Get a Privacy Policy for Your Website

Looking around the Internet, more and more sites are popping up with Privacy policies.  Google requires AdWords advertisers to add privacy policies to their websites.  I recently found a handy tool to create privacy policies for free from templates.

FreePrivacyPolicy.com asks you questions aogut your website privacy policy and creates a policy you can easily add to your website.  Check out mine to see an example.  Be warned, you do have to suffer a steady stream of self-promotion when you use the site, but it is worth it.

In the past, privacy policies were often discouraged by the professional SEO type because they were essentially duplicate content and would “suck” page rank.

More recently, many webmaster are considering that a privacy policy could help your seo by engendering trust.  A poll by Barry Schwarz

shows webmasters are split on the topic, with about a third saying yes, a third saying no, and a third saying no idea about whether a privacy policy is a ranking factor in Google.

BTW I voted “No Idea.”

Here is Matt Cutts saying don’t worry about duplicate content filters for content like privacy policies.

Definitely use the Privacy Policy creation tool I mentioned above if you are doing PPC advertising.  Otherwise, consider adding a privacy policy just as a way to project trustworthiness to Google.