SEARCHENGINES

Google Now Lets You Remove Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Search

Published

2 years ago

April 29, 2022

Google Now Lets You Remove Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Search

Google is now letting you make a request to remove personally identifiable information (PII) from Google Search. This includes information such as phone number, email address, or physical address, login credentials and more found in Google Search.

Google said this “new policy expansion” allows people to “request removals of additional types of information when they find it in Search results, including personal contact information like a phone number, email address, or physical address.” “The policy also allows for the removal of additional information that may pose a risk for identity theft, such as confidential log-in credentials, when it appears in Search results,” Google added.

The form can be found here and explains that Google may remove personally identifiable information (PII) that has potential to create significant risks of identity theft, financial fraud, harmful direct contact, or other specific harms. This includes doxxing, which is when your contact info is shared in a malicious way.

Google said for the search company to consider the content for removal, it must pertain to the following types of information:

Confidential government identification (ID) numbers like U.S. Social Security Number, Argentine Single Tax Identification Number, Brazil Cadastro de pessoas Físicas, Korea Resident Registration Number, China Resident Identity Card, etc.

Bank account numbers

Credit card numbers

Images of handwritten signatures

Images of ID docs

Highly personal, restricted, and official records, like medical records

Personal contact info (physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses)

Confidential login credentials

When Google receives removal requests, Google said it will evaluate all content on the webpage to ensure that Google is not limiting the availability of other information that is broadly useful. Google said it will also evaluate if the content appears as part of the public record on the sites of government or official sources. In those cases, Google won’t make removals in Google Search.

Removing the information from Google won’t remove it from the web, you should ask the web site owner to remove the information as well.

Google has a detailed document on how this works over here along with the button to request the removal.

Forum discussion at Twitter & WebmasterWorld.

Source: www.seroundtable.com

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Google Interested In Hreflang Alternatives

Published

9 hours ago

May 3, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Gary Illyes from Google said he has heard from the SEO industry that hreflang can be “annoying” and complex and confusing. So he is open to ideas on how to replace it and make it work for both small and really large websites.

He wrote this on LinkedIn saying, “Things I’ve learned and heard in Sofia at the SERPConf event.” He said one of those is that “hreflang is annoying.”

Gary wrote, “I don’t disagree,” that I guess he understands why SEOs and creators find it annoying.

So he said that he open to new ideas. He wrote, “I’m still very open to coming up with something less annoying, but it needs to work for small sites and mammoths as well, while delivering at least the same amount of information.”

So if you have ideas, let Gary know, he wrote, “Ping if you have ideas.”

You can use hreflang to tell Google about the variations of your content. This helps Google understand the various pages and how they are localized variations of the same content. But the implementation can be confusing and detailed, why he said it can be annoying. Several years ago, John Mueller said hreflang can be the most complex aspect in SEO.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 1, 2024

Published

1 day ago

May 2, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Ads posted its first feature announcement in over two months, it is on PMax updates. Bing Webmaster Tools fixed a notification bug. Google SGE renamed its AI overviews to AI Answer. Most SEOs have not filled in the Google March 2024 core update feedback form. A Google search for flag GIFs can lead to Nazi flags.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Ads Posts First New Feature Announcement In Two Months – PMax Updates

Google Ads has posted its first new features announcement in its help section in over two months. This was to announce several Performance Max campaigns features, which we will get into below. But like I reported earlier, Google has not posted anything in this section for two months prior to posting this new announcement.

Googling “Flag GIF” Leads To Nazi Flags In Google Search

If you search for [flag GIF] on Google, click on the “waiving” refinement, you are taken to images of Nazi flags. I waited a full week to report on this, a full week from when Google acknowledged the issue and it is still an issue.

Bing Webmaster Tools Notifications & Insights Bug Fixed

Fabrice Canel from Microsoft confirmed Microsoft has fixed a bug with Bing Webmaster Tools showing inaccurate and/or irrelevant notifications in the notifications and insights section. Fabrice wrote, “Happy to report that the fix has been implemented and the issue should now be resolved for your site and all sites once data is refreshed.”

