How Yandex.Metrika sells “generalized statistical information” of your site to your competitors
Everyone has already encountered that a search engine query is saved to your user preferences and then “used against you” - advertising on this query will haunt you all over the Internet for a long time.
But today I was puzzled by the advertising that Yandex showed on the Yandex.Pogoda site - on the one hand I know the topic (this is the business of the client whose site we are working on), but on the other hand I realized that I had never looked for this topic in Yandex. A suspicion crept into my head.
In the incognito mode of the browser, I opened the client's site, and then the Yandex.Pogoda site. At first, the advertisement was not launched, but after 30 seconds I received what I was looking for - five ads from our client’s competitors. The information about my visit “leaked” through Yandex.Metrica and the theme of the site was recorded in my user preferences. Checked on other topics - the result is the same.
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It turns out the following situation. You can spend a lot of effort and money to attract a person to the site, and this can be generally offline events - dating at the exhibition, outdoor advertising or a person’s visit to the corporate salon. Or it could be online advertising that has nothing to do with Yandex - for example, Google. Edwards.
And a visitor came to your site (without Yandex), received information and left to think. And here the “good” Yandex decides to “help” your business and starts actively and everywhere showing this competitor's advertisement to this person. And this is based on the fact that you used the service of statistics from Yandex.
Is it legal? Yes, you agree with clause 11 of the terms of use of Yandex.Metrica . Is it ethical? For each will be your answer.
Steps to repeat the experiment:
PS There is a timid hope that a setting will appear in Yandex.Metrica, which allows you to refuse to use your statistics in shaping user preferences of visitors.
But today I was puzzled by the advertising that Yandex showed on the Yandex.Pogoda site - on the one hand I know the topic (this is the business of the client whose site we are working on), but on the other hand I realized that I had never looked for this topic in Yandex. A suspicion crept into my head.
In the incognito mode of the browser, I opened the client's site, and then the Yandex.Pogoda site. At first, the advertisement was not launched, but after 30 seconds I received what I was looking for - five ads from our client’s competitors. The information about my visit “leaked” through Yandex.Metrica and the theme of the site was recorded in my user preferences. Checked on other topics - the result is the same.
')
It turns out the following situation. You can spend a lot of effort and money to attract a person to the site, and this can be generally offline events - dating at the exhibition, outdoor advertising or a person’s visit to the corporate salon. Or it could be online advertising that has nothing to do with Yandex - for example, Google. Edwards.
And a visitor came to your site (without Yandex), received information and left to think. And here the “good” Yandex decides to “help” your business and starts actively and everywhere showing this competitor's advertisement to this person. And this is based on the fact that you used the service of statistics from Yandex.
Is it legal? Yes, you agree with clause 11 of the terms of use of Yandex.Metrica . Is it ethical? For each will be your answer.
Steps to repeat the experiment:
- If you are the owner of a site with a competitive theme and are using Yandex.Metrica, then start with the fourth point.
- Open Google's results (for reliability) on any competitive topic - air conditioners, office partitions, pallet racks, etc. If you are from the regions, add “Moscow” to the request, so that you probably have found large sites that have been assigned the Yandex algorithms.
- Find a site that has Yandex.Metrica - in fact, it costs almost everyone. Open the source code (Ctrl + U), and then try to search (Ctrl + F) for the string mc.yandex.ru.
- Open the browser tab in the "incognito" mode and go to the found site.
- Then (after about 30 seconds) in the same incognito mode, go to the website pogoda.yandex.ru, where the Yandex.Direct advertisement is shown on the right.
PS There is a timid hope that a setting will appear in Yandex.Metrica, which allows you to refuse to use your statistics in shaping user preferences of visitors.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/233955/
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