Tracking & Conversion Measurements Archives

A week later, Google added Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, to Google Analytics. Last week we reported that webmasters were frustrated that Bing was not available in the search engine referral reports within the free Google Analytics immediately.

It seems like a week later, Google finally added Bing support. Sometime over the weekend, looks like possibly on Saturday night, Google added the Bing support.

If you now go to Google Analytics and click on the traffic sources and then search engines, you should be able to see the keyword referrals Bing sent you since June 5th, Friday.

If I compare June 5, 6, and 7th, Bing sent me 0.39% of my search engine traffic. How about you?

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Bing launched a couple days early, yesterday morning and Google Analytics users are confused as to why it does not show up in the search engine reports. The day Google released Chrome, their new browser, Google Analytics supported the new browser immediately.

So why the delay with Bing? Well, Google didn't know exactly what or when it would be coming. It did come a couple days early and now that it is here, Google can begin programming that new search engine into the reports. I doubt Microsoft gave Google an early preview of the search engine and how the search referral strings would work. But now that it is live, Google can begin adding it to Google Analytics.

A Google Analytics Help thread has confirmation from a Googler, Anna, that this will be working shortly. Anna from the Google Analytics team said:

Our team is aware of this, and the required action will be taken soon!

As of this morning, it was not working, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was done shortly.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Earlier this month, we noticed Google Analytics changed the graph to display only day counts selected. In the past, it faded out the rest of the month when you selected a few days. In addition, if you selected just a single day, it would break down the visits by hour.

Now this is no longer the case. So we ran a poll to see what Google Analytics customers or users want. Here are the results of the 100 responses:

Question: Do You Like New or Old Google Analytics Graph?

:: I Like Old Graph, That Fades Unselected Days said 83 respondents or 83%
:: I Like New Graph, That Only Displays Selected Days said 15 respondents or 15%
:: Other said 2 respondents or 2%

Forum discussion continued at Google Analytics Help.

eWhisper, WebmasterWorld moderator said that he sees a new feature in his AdWords account. The new feature allows him to link up his AdWords account with his Analytics account and bring in the tracking conversion data from AdWords directly into Analytics.

eWhisper said:

This feature seems to be about a week old. If you go to Google conversion tracking, there is an option for linking Google analytics goals to count as conversion types.

I personally tried to replicate this, but was unable to. I assume I am having issues linking up my accounts. In any event, here is the help document that explains how to link my Analytics goals and transactions to AdWords Conversion Tracking. I'll repeat those instructions here:

1. Sign into your Google Analytics account.
2. Click "Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings."
3. Make sure you've selected at least the "With other Google products only" options under "Share my Google Analytics data..."
4. Click "Save Changes" to finish.
5. Navigate to the Conversion Tracking page from within your AdWords account. The Conversion Tracking page will show a message alerting you that your goals and tractionsactions are ready to be linked. Please note that it may take up to two weeks for your Analytics data to be imported into AdWords.
6. Click "Link your Analytics goals and transactions" from the Conversion Tracking table.
7. Select the goals or transactions you want from the list. Each listed item will have the Analytics profile name, the type of action (goal or transaction), an editable field for the action name, and pull-down menu for the action's tracking purpose. Edit the action name and tracking purpose here so that you can identify the goals once they show up in your AdWords conversion reports.
8. Select "Link" from the bottom of the table to finish.

AdWords Conversion Tracking will then start importing the data from your Analytics account starting from the day you clicked "Link." Historical data from before this date will not be added to conversion tracking. You will begin to see your goals appear alongside your conversion data in your Conversion Tracking page and AdWords reports after approximately two weeks.

This is an obvious connection Google has made and hopefully this will make the tracking of ROI just a bit easier for AdWords advertisers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A week ago, Google Analytics fixed a bug with content data reports, now they need to fix issues with Google Analytics users logging into their accounts.

There are several threads in the Google Analytics Help forum discussing how Google is displaying an error message when they login.

Googler, Christelle, said in a Google Analytics Help thread:

If you get this error message (Error Has Been Detected) when you click on the View Reports link, please add your username in the form at https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pKyhdPcaY98d84kyJhdBELg

Your login email will be fixed within 24 hours (excluding weekends and holidays)

-- Christelle

PS: Please do not post your email address here

So if you are seeing the message, "Error Has Been Detected," please go to the URL above and fill out the form.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Starting a few days ago, it appears Google Analytics changed the behavior of the display graph based on your date selection criteria. In the past, if you selected a specific date criteria that was less than 30 days, Google would fade out the remainder of the days and highlight the dates you selected. Now, it looks like Google only shows the dates you selected.

This is a small but very significant change. I personally prefer seeing the whole 30 days on the graph, with Google highlighting that they are only using the days I selected. But not everyone agrees with me on that and Google has changed it to totally remove the unselected days from the graph.

The picture below shows a few days of traffic from my personal blog. In the past, it would show the full 30 days, and just bold those days I selected, now it just shows those days and hides the rest:

Do you like the new way Google Analytics handles this? Take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Google Analytics was experiencing an issue with the "Content Data" reports where it would not show information in some cases. Specifically, if you selected an individual date from the date selector and then viewed the Content Data reports, it would show up with no data.

The issue was first confirmed by a Google representative in Google Analytics Help. In that thread, Analytics Pro Christelle said two days ago:

Thanks everyone for the posts. We are aware that the Content reports have not updated and are showing 0 data when you select an individual date for the past week. We are working on this - and, it will be fixed soon.

Then this morning, Christelle informed us it was fixed.

We experienced a temporary issue with displaying data for certain dates, which has now been fixed. You should start seeing correct content data going forward.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Google announced the public availability of the Google Analytics API this week and SEOs are very happy about it.

SEOs thrive with data and even better SEOs have ways to automatically build software that uses this data to improve their conversions. Dynamically creating new pages based on search query data or A/B testing landing pages based on bounce rates and conversions in an automated fashion, simply makes sense. There are just an incredible amount of opportunity with this new API and SEOs are excited about it.

To be fair, most SEOs who realized this benefit already built internal systems to handle most of the tracking and dynamic creation of content and landing pages. But maybe Google Analytics gives them new ways to peal away at the data that they haven't had the time or resources to get at as of yet?

If you have technical questions about the API, you can check out the new Google Analytics API Group. There is a dedicated Googler there to help.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Technically, Google has agreed to store your Google Analytics data for at least 25 months. We ran a poll the other week, asking you if that is long enough. Most of you said, no it is not.

Of the 190 plus responses, 156 of your, or 82% said, that 25 months of storage is not enough time. While 35 of you, or 18% said it is enough.

Truth be told, Google seems to store this data longer than 25 months. Even if that is not the case, Google Analytics is free. There are paid versions and in those paid version, you can control the data storage retention policies. Or you can use a totally different analytics program and pay for it as well.

