Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Who wants a search history in their search engine - consumers or advertisers?

Both Yahoo and Google have launched a facility to check your search history - something people may remember first from A9.

Why would Google and Yahoo launch such a service within a week of each other - noting that they have both been talking about 'personlisation' for some time.

I don't find huge numbers of search users commenting that they can't remember their searches and yet both Google and Yahoo seem to be finding this very important.

Could it be the development of the advertising service of both search engines? MSN has already announced that it will use the hugh volume of personal information it holds on users to target demographically with its new pay per click system due to launched soon in France. MSN has the benefit of a long history of registrations from Hotmail - as well as from Microsoft Messenger and its many other products and services. It clearly aims to leverage this!

Yahoo has been building personal data too - but Google is relatively far behind on this one with its email system only having been created in the last year.

You should expect lots more 'personalisation' features to come from the engines - especially Google. What about your own personal web site for free? It's just a matter of time.

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