The recent launch of Google Trends for Websites was just a dress rehearsal. The real product that it is based on is Google Ad Planner, which the company announced today. Google Ad Planner is built for ad buyers who want to decide where to place their ads. It provides general traffic and demographic information for Websites, including gender, age, education, and household income.
One drawback of Google Ad Planner is that you cannot actually buy ads from inside it, not even Google ads. Advertisers have to log in separately to their AdWords or other ad platform accounts to do that.
But the bigger issue around both Google Ad planner and Trends for Websites is where exactly Google is getting this data from. The traffic data in Googel Ad Planner appears to be the same thing consumers can see on Google Trends for Websites. In fact, that is just a light version of Google Ad Planner, which uses some of the same underlying data—”aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research.” If that sounds kind of vague it is because it is.
The unanswered question is whether Google is using its widely deployed toolbar to collect the traffic data that it now wants advertisers to use for targeting ads. Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand, who has a good review, specifically asked Google if it was using toolbar data as well. Google responded saying it would “not disclose the elements of our secret sauce” even though it disclosed some of the other elements above (search data, Google Analytics data, panel data, etc.). Sullivan concludes:
It’s noteworthy the Google Toolbar isn’t being mentioned. I specifically asked to have confirmation that the toolbar is NOT in the mix, and “secret sauce” reply above is all I got.
That makes me think that toolbar data IS being used. In particular, the focus on Google Analytics data feels like a sideshow. Google can’t rely on Google Analytics as a core data source for this information, because of the simple reason that not every site runs it. In contrast, using Google Toolbar data would give them a nearly complete sample of all sites out there.
If that is true, Google should disclose the fact, even if it is only using the toolbar data in an aggregate, anonymous form. Because most people who download the toolbar are probably not aware that the data it collects about their surfing habits can be used to target ads back at them. (I wrote about the possibility that the toolbar might be a Trojan Horse for ad targeting here).
I’ve always maintained that Google is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Now that it has all the sheep rounded up, the wolf is about to shed its clothing and show its true colors.
Of course they are using toolbar data. Why wouldn’t they?
No way privacy concerns would outweigh the benefit.
A little while back, google altered their analytics user license to include the sharing of website stats. Maybe that’s what they’re using.
Well I really doubt that Google has launched this tool for the greater good and to help media planners buy ads on 3rd party sites. I’m sure it won’t be too long before they integrate AdSense purchases into the system…
I think one place they might get there data is from the search history when logged in to GMAIL?
Just run a packet sniffer if you care that much. Find out in five minutes. Have to say, it doesn’t really bother me as long as its collected anonymously.
I’m positive they’d use Toolbar. They’d be stupid not to. Course I don’t *want* them to… But yeah, what’s Google’s attitude towards consumer concerns? Yeah, they’d use the Toolbar data.
They could also be generating the data using machine learning.
That response is all the lamer for trying to sound hipster lowkey ie “secret sauce” instead of “trade secret”. The practice itself is hardly surprising but they should quite obviously disclose it. Oh well it will be great to see the google apologists come out and defend it as no big deal despite the fact that they would be outraged if anyone else was too chickenshit to disclose such a thing.
Relax. Big Brother only wants to serve you better. Relax.
They are certainly not using Google Analystics. The diffirence between those numbers and “Trends for Websites” looks like they could differ by as much as 5x. That does no say much for the accuracy of the new product
It’s an open secret that Google stores as much data as they can, and in perpetuity. Why wouldn’t they use toolbar data as part of their Ad Planner product? Their privacy policy is nebulous for sure, but it’s pretty clear to me that they have given themselves the right to use this data as part of any Google product:
From Google’s Privacy policy FAQ :
“8. URLs and embedded information
Some of our services, including Google Toolbar and Google Web Accelerator, send the uniform resource locators (”URLs”) of web pages that you request to Google. When you use these services, Google will receive and store the URL sent by the web sites you visit, including any personal information inserted into those URLs by the web site operator.”
