AOL Slips User Search Logs
by Emma Dobrescu - August 9th, 2006 8:51 am
AOL has released a few days ago, by mistake, a “collection” of users search queries (CNET news link).People started blogging about it, AOL apologized for the mistake and took down the logs. So far so good.
What astounded me mostly was the fact that almost everybody was only concerned about privacy. As shocking as such a log may be and as weird as the common searches may appear, nobody will ever sue you for searching for “naked pervert monkeys suiciding”. However only very few seemed interested in where those logs and analysis of the searches are supposed to be going to .Where it is sold, how it is used, what that implies.
For example :
AOL User 24868
The life of 24868 circles around pottery barns, HTML, MySpace (one of AOL users’ favorites), camping, limos, bedroom furniture and hair extension tools.
(http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-08-08-n53.html)
Now..what would you want to sell to that user?What kind of offers would you make to him? Who got to e-mail/contact him first?
These are the questions that go through my mind now, and though I’m not really familiar with the secrets of SEO, this might just make me start studying it.Because after all, WWW is a market, right?
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August 9th, 2006 at 9:31 am
This could have potentially huge implications concerning the law and search history… It is well known the goverment has been looking to get their hands on search query logs. Publishing this sample was a very bad idea for AOL as they will now become the center of law makers attention. I can’t believe Google is too enthused about this lapse either, being that AOL search results are powered by the Big G.
As for selling the search information per user, AOL claims USER 24868 is anonymous and there is no way to track that search history to a specific account. However, who knows if that’s really true or not. As Emma mentioned, there is obvious potential in the sale of such data.