Forum discussion continued at Google Analytics Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

About a week ago, many Google Analytics users and Google AdWords advertisers began noticing that the AdWords cost data was no longer being sent to the Google Analytics reports. We said that Google sent a warning that this may happen, if you don't link the two accounts.

Googler, AnalyticsPro.Chris, created a new "sticky" thread at Google Analytics Help discussions that talks about this issue.

Chris said:

Going forward, you'll have to tag your URLs and enable cost data to see AdWords data in your Analytics account.

If your accounts stopped receiving AdWords CPC/PPC data around March 23/24, It is possible that it is affected by the cost data changes implemented then. If you are an admin on such an account, you should have received a message, in February, with the subject line: Action required: Important change to AdWords/Analytics cost data

Here's an article explaining the different scenarios: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57167

So if you have this issue, hopefully this will help you going forward.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Back in the day, tracking how bots accessed your site was a bit of a crave. Now, you don't hear about it much. The old Google Analytics, aka Urchin, had a section for displaying bot activity on your site. It did this because Urchin also analyzed your log files, in addition to the method Google Analytics uses to track based on JavaScript. Since most spiders don't load JavaScript, popular analytical software, such as Google Analytics, won't track the bot activity.

To track bot activity, you need to use analytic software that analysis your log files. There are other methods, including writing your own database script to track all bot activity. Back in the day, Darrin Ward (founder of SEO Chat, who sold it years ago) created a script that looked for bot activity and stored the data in a MySQL database. I forgot the name of the software, but I bet it is still out there now or there are plenty of alternatives.

If you don't want to instal anything but you still want to track bot activity, there are ways.

In Google Webmaster Tools, you can go to the "Crawl Stats" section under "Statistics" and get data from Google on how active GoogleBot is on your site. Google will show you data and time based graphs for:

• Number of pages crawled per day
• Number of kilobytes downloaded per day
• Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)

Here is a screen shot of our graphs:

If spiders are not crawling your site, you might have to worry. Otherwise, this is often a metric not discussed often by SEOs.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.

FeedBurner is having a reporting failure yet again. I have received at least four emails and several IMs since April 1st from concerned bloggers that their FeedBurner subscribers numbers have dropped. I personally saw this myself, where FeedBurner is reporting only 8,000 or so subscribers to this site, when in fact, we normally have 20,000+.

The issue? Googler Matt S. confirmed the issue in a Google Groups thread, saying that FeedBurner is having problems retrieving the accurate numbers from Google Feedfetcher. Google notified the Google Feedfetcher team and they hope it is corrected soon. Here is a screen shot showing the huge discrepancy between March 31st and April 2nd, in terms of the numbers reported from Google Feedfetcher, typically people's most popular RSS syndication service. The difference is 9,842 subscribers versus 18 subscribers.

March 31st:

April 2nd:

Here is Matt's post:

If you compare individual days (e.g., March 31 vs. April 1) in Analyze > Feed Stats > Subscribers, I'm guessing most of the missing subscribers are from Google Feedfetcher. We've notified that team of the temporary drop in subscribers we're seeing reported by them and will work with them to resolve the issue.

These issues happen fairly often, so when you see it, don't worry. It is very rare that you would lose 50% of your subscribers overnight, even if you did touch the Queen of England.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

There is a thread at WebmasterWorld and several in the Google Analytics Help forum with complaints that Google Analytics is no longer tracking Google AdWords data properly.

The WebmasterWorld thread has this complaint:

In two of my analytics accounts for sites which I use adwords to drive traffic all of the data is being recorded as direct and not google(cpc)...and it not reporting any traffic from adwords (which my wallet tells my otherwise!)It is only for the past two days including today. Is anyone else seeing this? Is it a glitch?

The simple answer is that in February, Google notified us that we need to link our analytics account to our AdWords accounts to pass this information. So if you have not done so, and your Analytics data is looking a bit empty, go ahead and link up those accounts. Brad has a good post explaining how to link up your accounts.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Analytics Help.

An Introduction to Log File Analysis for SEOs & Webmasters from Eric Lander is a must read for all SEOs out there. He says that if you are not looking at your raw log files, you are missing out on things, even if you have the best web analytics software. Eric goes through the various key metrics in the log files that are key in your log file analysis process.

A Sphinn thread has extremely positive discussion around the article. I wish I had more time this morning to share my thoughts, but the article is great and the discussion makes it even better.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A Google Analytics Help thread has confirmation from a Googler that your Analytics data will remain in your account for at least the past 25 months.

Anna from the Google Analytics team said, "data is stored for at least 25 months," when using Google Analytics.

After that, I guess you should export the data and save it locally. Is 25 months enough for you? Personally, I am not too sure. Here is a poll, let me know what you think:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

YouTube has added new statistics to YouTube Insights, the YouTube video analytics. I wrote about YouTube Insights when it first launched a year ago. Today, they added features to tell you how engaged your viewers are, i.e. do they like your videos?

YouTube added a new tab named "community" clicking on that tab brings up the "User Engagement" stats. It looks like this for my account:

You can also break the community stats down by "ratings":

Or by "comments":

Or "favorites":

These are welcome features for me, being that I produce a weekly search video that you all subscribe to, right?

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

One of my top referrers on virtually all my web sites is Google Image Search. Google Image Search typically is in the top five referrers for most of my web sites. And it is likely one of the top referrers for your web sites. The issue is, Google Analytics doesn't consider Google Image Search a search engine.

A Google Analytics Help thread has a request from a webmaster or two that they would love to see which keywords trigger the referrers from Google Image Search. In response to that, Googler, Christelle said it is not possible as the default set up. Christelle said:

You won't get the keyword information because images.google.com is not treated as a search engine by default.

Why is Google Image Search not treated as a search engine? Isn't Google Image Search one of the most used Google properties, just behind YouTube and maybe Gmail? I cannot tell you how I wish I had the keyword reports broken down under the Google Image Search engine. I bet there is a way to set up advanced reports to make this happen, but why shouldn't Google treat Image Search as a search engine. Isn't it a search engine?

Take the poll below and let me know if you want Google Analytics to treat Google Image search as a search engine:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Dozens of webmasters are reporting that their FeedBurner subscriber count numbers are dropping like flies, over night. There are dozens of threads on the topic, but the largest one is at Google Groups.

Some publishers are noticing drops from hundreds of subscribers to just a few subscribers. The biggest anomaly is TechCrunch, which is currently sporting zero subscribers, even Arrington twittered this.

I am sure this is just a temporary reporting glitch. It wouldn't be the first time. In October 2008 we saw a major reporting glitch and also in August 2008.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google has been rolling out integration of your AdSense data in Google Analytics since October, but many publishers still wish they had it. If you do not have it yet, you can now get it.

