Let's start with a sneaky tactic.
I know that SEOmoz blog readers are an internet-savvy crowd, so many of you are probably familiar with the 'browser history sniffing' techniques that exist. (Bear with me, we'll get to internet marketing advice in a moment.)
In case you've not come across the concept before, it's probably best exemplified by the site Start Panic - just hit the 'Let's start!' button to watch it trawl through your browser history, and start listing sites that even you forgot you'd visited.
StartPanic uses Javascript to do the dirty work, but it's also possible to do this completely using CSS, and without Javascript. (There's advice about implementing the technical side of this in a popular post by Niall Kennedy.)
I wanted to show how you can use this to help your website perform better - let's begin with the least controversial, and work on from there
1 - Customize the User Experience
Niall's post - linked above - suggests one very sensible use of this technique: offering your users links to the social sites they use, and hiding the ones they don't. In this bottom of this live example page, you'll see a 'Digg It' button if you've been to Digg, a 'Share on Facebook' button if you've been there, etc. By limiting the set of sharing buttons, you can remove that 'social clutter' that is prevalent on some sites - this doesn't just give a cleaner page to the user, but may have a much higher 'sharing' rate for your page.
Customization can also be made is to the content of your site: use the browser history sniffing technique to see the kinds of blogs and news sites your visitors are reading, and then adjust your content based on the results. For example: I might consider writing a weekly post about PPC for the Distilled blog. We could check to see how many of the Distilled visitors had looked at PPC Hero, the AdWords blog, and the AdWords support pages. If the number was high enough, we might consider adding content to satisfy that niche.
Likewise, if you find that a high proportion of your readers visit KittenWar, then you might consider adding a little more 'cute' to your posts.
2 - Retarget Your Publicity
Traditional ad-network retargeting works in the following way:
- a visitor comes to your site, and leaves without making a purchase
- your advertising network drops a cookie onto that user's computer
- the user visits a different site which displays ads from that network
- the network recognizes the user, and shows them an ad for your product
- hopefully they're reminded of you, and come back to the site to make a purchase.
However, this retargeting only works when you can cookie people once they've visited your site. I'd propose using this technique to alter the copy on your site, based on what the user has already seen about you elsewhere.
For example: check for new posts about your brand each morning (or can I assume you do this already?) If your company had three product reviews on blogs and news sites today, then record these URLs, and check to see if each visitor to your site has already read one of them. You could then display a prominent content box on the front page with information about the exact product they saw reviewed, and a link to your page for that product. You might even acknowledge they'd seen the review: "Initech wants to offer you a 10% discount, as a reader of The Daily Bugle"
You could use the same technique for Reputation Management. If a site has published a negative article about you, there's a potential that people will come to your site to find out more. However, you may not want to simply have a message on your front page that reads "The Bluth Company has NOT committed treason - read more" - but you could choose display this headline only to people who've read about the story already.
3 - Find Your Competitors' Customers
This is where you could really up-the-ante with your CRO efforts.
I recently saw a bank who offered $100 to people who closed their account at a competitor's bank and switched over. This would be a perfect opportunity to sniff each visitor's browser history, to see if you should promote this offer to them on your site. You can even avoid showing it to people who have been shopping around (and looking at every bank's website homepage) by checking to see if they've visited the URLs for logging in and out of the competitor's online banking to see if they're actually a customer of that company.
For e-commerce sites, you could check to see if your visitor has visited your competitor's site, but could also check if they've looked at the competitor's product on Amazon or other retailers. Your product page could then include a comparison between the two products. That could increase conversions, but you'd avoid comparing your product to a competitor's for anyone who'd never seen the competing product.
To Conclude
So, the practice of checking to see if a visitor has already been to particular pages might seem a little shady at first - but this part of the way that the web and web browsers are designed, and people can block their browser history if they'd prefer.
Executed in the right way, it could be a very powerful technique for creating high performing, high converting websites. Use it wisely.
(Thanks for reading; you can follow me on Twitter: @RobOusbey, and I'm pleased to be speaking alongside some of the best SEO practitioners around at this year's Pro Training Seminar - tickets are still available.)
One has to be wary of using this technique. IMO nobody like being tracked. If i come to a website for the first time and greeted by my first name or shown comparison with the previously viewed products on other sites i would start doubting the credibility of the business and may not carry out any transaction with them. Who knows they may misuse my credit card details later or sell it to third party. Have you seen improvement in conversion rate?
Hey Himanshu; you're right about people
s aversion to being 'tracked'. However, as I describe, you can only use this technique to identify other URLs the user has already visited.
It's a long way from identifying their name etc - though millions of people are happy to browse around the web whilst logged into Facebook, which does offer such functionality.
