http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=53502

http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks?q=free

“I suspect the killer app is providing a detailed explanation to the [organic search result] recipient of why he/she received the [search result].“

Time to get to work again, Google.

Credibility + Trust = Sale Closed. Sort of like in the real world . . .

You’re absolutely correct. You know this. I know this. The web as a whole needs to understand this.

@afewtips: But what will they do when they don’t have great growth? Will they still follow the rules and not use the information in a way that benefits them but violates the user?

To quote one of my favorite musicians, former Oingo Boingo frontman and legendary hollywood film score composer Danny Elfman: “They say that values change when hunger or ambition strikes. Survival is essential, at any cost or any price“.

I’d say that sums up Goog quite well

So much for “focus on the user” and “we’re a different sort of company”.

Google stopped doing search many years ago – their ads still say they do search, but they transitioned into becoming teh online advertising agency years ago.

When the teenagers & noobies begin to realize this, Google will become just worthless as all the rest of the inflated stocks being traded.

Indeed, when I noted (i.e. tweeted a while ago that GOOG had risen almost 50% in a matter of 12 weeks, it all of a sudden stopped rising (and started falling again :O ).

My “observation” back then was simply that the web / online commerce is a significant factor making the traditional industries go bust (in fact, the other example I noted — Amazon — is still doing comparatively well).

Most internet companies are not large enough to be listed on stock markets – so the fact that markets are falling says little or nothing about online commerce. The fact that Google is falling again is simply an indication of the fact that Google isn’t really so much an Internet company any more — it’s now a plain and simple (and a traditional and old-fashioned) advertising agency.

Why? Because companies have been doing behavioral targeting for decades. Go ride the subway, and look at the ads there. They’re targeted to that sort commuter behavior. Drive along the freeway, or visit a football stadium. Or a Nascar race. You’ll see ads that “match” or are more “similar” to certain people and certain people’s behaviors than to others. Heck, even look at the TV commercials that come on during a kid’s cartoon, vs. during a Lifetime drama, vs. during 30 Rock. And it’ll become incredibly clear that all those ads are targeted to the behavior of those watching the show. Different shows = different behavior = different ads.

Google, in their own mission statement and in the press over the past decade, was supposedly different precisely because they didn’t do that sort of targeting. Instead, they only did relevance-based targeting, which is based (as I said above) on user information need.

Google can do whatever it wants, sell whatever it wants, collect whatever personal data it wants, be as hypocrisy-filled as it wants. But when it starts to package its offerings under the patriotic flag of “relevance”, I have to speak up. Relevance doesn’t deserve to have its name dragged through the mud like that.

What I find particularly abhorrent is the fact that behavior-based targeting plays fast and loose with the notion of relevance, and Google is trying to sell this wolf under the sheep’s clothing of relevance.

For 40 years, relevance in information retrieval has been defined in terms of a “user information need”. Something is only relevant, if it satisfies all or part of a user’s information need. So what is a user information need? It is requirement for information that the user actively-holds. It is a conscious acknowledgement of a lack of information, and a conscious desire to obtain information. Information needs are “pull”.

Now Google comes along, and says that even when a user is not looking for anything, even when the user does not have an information need, Google is going to use the behavior of that user to show an ad that is “relevant”. I’m sorry, this is out and out fiction. With no user information need, there is no such thing as relevance.

So call these ads what they are: behaviorally targeted. Call them ads that are more “similar” to users than previous ads. But don’t call them relevant. They are not relevant, and can never be relevant, no matter how many algorithms Google throws at ‘em.. because relevance comes from, is only defined in terms of, the user… and the user’s information need. No need = no relevance.

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