As an example: type "futur wife geneva" and search within Switzerland. I get Tonymontana's post as the first result found.

good news for Glocals!!! I hope the planet will jin us 

Only the position (ranking number 1) is somewhat relevant to the subject. But ...

the factthat it this forum page is actually listed means that Google robots and probably all search engine bots are allowed to index (read & list) all the forum pages!

I agree with just_me, I don't want people I meet around the world googling me & finding what I say and do or what events I attend around Geneva.

By the way, some years back a survey showed that an amazing number of people google you when they meet you. This was on British prime time TV news too.

I hope the site admins block the robots & not just with the robots.txt which is just a 'wish' ... many engines do not obey that wish.

Wow, that's a major flaw of the system, to my opinion! It seems like this forum is setup in the same way as "stand-alone" forums, like many that are out there, having everything readable but needing a login to post (logout and try!). 

The problem is that this site is a community and we have the false perception that it is a closed environment. Yes, leaving it open might bring more people to the site. But it also might (will!) reduce satisfaction of current users. The first rule should be to keep users, then bring more but not the opposite...

Bizhan is right, the robots.txt file is by no means a good way to handle this (and in any case, I don't think it's being used here). These areas should be user-protected and be accessible only to registered members.

Also visible to the public are the activities and comments about them. However, our profiles need a login to be seen (except our nickname and photo which appears on the posts). It's good news since that means that the mechanism is already in place...

Hum, Glocals has a good relationship with Google too... you can do a search with "Glocal forum posts on google" and you get a first hit in here! Note that this thread was created only 6 hours ago...

in my opinion the fact that you like it or not depends, I guess, on whether you are intimidated by what people may think about your posts or your activity online, which I understand well. but for your purpose to "meet new people" (as I read very often in profile pages), isn't good these "new people" see what is being done here? otherwise I don't see many efficient means by which they would know this website could be interesting for them. take a minute to think about the time when you (the expat in a "strange" city)discovered Glocals, but you were not member yet...I'm curious to know your feeling.

there wont be a right or wrong position on this issue, but I think for this community to grow (in "lurkers" and posters) and this website to remain a success ,doors should be opened to the extend it is now. after all,we are not eternally members: most of us will leave soon or later as it has always been here

on the other hand, since these forums effectively don't have a search function, having it all archived on google -- and being able to google something like "xxyyzz" site:glocals.com -- is rather handy.

True, it all depends on the needs of people. On what they want or care about. I think a good community site should listen and ask opinions of people (I guess that's why there's a "feedback" button following our every move).

Yes, it's possible that making it visible gives the opportunity for others to discover the site. But not necessarilly potential members. A well built site should provide enough public pages & keywords & descriptive text so that searches on major subjects related should be performed.

I'm not going to participate more in this conversation. The subject, in fact, is a question of taste and I have no idea what people really think about this here. It doesn't really matter to me that much since I don't participate much. But being a programmer, I was kinda surprised to see just_me's "discovery". My main point is the fact that this site seems (to me!) more private than it really is.

(hayes, there is a search function but it's just at the root of the forum).

(hayes, there is a search function but it's just at the root of the forum).

(yeah, like I said, it effectively doesn't have a search function. a search function that only looks for strings in the title of the thread, doesn't search the body, doesn't allow for search by username, doesn't allow you to specify dates, etc. isn't a great deal of cop. particularly, for example, when i'm trying to find racist posts made by certain members two years ago.)

It's not a problem when people can have a look at the activities although they are not members.

The point is that a lot of people tend to google you when you apply somewhere (especially for higher level positions) as Bizhan said. This might not worry you much when you have a pseudo, but the new site requires to indicate your first and last name (no pseudo) when you register. I personally don't mind that glocals can see my posts, but I do mind that my posts are now more public than an ad on a Geneva bus...

Actually I found this "problem" when I searched for "Geneva - country music", just to find out whether there might be something for zonker's taste (I refer here to his coming out on glocals). So you see, even a very common search brings glocals' forum posts on the first page of google.

