We’ve all walked into a clothes store to be asked – often right on entering – if we were OK and whether we were looking for anything in particular. Depending on your viewpoint, you may or may not find this helpful, but it’s certainly valuable to the store owner who can use the information to make sure customers find what they want.
Imagine now, you were the store owner and the shopping centre has requested you don’t approach customers unless they are specifically forthcoming and request help. Suddenly, you’d have lost the ability to proactively help customers. You’d also lose crucial feedback on which types of customers do and don’t find what they are after.
Unfortunately, the reality is that many websites are facing this dilemma now that Google has started to encrypt search queries. The change also means that sites people visit after clicking on results at Google will no longer receive “referrer” data that reveals what those people searched for, except in the case of ads.
As most websites have no human interaction with their visitors, the search query used in a search engine is one of the few clues a Web business can use to understand their visitors.
Behavioural targeting is not an especially new concept, but it’s probably still an industry very much in its infancy. Without knowing what the customer was initially looking for, the website will need to rely on later user interactions, like a log-in, to provide a personalised experience.
A retailer which wants to display certain related products to users who search with a given brand intent, wouldn’t be able to do this for these users now. The problem would extend to many other clever attempts at customisation – the B2B company which has a client case study on its homepage would have to wait for the user to visit another case study before they could attempt to guess which industry or service the user in interested in.
Understanding the initial intent of a customer who has bought a product/subscribed to a newsletter or requested a form can say a lot about that customer and really help with the relationship in the long term. It can also provide a vital clue in the short term about what the customer might be looking for before the first interaction.
Unfortunately, there’s little that can probably be done to reverse the tide, as Google’s concerns about privacy are being driven by far bigger forces than the search marketing industry. Brands may look to capture the landing page going forward (or, even better, the full navigation path) but this requires closer attention to be useful.
Matthew Oxley is head of search at Gravytrain
