Privacy Policy: index it/? And where to place it?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Hi Everyone,

Two questions, first: should you allow google to index your privacy policy? Second: for a service based site (not e-commerce, not selling anything) should you put the policy in the footer so it's site wide or just on the "contact us" form page?

Best,

Ruben

[Linda-Vassily]

I keep our privacy policy indexed. I figure that if someone is thinking about interacting with us in some way and doesn't happen to notice the link in the footer or the call-to-action boxes, it should be findable in search so that we don't look like we are hiding something. And for the second part of your question, I think having your privacy policy readily accessible helps users feel more secure and that is a good thing, so I would still have it in the footer.

[customerparadigm.com]

Ruben -

I think it's a wise move to have Google and other search engines index your privacy policy.  I'd recommend putting it in the footer of the site.  This is a standard part of nearly every website, so I wouldn't worry about including it.

Not including it, though, might raise flags and decrease the amount of trust a search engine places in your Website.

From a consumer perspective, many, many studies in the past have show a direct correlation between having a privacy policy on a site (or simply a link to a privacy policy) next to a form, and increased conversion rates.

My worry if you disable the ability of a search engine to index your privacy policy is that it may hinder this "trusted" mark by a search engine, as it may appear that you are trying to hide.

If you do plan to engage in a lot of deceptive practices, though, it might be nice to not have these pages cached, so nobody can look back at your older privacy policy (i.e. through the Way Back Machine).

One cynical thing to note: whatever you say on your privacy policy (i.e. we will never, ever sell your information), you should abide by what you say.  Otherwise, the FTC will come down on you for deceptive practices.  That's why most privacy policies are written by lawyers and allow the company to pretty much do whatever they want with the end user's data.  And why nobody usually reads them.

Hope this helps!

-- Jeff

[KempRugeLawGroup]

"If you do plan to engage in a lot of deceptive practices, though, it might be nice to not have these pages cached, so nobody can look back at your older privacy policy (i.e. through the Way Back Machine)."

I laughed at that part, but always good to know just in case.

Thanks Jeff!

Ruben

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Thanks Linda!

[Chris661]

Are there duplicate content concerns? Since a lot of this stuff is boilerplate?

[customerparadigm.com]

Chris - I wouldn't worry about duplicate content on the privacy policy.

I have, though, seen where people copy-paste from another site, but forget to remove the other company's name.  (That's a little embarrassing, though.)

Just my $0.02,

-- Jeff

[Chris661]

Thanks Jeff!