Many businesses are turned off from using public cloud services whilst fears over the security of sensitive data and applications exist.  Public cloud hosting services are now well established but experts still point to it taking up to 2 years for all potential risks to be identified and security improved sufficiently for businesses and enterprises to have enough confidence to use a cloud service.

Even the release of a summary of the strategic security issues within a cloud service by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has done little to allay fears.  This report issued earlier this year looked at the strategic and tactical security issues facing any data center which provides cloud hosting services, along with recommendations to deal with them.

Despite the low uptake, confidence within the industry is growing as the biggest security firms have issued notice of pending product launches which are aimed at solving many of the problems associated with cloud hosting.  For customers this is a big change in the way security issues are being addressed as typically they are forced to take up a new service before any consultation on security has occurred.  Instead of dealing with security problems on a ‘as they happen’ basis, they are instead looking at security pro-actively and putting measures in place before businesses take up a service.

A study by Aberdeen Group’s Derek Brink was published in July of this year.  The study called ‘Security and Cloud Best Practices’ talked to 110 IT business, yet almost half of these said they were pushing cloud providers to apply adequate security measures before they will switch.  Trust within the industry is fairly low at present however, analysts do point out that there is little evidence to show that security within a public cloud is poor.

In the fact, studies have proven that cloud hosting structures provided today are often more secure and able to deal with any attacks far better than most private networks.  But businesses are still reluctant to sign up with less than 170 of 500 surveyed by IDC in August of this year saying they thought a cloud hosting provider’s security was more secure than their own in-house architecture.  This comes in direct conflict with those who have made the move to cloud services who say they are confident that their providers offer better security than their own IT department could deploy.

It would appear then that there is still some confusion about cloud hosting and the level of security if can offer.  Providers have done little to build confidence with most remaining silent about their security measures, partly because they do want to divulge those practises which give them an advantage over their competitors and partly because divulging their security practises could leave them open to attack.

This it seems could be the deep rooted problem.  If providers are not forthcoming about their security practises and the depth to which they run then businesses will not be satisfied that a provider is doing enough to ensure security of data and critical applications within a cloud environment.  It may only be through certification by third parties such as ISO 2077 that businesses will gain sufficient confidence that providers will deliver on their security promises to take up cloud services.

News article written by Georgina Clatworthy, a freelance writer working on subjects related to business, IT and technology.  I am not associated with Quality Tech but I can recommend them for secure hosting services to suit any business need.

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Now, we’re asking ourselves if Matt Cutts’ blog is one of those sites.

With so many webmasters devastated by the Panda update – and just as many complaining that high-value sites have taken the beating low-value sites were supposed to – Matt Cutts’ blog might be one of the most high-profile examples of Google Panda having unintended consequences.

First, consider that the Google Panda update was rolled out in February of this year. Now, examine the Compete.com report for Matt Cutts’ traffic since then:

There definitely seems to be a downward trend coinciding with the release of Panda, but perhaps more revealing is Alexa.com‘s take, which shows a sharp drop coinciding with the Panda international rollout in  April:

How could mattcutts.com be impacted by the Google Panda international rollout when the site is not technically an international site? Here are a couple of things to consider:

• Mattcutts.com would certainly be expected to receive large amounts of international visitors due to its subject matter. Might that constitute an international site in the eyes of Panda?
• Not all sites impacted by the international Panda rollout were international sites.

Third party traffic statistics sources like Alexa and Compete.com do not accurately measure site traffic, but the estimates they offer are commonly referred to in the search community.

If Matt Cutts is indeed feeling the Panda burn, he’s not the only one. As Barry Schwartz at SERoundtable.com wrote in April (bold added):

Google said the algorithm works even “deeper into the “long tail” of low-quality websites to return higher-quality results where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before.” So if anything, it appears to impact even more sites and Google confirmed that, saying an additional “2% of U.S. queries” were impacted by this update. Impacted how? I do not think sites have claimed to be released from the algorithm update, even after updating their sites – but I do see more sites claiming they were hurt by this update.

