Internet search engine censorship is practiced in a few countries around the world for reasons of filtering pornography and controlling government criticism, criminal activity, and free trade. The reasons all boil down to the categories of cultural values, money, and/or power. Internet access is provided by local internet service providers (ISP) in the host country and the ISP must comply with local laws in order to remain in business. It is usually at the point of the ISP that search engines as well as individual web sites are placed under censorship and blocked. Advocates of internet and search engine censorship mostly give reasons surrounding the protection of cultural values which is true to some extent but most of the time it has to do more with controlling the masses.
Censorship can be placed against businesses. Search engine and internet censorship is not just reserved for political activists and dissidents. There are powerful local businesses that fear outside competition and will work to have those company names blocked from search engines. A recent example is the Chinese having Google China block searches relating to the French hypermarket chain Carrefour. The anger from Chinese people has to do with the Tibetan/Chinese conflict and France gave the Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama honorary French citizenship. However one must look further in that censorship may have been ordered by the Chinese government in order to keep any protesting from taking place within its borders.
Search engines have to comply with laws of other countries even though in U.S. Google is a US-based firm however if it wants to maintain a presence in a market that holds much potential like China, it has to meet in the middle.
One way to get around search engine and internet censorship is to use Tor. One method used by those subject to internet search engine censorship is to use free software known as Tor. Many international travelers use the internet to deliver work back to their home country. Many of these people are journalists, reporters, and researchers that need full use of the internet without censorship. This is where software like Tor can help. Tor is the software product from torproject.org and it uses a combination of programs, a browser plug-in, and proxy servers worldwide to anonymize a computer’s IP address making it look like it is based in another country.
Carry a portable version of Firefox and Tor on USB. You can download and install on your USB thumb drive what is known as a portable version of both the Firefox web browser and Tor. Where this comes in handy is if you find yourself in a country practicing heavy censorship then the internet cafes will be restricted as well. You can plug in your thumb drive and use this software to get around the censorship because the Internet cafes usually will not let you install the software.
Be smart about bypassing censored internet search engines and websites. It is up to you to find out the laws of a particular country concerning censorship. The point is that if you use methods to get around censorship, you could get in hot water. Probably the best thing to do would be to use Firefox and Tor on a USB thumb drive, on your laptop, and using a mobile phone SIM card device that uses General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to access the internet.
Tags: censorship, search engines, search engines and censorship
Is there a relationship between SEO and Hats? Not really. The analogy stems from the cowboy movies where the good guys always wore white hats and the bad guys always wore black hats. SEO techniques can be classified intro three distinct categories:
– White Hat
– Black Hat
– Gray Hat
White Hat SEO techniques are those endorsed by search engines. White Hat techniques focus on producing tangible, lasting results standing test of times through the flood of search engine algorithm changes.
These “good citizen” techniques usually focus on creating a focused user experience in addition to providing compelling quality content (or product) producing user loyalty. Google does a good job in explaining these techniques in their Webmaster Guidelines.
Google Webmaster Guidelines provide tips on three distinct areas namely:
– Design and content guidelines
– Technical guidelines
– Quality guidelines
Other useful resources on Google include:
– Webmaster Central (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/)
– Webmaster Group (http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help )
Black Hat SEO techniques are those deceptive techniques disliked by Search Engines. Black Hat techniques make a lot of web users angry by wasting their time in clicking on mostly useless spam links. The main goal of Black Hat SEO is to make quick profit by artificially attaining high rankings.
Gray Hat SEO techniques are those that have not been label officially as Black Hat techniques but carry some elements of deception or cheating.
Search engines are popular for finding the information you need on many things to include getting a job. Getting a job using a search engine focused on employment is quite common today and in some ways it almost replaces newspaper classifieds. It seems like a good idea but unfortunately there are those that post jobs on these sites that are not real or reachable at all. How do you get a job using job search engines and what should you look out for? Let’s look at a few pointers.
What are some of the more popular job search engines? Some of the names you will hear are Hotjobs.com, Dice.com, Careerbuilder.com, Monster.com, Simplyhired.com, and even Craigslist.org. Simplyhired.com is what they call an aggregator site in that it pulls opportunity information from many sources.
Is the opportunity listed with a direct employer or through an agency? Job search engine websites are more beneficial when there are listings from many direct employers and not search firms. Companies use search firms to find talent for a variety of reasons however they pay for the service. If a company interviews a candidate from a search firm and a candidate who applied independently, more than likely the independent candidate will get the position because the employer will not pay the fees to the search firm.
