What is interesting is considering what other related signals they may be tracking beyond query analysis. There are more than a few other user performance metrics that are outlines as well in those patents. Interesting stuff ….

I will often promote life insurance against mortgage searches. Does not get a lot of clicks, but when that same user does search for life insurance they may well remember/recognise the brand meaning you do not have to bid so aggressively.

What I don’t understand at this point is how it works with the relevancy algorithm, which is supposedly part and parcel of the ranking model. Secondly, an advertiser will buy against a key word, the price of which can vary wildly dependent on vertical. When your secured loan creative gets served against a credit card search, how and where are you paying? Is there a new bidding system which I am missing?

Agree with you on those points, could be a bit of a rich get richer scenario.

But, it would be interesting to know how many people “tweak” their searching as in the example you gave, I don’t suppose there is any way to know for sure, but judging by impression/click projections that the likes of adwords give, the overall volume sticks with the main terms….

What may happen however – and this is something we all know people do – is that the longer and less competitive key phrases may be invaded by the top key phrases.

OK, I’ll explain that a bit better. Searching for [car insurance] as the lead phrase – it’s common for the customer to then follow up with a more refined intention – such as [female car insurance]. They could refine another lever to [young female car insurance].

Do these less competitive terms where the relevance to the advertiser is currently higher get washed away because Google is bringing in more adverts from the previous, higher-paying, generic [car insurance] term.

It doesn’t create a completely off topic list of adverts but it certainly makes it harder for the small, niche advertisers who thrive/survive on the specific bits of business they’re set up for.

Also, what about the thought that they’re looking to bring this into the natural search listings?

Let’s put this in context though, how many people will search for car insurance and then holidays staright after? Surely there is a time cut off on this anyway, it’s not going to base ads on what you searched for last week.

I think they are trying to maximise revenues from same industry searches, I can’t see many normal users flitting from one industry to another in one session.

Also, this is “previous query”, so the user mustn’t have found what they wanted on their first search, do you think this will affect the likes of “car insurance” – how many people re-search for a different phrase – not many I bet. So in terms of organic seo, again I think it will affect the off-beat phrases where people haven’t founf what they were looking for 1st time round.

Oh yes, I think the whole thing is geared towards the Finance/Insurance sector, it’s where the big money is after all.

I don’t think customer will either Dave!!

I suspect they’re trialling it more and more to perfect the revenue – I mean usability – aspect of it, but some of the results are quite a way off the mark and I would’ve thought that the CTR would fall on the second search.

Mind you, do you think there’s an added weight for the more expensive terms? For example, searching for [car insurance] and then [spanish holidays] brings a strong element of car insurance into the spanish search. Almost completely dominating.

On the other hand, if (starting with a new session, browser and clearing cookie) you search for [spanish holidays] first and then search for [car insurance], the insurance searches still dominate their own query and there’s extremely little impact from the spanish context.

Revenue. Revenue. Revenue.

Sorry for being a bit dull but I just don’t get it!

It seems to me like Google are just finding excuses to give more impressions to ads, and therefore more income from AdWords. Which then makes me think “Are they doing it for customer usability, or corporate greed”?