Google+

Google have introduced a new tool called Google+, it’s like Facebook BUT it will affect your site ranking in Google.

It works really nicely, as you’d expect from Google, and it uses something called circles to allow you to divide your contacts into groups such as friends, family, colleagues, drinking mates! etc

OK, so it’s neat but I’m on Facebook already so why bother? Well, if you have a website, you can add the equivalent of the Facebook like button and people can like you BUT, unlike Facebook likes, Google will consider the popularity with the people in its algorithm to work out where to rank web pages!

So, in time, employing the best SEO firms may not be enough, you may find having more Google+ likes is more important than amazing SEO!

Of course Google isn’t revealing to what extent it’s important and as you’d expect they are starting slow and steady but consider yourselves warned, produce specific, keyword centric pages that are fun/exciting… likeable! And you should be on your way to good page ranking…

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How should we protect and use people’s data?

Were you are amazed by the leak that Google has captured details of our wireless networks when it went around taking images for it’s street map system? Probably not, but becoming cynical on the issue of storing data for a topic which is only just waking up is revealing in itself.

OFEC specialise in database driven websites such as e-commerce and so we know about storing personal data. We were one of the first firms, ahead of amazon, to start using suggested products to website visitors based on what people were looking at and buying.

The reason that people have not said much about the use of this data is that it’s anonymous, so we like the advantages that the use of this data brings and see no downside. Once people realise the data can be linked back to them they feel threatened because they don’t know where this is heading.

This is my first post on this subject, I’d welcome your feedback on where you think this is heading, how website should make use of this sort of data and the things website owners should do to make sure they don’t misuse their position or compromise their visitors.

Feel free to check my twitter feed on www.twitter.com/ofec