You might have missed the announcement last week, but Google has gone live with their search session ads. Now, instead of just showing you ads based on the keywords you search for, Google will remember what your last search was and show ads relevant to your searching “session.”
The example given by Google is this: If a user searches for “Italy”, ads for Italy will be shown. If their next search is for “weather”, ads related to weather in Italy will be shown alongside the regular weather ads.
Here’s an example that just came up for me. I had just searched for the term “gothic arbor” to see if one of my clients was listed, when somebody else came running up to say “hey, we’re #1 for plastic grips! Those homepage changes you made worked!” Naturally, I typed “plastic grips” into the search box. Check out the ads that it showed:
As you can see here, the first ad is still for arbors. Google remembered what I last searched for, and showed me ads relevant to my overall searching session.
I’ll be interested to see how well these changes work; not for Google but for overall conversions from the advertiser side. As somebody who’s bidding on some arbor related keywords, I’m not entirely sure I want to be showing up for other searches. It’s possible that it’s going to do nothing but lower my click through rate.
Privacy advocates should take note that these “sessions” are not stored after you leave Google. This feature only works during the same visit to the website, and does not persist over time. For instance, when I come back to Google after typing this post and search for “blog writer” Google won’t show me ads related to arbors or grips.