AdSenseAdvisor posted a WebmasterWorld thread said you can get it by going to the Inside AdSense Blog and reading the top. The top basically says:

Want to integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics? Improved reporting was on publisher wish lists this year, so we're spreading the reporting cheer this holiday season. Fill out our interest form, and we may be able to enable the feature earlier for you.

So if you want your AdSense integrated in Analytics, quickly go to the interest form and fill it out. It will then add your name to the list and you should get it soon.

AdSenseAdvisor said this is a Happy Holidays present to publishers. So take it while you can!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It appears there have been recent complaints at the Google Groups discussion area that FeedBurner stats are way down for many folks.

Last night, Google, the owner of FeedBurner, confirmed that there is an issue with Bloglines tracking, saying:

We have seen many reports that Bloglines subscribers are not currently being tracked. We are making adjustments to restore Bloglines as a subscriber source and will update this issue once it's resolved. (Please note that any subscribers on Bloglines are still receiving your feed updates; they just aren't being reflected in your stats at this time.)

A Googler updated that document and said it has been an issue since about December 6th. Since Bloglines is a fairly popular reader, your FeedBurner stats may be way off.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Does Alexa have a separate set of standards that allow them to ignore metatags that other search engines are supposed to ignore? Well, perhaps Alexa thinks it does, because the statistics package site is ignoring the 'noarchive' tag and one webmaster complains that 5000 pages are being archived by Alexa.

Huh?

It seems that, according to IncrediBILL, Alexa only honors robots.txt files and not metatags (huh x2?) If you have a problem, you have to contact Alexa directly.

But why does Alexa think it's above the rules and can't respect/honor the directives in the HTML files themselves? Why should you have to go to them directly?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

An interesting and detailed discussion on various marketing funnels looks at Traditional, Web 2.0 and Holistic methods.

Most of us view conversions within a more restricted scope. And that scope is often prescribed by being one of four basic site types: content (conversion == subscriptions, ads), ecommerce (conversion == sales), lead-generation (conversion == form completions, whitepaper downloads), or self-service (conversion == fewer complaints).

In the end, however, it is up to you to decide what makes a conversion. And of course it is perfectly acceptable to target multiple conversions.

In practice poorly converting buckets outnumber high conversion funnels.

Delve into this one at Cre8asiteforums in Traditional -> Web2 -> Holistic, The Conversion Funnel Mindset

Facebook was in the news recently because they hadn't met revenue projections. Why? Their target users are coming to network and "be social" rather than to buy something. Their ad-based revenue plan is missing its mark.

Another example are spam blogs ("splogs") that steal content from authentic blogs, buy a junk domain, and slap on Google Ads in the hopes of generating revenue. Perhaps some of these nonsense beggar sites do earn a piddly wage, but not to the tune of millions of dollars.

Are we "banner blind"? Yes. Are you stuck in the "Build it and they will come?" mindset? Are you a print advertiser trying to learn the ways of web marketing?

Once you begin to sell ads directly all the old offline knowledge sets come into play. Have you studied how best to adapt advertising theory and practice to the web? To your sites? Just as many webdevs instinctively optimise both for users and SEs, and some for ppc, they should also be optimising their ad offerings, their major revenue streams. You've built it, they are actually coming...now sell some drinks and fast food and ad space...

Cre8asiteforums discusses the topic from all angles in You Optimise For Users And Ses. What about your revenue sources?

I got word from a Matt (also a RustyBricker) who also runs Ask A Geek, that Google Analytics has a new front page design, at least slightly.

If you go to Google Analytics you may notice thew new favicon in the URL, which looks like the logo at the top right of this article. You may also notice that in the middle of the page, it says, "The New Google Analytics," adding "Google Analytics has been re-designed to help you learn even more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site." Here is a picture:

Currently, no one sees the new redesign in Google Analytics. We only see the text on the home page that there is a redesign.

There is forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Blogoscoped Forums with discussion around this topic. Again, no one sees any redesigned features within Google Analytics. They only see the mention of a new design at the Google Analytics homepage.

So maybe we can expect a redesign soon?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Update: The Google Analytics Blog posted at 4:30pm (EST), Streamlined Login to Google Analytics. Basically, they redesigned the login area.

I am a huge fan of Google Analytics, but even so, you should be aware of several bugs that have been confirmed by Google.

(1) A Google Groups thread confirms that some users are unable to login to Google Analytics, due to a "Redirect Loop." The error message continues to say, "Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete...".

There errors began to be reported on July 7th. Last night, a Google representative replied saying:

Thanks for your patience while our technical team works to resolve this issue. They are aware of the redirect error that occurs with some users when they try to log in to their Analytics account. While we work towards a long term solution, please visit the following URL and create a new account using the same login email:

https://www.google.com/analytics/provision/

(2) Google Analytics has been reporting to some users that their tracking code is not installed. But the reality of it is, the tracking code for those sites are installed properly and Google Analytics is actually tracking data and reporting on that data. So the message is incorrect and the tracking code for some of these sites are indeed installed correctly. I actually have this on one client's site, and I can personally confirm it.

A Google representative confirmed the issue in a Google Groups thread:

As some of you have mentioned, there is currently a technical issue with the tracking code status indicator. Even after you install the Analytics tracking code on your site and receive data, you may see a "Tracking Not Installed" error next to the profile in question. If you see data in your reports, you may disregard this error while our technical team investigates.

(3) Google Analytics is duplicating the cities information in the Map Overlay reports for some users. A Google Groups thread has a picture of what this may look like for you:

A Google representative confirmed the issue:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Our technical team is aware of this issue, where duplicate entries for a city can appear in the Map Overlay report. For now we have enough information to investigate. In the meantime, thanks for being patient!

There are three bugs that have been recently confirmed by Google Analytics that you should be aware of.

Forum discussion at Google Groups (1), Google Groups (2) and Google Groups (3).

Over the course of a month or two, many Google Analytics users began distrusting the reports provided in Google Analytics. We now have more reports, this time via Search Engine Roundtable Forums of Google Analytics not reporting accurate numbers.

I noticed yesterday's reports for this site was down about 20%. I immediately thought, give it a day and see if the numbers are higher tomorrow. They were. The numbers reported for Tuesday on Wednesday, was at normal levels when I looked today, Thursday. So I thought, maybe Google Analytics changed the time they are processing these reports (i.e. pulling in less data because they are running the reports earlier).

For example, let's say, Google Analytics typically runs the reports at 3am every morning. If Google Analytics pushed the report runs to 10pm every night, then you will be missing out on 2 hours of traffic, from the previous day. That means, you would have to wait a two-day period to see your full traffic data for the previous day. Hope I explained that well.

