call me paranoid but... is google able to track me?

[qdb]

Yes, google can track you, more than you will ever realize. Google even runs a public dns servers in order to track user flow, which are used by certain ISP's so yes, Google can track you.

The best you can do is to go into private browsing mode in firefox, or incognito chrome to somewhat mask yourself (no cookies).

[powsurfer]

This I find is a good use for the Tor Network. I go into Tor mode and can even set it up to select the country I am seen to be coming from (strict exit node).
The results appear to be accurate without any influence by my history/cookies/searches/likes/+1s etc

[jhannawin]

Great stuff, but given that you have to go to these lengths to get non-personalised results from Google what are you trying to deduce? What someone else going to these lengths will see in terms of your site position?

OK, I do get what you are trying to do, really. My point is that 'top of Google' is no longer 'a' place it is an almost infinite range of places and maybe absolute, personalisation free, position is far less important than overall traffic volume and quality of traffic that you get from this range.

[xmachinecorex]

i opened my email to webproworld and this topic .

i found this the other day from 2008 http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/inde...r-data-empire/

here we are 4 years later imagine the data now google data centers all around the globe

sucks, but what can we do now?

welcome to skynet icon13.png

[murphypj]

Steve,

Great article, firstly. Just a bit concerned as to your reply to the OP, who's last comment related to using Proxies, and your first comment was "Yes. They can track you and do". Are you of the opinion that even when using Proxy Servers, Google is returning results based on information it has stored about you? I run SEO/SEM campaigns for local SME's, when tracking SERPs I was usually happy that, logged out of G, the SERPs I saw were believable. From time to time I use Kproxy or NUIP and surf to my country specific Google searchbox, and double-check - so far this has confirmed my successes. I also usually ask a friend or family member to run the searches, and have yet to have any unpleasant surprises.

Can you confirm that you believe that searches via Proxy servers are tainted with Google tracking knowledge, and are unreliable? This would be a huge game-changer for SEO bods generally, and particularly for small one-man operations like mine.

[tinavargas]

Yes, google can track you, more than you will ever realize. Google even runs a public dns servers in order to track user flow, which are used by certain ISP's so yes, Google can track you.

The best you can do is to go into private browsing mode in firefox, or incognito chrome to somewhat mask yourself (no cookies).

While I'm reading the threads, this is actually what Im supposed to do, to browse privately. I'm just wondering though why should we avoid being tracked by Google? Does it really affect our SERP? I was actually tracking my ranking in Alexa and suddenly no regional ranking found for our website, could that be one of the reasons behind it? - that I don't clear my browsing history?

[dgswilson]

The two motives for crime are love and money (crazy acts without motive). Tracking, profiling, targeting is big business with high paying customers. Good motto is "If it can be done it is being done" See Mozilla at ytube (collusion):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_ckCpKeAHMk

[Mark Demers]

Try giving another search engine a try - I say give Alexa a try - they use Google to deliver their results and they are unbiased (I believe )and they don`t track you.

There are others who use Google to deliver their search results too and consulting them for your results just seems a lot easier than trying to outsmart the big G to get the real results.


That`s all I got