The dark side of search engine marketing: how and why does Google collect our personal information
When a lazy journalist is besieged by dark forebodings about Alexa from Amazon or Google Home, he writes something like: “Even Orwell could not have foreseen that we would invite Big Brother to our homes.” At the same time, he misses one important point: virtual assistants are not the first time that we are ready to trade privacy for convenience. It all began in the early 2000s, when people, in exchange for access to Google products and more targeted ads, laid out to the company all the information about themselves.
Today, Google supplies marketers (for example, me) your personal data in such amounts that we can extract more from them than from recordings from any camera or microphone. Never before have marketers like me had such wide opportunities to benefit from user information.
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At the current moment, 40,000 search queries arrive at Google every second , that is, 3.5 billion per day and 1.2 trillion per year. When you drive something into Google, your request is sent to a data center, where thousands of computers select results and send you back the final output. The whole procedure usually takes less than a fifth of a second. But this is something most people do not suspect: in parallel with this “behind the scenes”, another, even more lightning and mysterious process is taking place — an auction is unfolding there.
Any search phrase contains keywords, and people who are engaged in advertising, fight with each other to secure the keys that you just entered. Each advertiser offering a product, somehow related to your request, wants you to see exactly his ad and click.
And finally, advertisements take their final positions, like toys in cartoons, in a hurry, returning to their places a second before turning on the light - and the page of the issue is loaded.
As a rule, the first four results (that is, what you see on the screen, not scrolling) are always paid advertising. If you were unaware of this, then you are not alone. More than half of users aged 18 to 34 cannot distinguish organic output from advertisements. After 35 years, the percentage begins to grow proportionally. Google itself makes efforts to ensure that such people are as many as possible, trying different advertising design options that would visually merge with relevant results.
As soon as you click on an advertisement, your personal information is immediately transferred to marketers working with a search engine, and is stored on their AdWords account forever, without the possibility of deletion.
In case you suddenly have a miracle, it is easy on your soul - holidays are coming and so on - I present a complete list of what Google knows about you as of December 2018 (and, accordingly, all the parameters by which it makes tracking):
From the very first day you started using Google, your “personal business” began to take shape there, which includes, in particular:
In 2019, we will come closer to the cherished dream of any search service - multidevice attribution. When this technology is implemented, advertising will pursue the user easily and naturally, following him not only from channel to channel (for example, from social networks to organic delivery or to the mailbox), but also from device to device (say, from a phone to the tablet, from there to the laptop, then to the TV and desktop computer).
For example: based on your loyalty to one or another brand, your TV will send a high frequency signal when broadcasting certain commercials. For imperfect human hearing, it will be indistinguishable, but a cell phone, located at a short distance, will catch it . Accordingly, if you see a Nike ad on TV, take a phone and google Nike sneakers, the conversion chain from the TV to the phone will be fixed. Not bad!
If you make a long journey every day to work, marketers are already up to date and show you advertisements for products that are relevant to such a routine. For example, headphones, worn leather bags for laptop and handkerchiefs that will drown out your hoarse sobs. But how do they know that you have to get far? Very simple: the frequency of the signal of your phone is caught by the towers on the way. If pings quickly follow one after another, the marketer may conclude that you are inside an object that moves at high speed with occasional stops (well, or in the case of the Long Island Railway, then with constant stops, haha).
Knock the product in a search engine, and then go to the store with his feet. If you did it in this sequence, most likely, Google, thanks to the GPS data from the phone, linked your transition through the advertising link with the purchase in the store.
To provide marketers with even more information about offline purchases, Google has acquired ( for large millions ) credit card data from MasterCard. The company acknowledged that it has access to approximately 70% of debit and credit card transactions in the United States due to its “partnership with third parties”. Someday we will look back and this number will seem to us non-trivial.
Back in 2008, Hal Roberts, a fellow from the Center for the Internet and Berkman Klein Society at Harvard, called Google Ads "a gray method of observation." He defined Google as the “collective intelligence system,” which saves our data and uses it to its advantage. But, unlike other forms of surveillance, Google does not threaten us with murder or imprisonment.
The "grayness" of the method lies in the fact that, according to Roberts, the benefits that it brings to the corporation are difficult to identify at the individual level. But even then, he "played a key role in shaping public discourse online." Now, ten years later, it became even more difficult to notice the exploitation of data in Google Ads. Observation has leaked into almost all areas of our lives, and yet, little information is available to the general public about the situation.
In 2019, I would like to change this state of affairs.
In this series of articles, I intend to state everything that I know about the dark side of promotion through search engines. I will explain in simple terms what is happening “under the hood” and how Google and Google Ads track data.
Then, as someone who saw it all from the inside, I’ll tell you some nuances unknown to most ordinary users: how search marketing experts misuse the power of Google Ads and use the platform, in essence, to buy and sell customers. I will touch on how Google tried to correct the situation. Finally, I’ll list the steps readers can take to protect themselves from Google’s abuses, including ways to win back the right to dispose of their data from unscrupulous advertisers and marketers who play dishonestly.
Today, people admit to Google that they keep secrets from everyone else — even spouses, doctors, or psychologists. But they would not have shown such frankness if they were aware of the depth of this rabbit hole. I hope that my insider information will help them return to other ways for their fears, regrets, hopes and desires.
By the end of the series, readers will be armed with the information necessary to rebuild their relationship with Google. And if someone decides to leave it with his main search engine, he can build the process so that the person uses the search engine, and not vice versa.
Today, Google supplies marketers (for example, me) your personal data in such amounts that we can extract more from them than from recordings from any camera or microphone. Never before have marketers like me had such wide opportunities to benefit from user information.