In any event, I am also hearing these reports outside of the forums - so this seems fairly widespread. Is this an bug or a feature - now that is the question.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Folks at WebmasterWorld have been complaining that their Google Analytics data seemed off for weeks now. Well, they were dead on. If you go to Google Analytics, you will now notice that they have admitted to having data processing issues between the dates of April 30th to May 5th. Google promised to recover most of the data but all some of the e-commerce data between those date ranges are gone. (New Info: Google tells me that those with e-commerce reporting are more impacted by the data loss, but not all e-commerce data is loss.)

Here is the exact notification from Google:

Google Analytics experienced a data processing error from April 30th to May 5th. Almost all of the data has been recovered and is currently being reprocessed. The recovered data will be reflected in your reports within a few days. Please note that a small percentage of data, particularly in the area of e-commerce reporting, was not recoverable from those dates.

The Google Analytics team promised to take "every precaution to prevent such disruptions from occurring again in the future." But what do Analytics users get for the loss? Nothing. Should you expect something? I don't think so - it is a free service. In my opinion, if you need someone to take the heat, you need to pay.

There is no exact ETA on when the data that Google was able to recover will be represented in the reports. So keep an eye out on your stats for those date ranges.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

YouTube and Google both announced YouTube Insights, a new way to see more detailed statistics on your YouTube videos. I did a detailed post at Search Engine Land on the topic. If you have YouTube videos, you can see the stats by going to the my videos link and clicking on "about this video" button. Here is a screen shot of the button:

Now, my most popular video by far is the iPhone Popcorn Trick where I wrote that my iPhone can make popcorn. Here is that video:

Here is the YouTube Insights stats overview for this video:

Let's zoom in on the chart on the left and expand it to a year to see views for the past year:

Here is the video popularity compared to other videos across the year time span:

Views plotted on the world map:

Here are pictures (slide show format) of the views by continent:

Why is it so popular? Well, YouTube Insights currently doesn't show referral data but I have a feeling that is coming. I know why this video is so popular. Due to universal search and the video ranking number on in Google for searches similar to iphone popcorn.

Love the stats we have so far and looking forward to referral data YouTube!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night, the Google Analytics Benchmarking feature went live for those who opted in to the program. More on how to take advantage of that feature over here. Here are some stats from my personal blog.

You can also filter down the benchmarking to specific industries by selecting the "category list." Here are some of the options, broken open - the list will continue to expand as more sites are included:

Note: Google doesn't ask what industry you are in, they must get this information from some other method.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Tuesday morning we reported issues with Google Analytics but those issues have not yet been resolved. In short, the graphs and charts seem to be lagging behind by two days. But if you look closely and narrow down the date range to yesterday, Google Analytics is reporting statistics for the day, just not on the pretty graphs.

A revived DigitalPoint Forums thread has discussion on this. Lots and lots of Google Analytics users are reporting this as an issue. I see the issue myself as well.

Here is a screen capture of the issue. I want you to notice that today is 3/14 (Pi Day) and the date drop down shows 3/13 as the last day, but the last metric in the chart goes until the 12th, when it should go until the 13th.

Again, this issue has been lingering on since at least this Monday and I believe it is impacting every Google Analytics user. No word from Google on when it will be resolved.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

This morning I checked my Google Analytics for dozens of sites and noticed that the reports are missing yesterday's statistics. The March 10, 2008 data are missing from all my reports.

Is Google Analytics lagged? Did they have some sort of hiccup?

A Google Groups thread has other Google Analytics users complaining this morning, but then I saw this post:

I had panicked when I saw this too, but the numbers are still in the report, they are just not being displayed in the graph. If you highlight yesterday's date you can see the numbers below the graph.

It is true, while the visitors graph seems a day behind, if you change the date in the date drop down to today, it will actually show the correct stats in the detailed reports.

There are also many people complaining about it on Twitter including Scott and Brian.

I wonder when the visual reporting will be fixed?

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

The other day, SEOmoz released what they named SEO Analytics. The beauty about this package is that nothing needs to be installed on your site, all this does is watch the search space for signals on your domain. It really does not track rankings or traffic, it does however track links, search engine saturation, mentions and more. Here are some screen captures via SEOmoz:

Google Mentions:

Live Search Saturation or Index Count:

Google News Mentions:

This is a hybrid of a reputation management system with SEO details. If you are looking for a purely online reputation management application, check out Andy Beal's Trackur, by the way.

Right now, the SEOmoz tool tracks "brand" mentions in Google web search, Google blog search, Google news search, and domain mentions in Google. It also tracks linkage data in Yahoo web search, Yahoo Site Explorer, Technorati, and Google Blog Search. Plus it site inclusion stats in Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Site Explorer, Live Search and Ask.com.

If you are looking for a more robust SEO specific tool that correlates your search rankings and stats with your site traffic and are willing to install tracking code, then maybe Enquisite Beta is for you. The reporting functionality in that tool is incredibly comprehensive. Here is a short list of what it can do, but you can learn more at this page:

• Coordinate and monitor traditional marketing activities and online marketing campaigns
• Gain valuable business intelligence to fine tune your online and offline marketing efforts and drive sales growth
• Determine and exploit search and business trend lines
• Compare and refine traffic patterns from different search engines
• Discover keywords used to acquire search traffic from one engine and apply those keywords to improve performance at the other engines
• Compare search traffic from different geographic communities to better determine and take advantage of key marketplaces
• Monitor PPC traffic to ensure it corresponds with your pre-set campaign parameters.
• Build your business by increasing online and offline sales conversions
• Know your market

And of course, we have Google Analytics and many other great tracking tools.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Just when you might have hoped you couldn't possibly be pegged by another label, along comes Web Community Social Roles by Roger Dooley. The article focuses on a study called Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups.

The abstract states, in part,

"Our analysis focuses on distinguishing the signatures of one role from others, the role of “answer people." Answer people are individuals whose dominant behavior is to respond to questions posed by other users. We found that answer people predominantly contribute one or a few messages to discussions initiated by others, are disproportionately tied to relative isolates, have few intense ties and have few triangles in their local networks. OLS regression shows that these signatures are strongly correlated with role behavior and, in combination, provide a strongly predictive model for identifying role behavior (R2=.72). To conclude, we consider strategies for further improving the identification of role behavior in online discussion settings and consider how the development of a taxonomy of author types could be extended to a taxonomy of newsgroups in particular and discussion systems in general."

Cre8asiteforums members have taken a shot at the findings, applying it to that forum, but also to others that members belong to. Some see themselves, and several feel they don't fit precisely into a role at all. One person noted that the role of Moderator or Administrator was not mentioned in the study.

Our social roles online are another point brought out in the study and Dooley's article. If social behavior on the web sites interests you, check out the Cre8asiteforums discussion called Web Community Social Roles - Which Are You?