Google itself has listed some bullet points for measuring a site’s quality in the form of 23 questions site owners should ask themselves like “would you trust the information presented in this article?” however don’t seem to apply to all of the sites that are feeling a traffic crunch after the new algorithms were rolled out. If one of Google’s own – and undeniably a provider of value to the search community in Matt Cutts – is vulnerable, what other high-quality sites is Google missing?

Juxtaposing mattcutts.com against the 23 questions leave only two that could possibly apply:

• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?

Was Matt Cutts’ blog impacted by Panda? If so, there may be more than 23 questions to ask.

Update: Matt confirmed via Twitter that he was not impacted.

The change in strategy, confirmed in an email to Wired.com, was articulated by one of Google’s spokesmen thusly:

The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1’s and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality.

In a recent Google Webmaster Central Video, perhaps the best known Google spokesman to the SEO community, Matt Cutts seemed to be optimistic about the possibilties when asked if plus ones have any effect on search rankings:

We’re still looking at the plus ones and how much effect that can have. It’s definitely promising. We’re excited about it and we hope to figure out a good way to use that, but you don’t want to rush into it. You want to make sure that it looks like a good quality win and not just throw in a signal because you’ve got it.

There’s no immediate indication as to when these changes will go into effect, but it’s obvious for web marketers that now is as good a time as any to get started to focus on social media results as part of their search engine marketing plans.

Is this the first time we’ve seen a major search engine get heavily influenced by social media? Hardly. Recall the Yahoo-Facebook “Six Degrees of Separation” idea, a social test to find out whether or not everyone on earth really is only separated by, at most, six degrees. This experiment could spell out a future potential partnership between Facebook and search engines in which social factors influence rankings, such as how  many of your friends recommend certain links.

As for Google’s +1 innovation, forward-thinking search engine optimizers will want to start paying attention to their social media statistics as well as their places in Google’s rankings. Their future popularity could depend on it.

That’s about to change, as InformationWeek pointed out earlier today. Facebook is changing the rules of “following” and the ability to see someone else’s updates, the the news is good for Facebook and social media marketers.

In short, Facebook users can follow other users simply by subscribing – not necessarily “friending.” This means that people can follow all of your status updates and posts without actually being your Facebook friend. Social media firms will find the changes add to the potential audience of their regular updates.

Analysts were quick to scrutinize the move as a response to Google+ and Twitter. In Google+’s case, “following” other users is actually quite easy because a two-way connection does not have to be approved by both parties. The model is much more similar to Twitter’s model, in which users can follow whoever they like.

This small move can have big implications for Facebook and certainly might mean a more exposure for celebrities with Facebook accounts, as well. Whether or not Facebook becomes the go-to place for 140 character updates like Twitter is remains to be seen.

The NFL season.

Displayed on the right, you’ll find the hot searches for Monday, September 12th. Circled in red are all of the NFL-related searches, many of which had to do with Monday Night Football (wherein Wes Welker and the New England Patriots defeated the Miami Dolphins; the double-header also included the Oakland Raiders against the Denver Broncos).

While it’s expected that many popular sporting events will pop up in the Google search trends, what’s amazing about the NFL is just how dramatically it affects the rankings. On Monday, seven out of ten topics were the most-searched keyphrases on Google, leading 10 out of 20 overall. To contrast, the MLB season is in full swing and they managed just one top search, Manny Ramirez.

It’s a difficult proposition for non-sports related websites to capitalize on this bursting of traffic, of course. But considering the high level of involvement in the NFL – not only is it popular amongst fans, but online fantasy football has taken on a life of its own – it does raise some interesting questions. What other searches do people care passionately about, and when do these searches spike the most?

The NFL searches spike around the weekend. But what else lies out there in the Google trends?

After yesterday’s news item that Google was cleaning its house, Yahoo! decided to do them one better – by getting rid of their CEO, Carol Bartz. Bartz had been Yahoo’s CEO since 2009, making her tenure a brief one, and was named in 2010 as the world’s most overpaid CEO.

