SSM is Google’s new consumer profiling technique, and correlates offline purchases using credit and debit cards with online activity such as location searches. The technique, announced May 23, marks a qualitative increase in Google’s efforts to obtain and monetize information about its users.

Under SSM, Google takes information from undisclosed data brokerage firms and credit card companies and aggregates and anonymizes it using a proprietary algorithm. This data—which can include customers’ names, purchase location, purchase time and the amount of money spent—is then correlated to the information on Internet usage that Google has been accumulating and analyzing for years.