Yesterday I was prepped by the folks on Google for my post on Google Analytics Launches New Version With New UI & Features at Search Engine Land. What is new? In short, there is a new user interface, sleek new graphs and reports, and features such as email reports, customizable dashboards and easier to understand explanations of reports. The Google Blog and Google Analytics Blog both now have posts on this new release.

There are tons of screen captures floating around Flickr. Google sent me a few, but here is a screen capture of the dashboard.

For a smooth transition, here are a few helpful resources specific to the new version:

• Take a tour of the new version
  
• Report Finder Tool: will help you see where data from the previous interface is located within the new version (it is also linked to from within your reports on the left navigation menu)
  
• FAQs for more details about the new version
• New version features page

Both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld have threads on the release. Here are some comments from those who were already upgraded, don't worry if you do not see the new analytics yet, you will within a few weeks.

Just logged in and have seen the new version. I like the AJAX elements, but like you, it will take time to adjust to it.

Definitley a much snazzier interface, I really like the new graphing options

The new site overlay feature is really sweet also. So is the Graphing comparisons month-to-month.

Again, if you do not see the new version - you will in the next several weeks. If you see the new version and want the old version, you will be able to access it for at least 30 days.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Last week, WebProNews and others announced that MSN was very interested in acquiring DoubleClick. DoubleClick, much like Atlas, is a system which allows for the tracking and management of Web media, from images to banners to videos and even text.

Much like an old Bruce Lee movie, the Google dragon seems to have entered the fray as soon as the price was estimated at $2B. According to various reports and a thread at WebmasterWorld Forums, Google is interested in joining MSN's pursuit of the popular and effective technology. The thread's starter cites news posted at Yahoo! and wonders if this is where MSN must make its stance. If anyone can stand up to Google, it has to be MSN, right? (side note see this interesting commentary about standing up to Google here: Is Google Too Powerful?)

The first reply indicates that MSN may be willing to back down however, quoting an MSN executive as saying

"...at $2 billion...I would pass."

The news has sparked instant interest in areas outside of SEM, including the financial blog community, as evidenced by this commentary this morning at streetinsider.

A nice Search Engine Watch Forums thread asks for tips on how to learn about your competitors web statistics in any way. Normally, the best and most accurate method is to see the actual log files, but very often that is not possible. So what data can you get?

Some suggestions given in the thread include:

• Alexa - but we all know that it is far from accurate
• Quantcast - free internet ratings service.
• Compete - like Alexa

There are other services listed in the Search Engine Watch Forums thread, but I also want to point you to A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available by Rand, it is a very comprehensive list of publicly available tools that can help you learn as much as possible about your competitors web site.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Tracking your metrics is vital in today's world of marketing, no one would argue with that. But when it comes to tracking PPC campaigns down to the phone call, it can get expensive and cumbersome.

Discovery, Moderator at SEW Forums said in a Search Engine Watch Forums mobile ad thread;

We apply this same method to all of our marketing campaigns down to a pretty granular level. We have a unique phone number tied to every marketing campaign. In PPC and at Google for example we tie it down to the campaign level, in some circumstances down to the ad group level. The webpages dynamically display the proper number based on passed variables.

It is import, so import, you should probably also automatically associate that call to your PPC metrics, through integration of that data.

Today, it is really doable by most quality developers to get this done at a reasonable cost.

With open source phone systems and PBXs such as the Asterisk solution, you can easily build out a custom solution for your dynamic PPC campaign, even your organic campaigns.

Dynamically, your web pages can assign a unique phone number or phone extension to dial, that will automatically route and track that call for what it truly is. Setting a cookie, can be done over the phone in this sense and it doesn't have to cost you a million dollars to set up.

Who knows, maybe I or someone else will come out with a plugin for Asterisk that does this?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forum thread discusses one site owner who has mysteriously received two hours worth of free Google AdWords traffic. He received an extra 800 unique visitors from pagead2.googlesyndication.com, the referring source of Google AdWords. The site owner does not have any active AdWords campaigns running. The site owner does not run any affiliate program.

Possible reasons for the traffic listed in the forum?

(1) Spyware or something that changes the referral source of a fake click bot or something similar.

(2) A mistake by another advertiser, where the advertiser plugged in the wrong URL and let it run four two hours before realizing.

(3) A secret admirer who sponsored 800 visitors for this site. :)

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Last week we took a look at the Measurability of Search Engine Ads this week we have a new thread that has sparked the interest of many top names in the business. The thread is named The ROI from SEM can not be measured accurately and resides over at Search Engine Watch Forums. The thread creator starts off with a really long post. I summarized it as follows;

Big Brand X has PPC ads for the the keyword phrase of the Brand Name of Big Brand X.

That keyword phrase brings in $10,000 in sales per day but costs $5,000 per day on PPC spend.

You remove the keyword phrase from the campaign and you have the same gross sales on your site.

So in essence you are saving $5,000 per day.

But the tracking tools show you have a ROI of $5,000 per day.

He is fighting a battle with his company, to keep the campaigns live, due to the above example. He has received a ton of advice, including;

Simply bid with PPC using same/similar ads for a different site or subsite. Heck, for a spend that size you could alternate every hour (or any other way you wanted to) for as long as it takes to get the information necessary, as long as you were using PPC software capable of making those changes on the fly. Use a second company if necessary.

Treat the PPC as you would the banner ads, just trickier to control. It sounds like all you really need to do is show the ROI (or lack thereof).

And more. But the bottom-line, if he doesn't make it happen, the affiliate will, as Mikkel points out;

My best advise for a client like that would be: Drop search marketing and leave the market to your competitors.

Interesting discussion, forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Dave started a thread named PPC Analytics is only wishful thinking that possibly may be the best thread ever started at our forums, ever. The discussion goes deep into the question of the true measurability of search ads, compared to other marketing initiatives. I am going to pull out a few quotes from the thread, but if you have time, you should read it - it isn't that long.

But let's say the average revenue was in the area of 10 million and the PPC contribution was about 1 million and seasonal spikes and drops can be as much as 5 million... The margin of error would be grater than the PPC contribution. A drop in 1 Million could be easily attributed to other factors like seasonality or competitive conditions.

You can not measure how many people would have made a purchase anyway with search the way you can with Banner advertising. Search analytics can not measure lift against a control group who does not see search ads during the same period of time. The ads are either there or not. Lift if any in sales could be easily attributed to other factors like seasonality or competitive conditions for the reasons above.

The argument is, if the lift in search can not be accurately measured because of this limitation. You could argue that it might be possible to drive more sales on the website if you do no search marketing at all and save the money to do something else like a TV commercial, print ad or something cool or sexy that can't be measured either. Or just save the money.