What's interesting is that you don't know if the techniques I describe are being used on a particular page or not; you may have visited a bunch of sites today that are using this technique, and never known about it.
For example, let's say you're looking for a flight: you visit AlaskaAir.com and see a banner saying "We have a better punctuality record than Delta". You wouldn't think twice about this, and probably assume it was always shown to visitors; you'd likely never even wonder if it was just because you already visited Delta's site.
"What's interesting is that you don't know if the techniques I describe are being used on a particular page or not; you may have visited a bunch of sites today that are using this technique, and never known about it."
This is where i suggested to be cautious. The whole process of being tracked should not be apparent when using this technique. Otherwise i doubt it will have any positive effect on conversion rate. I got your point very well Rob. That's why i didn't rebuff your technique and infact gave you a thumbs up. Thanks for bringing out this technique to the table.
I agree with you Himanshu. It could come across as very creepy if implemented incorrectly, which would then achieve the opposite result with your visitor.
Instead of converting them to a customer, you would scare them away ne'er to return.
While I am impressed with the use of the technology I agree 100% with the tracking issue - this would turn me off right away.
I do respect that you brought this to the table, Rob. It is an interesting technique and I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it in the past. However, coming from a department in my company which is directly tied to marketing/PR, I know that if anyone heard that I was doing this, I would have to face a lot of questions and concerns; and that is only from within the company. If anyone with public influence heard that we were implementing this sort of tracking on our site, it could cause a lot of potential problems for my coworkers; and for CTR results that may only increase a little.
How you frame the debate will influence peoples' perception of your technique. Google and Facebook label their ad targeting as "user-experience" and "enhanced functionality" To this extent, most people begrudgingly accept it.
Rob, the fact that you used the word "Sneaky" in your post, and Start Panic as an example, may have framed the debate in an unintended, negative way.
You deserve credit for bringing it to our attention. Thousands of sites use these techniques, and we need to discuss them in an open, mature way.
Well said Cyrus. Framed differently, it would have been perceived differently.
quote:"IMO nobody like being tracked"
well I have news for "nobody"...don't open a browser...ever!
These days, when I go to a website, I automatically assume it is tracking my activity. And I think a lot of people make this assumption. Thus the reason so many people hesitate to sign up for things like facebook, iGoogle, etc. Same thing with the discount cards at grocery stores - it's tracking what you buy to create customized coupons. I agree that most people won't prefer a site that will track their info, but I also don't think many people would be shocked by such a thing. And for the people that *do* want a site customized for their interests, you're gaining a strong following.
Although this may be an acceptable technique for lesser-known sites, any corporate sites that need to watch for reputation management may want to steer clear of this. All it would take is one influential blogger to look at your javascript and write a damaging article about "How *insert_company_name_here* is Stealing Your Information and Violating Your Privacy". Just Google Facebook Privacy and look at the headlines. Also, any site has an obligation to their users (either legally or morally) to disclose any tracking methods imposed on them in the TOS/Privacy Page.
Agreed. The whole "users can opt out if they want to!" approach has left Facebook facing a terrible reputation hammering. Just because they are big now, doesn't mean they won't be blown out of the water by something "cooler" further down the line with privacy issues coming back to haunt them.
We more Internet savvy people may not have a problem with understanding how to adjust our privacy settings or turn unwanted features off, but that isn't true for the majority of Internet users. As patronising as this sounds, I think they need to be protected because a lot of users don't know any better. Corporations (imo) have a duty of care to protect their customers personal data ethically, regardless of whatever your local laws may be. That's why this whole post doesn't sit easy with me.
How is history sniffing any worse than bypassing browser cookie management using flash cookies so you can be tracked across sites in a network, a technique that nearly every corp site seems to use.
Bloggers can surely trump up privacy invasion stories whether you do this or not.
Do you really think it changes the moral situation if I put a clause 5.17.1.a in my TOS saying "we may use information from your user-agent to modify our service offerings"?
I thought I had read this wrongly at first but it would seem I hadn`t. I agree with some of the other comments on this, it seems slightly unethical to me to be using this trick and I would think that once customers knew this was going on, I suspect they would be disturbed by it. I understand the benefits and the positive side to the argument however, it`s a case of do the means justify the end and in todays security consious world, would customers stand for this sort of thing. It is amost inevitable that this method would be discovered by the population in general as these things generally are and then before you know it, it is a topic on the news gaining bad press. When do you say things have gone too far?
Completely Agreed. This is an extremely risky practice that could definitely cost an SEO/Webmaster their job if it was not approved by the company first. It could cause a potential PR disaster, just look at Facebook's reputation for privacy concerns.
This is a useful article but I wouldn't feel comfortable using this technique.
