Email Forwarding Question.

Short answer... No.



Google has NO ability to track what you are doing with your email UNLESS you actually pass the email through one of Google's own servers (i.e. if one of the email addresses in question is a GMAIL address).

Google (and other search engines) has the ability to read/collect information from your web sites simply because those sites are public (i.e. not password protected like your email). EVERYONE has that same ability.

By reading/collecting collecting information from the public web sites and passing that information through their algorithms, they are able to render search results (available to the public from google's own servers) and collect more information in the process. Number of times in a given period when a given search phrase is used by a visitor seeking information, which sites are visited as a result of that search, whether or not that visitor rejects those results, and subsequently clicks on a different result from that same search, or how long before that visitor enters a different search phrase, how many different search phrases are used by that visitor to research "related" phrases, etc.

Google cannot see any visitor interaction on your site, unless that interaction also involves a Google server, and to that end, Google constantly adds new "tools" to their repertoire.

For instance, Google AdSense requires the insertion of javascript code on an Adsense publisher's web site. That code accesses a Google server in order to render contextual ads to the visitor, and allows Google to monitor which of those ads are clicked by the visitor.

Google did NOT acquire YouTube because they had a desire to be the largest distribution channel for video on the web. They purchased YouTube because it allows them to monitor the activity of that site's visitors, and (because they also allow other web site owners to embed those videos on their sites) they can also monitor visitor activity on those other sites, as well.

Log into your Google account and have a visit to Google Webmaster Tools. As you look at each of those tools, think about just exactly what benefit Google gets from making those tools available to other webmasters.

There is no such thing as a "free lunch"

Thanks for the replies.

I think i'm confident that the forwarders are private enough for the moment. I don't spam (JFI) - its just those "contact me" "enquire" type emails on different websites of my own all forwarding to one email gave me a bad feeling.......

Thanks again.