Are the opportunities listed relatively current? Listings on the job search engine site that are aged or repeated over several months usually is an indication of something wrong. And their presence can make the whole process of getting employment even more frustrating because it’s more difficult to find the real opportunities with real employers.
How much privacy do you get with the employment search engine site? Some employment search engines don’t help you get work at all. They exploit the personal and professional data you give them and a short time later your e-mail inbox is loaded with spam that exploits the same information. You might get a lead from them occasionally but it is obvious your information was used unethically. Read the terms of service very carefully with any employment search engine and know how your private information is getting used.
Is the job search engine website free? Can you get to the opportunity listings without having to pay a fee or enroll? Paying to access an employment search engine website is the same as paying to find work—you should not do it. Also, you may just want to browse jobs and not leave any personal information or employment history (to prevent spam). So you should not be forced to enroll just to browse for work.
Do your part and report questionable postings to the webmaster of the job search engine. A favorite scam opportunity that you will see posted is the one where you can be hired by a business in an Eastern European country to collect payments from clients in North America and then send them the money after taking your commission. The problem is those payments you are receiving are from clients in on the scam and the checks are bad. You send the money and later the bank tells you the checks bounced. When you see an announcement like this, do your part and report it to the search engine.
Users are on two sides of the internet privacy issue. The purpose of this article is not to debate the right or wrong of third parties utilizing search engine records to probe into the activities of others. There are those in the United States and other countries that believe that giving up privacy for purpose of prosecuting a handful of crimes is not justified. Then there are those who gladly hand over privacy for a perceived sense of security. Let’s look at internet search engines that try to protect your privacy a little further:
It is mostly about wanting to target advertisements at you. Advocates against search engine privacy will say that data should be collected to ward off criminal activity but keep in mind that the internet is mostly about advertising. Internet search engines make big money through advertiser dollars. When a search engine can provide advertisers with good marketing research like in the form of users’ search habits, it would give any search engine a competitive advantage. This is what is known in the industry as behavioral targeting.
Ask.com does not use behavioral targeting. They also have a product named AskEraser that will remove records of a user’s internet search activity within hours unless there is some exceptional reason to keep it (as would be the case for site abusers). AskEraser can be turned off and on quickly from the user’s control panel.
Ixquick.com is committed to privacy. This is a meta-search engine that advertises protecting your privacy at a higher level. They delete all user search data within 48 hours. Ixquick.com uses the example of when America Online (AOL) actually published on the internet a database containing the search history of 650,000 of its users in a publicly-accessible location. They use the AOL example to make you aware just how invasive into one’s privacy this can be.
Google is one of the largest internet search engines and privacy is not as protected. It only does anonymization partially on a user’s IP address. Google engages in behavioral targeting which many believe infringes on privacy.
If you want to protect your privacy on search engines, do not log into its extra services. In other words, if you want your searches to remain private on Google, don’t log in to your Gmail account. Once you log in to your Gmail account, subsequent queries in the internet search engine will associate your search with your user name.
Don’t use Internet Explorer. Download the free Mozilla Firefox web browser at Mozilla.com. Internet Explorer is full of known security holes that can be exploited by spyware.
Don’t allow cookies where you can. Websites use cookies to store bits of information needed for the web browser to interact with the site. Many websites require that you have cookies enabled. Internet search engines use cookies too. So it is unrealistic to suggest that one never use cookies however this is where a web browser like Mozilla Firefox is advantageous in that you can set it to delete cookies when the last open browser window is closed.
Look into using the Tor Project. Tor is network of worldwide proxy servers that fully anonymizes your IP address. If the instructions are followed, it can protect you from invasive privacy attacks. Download it at Torproject.org.
Don’t type your name with your SSN. And never put any personal information into a search engine query field unless you want to put it at the risk of getting into the wrong hands.
Tags: internet privacy, search engines, search engines and privacy
What is pop culture? Pop culture is a term used for describing what is popular in the society at the time. “Pop” is a shortened use of the word popular. Pop culture tends to be on the opposite end of the spectrum with classical or traditional ways. Pop culture is also used to indicate what we do everyday and extends to our sports, music, entertainment, fashion, cooking, dining, and internet usage. With the internet, pop culture tends to be associated with video sharing, social networking, EBay, classified directories like Craigslist, and “Googling” on the famous search engine Google. Just how does pop culture relate to this verb “Googling?” Let’s look at a few ways:
Pop culture includes Googling your own name to get an idea of your image. Go to the Google search engine and try this some time: Type in your name or the name of your website and see what comes back. It is a good way to see how popular you or your brand is. For example, say you have a band and you are marketing albums on the internet. You can have a Googling session on your band name and see who is out there promoting you. Not sure who someone is? Go Googling on their name and see what returns.