From Google’s privacy policy:
“Google only processes personal information for the purposes described in the applicable Privacy Policy and/or privacy notice for specific services. In addition to the above, such purposes include:
- Providing our products and services to users, including the display of customized content and advertising;
- Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
- Ensuring the technical functioning of our network; and
- Developing new services.”
As Tristan Brotherton #6 has said instead of speculating somebody concerned (or really interested in finding the answer) should just spend 10 minutes with a packet sniffer and all the truth will be revealed. And considering this, I’d say Google is not using it as it would be quite simple to figure it out.
cheers,
./alex
As long as inform people that they use the data from the toolbar is OK by me..
Only the apathetic or stupid would install any toolbar without knowing whether it “phones home”. Who cares. Don’t install, or uninstall. “Problem solved”!
If you don’t want Google to know your habits, don’t use Google. If you think someone is using the internet to spy on you or target you in some way, stop using the internet. If you think the government is monitoring your phone conversations, don’t use phones.
I agree with Tristan Brotherton above. If you have a problem with it, do some work and figure it out instead of whining about it.
They are absolutely getting the data from the tool bar! Are you kidding me? Its brilliant strategy and something that we’ll never be able to officially confirm but chances are thats the deal. LOOK … http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
The problem is that the many people have their machines installed with Google toolbar by default when they purchase the computer. They don’t even know it’s there or use the toolbar’s features, let alone bother to uninstall it.
Forget the toolbar! Did you guys forget the other 800lb gorilla?? A little ubiquitous product called Adsense which in many cases is hard coded on the pages of many of the wonderful sites we visit everyday.
and who the heck would use Google Toolbar, anyways!?
The google toolbar phones home with the url you’re visiting in order to show you the pagerank bar. Do they record the data? I don’t know. Do their terms of use allow it? Probably so. Do they actually use it? Well, here’s the thing. This is G-o-o-g-l-e, folks… you know, the guys that direct most of the traffic these days. I’d say they have a crystal clear image of traffic levels from search stats alone. If that’s not enough, they have adsense – loading on one out of two sites (no idea really) – which they could use to get even more stats.
They might use the toolbar to determine the flow of users from one site to the other and make all sorts of averages they can plug into the traffic estimating equation.
Sure they could do behavioural targeting. Wasn’t doubleclick into that? But this is about statistics (demographic data moreso than simple traffic levels).
Duh? Google’s success comes from generating revenue from its users’ data, with or with their knowledge or permission. I consider that evil.
hey…
a side question. when you look at the google trends site for a website, are you able to see the traffic/usage numbers of viewers for a given website? or is it just the simple graph that i’ve seen?
but regarding the ad planner app… in order to get into demographics/gender/financial guesses… it’s no longer purely anonymous information. there are abstractions and guesses, and relationships being made from a statistical process.
if the data was purely anonymous, it wouldn’t be that useful to the advertiser…
google is heading in the direction of someone from congress wanting to examine just how much data google is accumulating on their public/users…
a more interesting question would be regarding data that google might collect from browsers that hit pages with their adsense/adwords advertising.. which gets into the question of who owns that data. do you the browser user own it, does the site own it, does google via you downloading the “ad” own it???
case law here to be made guys!!
peace
#22: Google’s core search business is based on robots.txt-style acknowledgement from site owners, so it’s really with their knowledge and permission. The fact that you’re pretty much doomed if you don’t let google index you is another thing, but it’s not being evil, it’s being the best on the market.
You may not like Google’s standing as gods of the internet right now, but that doesn’t make search inherently evil.
