Google is beefing up their efforts to play a role in the bookmarking scene. When opening my Google account to read some emails and blogs in Google Reader, a Google pop-up came up that looked like this:
From the Pop-up:
Access your bookmarks from any computer
Just click the star to create bookmarks, then access them from the bookmarks menu on any computer that has the latest version of theGoogle Toolbar.
As it looks from the pop-up, Google is trying to get more users accepting their bookmarking product.
Determining Relevance
It would be interesting to hear if you think the bookmarkings are being used to determine relevance. For the personal websearch Google is slowly building the assets to fully understand their users profile of Internet surfing habits.
- Webhistory, which sites did you visit
- Search history, with click through rates on both Paid & Natural Search results
- Bookmarks, which sites are important enough for you to bookmark, and how much do you visit these
- Feeds in Google reader, what feeds do you read and how many of their posts
Combining all this data, with the data they might collect with Google-Out and the Doubleclick databases, they have a powerful way of knowing exactly what you’re doing on the Internet, and what your intentions are.
From my perspective, the ultimate targeting tool for advertisers would be to combine all the data mentioned above here with some sociological data on life cycle of the average person. That would be interesting. With the right statistics and analyses, you can predict what the intentions are going to be of any person through their lifetime, who fits in a particular segment of behaviors before.
Google using a pop-up
The usage of a pop-up by Google can be called controversial for the following reasons:
- At the introduction of the Google toolbar was blocking pop-ups
- Google’s advertisement product has strict rules around the usage of pop-ups on your site. If you would like to advertise through Adwords or Adsense, you are not aloud to use pop-ups! From their terms and conditions:
Don’t use pop-up windows on your site.
We do not approve destination URLs that generate pop-ups when users enter or leave your landing page.
We consider a pop-up to be any window, regardless of content, that opens in addition to the original window.
This includes pop-unders, timed or intermittent pop-ups, mock system warnings, and pages that automatically initiate a download.
So I think about this for myself:
- Why do all webmasters still put up with the strict T’s & C’s of Mister Google, while they are breaking their own values time and time again?
- Do you have more examples of these? One good example that jumps into my mind are the paid link advertisements Google must be making good revenue on
When will the BIG shift away from Google products start, or hit a higher number. Until now, only a few bloggers were hit by the Google smack down, and started bitching about it. The question is, when will the Google Smack Down go mainstream?
Comments are more than welcome…
