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Google’s Behavioral Targeting Flaws Put Advertisers at Risk

For a while now, Google has been testing behavioral targeting in their search result pages. And while behavioral targeting may be the next big thing, it’s already putting AdWords advertisers at risk by costing them money and decreasing their quality score.

I’ve opted to use video here to help illustrate the progression and assumptions Google tries to make. (I know it’s not a high quality video, but I hope you can see the examples used and how this can impact you as both an advertiser and search engine user)

Clearly, advertisers are put at risk with their ads being served up on irrelevant result pages. To make matters worse, it’s clear that the maximum cost per click associated with an ad can allow it to effectively dominate keyword markets it has no business being in.

Make Google Accountable

If you have an AdWords campaign, do your research and make sure you are covered here. Google’s AdWords system is something that you should use to grow your business effectively. Wasting money on poorly targeted visitors is bad enough, but with behavioral targeting your quality score takes a hit too as this waters down your click through rates.

What’s Your Experience?

Please, sound off using the comments feature below. Have you been footing the bill of bad behavioral targeting? Are your ads suffering from “poor” or low quality ratings because of Google?

Please share your experience here with other Search Engine Journal readers. A big thank you goes out to Paul Mancini at Search Marketing Corporation for passing along examples of behavioral targeting in action here.

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Google’s Behavioral Targeting Flaws Put Advertisers at Risk

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