Seems the only way to avoid showing up on google (especially when you don't have a pseudo) is to send private messages.

I'm bumping this thread to bring your attention back on the privacy concerns, since all Glocals content is still viewable and searchable from outside. 

I strongly support what just_me wrote, and I would like to ask Nir and Oded to disallow Glocals pages being indexed on Google.   

Heh. This thread was posted in the "News from the site admin" forum that nobody ever looks at. Interestingly, it's announced as policy change on Feb 1 2010, while just_me's post on this thread is dated three weeks previously. I guess it's one of those cases where somebody noticing something sparks a change of policy. 

To be more precise, there was no change of policy (change of their intention about privacy policy on this site), just a change in the privacy policy document. Posts have always been and will keep being public. The documentation was modified to be clear about it.

So there was no change in the way the site works following just_me's post. We can keep asking for changes. Or go elsewhere...

Now I'm now hot shot lawyer but my layman's understanding would be: the policy isn't the way the site works, it's the way you agree the site is obliged to work. It is defined by the written agreement. It doesn't matter who intends what, if it's not in the doc, it's not in the policy. Ergo, the policy changed on 1st Feb.

I can understand the marketing value of site pages being indexed. The pages that constantly get updated give the search engines a very good indication of the popularity of site. They also show the engines that the site is reqgularly producing fresh content for their search clients. And THAT is something they love.

BUT. It seems to me the absolute vast majority of Glocals memebers were referred to by someone else. Many profiles say so. In 18 months of membership I have only ever seen one post stating "... thank god I found this site on Google ... coz I am coming to Geneva ..."

I don't have the site stats of course but I guess most of yo uagree that Glocals does not actually need the search engines to grow its most valuable asset: the members.

I have referred somewhere around 50+ people over the last 18 months. And a hotel I was staying at first told me about Glocals.

Privacy is a problem ... and most people don't read the privacy policy document. Yes that is their problem and yes, we are all resposnsible for what we say and should act resposnibly regardless of wether anyone is watching.

But we all would like to say things to and do things with our local friends which we don't necessarily wish to be seen by the world. And we all would like to look to this site to provide that extra level protection though we may have overlooked the policy document.

If the stats prove that Glocals expansion is fuelled by its current memebrs and not the search engines, then I guess there will me many people especially grateful if Nir & co could keep the forum and activity pages open only to logged in memebrs.

Hum... I do not wish for this to become a technical war on terminology!... The reality is that whether written in the privacy policy page or not, the forum posts have always been open to the world. And my point is that nothing was changed on that day, in the way our privacy is handled. It's not a case of "we're listening to our members". It's more like "oh, we better protect ourselves and add that in the document".

Some people, like me, are interested in the facts (especially in a sharing site like this, we're not discussing Dow Jones). The question was "Glocal forum posts on google???". The answer is yes. Were and will be.

But if we take a look at the current privacy policy, this piece : "Information you post to glocals may be indexed by search engines, which means non-members will be able to see, together with your name and picture, and potentially other information about you." might trigger some concerns. 

Appart the fact that the sentence is malformed (will be able to see what?), the "potentially other information about you" is vague enough that anything can be seen by anyone with no liability on the Glocal's side.

It must be important to them, for some reason, to not care about our privacy.

Hum... I do not wish for this to become a technical war on terminology!...

Then I have a suggestion: how about reading other peoples' posts before correcting non-existent mistakes under the guise of being "more precise".

It must be important to them, for some reason, to not care about our privacy.

Well, everybody knows, don't they. As alluded to perfectly well by Bizhan. And common sense. For example: 

1. This thread is posted in a forum called "Site improvement ideas and Bug reports"; which by definition must be one of the most closely monitored by the admins.

2. Where are they? They seem to all too happy to post on the forums when there is an opportunity to post the first hit on a google image search, or to recommend Holmes Place. But they are strangely absent here. 

