I read that Google will start offering SSL search to keep the search safe and encrypted.

Now this does indeed sound as a good thing, it means your searching will be more secure. All you'll need to do is use https instead of http.
So - is Google really only worried about the privacy of users? Let's dig a little deeper.

The encryption will naturally not mean anything for Google themselves - they'll continue to collect the data as they've always have. Anything else could be hurting their AdWords and peoples trust in them.

However enabling SSL in search via the https will mean the referrers will be turned off.
"As another layer of privacy, SSL search turns off a browser's referrers. Web browsers typically turn off referrers when going from HTTPS to HTTP mode to provide extra privacy. By clicking on a search result that takes you to an HTTP site, you could disable any customizations that the website provides based on the referrer information."

This looks to mean that the search terms aren't transmitted from the browser to the website, and means that the information about them aren't collected, by for example Google Analytics.

My first thought was "Google Analytics: Premium Service". 
Google as said still collects the information meaning they can still be coupled in with the website, however if they aren't immediately accessible from the client, and thus the JavaScript transmitting data to analytics it will mean analytics can't display them in the current setup.
Is it farfetched to think that Google might divide Analytics up in two services?
One free with basic features, and one premium to buy if you want to know the search terms people enter your site with?

I guess we will see eventually how this SSL affects Analytics.  But to return to the AdWords issue once more - if people don't know which search terms their sites pull in, how would you trust that Google AdWords are actually working and which AdWords to target? You can't check up on it other than trusting Google. Previously - you could couple the information with Analytics and make deductions on that information.

A side issue is SEO. If the search terms aren't displayed, then people will be unable to actually figure out which terms the visitors of a site use and how and where to optimize content for the audience.
SEO people often battle it out with search engines because they play the same game.
Search engines wants to provide the most relevant results to a search. SEO people want people to see their content. Google removing or hurting one factor could potentially be another move in that ongoing dance

As both a user of Google's search and Analytics - I'm torn myself. I welcome the privacy (although Google still records my searching, so privacy of course is to be taken with a grain of salt), but as a professional user of Analytics and SEO, I'm a bit wary of what this could mean as well in that area.

I noticed this blog: thenextweb.com: Google Blocking Negative Search Recommendations On Islam – Why? today (a bit late possible).
It tells about how Google possible is censoring search suggestions which could be controversial - in this case towards Islam.

Most everybody knows about Google in China so we know Google does … lets call it fiddle to be neutral ... with the search results in various situations.
However this begs the question - how do we actually know that Google is acting fairly and doesn’t censor or cheat with the search results in ways we cannot know?

Their revenue comes from advertisement and being able to provide a clear picture of what people search for to provide targeted advertisement.
So it would stand to argue that they can’t really afford to suffer doubt about their objectivity and whether or not they alter or effect or even censor search results.
However how would anybody know?

Is Google now so big that it doesn’t matter if they do questionable things? Can … would … people even stop using Google if it was confirmed that they are actively censoring? Is it even possible? Or are Google now so big that they can do what they want, when they want?

One can only speculate but my trust in Google is diminishing as they keep growing bigger and spand more and more features of the web, and with situations like this and China.
I still use their services, however …for now.

Do no evil.

Seems Google is thinking about placing advertisements on YouTube in an attempt to get it to make a profit. http://news.ebrandz.com/content/view/1897/568/

Well, personally I do not mind such advertisements myself, as long as they do not come in the form of "roll over", pop up or other such annoyances, and especially not if they starts containing sound and music.

What strikes me most though, is that YouTube isn't making Google much money (nooo, really, a free service isn't turning a large profit), which fits nicely into my Web 2.0 piece I wrote the other day. t looks to me very much like people (companies) just though that money would flow in, if you "Web 2.0"-ified your websites, whereas even a company as Google decides to start using ads on their Web 2.0 sites. And this is on top of the copyright problems associated with a service such as YouTube which I bet is also a large cost.

