We make our money through online advertising – which makes this site free for you to use. We’re not trying to pull a fast one or rip you off, but we do need to pay all of the talented people who work on this site, so we’ve adopted an advertising policy that works best for […]
What are cookies? Cookies are the confusingly adorably named tiny text files that can be placed on your computer or mobile device that uniquely (but anonymously) identify your browser or device. They are unable to search your computer in any way, cannot introduce viruses to your computer and contain no personal identifying information about you […]
Last updated June 2024 Index Click on the links below to jump to the associated section What is a frequency cap? Frequency cap advice for Ad Buyers CPA Campaigns CPC Campaigns CPM Campaigns Frequency Cap Advice for Site Owners Technical Information Frequency Formula Find out more What is a Frequency Cap? A frequency cap is […]
Lots of people are afraid unnecessarily of behavioural advertising. All it means is that if you have been to a site or bought something, a cookie is dropped on your computer and ad servers read those cookies and try to serve you an ad that is most appropriate to you. The data is anonymised and […]
In the past couple of weeks, the question of how Google calculates cost per conversion in AdWords has been percolating in the PPC community. Robert Brady wrote a post illustrating that the cost per conversion reported in AdWords does not always match the manual calculation of dividing reported spend by reported conversions. Mark Jensen at Get Found First followed […]
If you search for anything at Google UK or on any of the 27 localized versions of Google in the European Union, Google will now prompt you with a notification that they are using cookies to provide search results to you. In fact, Google says that by using Google search you are agreeing to allow […]
Internet users have historically been very wary of online advertising, so we’ve come up with this simple “Fair for Everyone” sample advertising policy which we hope will help calm people’s nerves, and also set everything on a more reasonable playing field with users. Feel free to put this disclaimer on your site alongside your T&Cs […]
Call it “Cookiegate” — or “Safarigate” perhaps. Late last night we got the Wall Street Journal’s piece: “Google’s iPhone Tracking: Web Giant, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy.” Danny covered the article and its claims extensively at Marketing Land. This morning there’s an expanding debate about whether the WSJ mischaracterized Google’s behavior unfairly […]
Last week, we saw some reports of people finding they can’t search on Google unless they accept cookies. Google confirmed to us there was a bug causing this that’s now been fixed. Google emailed us: This was a bug that was flagged and the team quickly resolved on Thursday. We apologize for any inconvenience. A […]
People are generally vaguely aware that debates have been taking place in Europe over new legislation which principally affects the use of “Cookies”. European legislation is inevitably more complex than elsewhere because of the way it is drafted by the European Commission and then individually interpreted, translated and re-drafted by each country. Today, I’m focusing […]
Bing has announced at SMX East today a new personalization feature named adaptive search. It seems a lot like Google’s previous query feature but supposedly, it goes well beyond just the previous query. Bing said the “more you search, the more Bing can learn” and thus adapts the search results for YOU based on your […]
Rafael Rivera spotted a new Bing interface where Bing was overlaying “live titles” on top of the home page’s awesome backgrounds. This is the new Bing HTML5 interface, that Bing has been for several months. Winrumors reports that along with these “live titles,” Bing will be introducing a form of Google Instant search. The Instant […]
Google is finally rolling out the ability to target ads to users by interest — based on their previous browsing activity, or behavior — to all of its advertisers. The company first announced a beta test of this capability more than two years ago, back in 2009, and it has slowly been introducing it to […]
On March 19, 2010 Google unveiled Google AdWords Search Funnel Reports via this YouTube video. This was a great day for proponents of multi-attribution marketing analysis. There are two reasons why companies that offer similar services actually viewed Google’s release as a benefit to their business models and not as a mortal competitive threat. Reason […]
The Google AdSense blog announced that they are now using a form of search history in the way they contextual match the ads you see on third-party web sites. AdSense used query data in the referrer URL to better match those ads. So if you came from Google or Bing, to a third party web […]
Did you come to our site and have a message appear before you could read a story? Those are called "overlays," and they’re becoming more commonly used by various web sites as an effective way to communicate with visitors. If you saw one of these, we’re sorry to have interrupted your reading, but hopefully you […]
Back in March 2007, Google promised to begin anonymizing log data to better protect user privacy. That kicked off a wave of privacy pledges from competing search engines. In addition, by agreeing to limit itself, it inadvertently got the European Union to demand even faster data destruction. Below, a look at Google’s progress toward its […]
Your privacy — and the ability to direct how your personal information is used and shared — is a priority we share. The websites and the other services we provide may gather information about you. This policy explains how this may happen, what we will do with personal information we collect, and how you can […]
The Google Blog announced that Google is improving the content network (aka AdSense) by leveraging the technology they have acquired with DoubleClick. First I’ll discuss the feature and then I will get into the privacy issues.
Saul Hansell from the New York Times reported on an interesting discovery that uncovered that Google may look at more than just your previous query to tailor the ads you see on the search page. Now, Google may look back several past queries to tailor your search ads. Yes, this is a major difference – […]
Lawmaker questions Google over privacy practices from Reuters reports Texas Rep. Joe Barton from the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee quizzed Google on how they will integrate DoubleClick’s data with their own. Some questions posed include how user data from DoubleClick would be merged into Google’s data, how that data would be […]
Google and the other major search engines have all been criticized in both the US and Europe over privacy issues and consumer data retention. More generally, there’s an intensifying debate about behavioral ad targeting and privacy occurring on both sides of the Atlantic. The European authorities have been considerably more aggressive, however, in demanding action […]
AdSense publishers, the next time you login to your AdSense console you will likely have to agree to new terms and conditions. The Inside AdSense blog announced that Google has updated their AdSense terms and conditions to include better verbiage for new products and features, as well as an update to their privacy requirements. The […]
Photo adapted from one by Hans Engel Some felt Ask.com won the privacy oneupmanship that went on last year when it rolled out Ask Eraser, a tool promising to stop recording any information about someone doing a search. But questions quickly came up, including whether the tool helped at all, considering that query data was […]
Group says Ask’s privacy feature is flawed from News.com reports that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has found a few flaws in AskEraser, Ask.com’s new privacy searching feature. The three problems are: AskEraser uses an opt-out cookie instead of an opt-in cookie. Ask stores the time that the user enables AskEraser, which can potentially be […]
Ask.com announced that they will be launching "AskEraser" in the near future, a feature to allow you to erase your search history. Ask also said it will be implementing a new 18 month data retention policy, where searches will be disassociated from IP addresses or cookies that might possibly be used to link them back […]
News.com reports on a positive but cautious response from the European Union to Google’s previous announcement that it would reduce its data/cookie retention time to two years. A prominent member of the EU’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party told ZDNet that there would be discussion regarding whether Google had “gone far enough.” Microsoft and […]
The Google Blog announced that Google will be shortening the expiration date of its cookies from the year 2038 to a two-year life cycle.
In response to an EU letter over data retention, Google has announced that it will now anonymize server log data after 18 months, rather than the previous maximum time it had announced of 24 months. It is also reconsidering how long its cookies last. It’s nice to see Google make such a fast, responsive move, […]
Google has announced that it will now anonymize the server log data that it collects after 18 to 24 months, as a way to better protect the privacy of its users. Until now, Google has retained server log data in its original form indefinitely, which made it possible for anyone with access to those logs […]
ClickZ and JupiterResearch are doing their semi-annual Search Marketing executive survey, and want your participation. This survey will capture what strategies search marketers are pursuing, what features and tools are most important to them and where marketers are spending their search dollars. It’s a short, 25-question survey, and your responses are strictly confidential. As a […]