Do you agree with ‘intent based search‘? You may have seen Google (Yahoo and others) rolling out intent based advertising for the AdSense platform. Are you afraid that Google is trying to pry into your private life?
Google has always ‘collected’ information on websites – whether it’s through the code you place on sites for AdSense, Ads, Analytics or Webmaster Central Dashboards. Google collects data from websites on an on-going basis to make search, as a whole, better. Some people think this may violate private policy issues, as both Google and Yahoo make you check a box that says basically you are allowing them to ‘follow’ your every move. The fact is, if you have any Google code placed on your website, then Google does have the ability to use your website information for generating data.
‘Intent based advertising’ in Google AdSense links categories of interest to the user’s browser history – in essence, Google will remember what you’ve search upon and try to place ads strategically for categories that peak your interest (except for categories related to health or children). Someone who has spent time browsing about pages on Dell computers will find ads for Dell computers appearing even when they’re on a site unrelated to Dell computers…it’s all about targeting ads based upon your interests and search history. To read more about this, go here, Google’s Behavior Based Ads.
Behavior Based search was one of the topics that was heavily discussed at PubCon – an annual Internet Marketing Conference that our SEO team attended this year. Google is already doing this with the use of Personalize Search, instead of offering ‘did you mean‘, or actually typing in words for you in the search bar, Google is now carrying this idea over into the AdSense Platform and actually showing ads based upon your search history.
Google has stated that their data retention time is around 9 months, compared to Yahoo’s 90 days policy. Does this perk your interest? Voice your opinion below!