Having received millions of shares of stock in Yahoo’s considerable company value and receiving a base salary of $1 million per year, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock figured it was time to move on. What’s interesting, however, is the fashion in which Bostock fired Bartz: over the phone. The firing was supposedly “without cause,” although there were some key points that probably led to the decision:

• The ultimately nonexistent communication in the  relationship between Yahoo and Alibaba. As SEOChat reports, “In August of last year, Alibaba Group sold Alipay to Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, chairman and CEO. Many observers saw Alipay as a huge factor in Alibaba’s and Yahoo’s value. Alibaba did not see fit to inform Yahoo of this change in ownership until quite some time later, however. “
• Not properly utilizing Yahoo’s assets, of which Alibaba is a major part.

The question of where Yahoo goes after this might be answered by a long-standing rumor: a potential buyer for the company. Microsoft heads the list, but News Corp. is another rumored potential buyer. If a sale happens, it will likely happen before the next CEO is hired, which would let the new company have an important say-so in Yahoo’s direction in the future. Yahoo fans will want to pay close attention in the next few weeks and months.

Proving that even the world’s best and most innovative companies have to do a bit of failing in order to discover what resonates with its audience, Google announced recently that it would killing at least nine different platforms and initiatives that had previously showed promise.

The cancellations include Google Aardvark, which had been described as Google as “an experiment in a new kind of search” that gave appropriate answers to users’ questions. Aardvark was acquired as a start-up in early 2010, but hadn’t panned out like Google had hoped.

Google Desktop is similarly being done away with – the official Google Blog cited a “huge shift” from local to cloud-based computing and storage. The reason given for discontinuing Google Desktop is that both online and offline instant access to information has been accomplished, though some are left wondering whether the program simply wasn’t popular enough with users to justify its existence.

Google Pack is also gone, and Google cites popularity with more web-based applications such as Google Docs as the reason. Google Pack had been aimed with downloadable software in mind, but Google is right to focus on a more web-based approach.

A very ambitious project known as SideWiki is also being shut down with the “fall cleaning.” While the attempt at collaborative results sounded like a good idea, the program simply didn’t resonate.

Be sure to visit the Google Blog to find what other projects and programs Google is discontinuing. While some elements of these innovations will live on in other programs, unfortunately many of these will be remembered as essentially failed projects.

It was only a matter of time that this dissatisfaction reached “app” status.

Known as the “Obama Clock,” this app is so hot that it’s the number-two app selling right now – behind only the World Atlas of National Geographic but above an app as iconic and useful as Wolfram Alpha.

The Obama Clock, which displays:

• current national gasoline price index
• unemployment rate
• movement in house prices
• the national debt
• the countdown of Obama’s first term in office

The app also shows the President’s approval rating with the same style of a heart monitor.

To no one’s surprise, this app is especially popular with conservatives, especially as the Presidential race heats up. If only during the Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Library next week (Sept. 7), one of the top candidates would hold up their iPhone and display the Obama Clock – it would not only be quite a moment for politics, but an iconic moment for mobile technology as well.

The application assumes that President Obama is going to lose re-election in 2012, counting down to his last days in office going into 2013. But what’s most interesting about the app are the other variables. A countdown clock is nothing most cell phones can’t handle, but watching the economic numbers change over the coming weeks and months could give this app more staying power.

The Obama Clock mobile app by Trojan Tree is available for iPhone and priced affordably for today’s economy at only .99 cents.

George W. Bush library picks up its domain name for $35k

File this in the “Ouch” category. Not keeping track of domain name registration info can cost big Texas bucks. George W. Bush’s presidential library domain name has been repurchased after a Web development company accidentally let it expire.

Raleigh, N.C.-based Illuminati Karate paid less than $10 for the http://www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com domain name and sold it back earlier this year for $35,000 to the library’s contracted Web developers, Yuma Solutions, said George Huger, lead Web developer for Illuminati Karate.

Illuminati Karate paid less than $10 for the GeorgeWBushLibrary.com domain name and sold it back earlier this year for a premium.

Domain Name News Reports:

The name was originally bought for $3,000 in March 2007 for use by the presidential library. The name is now safe until 2013 when it next expires.

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