I noticed if you come to a site using Feejit (sp?) via google, you're search term is included in the coming from URL. Does this present any kind of privacy issues? I remember AOL got in a lot of trouble for releasing search queries from their users.
I've been thinking a bit about this. I have a couple of blogs of my own, so I always think about feedjit in that context. Am I happy with my readers seeing what search terms are sending people to my site and do I think my readers will get mad because people can see what they're searching on?
feedjit only shows the most recent 10 referrers and clicks, so I don't think theres anything there that'll give a 'competitor' some sort of strategic advantage. Besides, tehy can just google around and find out what I'm showing up for in the SERPS.
As far as privacy goes, as long as I'm not personally identifying people and showing what search terms they're using, I think there aren't any privacy issues. I see my own search terms showing up and my location 'Seattle, WA' and no one knows who actually searched that term.
I haven't really applied my mind to this as much as I should, but those are my initial thoughts and I'd love to hear if anyone feels different.
I guess I'm just generally confused as to why AOL got in trouble. But IIRC each person had a unique idea so you could put their searches together, and I guess some of those people had searched for their own names. Since you're not putting multiple searches from the same person together it should be alright.
On the other hand, why should anyone expect their searches to be private at all? If I wanted to share searches coming to my website and even group them by IP address, what's stopping me? What if I said I would do this in my privacy policy?
BTW, I've been thinking of a Feedjit type thing but for search keywords instead of location. That's what got me wondering about these privacy issues. I hope that idea wasn't in your future plans ...
