Comments on: “Previous Query” Refinement gets aggressive

By: Google Previous Query Reason For Crazy Google Rankings? - Search Marketing Blog from Cincinnati, Ohio

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:42:42 +0000

[...] â€œPrevious Queryâ€ Refinement gets aggressive [...]

By: Judd Exley

Judd Exley — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:41:37 +0000

Like most things with the Googlemonster, I’m sure it’ll get smarter over time.

For now, I shudder to think of what will happen when my wife sits down to search for the nearest carpet store here in Perth and gets ads for clown pr0n.

I keed, I would never Google that kind of thing. The results are rubbish anyway.

By: julien

julien — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:17:17 +0000

probably not a coincidence that ‘loans’ is a far more profitable niche than seo consulting.

By: kylah16

kylah16 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:43:17 +0000

If they are rolling it out to organic results does this mean that no one will be able to claim top spot for a keyword anymore because it will be constantly changing depending on what the person searched for before?

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:32:27 +0000

When I covered the patents recently (last summer) released pertaining to query refinement and user performance metrics I researched and played with a variety of approaches to find it indeed was fairly prevalent.

More here on the actual patent; http://www.reliable-seo.com/knowledge-base/technical_seo/ad_serving_and_user_performance_metrics.html

I also put a post on this topic (and more links) on the ol Blog (huomah)…. it is the implications for the regular SERPs that is most interesting. Confirmation of the usage of user performance metrics is like a Pandora’s box IMO. If this is the ‘tip’ of the iceberg, what is lurking under the surface.

Dave

By: Damien van Holten

Damien van Holten — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:35:25 +0000

I think in most cases the CTR is fine. Since Google assumes people are refining their searches in the same general direction (loans -> cheap loans).

However, if I would build this system I would check for the keyword direction for the current and previous keyword and wouldn’t display ads from previous query’s if they don’t belong together (as seen here with SEO and loans).