Sam, This isn’t demographic targeting (adwords can do that on select sites), but giving advertisers an idea of what kind of an audience a site has. Quantcast (which apparently also launched a media planning app) does the same thing and here’s their explanation of the process: http://www.quan...quantcast-works
yeah. they are using google toolbar for it.
hey vlad (@25)
from the above article “… Google Ad Planner is built for ad buyers who want to decide where to place their ads. It provides general traffic and demographic information for Websites, including gender, age, education, and household income….”
so i would strongly argue that what i had earlier posted stands. if you’re getting into that level of detail/information, then you’re going beyond just straight/raw random/anonymous information. so yeah, i’d argue that google’s getting into some weird areas.
peace
@16. aka Big Brother
“If you don’t want Google to know your habits, don’t use Google. If you think someone is using the internet to spy on you or target you in some way, stop using the internet. If you think the government is monitoring your phone conversations, don’t use phones.”
So if someone is watching you from across the street stop going outside? If your boss is harassing you stop going to work? If the government is watching you in your home stop having personal conversations, showering, having sex and using the toilet…I get it…just let everyone and everything take your ass over until you can’t function anymore without fleeing to some remote location and hoping you don’t get found by anything with a pair of eyes or sensors. Brilliant! You’re a genius – or maybe just a common troll.
Sam: it’s possible. However, look at quantcast. There’s no reason google couldn’t be doing it along the same lines; that is, extrapolating from a known sample.
Here’s an actual quantcast report for money.cnn.com: http://www.quan...m/money.cnn.com
There’s no shady business in stats, not by my standards at least.
Isn’t that what the End User License Agreement is for?? You think they need to go above and beyond the EULA?
Yes! W are using Google Toolbar! And we will continue to collect every piece of information about you so I can buy myself yet another Boeing 747!!
Booooo-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Sergey
@30 – geronimo…
yeah.. google, and anybody else who uses this kind of tech should have it installed in a default “off” mode, and therefore force the user to have to turn it “on” in order to use it… i know it’s easier to simply collect the data from the apps that are running that the user didn’t realize was going on.
and nope, the eula isn’t sufficient. hell, i don’t know anyone who’s actually ever read the entire eula of any product they’ve installed, and i’ve been doing this since 1982! (yeah-there were eulas on software from dec/hp then!!!)
but anyway, my $0.02 worth…
peace
What about data from the phishing filter (”safebrowsing”) in Firefox?
Every URL gets check through a service from google, so if you go to techcrunch, they check if its a legitimate site. They can be pretty sure, that you will actually go to that site, therefore they could use that information to calculate trends data.
I never liked it, therefore first thing is to disable safebrowsing:
about:config
broser.safebrowsing.enabled = false
Like the previous post, I also wonder about what data they may be getting from Firefox.
running towards evil as fast as they can
Very cool I a huge fan of google and as a company who works with google. lets go google. Love it
Google has gone over to the dark side- it has become what it stood against- the “do no evil” bullshit was given to us to decieve us- first they sold out to the chinese govt. and now they sell our profile data ato the highest bidder.
Wherever the info is coming from (the toolbar probably accounts for at least half of the trending information) I’ll be comparing it with the very-expensive subscriptions like @Plan/Comscore/NetView etc. Since its all sample based pop. metrics, if the two yield similar results, I’ll post about it and we can all stop paying $60K/year for this stuff and om nom nom for free.
“Because most people who download the toolbar are probably not aware that the data it collects about their surfing habits can be used to target ads back at them.”
This isn’t about targeting ads to individuals. It’s about creating profiles of SITES for running ads on them.
I think Google already has enough information from their search engine to develop an ad planner.
First, 70% of people use Google as their main search engine today. Add to that the fact that Google also knows the search results you clicked on. Thus, Google would know how many people visited each site via searches conducted through them. After that, it is a matter of them using some statistical techniques to enrich the information from say, Adsense (for which they anyways keep track of which of their Adsense participating sites were visited by whom in order to serve them), Google Analytics and so on. Then they just have to extrapolate via statistical techniques to get a fair idea of user demographics that visit a site.
The defination they are using for privacy, “limited to personally identifiable information” does not cover these kind of usage. Surely google is making some use of google toolbar, analytics across different sites as well. I doubt if they are playing with the google search queries as well.
Cheers !!
Nothing can be used free of cost
We pay through our site user’s data lol