The pop culture term “Googling” is not popular with the Google search engine. There is a gray area between the company Google and the use of the verb “Googling.” Google’s lawyers are concerned that googling will become a household word and the tie between the verb googling and the trademark name Google will become blurred. Google has been on patrol looking for those using it as a verb without associating it with the search engine. In other words, if you use the phrase, “I googled for a job at IBM” it would raise the eyebrows of Google’s lawyers. More acceptable would be to use the phrase “I went to Google and googled for a job at IBM.” In the latter example, the Google trademark name was still mentioned. The search engine is okay with that.
Googling used in movies and on television. This is because it is becoming such a part of the pop culture. When people need to search, they go to the search engine and go Googling. This is probably one of the reasons why the search engine has such a large portion of the market share and it is because none of the other search engines get mentioned like this. For example, if an actor in a television show used “Googling” and “Yahooing,” which term do you think the pop culture would recognize first?
Google Earth is a popular form of Googling among the pop culture. Today’s pop culture is curious about everything. Want to know what the back yard of your favorite movie star looks like? Download Google Earth, go Googling for the movie star’s address, and zoom in with Google earth from there.
Googling for new words is done by the pop culture quite often. Have you heard some slang phrase or word that you never heard before? Go to Google and type the phrase in. It will quickly list the other websites using it. In fact, there are even websites dedicated to listing and defining all of the new pop culture terms as they become known.
Tags: pop culture, search engines
Adwords is the name for Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program. It creates a way for companies to post their web site’s link along with a short pitch on the search engine’s results page. There are basically two ways to get your site ranked on the first page of a search engine query: use Google Adwords and/or search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. How do Google Adwords work and how do you use their tools to set up a targeted advertising campaign? Here’s how:
Understand the process before you use Google Adwords. The first step is to sign up for an Adwords account. You pick keywords which are words that are used to refer to your business. When someone visits Google to do a search and enters the keywords associated with your business, your ad displays in the far right column of the search engine’s results page. When a user clicks your advertisement and goes to your web site, you are charged a pre-determined amount for that click.
The benefit of Google Adwords is obvious. To get your web site ranked in the top 10 search results for your keywords using SEO takes weeks and even months. During that lag time, very few if any are finding your web site. Just getting quality backlinks through a standard SEO process is a long and tedious process. You don’t have that with Google Adwords because you are paying for the right to advertise whereas SEO is more competitive because it is free.
How do you choose your keywords? Google provides a free keyword tool where you either enter the URL to your web page containing your product copy or you enter a phrase with your keywords. When you submit the information, the keyword tool returns a listing of keyword and phrase suggestions that you can use in your targeted ad campaign.
How much are you going to pay? If you are a user to Adwords, you are going to pay an initial one-time $5.00 USD signup fee. Google Adwords uses a bidding system in determining how much you will be charged when a user clicks on one of your ads. You will bid on what you think your ad is worth per click and your competitors will place their bids as well. Google uses other factors such as the quality of ads to determine the weight of your bid price. New users to the Google Adwords program can use the Adwords Budget Optimizer to set their bids in a way to optimize for getting the most clicks as determined by the user budget. Whatever method you use, you never pay more than your budgeted amount per day. Keep in mind that if you set a low budget for a highly-competitive keyword (a high-priced keyword) then there are fewer chances that your ad will display as often. The thing to remember is that when a keyword is popular and competitive, it will naturally command higher PPC rates.
What about click fraud? The first reservation anyone new to Google Adwords has is in the area of click fraud. Specifically the concern one has before using Adwords is that a competitor will click their ad and prematurely force the daily budget threshold to be met. After the daily budget threshold is met, the ad will not be displayed again until the next day. Google Adwords has processes in place that weigh click activity with known fraudulent clicking behavior so as to do their best to protect you and minimize the risk of click fraud.