Now I'm sure Google doesn't need the money, but it all comes back to my point - Web 2.0 is not a silver bullet. Revenue is not guarenteed, and it is not a new economy (like the internet bubble buzz back in the mid 90s). It still needs to provide a product - adverts now - to be able to turn revenue.

It will be interesting to see how far Google will go with their advertisement, cause if they go a overboard (I doubt it, but well, I guess it is possible), the "customers" will simply move towards the next service which provides something comparable. A number of them already exists.  

Browsing my site in firefox I noticed a "read i.ytimg.com" in the status bar after the page had loaded in.

Being paranoid, I started scanning the page for links to "i.ytimg.com" to figure out if something was located in the source, but nothing. Then I checked the domain ytimg.com in dns stuffs domain finder and it pointed back to Google and YouTube. Having a number of YouTube videos embedded into some of my posts, I felt more at ease with this mysterious domain and message.

Then I did an ordinary search on the domain, and behold - apparently (many) others have had the same worries/experiences as me.  

So apparently ytimg.com is used by Google for their YouTube service. Phew.

Just read the blog from Matt Cutts entitled "Solved: another common site review problem", that Google is working on (experimenting with) following form links now, meaning GoogleBot will submit some queries from a form and see where it is taken and crawl those pages.
More information is availble at the Google Webmaster blog: Crawling through HTML forms

Now, it is still on experimental basis. Mr. Cutts says only a few select sites are currently being tested, but for SEO people and especially us programmers who try to keep up with the progress just a bit, this opens up a whole new ball park if indeed the feature gets implemented on a more permanent basis.
I suggest reading the sources to see why Google is working down this avenue, because it also shows why it is beneficial for us programmers.

Interesting in my own personal little opinion, and it is a path which will make life a little less confusing for us programmers when we try to solve problems for our clients.

Reading the blog: http://www.blog.concept-i.dk/adwords-landingssider/ (in Danish), it stated that loading time will now start to affect your quality score for adwords.

Interesting.
I dug a little further and found information about it availble in the FAQ from Google, at amongst other this link: https://adwords.google.com/support/?fulldump=1#87144.

Now this is rather interesting in my book, because eventhough we as consumers have gotten faster and faster connections over the last couple of years, pages which feature a lot of flash for example are still excrutiating slow and annoying to load. This will now start becomming a larger factor.
Focus on time-to-load is in my (humble or not) opinion a good thing, and I'd very much like to see a larger focus on this - and if Google takes this step further and starts deducting the pages rank on the search result with load in mind as well, it becomes more fun.

Some time ago a Danish company released a press release on how to cheat Google and build up their SEO practice on it.
Basically it is simply a "cloacking" system and the claim is that Google never would be wiser.

Well, Google dislike Cloaking and are working to make such techniques impossible.

Personally as both a professional webprogrammer and a personal web-user/surfer – I dislike it as well, because it is a technique used to cheat the user and invalidate their searches. It is one of the reasons why I dislike many of these gray-area SEO companies.

Anyways – Matt Cutts from Google wrote this piece on his blog, in direct reference to the situation with the mentioned company. Apparently the script used is so buggy that plenty of information about the “parent brand” names – meaning the companies who bought this cloaking – could be found, and Cutts said that they could be removed from Googles indexes (*fingers crossed*).
Well, I guess they could do that because it is small time businesses and not like BMW in Germany who only got a temporary removal lasting a short period of time.

So well, basically when trying to cheat the searchengines make sure your scripts are error free

Shortly after Cutts blog was published, the owner of this cloaking system was interviewed by a danish media(Danish article – sorry) said that all the domains running this cloaking are owned by him (and not the paying customer) and thus all Google can do is close down the cloaking domains and not the discover the customers actual domain and close that.
Of course he’ll have to say that because it is the fundamentals of the system being challenged.

