Monday, 9 May 2011

A new step in local sales Advertising - Google Offers

What is Google Offers?

Google is all set to spread its arms in the territory of local sales advertising. It plans to launch "Google offers" through which local businesses can advertise its products with its mouthwatering discount offers. It is expected to fetch a good number of revenue for Google. It is coming out with its beta version in Portland, New York and San Francisco.

"Google offers" function more or less like Groupon. Users receive an e-mail with a local deal of the day. They then have the opportunity to buy that deal within a specific time limit. It will also provide users the ability to subscribe to location based deals and as the beta launch reads. One can expect best discount as well.
Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a trail for a pre-paid program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways.

"Google Offers" will be powered by Google Checkout. It also includes Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Google Buzz and e-mail sharing options.

The Internet giant was supposed to buy Groupon at a staggering price of $6 billion.

Groupon is a Chicago based internet coupon service which records users around 35 million. Groupon is a group buying website that features different deals daily in various locations. It is present in most geographic markets around the globe including India. It walked away from Google acquisition as the acquisition fell due to hesitation by Groupon's founders. Groupon would have helped its new owner expand in the $133 billion U.S. local-ad market and lessen its reliance on Internet-search advertising.

Amidst all the confusion Google decision to come out with its own clone of Groupon is a very bold one. This may posed a serious threat to the very existence of Groupon. With already well established brand name and also being the largest search engine it is sure to grab the market fast.

Beware!!! You are Being Tracked...

You surf the web and can avoid other sites that use tools from Facebook, Twitter and Googleand other websites which give you ultimate social experience? But really can you do that? I guess that’s impossible. Whenever you visit a site having a Like button, data including the adress of the site you are visiting is sent to Facebook. No matter you are logged in or not, they will have all the information they need with your Facebook identity. With privacy issues at the vanguard of technology news, it is vital to note that these social media tools track user’s behaviour.

In computing, web browing history means the list of web pages you have been opening thoruout your browing session. It also give the associated data such as title of the website, type of website, time on each page you have visited which is recorded by the web browser itself. Apart from the web browser there are some third party applications too which can track the web history.the worrying part about third party applications tracking your web browsing history is that there are many things a company can do with the information that isnt so beneficial to its users.

Banner ads are one kind of ads which can track your browing hisotry. Each advert records a cookie in the browser, and when you visit another website with ads served by the same provider this cookie will be sent back with the referring URL. For example if you visit Facebook.com the tracking cookie will be set in your browser. Even after visiting Facebook, the tracking cookie will be sent to Facebook when Like buttons are loaded on other sides. How to avoid that?

The easiest way to avoid this is to delte all facebook cookies stored in your web broswer, or to surf the browser in incognito/ anonymous mode. Apart from these there are some more ways which can be effective in this regard.

Disconnect, an open source browser add-on developed by a former Google engineer, Brian Kennish can block third party tracking scripts from major data gatherers like Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Twitter etc. It blocks the tracker script from collecting data from the user, such as Facebook like buttons or those auto login sites, and de-personalizes the user’s searches on Google. A user can also use other computer proxies to hide their IP adress from the web sites they visit or other computer they communicate with on the internet during their browing session.

Since browsers play an ever more important role in our use of internet its obvious the subject of privacy keeps popping up. And with privacy comes the topic of how we are tracked on the web. While registering or doing business with a website, the user should always review its privacy policy to see how it will use your information. One should never do business with a site which does not have a clearly stated and transparent privacy policy.

Newer Posts Older Posts Home