Tags: Google AdWords, PPC
People are using really four main internet search engines. And we will just cover those in this short guide. These internet search engines are Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. The main reason for using an internet search engine is to allow one to drill down and filter the massive amount of information on the World Wide Web and find exactly what he or she is looking for. However there are subtle differences in using the different internet search engines. The serious searcher will tap the strengths of each of them so as to have somewhat of an advanced search suite. Let’s briefly guide you through some of the tips of using the internet search engines:
How does one get started with internet search engines? All the internet search engines have a field where you type in the keywords of what you want to search for. Keywords are the words you believe are most likely to appear in the content of a web site you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for widgets, you type in the word “widget.” No matter which search engine you are using, there will likely be thousands of websites returned in the search results with the word widget. To narrow that down, you would begin adding more keywords. For instance, you might enter “green widgets.” For each additional keyword you add, the search is narrowed down further.
How does Boolean logic work when using each of the internet search engines? Boolean logic is basically the use of the words AND, OR, and NOT between the keywords. Using an internet search engine oftentimes requires creative implementation of Boolean logic for the more advanced searches. Of course when you use AND, both keywords must be found. When you use OR, one or the other keyword must be found. And, when you use NOT, the keyword on the right must not be included. Google does not have an implementation for the NOT operator however you can get the same effect when using this internet search engine by preceding the keyword with a minus sign and no space. An example would be “widgets –green.” This would indicate to search for widgets but no text should contain the word “green.”
What are some of the functions people are using in each of the internet search engines? The list of various in-line functions that can be used among the various search engines is too long for purposes of this article but let’s look at how a few of them work. For example, if you want look for specific text but limit it to one website, you would use the “site:” inline function in the search query window: site:www. . This function works on all the major search engines with the exception of (Live.com) Bing.com where it was turned off indefinitely because of abuses by data mining users.
Here are some more functions to enhance searches used by the other internet search engines:
intitle: to search for a keyword in the page title
inurl: search for a keyword in the page URL
inanchor:, allinanchor: search for keyword text in a link’s anchor text (Google only)
filetype: search only for pages of certain filetypes such as pdf or doc (all except for Yahoo; in Yahoo the command is originurlextension:)
address of , phone number of , phone listings for – only on Ask.com; by replacing with a person’s name it can look up the address/phone number if available.
Tags: search engine, search engine tips
Search engines index websites equally and if you have been using them for any length of time, you know that it is very likely that certain keywords you use will mix references to adult websites along with safe websites. This is a potentially dangerous situation for your children. How do you protect your children from the undesired results of internet search engines while preserving the useful search capabilities? Let’s look at a few ways:
Use a child-safe search engine. These are search engines focused on helping your child get homework done, playing games, listening to music, and searching for movie information—all at a child-safe level. Some of these search engines are named Yahoo!Kids, Askkids.com, Ask Jeeves Kids, and Google Safesearch for kids.
Turn on moderate or explicit safe searching on search engine preferences. On many of the major search engines as well as the alternative ones, you can set a preference referred to as moderate safe search where sexually-explicit images are filtered when doing an image search. Or, you can set explicit safe searching to do this filtering on both images and explicit text. The only problem is that these preferences are not protected with a password so your kids can alter them if they like.
Use content filtering software at the machine level. These are Windows programs that you purchase and install on your machine. Usually, they have an option that allows you to set a password and without it, no one can stop the program or unload it from the system. This software usually is not free and can get quite expensive if you have to protect your kids on multiple machines.
Use a proxy web service with filtering software. There are companies that run proxy servers with filtering software at that level. You sign up for the service and once you follow their configuration instructions, your web connections go to their proxy servers and in turn they interact with the search engines. It is not always guaranteed that a search will not list return the links to sites that are not safe for your children but most likely your child will not be able to click through because the end site is recorded at the proxy server level.
Be a proactive parent. You can allow your children to have e-mail addresses but you should make it a rule for them to provide their username and password. You might ask what e-mail has to do with protecting your children from search engines. If your child is logged into their Gmail account and searching for information or visiting websites that he or she should not, you can find this out by looking at the spam mail received. Remember that websites like Google like to use behavioral targeting and if your child is logged in to his or her Gmail account then their browsing habits can be linked to their name.
The best protection is putting the computer in a family viewing area. Sometimes the best way to protect your children is also the most inexpensive and simplest to implement. Many experts agree that by putting the computer your children use in a common family area that there is less likelihood that they will become the victims of unsafe searches on the internet or visit websites that are not child-safe.
