Search Engines Are These Another Method For Businesses To Take Note Of Our Habits?
We call at the chemists and are given loyalty cards. We can gain points by using our card as we shop. The more we spend, the the faster the points we amass. With many loyalty cards we are posted special offers for articles we purchase regularly. So if the shop knows what we purchase regularly, they are surely observing our shopping.
Yes, this is the real reason for their loyalty cards. These companies want to know what consumers are purchasing. Which customers buy what. Who they should be promoting certain items to. Well, we all know this in reality, but we like the suggestion of getting money back, or fuel, or special treats, so we take the loyalty card in spite of ourselves. Even our banks are now aware when we go abroad, and if we have not updated them before we travel, our bank funds are frozen, to protect us from fraud, but again it reveals how our movements are being tracked.
So now with the development of the Internet Business, we shop on line. We may Work From Home and think to use the internet to search for items we need. This may be as easy as doing our weekly supermarket shopping using the internet. If we do, we will observe the next time we go to the virtual shop, many of the Online Jobs are arranged for us, we do not have to remember all the items we added to our basket last time, and what area of the virtual supermarket they are, the company’s site remembers we got these items and prompts us to add them to our basket.
If we are using a search engine for occasional queries, we start adding our query and are prompted by queries we have entered before – is this what we are searching for again?
As I Work From Home, I often use an on line bookstore to find special books I may require. I am prompted to confirm that it is me and not somebody else who is searching through their web site, then they advise me, as I search, what other customers who have made similar purchases also bought. So, they know who I am, what I have bought in the past and what other folk with similar tastes have also picked. The Internet Business is certainly very complex!
When we search through sites, looking for data, perhaps in relation to something we have read, we may often see a counter on a web page, advising how many folk have visited this web page. They are monitoring traffic through their web page. Perhaps they want to know which pages are of most interest to other folk, or maybe they just want a general idea of how popular their web page is, but somehow when we click on their web page, they know.
As we all do lots more Online Jobs and tasks we would have gone to the library to do previously, or gone to the local high street with cash, we leave a trail which is simple to follow. We are making ourselves visible to the outside world and anyone who wants to follow us in our virtual world can do it quite effortlessly.
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