Google Tracking Frequent Users

BrianGa writes "According to this article, Google has started placing a counter on its home page for a small number of its most frequent users. Most Google users do not have it, but a select few now have a counter that notes the actual number of searches made. For the curious, an explanatory page linked to the counter reveals that this is a test, or limited-sample experiment of a new search counting feature."

Comments

It uses cookies to keep count

[srboneidle]

So if you delete your cookies, or use a browser such as Opera which automatically gets rid of them after each session it can't really keep track of you.

Unless they actually *do* log you IP every time you search...

Maybe

[Timesprout]

The counter is placed on computer hard drives by a cookie, a software file that a Web site places without the recipient's permission or notification and that transmits information back to the site. "If the number contains more than three digits,'' the counter notes, "you truly are a Google frequent searcher.''

Maybe the article author should Google for browser security/privacy settings to find out how cookies are handled.

Re:Google is NOT dead : )

[fearlezz]

Google is not dead.

It's a result of a malicious program "Trojan.Qhosts", which exploits a bug in internet explorer to get access to your pc. Then it alters your hosts file to stop your pc from accessing google.com.

Search google for that "Trojan.Qhosts". Ow, you can't. Okay, then try this link

Re:Google is dead : /

[Sibeling]

According to this address 10k+ users are seeing this problem which is probably caused by some virus.

I'm hearing this 'virus' placed entries in the windows hosts file so that Google points to something else.
For XP the host file can be found here:
\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
for 2000 and NT:
\Winnt\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
and for the other Windows systems:
\Windows\hosts

Check out the entries in the hosts file and make sure there's nothing strange in it

Watching Google Watch!

[hkmwbz]

I am sorry for responding twice to your inane drivel, but I had forgotten about Google Watch Watch .

From Google Watch Watch:

When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. For some reason, though, all of NameBase's deep pages -- its pages with specific names and citations -- have a low Google page rank, which causes them to show up low in the search results. Search for "Donald Rumsfeld" in Google and in the first five pages you get a lot of .mil and .gov sites, some news stories, and some activist sites. Namebase's entry on Rumsfeld doesn't come up. (It is in Google's database, but to find it somebody would have to first wade through hundreds of results.)

Brandt sees this as Google's major flaw. "I'm not saying there aren't some sites that are more important that others, but in Google the sites that do well are the spammy sites, sites which have Google psyched out, and a lot of big sites, corporate headquarters' sites -- they show up before sites that criticize those companies."

In other words, Brandt recognizes that there has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld."

Google Watch exists because of someone who wants PageRank to value his opinion more than the majority. Go figure.