Surely 1+2 means that neither is prepared to step up and say exactly why it's important to index the posts on search engines. I think just_me at least deserves the courtesy of a reply, but i'm old fashioned like that...

LOL sorry Mr. hayes, I'm not here to share arrogance or be a smart ass. You go and have fun.

Hi folks.

@Hayes - we reply to an average of 30 emails per day from members asking questions, making suggestions, or complaining about something that doesn't work they way they want it to.

This thread was posted on Jan 10, received 12 replies from 5 people on Jan 11, and then nothing for 5 months (till today) so I don't think its so strange that neither of us 'stepped up' to post a reply.

@Just_me - I appologize for not replying earlier.
It's important to us that forum posts are indexed on search engines because alot of people find out about glocals when googling questions and getting to a forum reply.  The forums have been open to non members, and to search engines, since we launched the site.  Non members, and search engines, can NOT see member profiles and can NOT see photos or Photo tags. 

Oded

Sure,,, it just takes a little prodding sometimes ;) 

Surely the thread was bumped because it's an issue that people regard as important today as on the day it was posted?  

@Hayes: yes, with recent news such as Facebook's unscrupulous use of people's data or Google's StreetView eavesdrop on Wi-Fi communications, it appears -- and it's a very good thing -- that web users now consider privacy concerns much more important. 

@Oded: if you google it, the first hit of the search result is the member's profile photo.  All messages and events ever posted by the member are now fully indexed in the hands of Google -- completely out of control of the member or the Glocals admins.  

I worry that this will make Glocals members uncomfortable and less incline to talk freely, as what they write will be kept in memory forever and can be read by anyone in the world.  I'm more than happy to share my thoughts and my tips with the Glocals community -- not so much with the whole planet.

I reaffirm my advice about not letting robots index Glocals' content; instead, there should be an internal search engine.  In any case, it would be useful to organize a poll in order to know what members think about it.

This is not good ... our Glocals photos on Google.

@ just_me / @ TheOmegaMan :

Thank you VERY much  for all the usefull informations you are giving ! Because I did not know ... all you are describing and that any of our comments on the postings, picture, etc. could be reached via Google !

I will then definitely do some changes in my use of Glocals - because being more for an active "proximity life" , i do not feel any necessity "to be linked with the world" :

* leave "unclear" picture as it is now on my profile,

* withdraw my spontaneity on the boards

* keep up with my off board activities

* limit my personal data

Best regards,

Tounal

@Tounal - just to clarify - the personal data on your profile can NOT be seen by search engines or by non members.

Oded

@ just_me / @ TheOmegaMan : I answered below...

@ Oded :

Many thanks for your answer to me concerning the personal data.

However, i am very much welcoming the idea of TheOmegaMan having a general poll for anyone agreeing or not : concerning the link with Google with any of our postings... (does anyone agree ???).

Most of the people miss all forum issues, do not know about the google issue, etc... I just got the clue because someone talked about it by chance at a lunch meeting !

Wishing you lovely day.

Tounal

A poll would be good.

I guess most people would be concerned and vote No To Google as privacy is a big issue.

But all that really depends on whether Glocals is expanding mostly due to word of mouth or search engine referral. If the former the poll would helpful. If the latter, then to be fair, I can't really expect the admin to block search engine bots.

@ Bizhan

I've just been taken by surprise  with all this "Google" issue... but to be fair, i am also not expecting the admin to block any search engine ! it is up to the creators to choose the way they want to expand and not me to complain... ! ...for sure i'm still enjoying Glocals  !!!

Tounal

Following on from the (above) voice of reason.

If you’ve ever used the internet for online banking, applied for a credit card, shopped at Amazon, bought off ebay or even emailed your granny through Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Gmail et al…Google know where to find you.  And that’s not just wild speculation…..I work for the opposition.....so all you people whingeing to glocals about your lack of privacy?.....I know who you are and how to find you…..(turn up the "Jaws" soundtrack).....

@Carolyn to call people airing their concerns "whinging" is unkind and unfair.