Check out the thread, MugShot is doing an excellent job with his replies. Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

With conversions being all the rage for web site owners, first thoughts are more likely on attracting first-time visitors and ways of converting this traffic into sales. However, they are not the only target group to be considered.

Ammon Johns starts a discussion in the Online Marketing and Promotion forum at Cre8asiteforums :

"Indeed, certainly within two years of business, one would hope that the majority of sales were coming from existing customers, happily returning. Of course, only you will know what the consumption cycle is for products or services of the type you deal with. But you would certainly hope that each sale you make would lead to at least one recommendation to a friend, and to repeat business from each customer."

Discussion: The most important source of customers, experience - repeat customers.

Jennifer beat me to it by posting at the SEW blog a WebmasterWorld thread named Spying on your competition (requires paid subscription). Basically, when you set up your Google AdWords conversion tracking code, it asks you for an optional "cost of conversion" value. That value is stored in JavaScript, visible to anyone, as;

var google_conversion_value = 15.0;

The 15.0 represents a $15 cost of conversion, entered in by the advertiser.

The cost of conversion value can be attributed to how much a product costs, how much each lead or sale is worth for a company. You can learn a lot about a company with this metric. The question is, why isn't this metric encoded some how? An oversight?

Excellent find and excellent thread, forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (requires paid subscription).

Session description:

"How do you know if you've been successful with search engines? You can check your "rank" at search engines for particular keywords, analyze log files to see the actual terms people used to reach your web site or make the ultimate jump and "close the loop" by measuring sales conversions and return-on-investment (ROI). This panel explores ways to measure success and what statistics you should really care about. Last part of session offers Q&A with measuring tool vendors."

First up is Laura Theme of Bizresearch who reviewed various tools including ranking spider analysis and NetTracker, ClickTracks, WebTrends. Presented issues dealing with 301 redirects, keyword targeting, etc.

Strongly recommends getting training on analytics. Reviews Google Analytics features and issues dealing with language in the agreement that says Google can issue a press release naming you as a user and that Google Analytics is your preferred analytics provider.

Web analytics providers:

• Omniture


• CoreMetrics


• WebTrends


• Hitbox


• NetTracker


• Google Analytics


• ClickTracks

Organic vs paid and return on ad spend are big considerations as well as ease of use, hosted versus log file analysis software, detailed robot analysis, ability to analyze aggregate data and user sessions, customer latency methodology, customer support and training, adaptability to interface changes, data ownership and use and cost.

It makes a difference which keyword phrase is being given credit for the conversion. Example, a customer might first hear of a brand from an initial search using a general phrase, and then actually convert on a subsequent search that is more specific.

Analytics will allow you to influence what your clients think though enhancements to your web site and through competitive analysis.

Possible web analytics features of the future:

• Free, lower cost


• Set business rules for organic and ad campaigns


• Alerts emailed to multiple managers, site owner


• Easier to manage multiple accounts


• Integration with business software like CRM

Keep in mind:

• No tracking tool will do everything


• Make sure your tracking tool is accurately collecting the data


• Great SEM/SEOs may not be good web metrics analysts and vice versa

Next up is Bryan Eisenberg. The probvlem is that web analytics is just a tool You have to plan for measurement. Not tool is useful unless you are prepared to take action on it.

Plugs WAA. webanalyticsassociation.org

Customers are ignoring "push" marketing. Internet is "where it's at" because it's a pull medium. Users pull themselves to your message.

Disparities exist between what advertisers will pay for other media and for online media compared to where consumers are spending most of their time.

PPC costs are increasing, conversion rates are disappointing. People are still making money, but they're also still leaving a lot of money on the table. There is still a significant opportunity to improve conversions and online marketing effectiveness.

Conversion as a measure of success. Consumers are not acting the same way. It is more important to understand what the customer wants.

Ways to measure conversion rates:
1. Overall conversion rate
2. Conversion rate over time
3. Scenariop conversion rates (linear and non-linear)

The phrases users enter in search engines shows their intent. Gives example of phrases that are increasingly specific as an illustration of where the customer is in their buying process. The more specific, the closer they are to making a purchase.

Good Scent. Gives example where banner ad creative is similar to landing page, which drills down to a category page. All are similar but not exactly the same.

Bad Scent - irrelevant ad creative and landing pages.

Broad phrases should bring the user to an informational page. A specific phrase should bring them to a specific product with the opportunity to take action.

Users typically ignore top and side navigation. They focus on the main content area.

Shows multiple examples of large companies advertising on common phrases that bring users to irrelevant pages. A lot of money is being spent this way but they're still making money. But they are also not realizing a significant amount of revenue opportunity.

Six sigma perspective on lost sales - "Anything that results in a lower level of customer satisfaction or a lost customer is a defect in the sales process." 2% is an average conversion rate. What about the other 98%?

Now comes the panel portion of the sesions which includes vendors from various web analytics packages.

Audience Question: Give some strengths and weaknesses of your software

Chris Knoch, Omniture - Offers the ability to configure weight to the keywords.

Jay McCarthy, WebSideStory - offers a suite of products, in-site search, content management which distinguishes WebSideStory from other vendors.

Brett Crosby, Google Analytics - Available in 16 languages, tightly integrated with Google AdWords, we're free. Working on ease of implementation and providing data.

Barry Parshall, WebTrends - First party cookie tracking for improved accuracy in tracking, both hosted and server side applications. WebTrends can be overwhelming sometimes, particularly on the administration side.

John Marshall, ClickTracks - Less reports is an advantage, need to do a better job at graphing results.

Danny asks vendors to provide price points. Prices range from a few thousands to much more. Don't solely look at "free" as your decision point. Google still offers a software version &895 to $5000. WebTrends is $35 for hosted to $5000 and more for the enterprise version. ClickTracks starts at $49/mo and software is $495 to several thousand.

Danny brings up the free issue of GOogle Analytics and notes that when that happened, how the other analytics vendors sent out press releases justifying their existence. Danny agrees that free should not be the sole decision point. Some companies cannot afford a tool, so free might be their only option. However, for more sophisticated needs, a paid web analytics solution should be a consideration.

Audience Question: Is a long time spent on my site (publisher) a good thing or a bad thing
Bryan: It depends on the scenario. Are they looking for support or are they ready to engage?
Brett: Look at repeat visitors
John: Thank you for bringing up time on site as an important metric. ROI is a blunt instrument metric. Look at average time on site broken out by keyword to better understand the visitor's intent and their interaction with your site.
Bryan: There's a difference between average and typical. As in the difference between "mean", "median" and "mode".

