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Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

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Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#42
Theres a price to privacy. When I was younger I jumped on the bandwagon and for a period only used Firefox with cookie autodelete and cache cleared every exit.

Now I just see it as being asocial. If Google didn't monetize search with ads how would you discover new products? Without ads websites would not be able to deliver premium content and we would all still be stuck in the early 90s. The internet would work like some broken socialist version of wikipedia.

I have ad free YouTube and sometimes I consider turning it off just to see what kinds of ads are out there that I've missed.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#44
post #27

Waiting for google to make this a ranking factor for SEO like they did with amp.

That’s probably already the case. This is a common area of speculation in the SEO community. Trying to figure what factors are used by Google to determine the ranking.

People will add it in their configs and anecdotally perceive that it has an impact in their rankings. It would likely become a must for SEO.

This a reflection of how incredibly genius the original PageRank was. It’s what makes Google the business it is. It’s almost like a small model of free market behavior. Except that in this case Adam Smith’s invisible hand is Google. That’s what makes Google so powerful and scary.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#45
post #15

Let me get this straight: even if my site has no ads or trackers, Chrome will now use my visitors data for advertising and surveillance??? Does anyone else see FLoC as worse than the current state we're in?

It seems not. The FLoC page ( https://web.dev/floc/ ) says: > For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.

Dirty of google to hide behind “web.dev” and not make it front and center clear this is a google property.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#46
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems not. The FLoC page ( https://web.dev/floc/ ) says: > For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.

Excluding a page is a manual process however, requiring to set the header mentioned in the blog post. So website owners have to explicitly opt-out of FLoC.

Web server software maintainers should enable the header by default. Bugs should be filed against those with the wrong default.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems not. The FLoC page ( https://web.dev/floc/ ) says: > For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.

Dirty of google to hide behind “web.dev” and not make it front and center clear this is a google property.

Seems to mention Google more than on Youtube. Both use Google accounts, as seen in top right corner, but only web.dev has a footer mentioning Google.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#50

How does it benefit website owners to opt out?

On an individual level it doesn't. It takes time and makes such a small difference that it's pointless. Google knows this of course. The result is that they can claim people can opt out, while in practice they run a giant surveillance network.
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