By the way, in the English language the last 'e' is omitted when there is "ing" attached to the end ... And I'm picking on that because you gave some Mexican young lady a hard time about her spelling "What's The Mistry" vs "mystery" ... (And I don't claim my spelling is any better than anyone else's .. before you go looking at mine :-)

You, in any case are way off the mark. David Lawson states his precations/assumptions and that is perfectly fine. We all know google and other sites reserve the right to scan our material (emails etc). BUT ...

Google does not publish my emails nor does it link to them for public viewing.

My arrangements with my friends and where I go or what I discuss with them on this site ARE available to the Internet public.

And "that" is the point, rather than whether Google robots read my emails, which of course they do and they tailor & target their ads.

Google's or other robots do not conecern me (for this sort of social networking) as much as an individuals' decisions about my projects, career and business contracts, way into the future.

My discussions here can be taken out of context and misinterpreted as being the sum total of my entire profile/personality and I will never even know it happened.

Indeed sometimes even friends misunderstand a joke or comment placed online, in the absence of a full context, body language and tonality. But with friends I have a chance to explain.

Hmmm... I'd give credit to Carolyn C for attempting the reductio ad absurdum here. It was a nice try -- technically she is right, isn't she. It's just that for every example she brings, all the data are hidden behind some kind of credentials/encryption (OK, for Facebook the argument is incomplete). 

On the other hand David Lawson's point... not quite either. That material is permanently archived on search engines is a fair presumption (as he says), and certainly a good rule of thumb, but it isn't actually true. 

The thread as a whole starts to imply a kind of false dichotomy: that either the content has to be password-protected (which obviously keeps out search-engine bots) or it ends up permanently in the hands of accidentally rich Nigerians. But that is not true either. Since basically we are just talking about logging on search engines here and nothing particularly sophisticated, isn't the robot exclusion standard sufficient? 

Hey all,

To say it again: only other members who are logged in can see your profile. However, non members (& search engines) can see most of the other stuff, including forum posts, Activities posted, your user name & profile pic.  

The system works this way for 3 main reasons:

1. We estimated that most folks would not post sensetive personal data to the forums / activities, as this content is anyway visible to 40,000 other members.

2. We estimated that the content of the profile may be more sensetive, hence it's shown to members only, plus you can choose to limit that further and show it to your friends only.

3. Many new members surf glocals a bit before deciding if to join or not. So showing them the forum / Activity content helps.

For now, we do not plan to limit non-members (and search engines) from viewing the forums / Activities / etc.

Hope this makes sense,

Nir

Nir,

I wish you and Oded will change your mind eventually.  Valuing site publicity over members' privacy and safety is the wrong thing to do. 

This strategy will backfire at some time in the future, as proven by the outrage caused by Facebook's privacy-disrespectful policies.

Furthermore, Glocals is so famous now that I don't think it needs such a detailed visibility on Google.

To conclude: just a few weeks ago the Electronic Frontier Foundation published their proposal for a Bill of Privacy Rights for social network users.  I recommend having a look at this inspiring document -- it's worth reading. 

@David_Lawson:

> I always assume that anything written on the internet is for public consumption and will be there permanently forever.  to assume otherwise, i think, is just delusional.

What is self-delusional is the passivity by which some surrender their right to privacy.  Don't give up so easily!  You wrote it, you still own it -- even when it's in Google's cache or in a social network or wherever -- and you have full rights to ask for it to be taken offline.   

@Carolyn C:

If you’ve ever used the internet for online banking, applied for a credit card, shopped at Amazon, bought off ebay or even emailed your granny through Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Gmail et al…Google know where to find you. 

Not really.  Someday I'll explain you how Google works

> You wrote it, you still own it

Really?

Do you remember the controvesy when Google announced that it planned to scan, digitize and make searchable the collections of five of the largest libraries in the world. At first, it seemed like one of those great ideas from the search giant.

But there was a big catch: Many of those books were protected by copyrights, and Google was requiring copyright holders to opt out of the scanning process if they don't want their books in libraries to be searchable.

