose 49 per cent between February 2010 and the same month this year to 2.8 million, according to researcher comScore. The number doing so at least once a week climbed 44 per cent :: Read the full article »»»»

Google Ranks as MOST Trusted, Is Love Blind?

Harris Interactive has ranked Google as the MOST trusted Corporation in the U.S.A, supplanting Berkshire Hathaway, which falls to the 4th position. Johnson & Johnson ranked second again, followed by 3M Company at 3rd. Apple ranking 5th, as its corporate reputation catches up with its elite brand status.

Dispite Googles woes on integrity and trust of the past couple of years, Google was rocketed to the top of the Trusted List. Examples of outright privacy breaches and dishonest behavior seem to have been completely ignored . . .

Google settled U.S. Federal Trade Commission charges that its social network, Google Buzz, violated the company’s own privacy policies and used deceptive tactics when it launched in 2010.

“We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters. “Clearly there have been some privacy concerns as of late, and judging by some of the search terms we’ve seen, along with the tens of thousands of personal e-mail exchanges and Google Chat conversations we’ve carefully examined, it looks as though it might be a while before we regain your trust.”

Schmidt acknowledging that Google hasn’t always been open about how it mines the roughly 800 terabytes of personal data it has gathered since 1998 :: Read the full article »»»»

Go Go Google Go

Content Farms Feel the pain of subsidence, hits drop like flies as Google’s new algorithm kicks in and kicks off sites that it reckons are spam.

“There is of course a sweet irony here, 12 of the 15 sites we looked at to research this article – Run Google Ads – surely this is going to hurt the Big G more than anyone else?”

Sounds like a game out Zynga’s closet, unfortunately it’s much more serious for sites that have been labeled “Content Farms” by the search giant. Content Farms as defined by Wikipedia is used to describe news aggregators that employ a large staff of freelance writers to generate content that is designed to “satisfy algorithms” resulting in higher rankings on Google SERPs, search engine result pages.

Based on what has been determined to be a rise in such activity, Google has altered its search algorithm to demote what they have determined as “low quality” sites. According to many SEO analysts, this move was caustically termed a “farmer’s update.”

The clear debate which  has surfaced hinges on how ‘automation’ can distinguish a “low quality” from “high quality” site? Particularly since Google notes that there was no human intervention. “Our recent changes to help people find high-quality sites are entirely algorithmic and we have not taken manual action, nor will we take manual action to address particular sites. Instead, we will consider feedback from publishers and the community as we continue to refine our algorithms to improve our search quality at scale.”

Traffic to some Web sites has decreased by 40 percent.  Other sites like theteacherscorner.net, a 13-year old site indicates their ad revenues have dropped by 50 percent even though the publishers of the site assert they receive “several million monthly pageviews and thousands of pages of original content for educators.” There is of course a sweet irony here, 12 of the 15 pages we looked at to research this article Run Google Ads, surely this is going to hurt the Big G more than anyone else?”

Is there any recourse for publishing sites that feeling they have ended up on the wrong side of these changes?

Google has done their usual feedback-support thing and opened up a forum: “Think you’re affected by the recent algorithm change- post here.” In less than 24 hours of the forum going live, over 150 complaints were received. As of today and this posting, there were 801 complaints filed. Google’s employee Wysz, the forums host, must right about now be sweating his little heart out, here’s his intro:

We recently made a change to our search ranking algorithms, which you can read more about on the Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

Some  example of the pain being felt out there: 801 - We’ve experienced a significant drop in our traffic (almost 35%) as a result of this change (with an equivalent drop in revenue).  We believe that our only crime is that we host user-generated content.

744 - Wysz, I don’t mean to call you out (and maybe you need to say what you say to avoid more lawsuits), but, yes, Google IS able to make manual exceptions, http://www.cultofmac.com/crisis-over-google-has-reinstated-cult-of-mac/84362 .

311 - Our Training College has lost all Google traffic to its site since the update:
http://www.nationalcollege.edu.au
All its content is original.  On some searches content that has been scraped from it and links created by directories and content scraping sites rate ahead of it.  The site no longer ranks at all after previously having a significant amount of traffic from Google searches.  The site offers good quality information for people looking for vocational training in Australia and has consistently generated a good page views and actions of enquiries through the site and by phone.  The site has had a lot of work invested in providing good quality content.  Any information on what we should do or review by Google would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your help and consideration.

Go  Go Google GONE!

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