 | |
 | |
| Developer(s) | |
|---|---|
| Initial release | March 29, 2012 (2012-03-29)[1] |
| Operating system | Cross-platform (web-based application) |
| Type | Statistics,Surveys[2] |
| Website | surveys |
Google Surveys (previously known asGoogle Consumer Surveys)[3] was a business tool developed byGoogle that aimed to simplify personalizedmarket research.[1] Released in 2012, Google announced in September 2022 that it would cease operations on November 1, 2022.[4] This product was designed by Google as an alternative to internetpay walls for websites that publish content. The program was launched by several online publishers such asPandora,AdWeek, and theNew York Daily News.[5] Google Surveys was part of theGoogle Marketing Platform.
Google Surveys offered a web interface for designing surveys and provided the audience to take them. The survey questions had to meet certain requirements regarding length and content.
Google received money from business customers such as market research firms and small businesses who create the surveys. In addition to the paid services, Google also offered a free survey for websites with predefined questions targeted at people visiting the website.[6] Every time a user responded to a survey, the publishers would earnUS$0.05.[citation needed]
From the consumer side, the surveys worked as apaywall (also called a "survey-wall") for websites offering premium content.[7] Users visiting these websites had the option of responding to a survey to access content for free.[8]
Google Surveys utilized inferred demographics to balance its sample, gauging respondent demographics based on their past web browsing activity.[9]
The product was launched on March 29, 2012.[10][11]
On February 19, 2015, Google announced Consumer Surveys as a platform for publishers to monetize their online content.[12] Initially, this platform was available only for publishers from the US, UK and Canada.[13] Publishers' payments were made through theAdSense payment system, but the platform had its own management and reporting console.
On October 19, 2016, Google announced that it had renamed the product from Google Consumer Surveys to Google Surveys and was moving it to part of theGoogle Analytics product suite.[3]
In September 2022, Google announced that Google Surveys would close on November 1, 2022.
Notable uses of Google Surveys included voter information tools and behavior surveys of holiday travelers.[14] Google Surveys published voteropinion polls leading up to the2012 US presidential elections. According toNew York Times' blogger and statisticianNate Silver, the Google Surveys' election polls were ranked second in terms of reliability and lack of bias in predicting election results for the2012 presidential election.[15] However, it was the worst performing pollster for the2016 presidential election.[16]
Pew Research Center conducted a series of tests to evaluate Google Surveys in consultation with Google. In November 2012, Pew independently published an analysis of the results up to that point, which stated in part that a "comparison of several demographic questions asked by Pew Research indicates that the Google Consumer Surveys sample appears to conform closely to the demographic composition of the overall internet population".[17]
Google Surveys has been compared toSurveyMonkey (which also offers both a survey creation interface and a way to purchase an audience), where it was praised for its low cost per response but was found to have less flexibility in designing the survey.[18][19]
Google also reviewed Google Surveys in awhite paper, concluding that "Google Consumer Surveys can be used in place of more traditional Internet-based panels without sacrificing accuracy" while also stating that "since Google Consumer Surveys only allows one-question or screening two-question surveys, analysis of the relationships between survey questions are difficult or sometimes not even possible".[7]: 10
