So here I am having a look around Technorati to look at some other related travel Blogs to learn form. And up pops on the right hand side an advert for ME! Birds Ferry Lodge – now that is scary – how on earth do they do that?

You have cookies and beacons on your web browser — don’t worry, we all do — and that’s what’s tracking you and showing you ads on different websites.

hmmm, and why am I being sold books on the coming Zombie Apocalypse? 

@alisongygax-mather
Alison, this is called remarketing. Just for simplicity, to discuss how it works on AdWords only: 

• You visit a site and receive a tracking cookie placed there by the site-owner  
• The site owned now has you in a ‘list’ in his AdWords account
• He can run a display campaign targeting only his lists. 

• Exclude people who visited your “thank you” page from the list. Thus targeting only “almost” customers 
• Give an offer which gets better off time (i.e. if they didn’t buy it for $100, offer it at $95 next time) 
• Use seasonality and scarcity in the remarketing ads (three days left!) 

@robpeck Rob, that was a very helpful explanation. And thanks for explaining the remarketing concept.

My problem with their tracking is that they’re obviously tracking what I input into the search bar and popping up THOSE ads for me, more often than the results I actually click on.

And that IS a problem because I type about 100 search terms per minute when I’m doing keyword research, especially for obscure health conditions and terms. This makes for some pretty ODD advertising on my pages, lol. NONE of it has anything to do with my real interests, but only with the fact that I’ll keep typing in vast numbers of search terms that all seem related. They’re totally convinced I MUST buy their products or i’ll DIE SOON! 

Forgive me, but that’s really funny from my end, though I KNOW those adwords buyers are getting ripped off with me. I hate that for them. And that’s a real problem with Adwords, in that any buyer could get accidentally ripped off by intense researchers like me.

What’s not funny is that I now have special insight into just how targeted every single page I view online really is. I mean they are ALL chock full of these bizarre search terms I’ve used… OR WORSE… terms I’ve used ONLY in emails when writing to medical professionals about certain research I was doing. These are subjects having nothing to do with me and terms I’ve never used EXCEPT in emails… nevertheless, soon after I send these emails, those keywords start popping up everywhere.

So NOW, there are certain keyword subjects i won’t touch or rewrite with a ten foot pole, lol. Just don’t want to see those 30 letter words pop up all the time… I need to spend a day mass-typing in happy-go-lucky beautiful keywords! Maybe that will return some more positive ads on my pages, lol.

Robin Carlisle

As an aside, the thing I find most amusing stuff is actually on the Facebook ads. 
Perhaps you would like to advertise to the 380 people who work at Wal-Mart and like cocaine? 

Oh, and I obviously overlooked the Cost Per Click (not search) factor involved. At least I’m not costing them money.

Robin