This made me giggle

[Baylow]

So,

I'm trolling Digg and I come across this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/technology/27google.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&adxnnlx=1214584357-JiP2qJ3TdevvD8dDjBEicw

It's hilarious how the rest of the world is about a year behind the goings on of the search marketing/search engine world.

[AussieWebmaster]

Behavioral marketing may get heat from privacy advocates but it is not going away.

[jimbeetle]

This is actually new behavior. Google had been using the *immediately* previous search to influence AdWords results for about a year; it now looks at *several* previous queries. Barry has a short writeup (http://searchengineland.com/080626-165931.php) over at SEL.

[AussieWebmaster]

yeah I had read the NYT article this morning and was amused.... here we go on another round of behavioral marketing debates

[B-Double-U]

I'm not sure if this was planned or not, but if you have ever run a search query report in adwords, you get back quite a bit of data, but you see a frustrating line item such as "Search Query" "11898 other unique queries" instead of a search term. Most reps will tell you that this is a gathering of terms that were searched only once or twice and grouped together to save DB space or just to speed up the reporting process. Most people are content with this answer, but being the persistent and inquisitive type (AKA frustratingly annoying) that I am, I pushed and pushed for an answer (because I was seeing other terms listed with only 1 or 2 impressions and results). So, naturally, it begged the question, why show those, but not the others....right? It turns out that these terms are "terms that, under global match conditions, produce relevant results, but cannot be shown for security reasons".
What this means is that they are phrases that will either give insight as to the referring domain, contain confidential information (like a UPS Tracking number or telephone number), or are part of a series of queries related to the keyword phrase in the account that caused the ad to launch.

This makes me wonder, because I can't see the data, is it including phrases within my negative keyword list in the leading phrases? Or worse, possibly, not including them...

If I change my mind and perform a new search, am I predisposed to a totally new subset of ads because of past behavior?

I am still trying to absorb the fact that I was told by google that the term "shirt" and "vest" were synonymous when used in a broad match scenario... If they can make that stretch in the open, what's really in that black box of "other unique queries"?

[googly girly geek]

B-Double-U... your Google account manager will have a breakdown of these "other unique queries" and should be able to provide them to you.

[B-Double-U]

Thanks googly girly geek,

I ask every time I am on the phone with them just about and they always tell me that they cannot provide that info. Have had this info provided to you before? If so, I would love to get hold of your account manager to see if they can coax mine into providing me with that info, because I would definitely make use of it. So far to date though.... no luck...