Google: The God of Data
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There’s been some interesting developments with Google recently. The privacy advocates would be up in arms if they weren’t already picketing against global warming and Chinese occupation of Tibet.
“Hi Dalaih… yes that’s right, Richard here… good thanks, and you? … Look, I need you to do another world tour. We’re low on funds, and with Global warming, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet we’re running out of funds … ahuh … right … no, they wouldn’t give me a Pretty Woman 2 .. thanks, I’m glad you liked the first one … that’s OK Dalaih, I understand … yes, I miss Seinfeld too … OK … bye”
Demographics
Advertisers are now able to target the Google content network by demographic. The interesting part is in how they are collecting the demographic information.
From the ‘learn more’ link…
Some publishers on the Google content network know certain individual details about their users. Social networking sites, for instance, often ask users to identify themselves by age and gender. On sites that provide this type of information about their users, Google can often display your AdWords ads to members of the groups that you prefer, or prevent your ads from displaying to members of groups you don’t want to reach
Pretty cool stuff. Who needs to buy Facebook when you can just rip the information out of profile pages?
Schmidt (head Googlenaut) has stated that he wants Google to be able to tell you “what you need to do tomorrow”. Once they get their hands on your medical data they’ll better understand your bowl movements and more effectively position those lucrative Metamucil adverts to those aged between 65 - 100.
Analytics
Google Analytics now provides the option to webmasters to “share” data within the Google Analytics system called “Benchmarking”. This service allows you to benchmark your sites with other “similar sized” sites. I’m still trying to work out how this is useful for me but the graphs are real perdy…
Anyway, I’m growing increasingly concerned with Google’s knowledge of my publishing activity. My main concern is that I don’t know how the information is being used. Is it to my advantage or disadvantage to let Google under the hood of my sites?
April 9th, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] a previous post I mentioned I was concerned as a publisher, that data I send to Google may influence my ranking in [...]