Audience Question: MTV.com is having challenges communicating metrics of success to senior management that are not "online savvy". In the middle of a search engine optimization effort and wants to know of ways besides before/after or increased saerch engien referrals.
Laura: It depends on ewhat you're trying to achive. Gives example of increasing newsletter sign ups.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

The B2B Tactics session explores the unique marketing needs for business to business marketers moderated by Detlet Johnson of Position Technologies.

First up is Chris from ClearGauge. Who asks, what's different about BtoB? Business to business online marketing is a more considered purchase than consumer marketing.

Differences from consumer marketing:

- Goals of BtoB marketing is to start or develop relationships.
- The emphasis is on different search engines. Focus on major search and business and vertical specific engines.
- Keywords - buying cycle and role based.
- Message -
- Landing pages - The difference in messaging and desired outcomes should be reflected in landing pages.
- Next "date" - Don't rush it. With BtoB you don't "kiss on the first date".
- Tracking ROI - Define measurable goals.

Internet is the first user driven medium. Traditionally, marketers pushed their information out. Search is a pull medium.

Often times you have to filter BtoB prospects from similar consumer or unrelated phrases.

Chris provides a range of PPC considerations for BtoB but I cannot see them and he's speaking very quickly.

Tip for blogging conference sessons: Sit in front of the screen where the Powerpoint slides are displayed. Do not sit on the other side of the podium! I know this, but came in late.

Key pillars of paid search.
1. Find: Keyword research. Find phrases based on the position in the buying cycle and also take into account purchasers and influencers.
2. Engage: Relevance of message to keyword is important as well as landing page relevancy.

Described considerations for effective A/B testing with Google.

Best practice for web site content and site architecture.

Web analytics and measurement are important to ensure you measure what matters.

Lead generation funnels according the type of campaign.

Takeaways:
- Focus on the buying cycle
- Remember it's about prospects not products
- Make sure you measure business objectives

Next up is Paul Slack of WebDex.

BtoB Sales Cylce
- Uncovering the need
Prospects research possible options to create a short list of vendors and from that make a selection.

Search Engine Buying Funnel - sweet spot for btob marketers is during the consideration phase.

Targeting your AUdience

Influencers.
Example: Had client write white paper on a certain topic. That very specific ranked well and sent visitors to a lead generation process and had a 16% conversion rate.

Developing an Internet marketing strategy - The challenge is that it's not ecommerce, it's getting influencers to opt-in to your buying process.

It's important to define goals and objectives, target audience, conversion activities, budget, measurement and tracking. Provides an example for defining cost per lead, cost per acquisition and the break even.

Remember: Begin with the end in mind.

Chris Grady from Merak is the last one up. Merak evolved from a single mail server product from a bedroom office to an total communications solution with customers world-widel. The marketing success was a result of search engine marketing.

Grady presents some guidelines from the perspective of an in-house marketer.

1. Turn hurdles into opportunities

Sales cycle

- Id a need
seek solutions
comopoile a lsiot
negotiate price
purchase

Merak Hurdle - late to market
Advantage - SEM enabled them to passively take away customers from competition for about 2 years

2. Identify engines and keywords used by potential btob customers

Review content generated by and used by target audience. Also created a custom keyword analysis tool.
Keyword reference guide. Analyze keyword performance data and put it into a reference guide. Distribute that guide to content developers.

3. Keyword targeting successes. From mining data, found that their largest clients found them from very long search queries.

4. Monitor what activies lead to buying. It appears the more interaction between prospects and Merak, the higher the conversion rate.

Going back in time, he would hire a search engine marketing firm. Can't afford it? You can't afford not to. You need to find a firm that is transparent to how they provide the service.

Q: We sell products to both consumers and busineses. Example: DSL. Advise on how to approach that?

A: Paul Slack. Implement a decision process at the landing page to filter the user to consumer/business info.

A: Chris from ClearGuage: Analyze web metrics to see what kinds of language business users tend to use and bid on those phrases.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

A long thread has developed over at High rankings Forums about the subject of marketing testing with a website. The idea of using methods like A/B testing has long been promoted by groundbreaking paid search leaders such as Lee Mills and other early adopters of measurement technology. Many of the most reliable paid search firms of the day are "sophisticated," classified as such by Jupiter in 2004 and introduced by Chris Sherman at the SEW Blog.

In the HR thread, some very interesting ideas about testing are posed. I for one never thought about this, but there actually are people that are afraid to test, according to Moderator "torka." People are sometimes

in fear of being "banned" by the search engines that they're afraid to sneeze around their computers for fear of offending the Search Engine Gods.

The thread is one of those rare ones that goes (so far) 3 pages without actually getting boring.

Read it all at High Rankings Forum.

ShoeMoney is a great guy and a smart one also, he recently wrote a blog entry named Is your website making what it should be? In that entry, he explains the rational he used to come up with a new conversion metric term he named "IPU". IPU stands for Income Per Unique and ShoeMoney explains it as follows;

So for instance if you have a site that is bringing in 8,000.00 a day and you are getting 65,000.00 uniqes a day that is around 8 cents per uniq user. That is pretty good. I have sites that range 2-9cents per uniq depending on the niche.

Now, a thread at DigitalPoint forums asks you What's your IPU? with a poll. This is in the AdSense forum, so it is specifically asking for it in AdSense terms. If you take a look at the results (at this time I see 13 responses, the majority have an IPU of 10 cents or less, most only 2 cents or less.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Ever since March 2004, I have been comparing analytics software built by the same company. The first entry I have on this was named Comparing Web Traffic Between Different Web Analytictical Tools which shows the huge gap in traffic when comparing Urchin 3.x to Urchin 5.x. Then the topic came up again in January 2005, with an entry named Web Analysis Tools & Consistancy. Which led me to an entry in late May of 2005 where I said, Web Analytics Needs Standards Bad.

So when Google Analytics came up, I signed up and let the data collect. Keep in mind, Google Analytics is Urchin. The differences are; (1) its a half of a version newer and (2) one is server side tracking (logs and 1st party cookies) and the other is simple JavaScript tracking (3rd party cookies). Then yesterday, I did a comparison of my trusted Urchin 5.7 package against Google Analytics for the month of December. I came up with a 20%, 19.79% to be exact, increase in traffic for the Urchin 5.7 tracking over Google Analytics. Ill post the daily increases for December in the extended entry area, you will notice it was as low as 5% and as high as 30%.

For a visual reference check out this chart, you can click on it to enlarge. The red is Urchin and the blue is Google.

I started a thread on this topic at our forums and Matt, md_doc explains why this may be the case. He says;

Using logs you get information that you would not get with javascript... like when someone that has javascript disabled comes to your site, or when a robot parses your site.