How do we opt out of our personal forum information being disseminated from glocals.com to the search giant? Will we ever have the option given Nir's statement above?

The thing that concerns me about Nir's post isn't really anything about copyrights or privacy, more that it doesn't really address the topic in hand. It's been done to death the stuff in our profiles -- the bits about how we like wine, salsa dancing and how we lost our backpacks in Cambodia -- won't end up on Google. Fine. Very good. We know that! 

The topic of the thread was concern over forum posts being archived by Google. Whereas Nir's reply at least twice refers to "non members (& search engines)". The thing is: search engine archiving, and personal browsing are not the same thing. They do not work in the same way. People can click on links, and go wherever they want within a site provided it is linked (or they otherwise know the URL). Robots can parse a page, strip out all the links, and visit whichever all of them sequentially. 

However, just because bots can do that, doesn't mean they do. Compliant robots are bound not to enter the directory tree below levels that the site administrator forbids. This is how, for example, company phone directories are visitable easily but not archived on Google. Because search engines do comply, at least scrupulous engines do not publicly archive or serve this information. 

Thus it would be almost inconceivably easy for Glocals to keep the forums and anything open to public viewing, but not have it archived on search engines. It would be literally one line of code. 

However, Oded said explicitly that they don't want to do that. For what it's worth, I agree 100% with TheOmegaMan's comment: I wish you and Oded will change your mind eventually.  Valuing site publicity over members' privacy and safety is the wrong thing to do. If you want to petition them, you could always ask Oded if you can start a Glocals group about this. Good luck! 

2: TheOmegaMan - thank you, I'll look forward to it.  We can exchange notes and I'll explain how Yahoo! works

@Oded - somebody just told me that everyone's photo is on google images ...

and sure enough if you go to http://images.google.com and search for as an example "glocals NAME"  (replace NAME with your own name) you will see your picture plus that of many friends too.

I know technically how that happens (forum posts and comments are picked up by Google not our profiles that you say are not visible). But this makes the idea that our pictures (& profiles) are locked a bit of nonsense.

... what difference does a profile lock make if the pictures and names are picked up from somewhere else on the site anyway!

You can at least put the poster's picture in a folder and make that a nofollow. And similarly with poster's name as it appears on the left of the his post or comment you could block the robots from reading just the name yet keep the posts and comments pages open to the robots. What do you think?

Bizhan,

It's true that search engines see your name and pic.

This is not new, and we said it before. 6 posts up on this same thread is my last reply to this, saying: 

"To say it again: only other members who are logged in can see your profile. However, non members (& search engines) can see most of the other stuff, including forum posts, Activities posted, your user name & profile pic.  "

I know and respect that this topic is important for you, and that you think our current settings are not good. But I don't know what more to add to the discussion, which hasn't been said already.

All I can do is copy-paste the explanation of our current settings (below), and why it's done that way.

Nir

Hey all,

To say it again: only other members who are logged in can see your profile. However, non members (& search engines) can see most of the other stuff, including forum posts, Activities posted, your user name & profile pic.  

The system works this way for 3 main reasons:

1. We estimated that most folks would not post sensetive personal data to the forums / activities, as this content is anyway visible to 40,000 other members.

2. We estimated that the content of the profile may be more sensetive, hence it's shown to members only, plus you can choose to limit that further and show it to your friends only.

3. Many new members surf glocals a bit before deciding if to join or not. So showing them the forum / Activity content helps.

For now, we do not plan to limit non-members (and search engines) from viewing the forums / Activities / etc.

Hope this makes sense,

Nir"

I know and respect that this topic is important for you, and that you think our current settings are not good. But I don't know what more to add to the discussion, which hasn't been said already.

I don't think you need to add anything, Nir. 

What Bizhan is suggesting is identical to what I was suggesting: nofollow for robot exclusion. Surely if you were to add http://www.glocals.com/sites/glocals/_media/members/ to robots.txt it would keep (all future?) images out of the Google image search, but still keep the forum archived. Is that not correct? Bizhan/SiteAdmin/OmegaMan/Carolyn? Right now the only URL that seems to be forbidden by this standard is /things-to-do/manage_events/ ....