Tags: children & internet, children & search engines, protecting children
Have you ever shared information with your friends and on several occasions received the reply, “Where do you find this stuff?” Usually, that is an indicator that some of your friends could learn a little more about how to use a search engine to get what they want. A search engine is a very useful information research tool and can be a valuable asset if you and your friends know the all the tricks to using one. Actually, these are not really “tricks” but features built into a search engine either implicitly or as a result of the design. Let’s look at a few of these search engine tricks further and you can begin impressing your friends today:
What other websites are like the one you enjoy so much? You found this great website with helpful tips about some niche topic and you would like to find other websites with additional but related information. All you have to do is go to Google and type: related: and it will list websites similar to the one you found.
Using search engine tricks to find out whom you are dealing with. A search engine is actually a way to protect yourself if you have a lot of business dealings on the internet. Even if you are on the dating scene, you can do an internet search by just typing in the person’s or company’s name followed by the word “scam” or “offender.” This is also a great way to find that old friend from years back–simply type in their name.
Who is using my material? If you write web content or publish other work on the internet, you can figure out if your work is getting plagiarized or where it is published by just pasting the article in the search engine query window. Yes, paste the entire article but enclose it within quotes. On Google, all matched text shows up as bold in the results page. If the entire description is bold, there is a good chance your content was copied if you never posted to that site.
I need information that is very detailed and in-depth. What if you are doing research and need more detail then what is provided on most web pages? What if you are looking for free e-books and tutorials on some topic? Oftentimes, you want to look past introductory or landing web pages and find the detailed documents in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF format. Most e-books are written in Adobe PDF. One search engine trick you can impress your friends with is finding only results where the documents are these file types. You can do it by typing the key phrase in the search query window and following it with the filetype: parameter. For example, if you want to find e-books in PDF format related to search engine optimization or SEO you would type: SEO filetype:pdf. Other filetypes include “doc” for Microsoft Word documents and “ppt” for Microsoft Powerpoint documents.
I need academic-style information. Sometimes you need highly-researched information that is found in university publications. A search engine trick to limit search results to only this type of publication is to type in the key phrase followed by site:edu. For example, let’s say you are doing a research project on database design. You can go to Google and type in: Database design site:edu and only publications from academic websites are returned.
It’s like anything that is extremely profitable—everyone wants to try the same and be just as successful. And so it is with the future and internet search engines. Other enterprises want to be just as successful as the internet search engine leader Google but in order to do that, they have to figure out how to do some special thing better. These are niche internet search engines and they try to focus on specialization strengths rather than doing it all. Let’s look at these niche internet search engines and the future of internet search engines a little more:
Google is still a strong leader in the near future. Unless someone comes up with a dramatic change in the way internet search engines like Google work, it will probably remain the leader for some time to come. It has a strong framework built to search internet-wide and an established base of Adwords and Adsense clients that will not be disappearing any time soon.
Then there is Microsoft’s attempt to take over Yahoo. Although this last bid by Microsoft to do a hostile takeover of Yahoo is over for now, one can never be too certain that this will not be attempted again except from a different angle. One thing for certain is that in the future you will more than likely see some business through mergers try to dethrone the king of the hill Google. Google is discussing options with Yahoo since the hostile bid fell through concerning an advertising partnership but nothing is for certain yet.
There is an emergence of search engines specifically for the social networking scene. The popular thing to do now and probably for the future is the social networking thing. People like to blog, post on forums, set up their MySpace accounts, and basically make all sorts of chatter, share music, and videos on the internet. That is the idea behind Twing.com. It is to search only forums, topics (within forums), and posts (also within forums). Twing’s database is still growing however. Another social networking search engine that is out to change the future of internet search engines is Sightix.com. Sightix.com uses a methodology where people’s social profiles (or graph they call it) are used in producing relevant search results.
Could there be more “niche” search engines in the future? They are not out to overtake Google. They are only out to be the best internet search engine within their niche. These are search engines that are specifically to find blogs, forums, maps, medical information, jobs, audio, and video. The idea is to have the most up-to-date and comprehensive search database specifically for the site’s specification. For example, there is the niche internet search engine Topix.net. How many times have you gone to the internet and searched on world news and local news and had to go to two different websites? Topix.net is a search engine specifically for news and so it has access to hundreds of sources from different newsfeeds and combines all into one page.
Expect in the future to see internet search engines become more sophisticated with mobile technology. People will continue to be mobile and unable to be in front of a computer all the time. One of the reasons why Microsoft wanted to take over Yahoo was because the Yahoo search engine has made significant progress in leveraging mobile technology. Being able to search for news, maps, and local information all from a handheld mobile device should become increasingly popular in the future.
Tags: future, search engines
