Curses
Recently, I was revisiting the Google Adwords/Analytics/Webmaster Tools set up process for a client, meaning I was signing up for all their stuff, when I stopped to actually read one of the options you are offered when you start tying all of this Google tracking horsepower into your computer.
Enable Web History?
There’s an option at the end of the sign-up process that has a check box labled “Enable Web History.” I never really paid a lot of attention to that check box until recently because my eye was caught by the statement about “personalized search results.”
If you work with SEO pr PPC clients who are not in your physical location, in a different city, state or continent, you’ve probably had to address the “reason” why you sometimes see a different set of search results than your client when you enter the same search terms. I’ve usually attributed it to differences in server updates based on location, or minute differences in the way the search term is typed, or even browser plugins. But something interesting happened to Google in 2007 that might also be contributing to showing different results to different users searching the exact same term… they accquired DoubleClick.
Information Overload
Now if you know anything about DoubleClick, you may recall that they are an online ad media superhero, with powers even Superman can’t defeat. Their cookies show up everywhere, seem almost impossible to totally get rid of because you never really know where they came from so as soon as you kill one, another takes its place, and they while they’re roosting in your browser, they track and remember more about what you do on the internet than you can remember yourself. When the whole idea of a merger started bubbling around, there was some worry about the the fact that the internet’s largest search engine and paid search ad slinger was about to acquire all that consumer browser history behavior. Wow – what advertising havoc they could wreak by combining Google’s massive database of search records with DoubleClick’s massive database of searcher’s behavior?
I’m not an expert on the what sort of details were finally hammered out between two such powerhouses in order to get the Feds to OK the deal, but it’s stupid not to realize that Google would want to make as much use as possible of DoubleClick’s technology. After buying DoubleClick, for example, Google practically abandoned the Urchin analytics tool and souped up its own Google Analytics product with fantastic new features never before realized with a totally free product. What’s it matter where the technology might have come from or what all it really keeps up with once you begin using it? It’s free!
So if Google has access to all this data, why not use it to create the most personalized internet usage experience possible? Sounds like this fits expertly into Google’s mantra of providing the best internet experience for every user. So what’s wrong with that?
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall
Probably nothing, unless you’re an online advertiser. Think about it… what if no matter what you did with your website’s SEO, you never made page one SERPs for Joe Schmoe in Cody, WY for camping gear because he already had ten or eleven favorite sites that he visited regularly for camping gear, they’re all bookmarked, and Google knows these are his favorite sites because Joe’s got the Google toolbar and he’s enabled “web history” with Google, so they know exactly how many times he’s been to visit them. How will you get your web site in front of Joe Schmoe to tell him that you have ALL his favorite gear at the lowest price in one store if Google’s personalized web surfing experience is altering the playing field and showing favoritism to sites that are in Joe’s browser history, as stored on Google?* It sounds more like Google wants to be our friend by showing us what Google thinks we want to see rather than letting us see unbiased results and make progressive decisions.
I don’t even know that there’s that much visible effect on your search results when you “enable web history” but it is a type of privacy issue when some massive computer complex is tracking everything you do. As a shopper, honestly, I don’t really care that much. But as an online advertising analyst, having some search engine “putting their thumb on the scale” while I’m trying to balance out SEO vs PPC for a client is a headache I could live without.
Maybe I can get a grant to set up a side-by-side internet surfing study – one machine and browser with no Google tie-ins and another with the full gamut – and at the end of a month, start running coordinated searches and observe the differences? Anyone up for that?
*and it is stored on Google – they explain this here
