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This gives website owners access to unprecedented amounts of data about what we choose to do with our time online.
Image Credits: Google Survey
The concept of “paywalling”
A number of websites that had previously been free to access have recently put up what is known in the industry as a “paywall”. This means that in order to access the services and information on a website, the user has to become a subscriber and pay for the information that they access. The newspapers in the Murdoch Group now require those who wish to use the websites to get venues to sign up for a subscription in order to access.
Anecdotally, Internet users are not keen on the concept of “paywalling”. Whereas the Internet was once principally a source of information, most people’s online experience is no more wanted to with shopping than is to do with learning.
Something that was once a giant library is now a giant shopping mall, and people are resentful that things that were previously accessible for free now attract a charge. However what Google are offering may be a compromise in this situation.
The alternative to the paywall proposed by Google is the idea of a “surveywall.” Whereas with the paywall the users are required to sign up for a subscription, the surveywall operates by allowing users to answer survey questions in order to access the websites they want to see.
A recent article in the Guardian described the concept as "fast, simple and efficient." Provided the concept is simple and the question precise, asking users to respond to a straightforward question before they access the service they want to be an absolute goldmine of market research information.
Google & Marketing
Google has become a global player in the marketing business over the past few years. With the introduction and growth of Google Adwords, and in particular the algorithms its uses to target the marketing it shows to its consumers, it has a huge amount of expertise to bring to the area of market research.
For a number of years, Adwords has been offering tailored packages two businesses ranging from small sole traders are up to multi-national corporations. With its recent development, Google is ready to bring this intelligence to the business of gathering the market information as well as promoting products.
Possible applications
For companies looking to get a quick idea of what people might think of their product branding or packaging, using the Google Surveywall might be an excellent option. There is also huge potential for the individual packets of data gathered by Google to be aggregated and processed to produce information by country, by industry sector or just about any other variables you can imagine.
Of course the biggest winners in this scenario are likely to be Google. With a vast number of users at use its services or every single hour, it essentially has access to the largest customer panel anywhere in the world. There is no need to preregister people and the ability to collect vast amounts of information extremely quickly is likely to prove both attractive two market research is and lucrative for Google.
As with anything, there will always be drawbacks. In this case, the selection of participants will be very opportunistic and nowhere near as rigorous as the processes used to put together consumer panels. That said, if what you’re looking for is a straightforward love or hate reaction it’s hard to imagine a more straightforward way to achieve this.
Conclusion
The concept of the Surveywall is an interesting one for market researchers. The opportunities to use it to gain rapid opinions or aggregated data from extremely large populations are great. However, as with all methods the usefulness of the Surveywall concept will have limited applications and will need to be chosen carefully. If you need practical advice for online surveys contact the 2 Europe agency for further information.
Faizan Ahmad About the Author:
This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.