Likewise. Whilst I'm aware that all kinds of tracking takes place, this is a bit much for me. For me to implement this I'd feel I was crossing some sort of ethical line in the sand.
It's probably all kinds of hypocrisy me saying that! Never mind, it's all slightly fuzzy ethics in our line of work I guess to some degree.
How would a novice go about implementing this on his wordpress site? Is there a "plugin" for this kind of thing, or it has to hard coded somewhere?
I don't know about a WP plugin, but I'll have a Google around.
I don't know your skill set, but Mike Griffith created a module for the Dojo Framwork; if you're not comfortable hacking some custom Javascript into your site, then a developer should be able to tailor something to your needs.
I did a quick Google. Seems there's a social bookmarking plug in by cognition.ca that will only display links to social networks detected in your history.
https://www.cognition.ca/2008/09/social-history-now-a-handy-wordpress-plugin.html
WP Greet Box will sort of do what you're asking in an unobtrusive way
Thank you for the explanation and uses that it could be put to, I guess you need a lot of resources to impliment this right, (surreptitiously) without falling foul of people's good will.
I think you'd have to be really, really good at this kind of stuff to make it work. Knowing me, I'd most likely try it and majorly screw everything up. I don't want to take that chance!
I don't think the average Joe would really know what's going on, though, if this was implemented on a site he or she is visiting. They might realize it's advertising, but most people have trained their eyes to ignore ads and stuff like it. A lot of people just don't care. I think in order to pull this off effectively you have to implement it to the right audience and implement it without a hitch.
https://ha.ckers.org/weird/CSS-history.cgi is quite simple.
I'm considering using it to load advertising blocks from sites used by blog visitors as I imagine the trust established would make click-throughs more likely. So, the a:visited on amazon.com would force the loading of amazon ads in place of whatever other site (could help to load correct locality for amazon too).
If it hasn't been brought up, let's acknowledge what's going on with digital marketers. Like SEOs most are not bad people. In fact, digital marketers would prefer to only send the perfect message to the right person at the very moment that is best for them to receive it. Marketers really don't want to waste their time or money sending you a message if you're going to ignore it. Really think about that.
As Marketers ween themselves off the carpet bombing, broadcasting style of ... dear I say it ... Outbound Marketing, we will see more and more engaging messages.
As long as the info they use to target us is not PII (personally identifying information), then let's upgrade this relationship and target me right baby!
Fully with you on the non PII issue. Especially with a relevant passage in the Privacy Policy stating you use non PII software, like cookies, to enhance user experience. Then a passage on usage of PII.
I wish more people would target ads at me.
Im sick of having to watch R&b preroll ads on Youtube or dumb movie ads on last.fm and it annoys me because I know they could do it right if they wanted to
Targeting is an opportunity to impress your visitors and make a visits to your website much better for you AND you visitor AND advertisers
Done right its a virtuous circle and everyone benefits.
edit: Just thought Id add www.penny-arcade.com as an example
re:edit: not a perfect example now that I think it through as they dont target ads based on cookies. But they target their ads to their users interests and I pay attention to them because they are always of interest to me.
Done well, the user wouldn't be aware that browser history was being used in this way: and if ads, sharing links and other content can be better targeted, its good for everyone.
But there's a nerdy part of me that always wants to browse anonymously and to see the vanilla version of a page, rather than letting crude logic behind the scenes determine what I see.
It annoys me with Google search, which I want to be a passive tool, not dynamically changing based on what it thinks it knows about you... and it would annoy me elsewhere too, if I knew about it.
So I suppose the answer in terms of user experience is: if you know it's happening, you'll find it annoying as hell. If you don't, you won't.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the article but history sniffing and cookie setting is very much where the customer-centric marketing is heading and in many cases is already there. I am 100% behind this as an additional avenue for serving the customer. If it's employed along with all of our SEO, CRO and other great we-care-about-your-experience strategies, then let's do it and let's do it right.
Case in point, the auto industry employs massive display ad network strategies covering national, regional and local targeting. When implemented well this is an amazing achievement. While they have display advertising nailed down, they are completely cannibalizing their PPC, but that's another story.
Then again, as I write this I'm looking at the situation from the point of view of targeted marketing and not as a system of organizing webpage content. Maybe it's an on-issue?
For the examples listed in this article I'm seeing a very good use of the technology that is extremely customer focused and founded in available non personally identifying information (PII). I have no problem with this.
I heard Safari already has fix to the CSS history hack although ive written my own to use :) i think this tactic wont last much longer... although anti-pinning DNS attacks are still around and are super nasty
This technique won't work if a user switched to 'inprivate browsing' like the one provided by Internet Explorer 8.
I like the approach of using these tactics purely for the user's benefit, IE decluttering the user experience.