The question is how Google will track these cloaking pages without having a manual process combined with their crawler, if the script/system doesn’t throw as many errors as shown by Cutts.
Unless of course they start to spoof crawler user agents so they appear in all essences as a normal browser. Now that could be fun :)

However one of the customers visible by name in Cutts blog are now fearing to be removed, and I for one hope they will be. Of course the owner of the Cloaking System said that it was an error on their part and apologizes to the customer. Yeah, if errors happens once, they can and will happen again.

I do not specifically like Google, because I feel they are amassing too much information about us surfers and other issues (such as Google in China), however I dislike these people/companies more, because they try to cheat us users by manipulating the actual results as presented to us by Google.

So I do hope Google bans every company they come across who does this and develop a method of automatically tracking/detecting these things.

That at least might create some respect about the SEO market in the eyes of many of us, and make it seem less like snake oil-market.

Well, I always thought SEO was just another gray advertising market, more or less ethical companies selling stuff few actually needed.
Especially with cases such as BMW and SAS Raidson (sorry, link is in Danish) still lingering within the mind.

Of course, I knew that SEO was big business, that it was something few actually had much concrete information about (except Google of course :) ) outside what they've tested or read or heard or thought up, and I knew that many people, and companies, wanted their websites optimized to be ranked higher. Hence experiences such as the situations to linked above.

Due to my job, I’ve encountered SEO a couple of times and performed some minor work on a couple of clients’ websites, and subsequently had read somewhat large amounts of contradicting information about it – you know:
Use meta-keywords. Do not use keywords. Use friendly urls, dynamic is fine. Page length is important, not important. Linkfarms, doorway pages and all that.

So when I got the chance to go to a (free, yah) SOE presentation by somebody who supposedly knew something about it I of course jumped at the chance. The person holding the presentation was from the Danish firm Concept-I (their blog can be found here and it is now one I’ll keep an eye on.)

I must say it was quite educational and while I did leave there in a state of euphoria over having learned something new relative easy (not always the case) and free of charge, my view of SEO had not really changed much, except for one thing …. the sheer and utter importance of it.

I hate to admit it, but it works. Google is an authority on the market, due to market position alone, and if they say a site is "number 1" – it is an quality stamp, or at least it is perceived like this.
I even know this is the case from myself as well, despite I’m very critical of information. For example, I do not click adwords because it is blatant advertisement, and as such the company buys its "position" on Google. Just like I do not buy Vanish Oxy Action Clear Colour Ultra Lite Unlimited or what it is called, simply because I see a cheesy synchronized advert on the TV.
But that is just me, I try to automatically filter adverts out and avoid being influenced by them.
 
Anyways, being easy to find is one thing, however this perceived quality stamp tied in with rank position is very very different and vastly more important. This leads to more and more companies seeing the importance of staying high in the ranking, and thus more and more need for SEO. 

The fact of authority alone, is what makes SEO tremendously important in today’s online market and as such I think everybody who works connected to that field owes it to themselves, and their clients, to keep an ear to the ground and try to keep somewhat up. If nothing else to be able to guide and give advice to the clients, in case they need SEO done.
Even if one have no personal interest in SEO, but have a profession where online activity is a factor – SEO to help advice client is important. At least in my (not so often humble) view. 

As said, I did learn many good and solid things from said presentation, and some myths where busted, for me personally at least – which I’m very grateful for.  Some of the myths busted was one about page length causing ranking issues; something I did not really believe in, but you see it online (I know, I know – if it is on the internet it must be true ?).
Another was that Google was able to do dynamic URLS quite well –so friendly urls are now more a public relations tool then anything – that is good to know, cause it is a common statement flung around the web. 
There was a lot of other useful information, about linking and a little insight into how these professionals do it, and some things to avoid.

All in all, I walked away from this presentation armed with more the tools and more knowledge which I can use in my chosen profession. Of course, being the huge skeptic and cynic I am, I am not blue-eyed, and know that what I got was more a superficial view then indebt (it is also limited how much you can do on 3 hours), from one company/persons perspective, and that as such it needs to be spiced with multiple sources of information.
But I feel better armed in the universe of SEO now.

Still perplexed, but better armed.