Google Related Content

Posted: March 12, 2006

It appears Google is testing out a new feature that shows related content for searches and websites to visitors. This takes the form of an information box that publishers can place on their website. Google then serves up related search terms and websites. (i.e. It’s doubtful it will be seen on Google.com; more than likely, their AdSense publishers and search partners may use it).

While at present it looks like an experiment to start correlating web pages and improve the user experience, there could easily be a much more commercial purpose behind this project. (It appears non-commercial because the initial code does not have a place for a publisher id. The publisher id is what Google uses to know who needs to be paid for clicks and impressions).

Consider these facts:
Search makes up less than 5% of all page views on the web.
Content visits make up the vast majority of all page views.

To truly monetize the net, Google needs to enhance its AdSense program. (The AdSense program serves ads based upon a page’s content).

Enhancement of the AdSense program needs to occur along the lines of behavioral, demographic, and geographic targeting. They did make their first move into demographic targeting recently.

By offering website publishers a free service that helps improve the user experience, they can also start collecting and correlating more data about user behavior. They cold also place more cookies around the web to see how people are surfing various websites.

Once Google starts to understand what is related, how visitors surf, how they jump from topic to topic, and even how they evolve in the same topics from general to specific answers - they will start to gain an even bigger picture of web behavior.

If its commercial based (just speculation), its a very smart idea to collect the data in a ‘enhancing the user experience’ sort of way. Of course, this is still screen shots and rumors - but it’s a very logical move for Google to make.

If Google is to serve ads all over the web via its AdSense program, then it must be able to offer adversities targeting options not currently available. While it looks like a fun program from Google - the commercial implications are enormous. Of course, so are the privacy implications, but that’s a different topic entirely.

Screen shots and code available at ZDnet about related content from Google.

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