Have you already noticed that this topic is particularily important to people who are very active in the forum? If they start to send PMs instead of posting, then the forum will soon lose the benefit of sharing useful info with the community. And so the same topic might come up again and again. Forums can only live, when members are active. Otherwise they don't make much sense. There could be an info like "Forum posts are public", in order to make members aware of the fact that this isn't Facebook where comments can only be seen by friends.

In addition I still see the issue of real names on the new site. New members cannot chose a pseudo anymore (they can only hide their last name). I noticed that a lot of new members try to protect their identiy by keeping the chicken photo. Normally, on all other forums I know, members do have pseudos. It was said that due to the growing number of members the creation of pseudos became more and more complicated, but hey, we were told to be creative.

Hi Bizhan,

as I told you by PM, profile pictures can be found in Google because they are present in Forum and Event pages -- which are indexed by Google. 

And (as pointed out by mdiephuis in this thread, post #73) Forum and Event pages contain the original full-sized profile pictures which are then scaled by the browser, instead of a thumbnail.  Therefore Google stores our full-sized profile pictures.

I have been studying the possibility of excluding profile name and pictures directly from the HTML source of the pages via googleoff tags, but unfortunately this feature is available only for the Google Appliance, not for the public Googlebot.

Hayes: the way to keep Google from indexing all pictures could be going the other way around, i.e. blocking everything except the pages' text.  This can be done by setting a robots.txt containing User-agent: * and Disallow: *.htm .

But, still, the decent thing to do is to block Google completely.

Hi guys

We will check with our tech guys, and if Bizhan's suggestion is doable, we will implement it so search engines don't pick up your profile photo and/or your name.

Oded

@Hayes ... correct. Just blocking the name & photo will do the trick.

@Oded ... photo blocking is easy/standard - thank you for considering ... name blocking is not standard but dead easy too. BTW, Google loves 'links' and image hence it associate the poster's name and image so tightly and publicly.

A simple Javacript link to the Poster's profile will make the poster's name & link invisible to Google. So prolific posters such as our lot here   will not become Googles favourite whipping boys!

Just ask your techies to consider a javascript fucntion like this:

UserProfile('ek','of','ed','od')"  ... see your name in there? The function on your server reconstructs it into Oded Ofek ... it takes minutes to write this code.

... and make the user names into buttons. When the button is clicked the the above function reconstructs the name and pulls the correct profile (for the loged in members a always).

In this way the names will be invisible to all the engines even if they don't obey Robots.txt or even if they change their policy in the future.

Many thanks for conisdering.

Hi Bizhan,

pardon me for correcting you, but:

> You can at least put the poster's picture in a folder and make that a nofollow.

This will not work as Forum and Event pages contain a link to the picture.

> And similarly with poster's name as it appears on the left of the his post or comment you could block the robots from reading just the name yet keep the posts and comments pages open to the robots. What do you think?

This is not possible either, as it is impossible to tell Google to index only parts of a page (see my previous post about the googleoff tag).

What could be done at least, as suggered by Bizhan, is to hide profile picture & name, in Forum and Events pages, from not-logged-in users (and hence from Google too).  This is technically feasible and should be done ASAP.

By the way, there is no need for techniques to obfuscate member names or transform the name string into a button.  Just not showing the leftmost part of each post (or anonymizing it) unless the user is logged in will work fine.  

@OmegaMan/Daniel - the pictures can be made nofollow no matter where they are linked from ... without a shadow of a doubt. As for blocking the names ... that too is perfectly and easily do-able (I was not thinking of using common tags) ... I did not say how

And when you look into 'anonymizing' or not showing the left most part, you will end up using techniques some of which are what I had in mind - if you meant not showing to Google bots.

