Today I was reviewing my Google Blog Alerts and spotted a posting that surprised me. I was surprised because the post obviously may have an impact on the person who posted it because it contains some sensitive information that could have negative ramifications if it were made public.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

I was curious, so I clicked to visit the Live Journal page that Google had obviously crawled. I logged in using my OpenId, but was stopped from viewing the post via Live Journals privacy settings on the post.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Now I’m wondering how Google was able to see the post, why they would crawl private posts at all and how this might impact users if it were made public. So I’m making it public. What do you think of this revelation?

I noticed for the fist time today a new “Note This” link next to “Cached” in the Google SERPs. I checked and don’t see it in co.uk or com.au, so I suspect they are rolling this out slowly…

When I click the link, a new Note has been added to my Google Notebook. Works only when logged in as far as I can tell.