[Sigia-l] search logs - relevance of penultimate referrers?

[Skot Nelson]

On Mar-20-2006, at 6:59 PM, Lyle Kantrovich wrote:

> if a user searches for "apples" from the home page or a
> dedicated search page, that doesn't tell you much.  Knowing that the
> user was on the "Fruit products" page just prior to the search page
> would be valuable.

This is a great example of making a business decision that makes  
technological sense, but may be difficult from a business aspect.

Technology makes it possible -- even easy -- to gather enormous  
amounts of data which can then be used to segement, slice and group  
people into markets.

In my experience, business thinking hasn't kept up in many  
organizations. (I know this is an over generalization and numerous  
counter examples exist.)

There's a point at which micro-marketing and data analysis can be  
dont to excess, but this point continues to be challenged and pushed.  
One thing's for sure: the marketing department I worked in where  
every program had a primary audience of "Male aged 18 - 54" and a  
secondary audience of "Female edged 18 - 54" is dead. In 1996, I  
tried to sell the idea of delivering messages targeted based on  
search & profile; they wouldn't produce the creative...didn't see the  
point.

At the very least, the data being talked about could be used to  
deliver ranked results. As Lyle suggests...if I clicked on "Apple"  
from "Fruit Products" one would presume that I'd be more interested  
in "Calvados" than, for example, an iMac.