')
At the current moment, 40,000 search queries arrive at Google every second , that is, 3.5 billion per day and 1.2 trillion per year. When you drive something into Google, your request is sent to a data center, where thousands of computers select results and send you back the final output. The whole procedure usually takes less than a fifth of a second. But this is something most people do not suspect: in parallel with this “behind the scenes”, another, even more lightning and mysterious process is taking place — an auction is unfolding there.
Any search phrase contains keywords, and people who are engaged in advertising, fight with each other to secure the keys that you just entered. Each advertiser offering a product, somehow related to your request, wants you to see exactly his ad and click.
And finally, advertisements take their final positions, like toys in cartoons, in a hurry, returning to their places a second before turning on the light - and the page of the issue is loaded.
As a rule, the first four results (that is, what you see on the screen, not scrolling) are always paid advertising. If you were unaware of this, then you are not alone. More than half of users aged 18 to 34 cannot distinguish organic output from advertisements. After 35 years, the percentage begins to grow proportionally. Google itself makes efforts to ensure that such people are as many as possible, trying different advertising design options that would visually merge with relevant results.
As soon as you click on an advertisement, your personal information is immediately transferred to marketers working with a search engine, and is stored on their AdWords account forever, without the possibility of deletion.
In case you suddenly have a miracle, it is easy on your soul - holidays are coming and so on - I present a complete list of what Google knows about you as of December 2018 (and, accordingly, all the parameters by which it makes tracking):
- Age
- Income level
- Floor
- The presence or absence of children
- Marital status / serious relationship
- Browsing history (both recent and long-term)
- Devices (phones, tablets, computers, TVs)
- Geographical location
- Children's ages (infant, preschooler, etc.)
- Successes in high school
- Academic qualification
- What time of the day do you use google
- Languages you speak
- Recent major life events
- Property rights to housing
- Topics of the sites you visit and the context of the visit
- Products you buy
- Products you almost bought
- Wy-fay
- Distance to the nearest cell tower
- Application Installation History
- The amount of time you spend in a particular application
- operating system
- Email Contents
- The amount of time you spend on certain sites
- Movements in space (for example, moving to another apartment)
- Movements in space (for example, a train ride)
From the very first day you started using Google, your “personal business” began to take shape there, which includes, in particular:
- Voice search history
- All requests you entered
- All advertisements that you saw, and all the information about the transitions
- All geographic points you visited
- All the pictures you saved
- All the letters you sent
In 2019, we will come closer to the cherished dream of any search service - multidevice attribution. When this technology is implemented, advertising will pursue the user easily and naturally, following him not only from channel to channel (for example, from social networks to organic delivery or to the mailbox), but also from device to device (say, from a phone to the tablet, from there to the laptop, then to the TV and desktop computer).
For example: based on your loyalty to one or another brand, your TV will send a high frequency signal when broadcasting certain commercials. For imperfect human hearing, it will be indistinguishable, but a cell phone, located at a short distance, will catch it . Accordingly, if you see a Nike ad on TV, take a phone and google Nike sneakers, the conversion chain from the TV to the phone will be fixed. Not bad!
If you make a long journey every day to work, marketers are already up to date and show you advertisements for products that are relevant to such a routine. For example, headphones, worn leather bags for laptop and handkerchiefs that will drown out your hoarse sobs. But how do they know that you have to get far? Very simple: the frequency of the signal of your phone is caught by the towers on the way. If pings quickly follow one after another, the marketer may conclude that you are inside an object that moves at high speed with occasional stops (well, or in the case of the Long Island Railway, then with constant stops, haha).
Knock the product in a search engine, and then go to the store with his feet. If you did it in this sequence, most likely, Google, thanks to the GPS data from the phone, linked your transition through the advertising link with the purchase in the store.
To provide marketers with even more information about offline purchases, Google has acquired ( for large millions ) credit card data from MasterCard. The company acknowledged that it has access to approximately 70% of debit and credit card transactions in the United States due to its “partnership with third parties”. Someday we will look back and this number will seem to us non-trivial.
Back in 2008, Hal Roberts, a fellow from the Center for the Internet and Berkman Klein Society at Harvard, called Google Ads "a gray method of observation." He defined Google as the “collective intelligence system,” which saves our data and uses it to its advantage. But, unlike other forms of surveillance, Google does not threaten us with murder or imprisonment.
The "grayness" of the method lies in the fact that, according to Roberts, the benefits that it brings to the corporation are difficult to identify at the individual level. But even then, he "played a key role in shaping public discourse online." Now, ten years later, it became even more difficult to notice the exploitation of data in Google Ads. Observation has leaked into almost all areas of our lives, and yet, little information is available to the general public about the situation.
In 2019, I would like to change this state of affairs.
In this series of articles, I intend to state everything that I know about the dark side of promotion through search engines. I will explain in simple terms what is happening “under the hood” and how Google and Google Ads track data.
Then, as someone who saw it all from the inside, I’ll tell you some nuances unknown to most ordinary users: how search marketing experts misuse the power of Google Ads and use the platform, in essence, to buy and sell customers. I will touch on how Google tried to correct the situation. Finally, I’ll list the steps readers can take to protect themselves from Google’s abuses, including ways to win back the right to dispose of their data from unscrupulous advertisers and marketers who play dishonestly.
Today, people admit to Google that they keep secrets from everyone else — even spouses, doctors, or psychologists. But they would not have shown such frankness if they were aware of the depth of this rabbit hole. I hope that my insider information will help them return to other ways for their fears, regrets, hopes and desires.
By the end of the series, readers will be armed with the information necessary to rebuild their relationship with Google. And if someone decides to leave it with his main search engine, he can build the process so that the person uses the search engine, and not vice versa.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/434508/
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