The Digital Lookout

The adwords blog has announced the launch of a demographic bidding beta test and is offering the chance for advertisers in the UK and the US to sign up for the trial.  Reading into the release the targeting is only going to be available on the content network placement network and is dependent on the publisher site having the capability to provide the information on the users.  If the site has this information, more often than not through a sign in system, then it will be shared anonymously to Google and the appropriate ads.

From the detail in this article the benefits of this system over MSN’s own demographic targeting system is that the system will allow you to up weight your bids by a higher percentage (MSN’s limit is 150%) and that you will also be able to choose not to show your ads to certain audiences.  This is certainly an advance on MSN but the impact of it will be limited by the reliance on the publisher site and the fact that the targeting wont apply to the main Google search results, where it could have most benefit.  This is obviously due to the fact that you dont need to be signed in to Google to use it although they could have implemented it for those people who have a Google account and perform searches whilst signed in.  Maybe that will be in the next release, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

On a Google search yesterday I spotted something I had never seen before which is further evidence of the increasing personalisation of search results. On a search result for the AdWords help centre Google told me how many times I had visited the page and when I last visited (see screenshot). At the time I was signed in to my Google homepage and so it would be linked to my session I am sure but it is a further indication we are on our way to a fully personalised SERP. It will be interesting to see if they begin to use this as a CTR metric as with the PPC model and use it to rank the results in the same way.

The personalisation of search results throws up a whole heap of questions which can be debated till the cows come home. But for me, the main two which need to be discussed are privacy and user experience (broad I know).

Google announced in February that it would be making a change to its google account sign in process to allow for more personalisation of search results. Basically, as far as I can gather, the change will be to make the opt out of automatic sign in box as difficult to find as possible! Im sure there are certain legislation they need to comply with but this act throws up a whole heap of arguements (which I dont really want to go into). From my investigations into personalisation (though limited) I know that it can spook people. If you dont understand the automatic sign in process and google starts telling you what you have previously searched on and what you may be interested in it can be a little big brother-esq, producing a negative user experience.

Further affects on user experience can be produced if google interprets search data based on irrelevant criteria. This has been one of the pitfalls of local search. Basing results on a users location is great if they are searching for a locally based product. But what about if there product doesnt need to be locally based, financial services for example. You dont need you mortgage lender to be based nearby because you can perform all the necessary actions over the phone or online therefore making the search results less relevant than the normal ones. Similarly with a product such as hotels. a man in manchester searching on hotels is unlikely to actually want a hotel which is in manchester, more likely he wants a hotel in a city further afield for a weekend stay for example.

Im sure that the behemoth that is google has considered all these problems and will roll out something which addresses them all. But until this is the case I have my reservations about it taking off. I am all for it, believe me, but just think there are some rather lage hurdles to overcome for the product.