Technology Information

Suspicious or suspecting somebody else such as hacker or intruder is accessing and hacking into your Gmail account without your knowledge? Gmail is getting popular as email service provider of choice by many, and is probably holding and storing lots of sensitive private personal information such as user name and password credential recoveries, tax records, love letters, Google Talk chat histories, bank statements and etc.

Thus protecting the security of Gmail or Google Mail account is of utmost important. Other than using a hard-to-guess and long password to secure the e-mail account from brute-force and dictionary attack hacking attempt, it may be useful to review and check Gmail account login session and access activity history in order to ensure that only user himself or herself and other authorized people is gaining access and logging into the Gmail account.

Gmail has launched “Last Account Activity” feature that showing user information about recent activity in the Gmail account. Recent activation information includes any times that the mail account was accessed, using a regular web browser, through a POP or IMAP client, from Google Toolbar or a mobile device, and other access type. The IP address from which the access was made, as well as the time and date is listed, enable user to check and verify that the login is indeed valid and legitimate, and whether there is another person use the Gmail account without your consent and knowledge.

To access the last account activity history, click on the Details link at the end of the Last account activity line at the bottom of any Gmail page to open a new window showing the recent sign in records from last few hours onwards, including concurrent session information if user (or anybody else) opens Gmail account access in more than one location.

In the “Activity on this account” window, there are plentiful of information that is available, including user’s current IP address, so that user can know easily which session is opened by him, and if there is another login session to Gmail that does not occur on his or her comptuer. Gmail Blog explains how to use these information to protect and secure your Gmail account.

The top table, under “Concurrent session information,” indicates all open sessions, along with IP address and “access type” — which refers to how email was retrieved, for example, through iGoogle, POP3 or a mobile phone. The bottom table, under “Recent activity,” contains my most recent history along with times of access. I can also view my current IP address at the very bottom of this window, where it says “This computer is using IP address…”

With this information, I can quickly verify that all the Gmail activity was indeed mine. I remember using Gmail at the times and locations listed. Being extra cautious, I can also click on the “Sign out all other sessions” button to sign out of the account I left open at home.

If you suspect the intrusion or violation into your Gmail has occurred, then remotely sign out and log out all Gmail access session that is not on your current computer by clicking on Sign out all other sessions button. The next thing you should do if immediately changing your Gmail account password by going to Google Account Settings, and then click on Change Password. If you no longer has access to Gmail, try to recover or reset the Gmail and Google Account password.

SEOmoz has a new search engine optimization metric analysis tool that will determine how your blog or website ranks in terms of ranking search engines results page (SERP), linkage or backlinks to the blog, relative importance, visibility of the webpage, popularity, mentions of the page across the Web and etc. In other words, it’s another tool that will tell webmasters how likely their pages and sites will rank on SERP, or the potential strength and ability of a page to rank in the search engines. Page Strength is a good add-on and comparison to Google Page Rank, which based solely on Google data.

When you the URL or link address of the web page or website, the SEOmoz Page Strenght Analysis Tool will retrieve some data about the website from various source and then process the date in order to calculate the page strenght. The data includes:

• Links pointing to full URL
• Links pointing to domain
• Position at Google for first four words of title tag on target URL
• Age of Domain
• Links from domains with .edu TLDs
• Links from domains with .gov TLDs
• Alexa Rank
• Domain name visibility
• Internal Link Percent
• Number of search results for URL search at del.icio.us
• Listings in DMOZ (ODP)
• Links found in Wikipedia
• Google Pagerank of full URL and Domain

So it’s the data analysis is pretty intensive, but the Page Strenght may not reflect your actual standing in search engine as the calculation, after all, is from SEOmoz and not from the search engines themselves, although it may comes close. Anyway, with SEOmoz Page Strength tool, you can have a glance of most important indicators about your website on one single page.

Google has quietly unveiled its next level of search engine program called Google Merchant Search. Generally, Google Merchant Search is a search platform which offers users a new and different way to find products or services from the providers. Based on the search result typed in by the user, Google Merchant Search will display a list of product/service providers that meet the user’s search requirement. The user can have a quick glance at these providers and sort/filter them in accordance to the criteria specified. From the filtered result, the user can choose to contact any of the providers in the list directly for a more detailed quote. Otherwise, the user can leave his/her contact information and Google which function as a middle man between the service provider and the user will forward the user’s request to the selected providers. Once there is a reply from the providers, Google’s representative will connect the user to these providers. In this exchange, Google keeps the user’s contact information and will not disclose it to the providers.

Google Merchant Search is a beta program which is currently only available in UK. In this current testing state, this new program can only conduct searches for secured loans from financial service providers in UK. Users can see the demo shown in the photos below.

Users use the Google search engine to search for a Secured Loan. Users can use the Google Merchant Search to compare loan lenders to get the best rate.

A list of loan lenders with relevant information will be shown once users proceed with the search via Google Merchant Search.

The emergence of Google Merchant Search has enhanced users’ product/service searching experience. With the search result, users can easily compare the pricing and service. However, Google is also in a dilemma after introducing this new service. With Google Merchant Search, the existing search mechanism might be in jeopardy. Google’s highly profitable Search Engine Marketers which bring in traffic and benefit the tripartite network of advertisers, publishers and Google itself is threatened. When users click on sponsored listings, Google makes money; likewise, the advertisers profit when there is high traffic while website publishers profit when their sites attract traffic. Google’s organic search results bring many visitors to the sites. At the same time, many visitors are channeled to certain network sites via AdWords. Thus, businesses benefit from Google but the mechanism also puts the relevant business models at risk for they depend solely on Google. When the centre breaks, things fall apart.