Google got most websites you visit to help them collect data about you.
Here’s how the data collection works.
Any company or website that takes their search ranking or eCommerce seriously, wants to know how traffic got to their site, and the methods that can be used to get more traffic to their site.
The way websites get this information is by using a software script that generate cookies and place them on visitors’ devices. This gives a website LOTS of information about each visitor: for example, what time they landed on the site, how long they were on it, what pages they looked at, the geographic location of the user, what operating system their device uses, what browser they used, their IP address (internet location), what site they came from, what keyword was used to find the site, how many times they have visited the site before, what pages they visited on the site and for how long.
Google saw this information need early on makes this data collection script available for free to the websites. The websites collect data on you, and Google gets that data free, and then aggregates that data together to make a more expensive data profile of you. Approximately 80% of all websites have Google Analytics on them.
Here is how your data is monetized when you visit sites:
Let’s say you use Orbitz to search for a flight. Orbitz then places a cookie on your computer. This cookie is a small file that basically says “I want to find and know about flights to Europe.”
Orbitz can then sell that cookie information to big data companies. These big data companies auction it off to the company with the highest bid. This whole data-collection-and-sale process takes under a second!
Say in this case, the sale was to a major airline like Delta. Once Delta knows what kind of flight you’re interested in, Delta then shows you ads for relevant flights — NOT JUST on Orbitz’s site, but on ANY site you visit, and on ANY of your devices.
What this means, is that companies can reach you AFTER you leave business websites. You then can see airline ads when, for example, you are on a sports or news site, or on another device.
Let’s get back to the websites’ scripts that do this great data collection activity:
To summarize, websites can collect your information when you visit, website visit information is then aggregated by many web analytic services, including biggest — Google Analytics.
This is how Google generates the bulk of their revenue from delivering relevant ads and search results based on the website visitor information.
Obviously, the more information Google and others can gather about the visitor, the more targeted ads they can deliver to that person.
Please understand that cookies ONLY have value: if they can correctly identify the visitor.
The HUGE activity of matching you and your devices and these cookies together, is part of search “engine optimization.” Making this happen efficiently, is what Google thrives on!
“Google measures us and builds its systems and services to indulge our desires and weaknesses.” The Googlization of Everything, by Siva Vaidhyanathan.
