If you use Google to search the web, the chances are good that you’ve been exposed to some ads in your search results. A few years ago, Google began using exposed terms from your query to place ads on your results page as well, but not everyone knows that this data can be used to display targeted ads on other sites as well – even if you don’t click on them! Here’s how it works and how you can avoid seeing them again…and even make them disappear! Why Google’s Exposure Notifications may not be as private as you think
What are Exposure Notifications?
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Whenever a web page is loaded from another website, it might contain content from other sites. These sites are called cross-origin domains and they must explicitly give permission for their content to appear on your site. This permission is done through something called Cross-Origin Resource Sharing or CORS. When a site embeds content that isn’t allowed by CORS (i.e.
What data is shared?
When you take a picture with your smartphone, that photo is often saved to your camera roll. However, some photos are automatically shared with your social networks. For example, if someone tagged themselves in one of your images (or you auto-tagged them), they can now see that image on Facebook and Instagram. They also have full access to all of your other photos through their profile page.
How can you opt out?
Every time a new URL is indexed by Google, it sends an alert to anyone who has asked for one. There are various ways that you can stop these emails from arriving in your inbox, but they won’t delete your previous subscriptions. If you have received too many emails from Google, take some time to go through them and opt out of any you no longer want. Here are a few tips on how to do that
Are they turned on by default?
Most people (including us) had no idea that we were exposing our information to search engines. By default, all web pages are set up so they’ll only appear in search engine results if your page is linked from other sites. To expose your website or a specific page, you’ll need to tweak some tags on that page. If you don’t know how to do that, consider hiring someone who does.
Can I see the notifications from people who opted in to sharing this information?
The short answer is yes. If someone shares with you their email address, which they can do when they get in touch with your business through a form on your website, then you will also see notifications from them on Google. As we’ll explain below, these alerts are easy to miss and might go unnoticed by many users who have shared their email addresses with your business.
Is there anything else I should know about these notifications?
Well, there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that no one outside of your company will see these notifications unless they are granted access to your exposure settings. You can grant a viewer access by going to your company overview page, clicking on Visibility Settings, then choosing whether or not viewers should have access to these notifications in general or to only certain pages.