Is Google s Behavioral Targeting Flawed

RSS

Contact

Newsletter

Is Google's Behavioral Targeting Flawed?

Do you have a search site?
Submit it free to the internet's best search industry directory. » Click Here

Search Engines
Google, Yahoo, MSN...

Search Marketing
Marketing, Budget, Planning...

Pay Per Click
Bid, Price, Quality...

SEO Companies
Optimization, Manage, Company...

SEO Tools
Track, Search, Create...

Analytics
Statistics, Counter...

» Submit your site for FREE «

More...

Get Your Site Submitted for Free in the World's Largest B2B Directory!

Email Address:
* URL:
*
*Indicates Mandatory Field

Terms & Conditions


Titan Quest Forum	Nintendo Wii	Graphics Forum
Halo 3 Forum	Mac Software

By: Anil Batra
2007-10-30

By now it is well known that Google uses in-session Behavioral Targeting. Eric Lander of Search Engine Journal points out some interesting issues with Googles Behavioral Targeting.

I can see how Googles BT can be concerning for some advertisers and consumers. Google Behavioral Targeting (BT) by no means is an advanced one. They just use the current search words with the last search words in the same session to figure out users intent and then serve the relevant sponsored links.

However, it raises two questions in my mind.

How many times a consumer jumps from one city specific search to another?

If I live in Seattle, most of my searches are in Seattle area. I hardly switch from Seattle Care Dealer searches to Los Angeles (or any other city) lawn care search. Does anybody have any study that shows how people switch cities in their searches?

If I do a search for a Seattle car dealer and then a search for a lawn care, am I not the same person who was in interested in Car dealers? Then dont you think showing a car dealer ad while searching for lawn care is relevant to me? If you agree then I dont see where is the issue with Googles Behavioral Targeting? The whole promise of Behavioral Targeting is to show the write ad/content/offer/product to the user based on their behavior instead of the context (in this case showing a car dealer ad even though user is searching lawn care).

Do consumers (searchers) consider the sponsored links as advertisements or a part of the search result? If they consider these as a part of search results, then yes showing the unrelated results definitely will add to the frustrations consumers experience with Search. But if consumers consider them as advertisements more than as a part of search results then, IMHO, it is ok to show out of context ads as long as they are relevant to the consumers. Several studies have shown that Click Through Rate (CTR) on the organic results are far more than CTR on Paid (Sponsored) results indicating that users considers these paid listings more of an advertisements than search results.

What do you think? Would you, as an advertiser, want to see your sponsored links show up out of context (content) but relevant to the user? As a consumer, do you consider sponsored links as advertisements or as a part of the search results?

Comments

Tag: Google, Behavioral Targeting

Add to

Del.icio.us |

Digg |

Reddit |

Furl

Have a bookmark! -

About the Author:
http://webanalysis.blogspot.com

Anil work at ZAAZ and has over 10 years of experience in Consulting, Business Intelligence, Web Analytics, Online Advertising and Behavioral Targeting. Prior to joining ZAAZ he was working at Revenue Science, leader in Behavioral Targeting. He worked with Revenue Science since it was called digiMine, a web analytics vendor. He has worked with several fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Business Objects, Dowjones, ESPN. Anil holds a B. Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from India and an MBA from University of Washington, Seattle.