Sharon

http://www.autoloans101.info

I do not see any possibility of MULTIPLE insurance companies paying for search phrases like “indianapolis web design” (even if web designers are notoriously bad drivers .

It is certainly possible that “indianapolis” is included in multiple auto insurance adword campaigns. And it might be possible (if bracketed improperly) that these car insurance campaigns could come up for ill-advised searched which just contain the word “indianapolis”. But this does not explain why THREE separate companies would show up next to each other.

I think the only possible answer is that Google was continuing the ads from the previous query. Which sucks for the advertisers.

Karl

Simply put, you’re wrong. Check out the New York Times article I linked to in the comment below. Google has publicly admitted that they serve up ads based on previous search queries.

I find it preposterous to believe that Geico and Progressive are bidding on the keyword “web design”. If I were to believe that Geico and Progressive showed up b/c they’re bidding on “web design”, I’d have to ask myself why are only insurance companies bidding on “web design” and not accident lawyers, dui lawyers, structured settlement outfits and anyone else paying out the nose for their clicks?

The only reasonable answer is that none of them would ever waste their ad budget by bidding on a keyword as completely irrelevant to their industries as “web design”.

So this my friend is definitely coming from Google. It can’t be explained away as aggressive bidding by the car insurance companies.

As for whether or not that’s a good or bad thing — I’m divided. From what I’ve seen, the way Google has been blending search queries to serve up ads has – for the most part – been beneficial to the user. I’ve had some moments where I’ve wondered how Google read my mind.

But sometimes Google completely misses the mark as in the screen shots above. The only reasonable explanation I’ve seen for why it missed the mark is that they are chasing the money.

Is it wrong for a for-profit entity like Google to chase profits? Definitely not.

Is it smart for them to chase profits in the way they did above? That’s can be debated, but if they aren’t careful they’ll find themselves vulnerable to the next wannabe Google-killer.

As for your notion that it’s ok for Google to do whatever it wants to generate money b/c they give us all sorts of free stuff. Hogwash!

First of all, the reasoning’s flawed. Giving away free stuff in no way absolves you from the nefarious methods that may have been used to acquire the money which allowed you to give away the free stuff.

Secondly, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Even if I’m not forking over any cash, Google is collecting my info or getting me to do something that will make them money. Just like any other for-profit entity Google doesn’t give a damn about you, me or the next guy. Their motto: “Don’t be evil” is pretty revealing in this regard (I much prefer your motto: “Be good”). Anyway, if Google didn’t think it could profit off the information collected or the page views generated by the free stuff, we wouldn’t see that free stuff. With Google it’s always quid pro quo.

At least Bill Gates is trying to stop Malaria with the money he’s made without requiring the beneficiaries to fork over their private info or use visit one of MSN’s web properties. The most altruistic thing I’ve seen Google do lately is to make it easier to figure out how long it takes to walk rather than drive to the closest Blockbuster (but that requires subjecting ourselves to their sometimes not too pertinent advertising).

So this my friend is not coming from Google, it’s set by “Travelers.com, Geico.com etc”

Google should make money, for pit sake they are giving us all types of free services, just imagine, my current custom webmail memyself.com has 7+GB of space, that cost money. Not mentioning all other, for example Blogger.com etc.

Be good
Emil

Even though the SEOs have known about the “previous query” feature and personalized text ads for over a year, it looks like Google’s letting the public know via mainstream media channels.

A couple interesting things from the story:

(1) Google doesn’t have to use cookies. It just stores the history of URLs you’ve visited. When searching Google, you’re URL contains your search query.

(2) Google’s apparently more concerned with search engine users freaking out over privacy issues – not advertisers freaking out over the inability to fully know or control their PPC spend.

I’m not at all against Google making money. They’ve given us all A LOT of cool, free stuff funded entirely by their ad revenue.

But I definitely don’t think that whatever’s good for Google is good for the web.

The thing that bugged me the most about this is Google’s lack of transparency to their advertisers. If I had clicked on the Geico ad on screen 2, how would Geico know what they paid for that click? Currently, there’s no way that I know of for Geico to find out.

What if Geico doesn’t want to pay for clicks from delayed ads? Currently, there’s no way I know of for them to opt out.

These are the sorts of business practices I’d expect from Microsoft — practices in large part motivated by their belief that whatever’s good for Microsoft is good for computing.

I am much more bothered when they go along with limiting searches in foreign countries based on the governments leaning on them.

Even that not much, we have lots of choices for search and advertisement. If it didn’t work they wouldn’t do it.