The only reason I mentioned the javascript (obfuscation) was because Oded stated "if Bizhan's suggestion is doable" .... so I was suggesting one of many ways to achieve that happy medium for all. But lets not trun this into a technical debate ... though it'll be fun to discuss over a beer   ... I am sure Oded's techies can easily come up with a solution ...

... and hey Daniel you're still have a little spare time for a bit of techy work right? I think Oded knows where to find you ... yeah he'll Google you

I just want to allign expectations here folks.

Our techies are currently working on another project, and will only be able to dig into this sometime next week.

We'll update you when they start, and on what they say.

Oded

That's good news, Oded.

Feel free to contact me if you need some help. 

Hi folks

Quick question on this before the tech guys start working:

Is the problem that a name search on Google shows your forum posts, or is the problem that a name search on Google shows your profile photo or both?

Thanks

Oded

I would say both although the picture its more important to be invisible in my opinion

Definitely both.

I'd say it all depends on what you look like.

If you look like me or Maria or Bizhan, you want the pic removed.

If you look like Hayes, you want the pic enlarged!

Seriously, for me: no issue with either my pic or my forum posts showing on Google searches.

Nir

hell yeah! 

i just did a google image search for glocals hayes (no quotes, no plusses or nuffink) and among the top 20 hits there are: 

- a picture of me (this makes sense).

- a few random pictures from the site. front page, austin goddamn powers, etc.

- pictures of tammyshanker, facemelter, and justdoit. just wtf now? how is google getting me confused with those three? i have a reasonable grasp of the english language but it's hard for me to express how much i disapprove of those three slackers getting global credit for my work. 

HOWEVER! The number SIX hit for a google image search of glocals hayes is... higher than tammyshanker, facemelter, justdoit, and all but two of the site graphics... is the following image. seriously, i shit you not. swear down, honest to god, no messing. this is number six. those google kids are clever, aren't they?

I agree with Bizhan: both.

Both, of course.

both but mainly the posts

Hayes, 

Inspired by your post, I did a Google Images search on "Nir glocals". Among the top ten results is this one. Strange days indeed...(-:

That's because this image is published in a post by Marina that also mentions your name. 

Or unless Google knows something that we don't

Bannir son souvenir, n'est-ce pas honnir Nir?

Sometime next week from Jun 23rd would take us up to the first week of July.

Any progress? 

Sorry for the delay here guys.

This has been scheduled with our programmers and will happen within the next 2 weeks.

Oded

lol.....this is the most sophisticated way to hide one's on-line identity I've ever seen...

APPLAUSE !!!!

 ... based on TheOmegaMan's (Daniel) explanation above, all our names will be associated with this image coz it appears twice on this page ... I guess there is some poetic justice in that - Thanks Irina 

Bizh, don't provoke me, plz. I'm really close to publishing the pic a few more times in this thread. So that way,  in Google search, Glocals' members' identities'll be totally hidden under this charming image. SiteAdmin can work on more important site problems. Let's give the guy a break...

Cuz, in Google, we all - Glocalers - will be looking like this:  

Hey No Princess Irina. Have mercy.   ... & if u come to my Sunday outing place (you know where) I'll bring you a slice of my world class special carrot cake.

Quick update on this.

We blocked profile photos from search engines and are now working on also blocking usernames.

This is a sitewide change, so it requires some work and some testing.

I'll update you when its done.

Oded

Hi Oded,

That's very good news!

I've tested the forums and this solution seems to work very well.  Just a minor thing left out: when an user thanks someone else for his/her post, both names are still visible by not-logged-in visitors.

On the other hand, old profile photos and usernames are still visible on Google; you should remove them via the Webmaster tools.  I will be happy to do this for you if you don't have the time or inclination.

Thanks in the name of all Glocal members that care for privacy.

Hi all,

Just noticed that names and profile photos of members are visible in the Groups pages to non-logged in visitors.  They show up in Google search results, too.

Oded, can you please take care of anonymizing it, just as it was done for Profile and Forum pages?

Thanks in advance, as always.