Google SGE AI Overviews Has A New Title – AI Answer

Google is now labeling or using the title of its SGE, Search Generative Experience, “AI Answer.” This replaces the title “AI Overviews” and “Al overviews are experimental.” This change happened on Monday, I believe.

Most SEOs Did Not Send Feedback To Google On The March 2024 Core Update

Google opened up its feedback form after it announced the Google March 2024 core update was completed and it seems most SEOs did not send Google feedback. Why? Maybe because many don’t believe Google will use that feedback to help them? Maybe because SEOs don’t want to share specifics with Google?

Sundar Pichai 20 Year Google Anniversary

Google’s CEO, Sunday Pichai, on April 26, 2024, posted on Instagram that he is celebrating him 20 year anniversary of working at Google. He started on April 26, 2004 and is now running the place.

Other Great Search Threads:

ave you seen this before…. Seems like looker studio google has got lot of spam links injected …i just encountered this while checking something… its tons of content… made a search with site: hea, Raman on X

Gartner: “By 2026, Google will lose 1/4 of queries to AI” Datos: “Really? Let’s investigate that claim with data from millions of real Internet users.” https://t.co/5QErT9g9IF Embarrassing that th, Rand Fishkin on X

The favicon guidelines are at https://t.co/9z0HOt9H5f – not all sites have unique favicons, so I wouldn’t immediately call that spammy. For images in general, a legal path may be open via the DMCA process., John Mueller on X

Well, moved to Munich, Germany., John Mueller on X

The more server logs and crawl patterns I see, the more I’m sure the world needs more SEOs. Of the good kind. You see, part of good tech SEO is fixing spiders traps, optimizing crawling, speeding up sites. 1/6, Joost de Valk on X

This Google Ads thing is becoming really expensive. Fee increase from 2% to 2.5% for Italy. Fee increase from 2% to 3% for Spain. Fee increase from 5% to 7% for Turkey., Thomas Eccel on X

We’re committed to ongoing and planned enhancements and listening to great ideas as yours to help us maximizing our crawl efficiency and minimize crawls. There’s no AI or PhD that can outperform the IndexNow signal when it is properly configured. We f, Fabrice Canel on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

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SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 30, 2024

Published

3 days ago

May 1, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Microsoft Advertising has officially added Copilot to help advertisers using AI. Tuta complained to regulators over its ranking drop with the Google core update. We saw the same person rank in Google Search with multiple entities. Google renames product sites to product websites. Google Search App has a neat screenshot feature. I am offline today, all these stories were pre-written and scheduled, including this newsletter.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Copilot Now In Microsoft Advertising Platform

Microsoft announced the general availability of Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform. This means you can now use Copilot (Microsoft’s AI) natural language conversational chat, asset recommendations, and image asset creation in the Microsoft Advertising platform.

The Same Person With Multiple Entities In Google Search

Last week, Shameem Adhikarath shared an example of an individual that shows up twice as two different entities in Google Search. It is like maybe Google was fed two distinct entities for the same person and now Google is showing both of them, with the same name and same query.

Tuta Complains To EU Regulators Over Google March 2024 Core Update Ranking Drop

Tuta Mail, a popular encrypted email service, complained to European Union tech regulators that Google dropped its rankings for all sorts of keyword phrases with the Google March 2024 core update. Tuta is upset they no longer rank for [encrypted email] after this update.

Google Search App “Send A Link To This Page” When You Take A Screenshot

One of my pet peeves is when people send me screenshots of pages they want me to read and do not include the URL to that page. Well, the Google Search app is trying to solve that issue by telling the person who took a screenshot to “Send a link to this page” by clicking a big blue “Share” button.

Google Renames Product Sites To Product Websites

Google has renamed the Product Sites search filter to Product Websites. These only really show up in the European regions and starting last week, Google renamed “Sites” to “Websites.”

Slimmer Google Dog Tag

We have seen numerous dog tags for Dooglers, Google dogs, before. But this one looks slimmer than the old dog tags. I found this new photo of a Doogler and you can see the small Google collar tag.

Programming Note: Offline For Last Days Of Passover

This is a programming note that I will be completely offline for the last days of the Passover holiday. The last days of Passover are on Monday and Tuesday, April 29th and 30th. Any stories published here will be scheduled and written beforehand and not posted live.