LookingConfident's  Instablog

These two recent articles - this one from MarketingLand and one from MediaPost (What's Next For SEO?), have really caught my eye.

The latter, as has been compiled by Ryan DeShazer, advised of Vanessa Fox's piece- in referring to her story appearing in SearchEngineLand on Friday. "Will [Not Provided] Ever Reach 100% In Web Analytics?"

Vanessa noted the recent decision by Google was to make secure search the default on its Chrome browser. (Effectively then, Google is preventing- the flow of organic keyword data through to analytics tools, as part of the referral information.)

This may not only have an effect on SEO practices - it could in turn, hamper methods used by some businesses in search retargeting.

In what way?

This is best explained in a post on Chango via comments Ben Plomian had made to my post here & more recently-in one that he made here.

In his article (5 Myths About Search Data) Ben explains ... one of the best techniques (for obtaining search data, for advertiser to then get to re-target with) is by harvesting the string query data that publishers get from their referral URLs.

Publishers use that data (Ben advises) to see which keywords brought searchers to their site, and [that] it's been helping them optimize their content for years.

(A Chango announcement advises Chango's Madison collects over 6 billion searches a month from Chango's propriety Data network.)

Looksmart's (exclusive) use of Keyword Data

Looksmart (they have told us - - albeit from within a couple of Canada job vacancy notifications), were now exclusively harvest 'over 5 Billion pieces of search (user intent) queries' per day from search engines that provide (and, in Real Time), 'keywords' or 'keyword phases'- as they are typed in by searchers. The numbers (in queries), have risen up from the 3 billion per day - that we had "previously" been told.

Unless Looksmart (some-how), have happened to have now lost that exclusivity (there's been no announcement as such?) the Co explains here, just how they target individual users:

How does it work?

...At the time of the query, the ad server determines the physical location of a web site visitor using the IP address provided by the publisher [meaning "search", I feel-including both Google and Yahoo] ......... The ad server then uses the location information to deliver ads targeted to the users geographic location and search type.

AdCenter marketplace - bit.ly/Lbx0uZ

This news must surely put Looksmart in such a "strong" position now, (not just for a new board and remaining long term insiders-good players have luck?), it also includes ordinary shareholders in that push for a role in an evolving intersection of search and display.

Always, only an opinion.

LC

Disclosure: Long LOOK

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