But to go into the area where it's really only benefits the site, well that would be hard to justify. Even the middle area, with the bank example, feels sketchy. Maybe it's because the example was based on a bank or ecommerce site, looking for evidence of transactional pages being hit. I doubt that if word got out a user would stop to understand that only the URL was sniffed, not their actual transactional data. Then there's a heck of a backlash to deal with.
Agreed. Why clutter up the page with a dozen social/sharing badges and buttons when you can just serve up the one, two or three that the visitor uses on a regular basis?
I haven't come across this tactic in general SEO stuff (as far as I know of) yet, but there's a bunch of big companies out there taking advantage of Adwords's remarketing program, which uses tracking cookies in a similar way. It gets a little creepy sometimes.
For example, check out grasshopper.com, and "Almost" sign up. You'll then be followed around the internet by their ads, wherever you go that's opted into the content network's display ads.
This can easily be done using something like jQuery although it is a little unethical I think.
This 'tip' has been known for a while and as stated earlier it won't work much longer with newer browsers.
Wow that's a great writeup.
Thanks for this, and your mention of using ReTargeting to actually change the copy of your site is very interesting.
doesn't this count as "cloning" ?? Which is BAD (cf. Matt Cutts):- If the user sees something different to Googlebot, it IS cloning.
It makes perfect sense to me to tailor pages to each user based on history or keywords on landing, but have been of the opinion it just isn't allowed.
People hate advertising because it is 98% noise. Think about it- when you are looking to buy a car, the different deals/sales going on are interesting and relevant. When you aren't, it's just an annoyance distracting or interfering with the content you are interested in.
Marketers don't like it either, because in most cases you are paying the same whether you are broadcasting noise or signal. So we've worked harder and harder to make our message more relevant to the consumer.
There is a fine line between relevant and creepy, however. Using a tactic like this to only present the social bookmarking sites that someone actually visits improves the user experience. It removes noise (don't clutter the page with de.licio.us and stumbleupon if I only use digg and reddit.) On the other hand, having a website follow you all across the internet can be creepy and annoying. Visiting webmd doesn't mean I want you to serve me tons of online pharmacy ads. Visiting edmunds.com doesn't mean I want to see an ad for Toyota, Honda, or Ford on SEOMOZ.
When that proper balance is found between relevant and creepy, users AND marketers win. Believe me- we don't want to be creepy. We know people hate ads, but ads are the way a lot of the content you get can be discounted or free. Ads CAN be useful and of interest to a consumer, they just need to be more targeted.
Definitely a great tactic. But the point is it must be done in the right manner with proper understanding.
Good one!
Thanks Rob, interesting topic.
Almost started to panick ;) Great ideas. Why not using the browser info for performance marketing? Google does that for long time now.
Thumbs up for another post Rob. It seems a bit greyish to me, but I appreciate you bringing it to my attention.
As to whether or not it's a white/grey/black tactic, it reminds me of a Moody Blues song lyric:
Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey and yellow, white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion
I can't see myself using it on any site I am connected with for the following reason. It's a hard enough fight to get the resources I need to make changes to a clients site.
Rather than spend those resources on a tactic like this, I'd rather focus on improving the user experience of all users rather than targeting the specific users in your example.
People's ability to be unnerved by technology is inversely proportional to their understanding of it. The more I learn about retargeting the less I mind it but to the uninitiated it can feel like someone's been rummaging through your bins.
I'd agree completely with your closing statement but lay stress on the first clause -
"Executed in the right way, it could be a very powerful technique for creating high performing, high converting websites."
I agree that if a user doesn't want to be tracked, they can change their privacy settings to reflect that. However do not underestimate users ability to sniff out what is going on. I'm sure someone can provide concrete data for retargeting conversion rate, but to say that users don't even notice is surely missing the boat. We've been inundated with advertising all our lives and can sense when something is out of balance. I was shopping for X the other day, and now I see ads for X ten times as often as before.... it may still work, but it is not subtle.
Hey Rob - thanks for bringing this to the table.
This is really cool but I am a little concerned about how long this hack will be around for.
Can anyone comment as to how long it has been around and the likely hood of it being patched?
I may have my developers look into this.
I came across it at least two years ago, patches (such as a FF add-on) are trickling through.
https://ha.ckers.org/weird/CSS-history.cgi mentions tragetting IE7 and FF2 and is from 2007.
Thanks Rob, for this interesting topic. While I'm appreciative of this article - and believe it may be quite helpful, I (as a website visitor) don't feel I've provided implicit consent for someone to track my visit history, other than the one I'm on - So I wouldn't like this at all, and would feel it's an invasion (unsolicited and unapproved) of my privacy. But hey... Google does this to me all the time ;-)