Furthering their attempts to take over the world, Google is now offering a service dubbed Google Flu Trends that will track flu cases on a state-by-state basis. This task is accomplished by simply tracking search quires for flu-like symptoms by state. Sound like an inexact science?
The following is from Google:
In an attempt to take behavioral targeting to the next level, Google is now personalizing SERPS (search engine referral page) without the searcher being logged into their Gmail account. By looking at the recent search activity made from that browser, Google is sorting the results through their customization initiative. Previously, Google was personalizing results only if one was logged into their Gmail account.
Behavioral Targeting (BT) is pretty much the hottest topic I can think of right now. Seriously. It’s up there with Britney Spears’ latest updates (she colored her hair again, in case you’re wondering). Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit. But BT is doing some pretty big things with advertising. Behavioral Targeting used to be just predicting what consumers intentions were based on past experiences. ValueClick Media recently came up with a different approach to BT that “…uses a predictive algorithm to detach past behavior from future likelihood to click or convert. This forward-looking approach is self-learning and adapts on the fly to data from more than 13,000 publishers and thousands of advertisers.” Pretty impressive I’d say.