Can you believe that it can affect on average, 20% of the visitors of this site? Who are you that are blocking those cookies? Do you even know you are blocking them? :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Continue reading "Urchin Server Side Compared to Google Analytics"

There are several of you folks who are interesting in tracking AdSense clicks with Google Analytics. Well, Shawn Hogan from DigitalPoint created a script that makes it possible, at least in Internet Explorer. The details and script you need to add to your pages are at his blog entry named Track AdSense Clicks With Google Analytics. What it does, is enable you to set up an AdSense Click as a goal in Google Analytics. Very cool stuff. He explains, currently "this only works with Internet Explorer because of some limitations/bug with Mozilla."

Official forum thread at DigitalPoint Forums and a thread asking about this is at WebmasterWorld.

Like with many of Google's popular new products, Google Analytics has to be taken back a step. Google currently is not allowing new users to subscribe to Google Analytics, plus they have removed the add site link for those who have already subscribed. In addition, I get this message when I log in;

Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now. The demand for Google Analytics surpassed even our highest expectations and as a result some customers may temporarily experience report-update delays. All data continues to be collected and no data has been lost. We are currently adding resources to ensure high-quality service. We apologize for any inconvenience.

I have been looking for the site overlay feature, you know the feature that shows graphical overlays of user clicks and goals. That has also been removed according to a post at WebmasterWorld, message # 180, which has a reply from Google to a Webmaster;

Thank you for your email. The demand for Google Analytics exceeded our expectations. As a result, we have temporarily removed the site overlay tool report. Once we have increased our capacity to process this report effectively, we will add the report back to Google Analytics. You can see link popularity statistics in other Content Optimization reports, such as the "Top Content" report or the "All Navigation" report.

For discussion on Google removing new sign ups, check out WebmasterWorld.

Alright, so about a billion people signed up and installed the code to get Google Analytics running. So did I and all we are seeing, for the past 24+ hours is;

Folks are getting tired of it and it happens often when Google does something this outrageous. Gmail, Google Maps, Keyhole and so on. A member at Search Engine Watch forums posted a thread he named For those w/ Google Analytics Problems which has a quote from Google on the issue, here it is;

Hello,

Thank you for your email and your patience.

We have received your report regarding the problem with the "Check Status" alert update. Our engineers are currently working to solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly. This will not affect data collection or report generation if you have already tagged your website with the Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Additionally, I understand that you aren't seeing data in your reports, even though your tracking code has been set up for over six hours. We apologize for any inconvenience. We have collected your data since you installed the tracking code on your site, and are continuing to collect this data throughout the day.

We are currently in the process of creating reports from your data. You should be able to see your reports populated with data later today. Please note that this reporting delay is associated with unexpected demand for Google Analytics. Under normal circumstances, the data in your reports will be at most six hours old.

For additional questions, please visit the Analytics Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/analytics. If you're unable to find an answer to your question on our site, please feel free to reply to this email.

Sincerely,
Analytics Support>

Good thing I hear they will have the server edition of 6.0 (hosted internally and not by Google) by early 2006.

Google has now re-branded Urchin to Google Analytics presenting users with better ways to “understand and influence visitor behavior and generate a higher ROI on marketing initiatives”. Yes folks! It’s offering a free hosted web analytics service, in hopes that advertisers, publishers and website owners will spend time understanding how people find their websites, navigate through them and convert on the goals of the site. With the free service, Google hopes it helps people spend money on their search marketing campaigns rather than on measurement. This is going to have a huge impact on both the search marketing and the web analytics industries. Draw your own conclusions.

But how much is really free? Google Analytics will allow you to track up to 5 million pageviews per month, no questions asked, no fees charged. So you have a BIG MONSTER website, then all they request is that you have at least one active Adwords account with an active campaign and spend $1 if you want, that’s all it takes. No more pageview caps. I’m sure they hope you spend much more than that when you see all the tracking benefits.

What’s more in this move, Google Analytics now allows integration with AdWords to better monitor “ROI metrics automatically without having to import cost data or tag keywords”, as well as tracking all of your other internet marketing initiatives as well. When you subscribe to it, you will see it as a new tab under your AdWords account. It now has executive, marketer, and webmaster dashboards for view quick summaries of “traffic, e-commerce, and conversion trends without hunting through reports.” Here is what else it offers:

• Reporting interface accessible directly from the google.com/analytics website if you don’t have an Adwords account


• Advanced visitor segmentation with over 80 web analytics reports


• Ability to track up to 50 websites within your account


• Site overlay


• Funnel visualization


• GeoTargeting with a cool map that shows where your traffic comes from
  
• It’s available in 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and English.


• And much more…

For those worried on privacy concerns, this is what they say, “Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Google Analytics is subject to the same industry leading privacy policy as all Google services: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html”

On a personal note, I’m also very excited with the steps Google is making because my consulting firm, iHispanic Marketing Group, is proud to announce that Google Analytics has chosen us as one among other Client Service and Support Consultants to service the global Hispanic market. With this strategic alliance we are committed to delivering professional services for training, advanced support, and expert web analytics consulting to executives, marketing managers and webmasters in both Spanish and English. Our loyalty we’ve had to Urchin and to our clients have demonstrated great rewards. Google Analytics will be a fun ride moving forward to continue building leadership with the Hispanic market for search engine marketing and internet strategy.

For discussion on this topic, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the SearchEngineWatch Forum’s thread: Urchin Now Google Analytics, Now Free.

Gary's blog mentioned the winner of a Microsoft VirtualEarth contest which is a company called MapStats. Yes, it is a cool, but who said it was the first? Urchin's Geo Map Overlay has been around a long time ago. I use it all the time and it's fabulous. Here is a sample:

Urchin defines it as "GeoTargeting: Discover at a glance where your best customers are located. Find out where your visitors come from and which markets are the most lucrative. Compare conversion metrics and visitor value for just about any geographic location." You may watch the tour with Chapter 7 of the DEMO on Geo Targeting to learn more.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think MapStats gets bragging rights as the first to deploy such function.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

As you all know, Google continues to grow in the multilingual market space and most likely one among many other reasons why it chose to buy Urchin as opposed to other web analytics software companies since the software already came in multiple languages. Today, I came across their website and is now translated into 11 languages:

Urchin - English
Urchin en Español
Urchin - Français
Urchin - Italiano
Urchin - Deutsch
Urchin - Nederlands
Urchin - Português (Brasil)
Urchin - Japanese / 日本語
Urchin - Korean / 한국어
Urchin - Chinese (Mandarin) / 中文(简体)
Urchin - Taiwanese / 中文 (繁體)

I'm personally happy to see the Spanish version... Now, if we could only get that really nice On Demand DEMO in all languages we would be all set ;-)

Monday I wrote that Web Analytics Needs Standards Bad, which I then followed up with Bryan Eisenberg live at WebmasterRadio.FM. He told me the Web Analytics Association was working on something and hoped to have it soon. Today, he called me to let me know they posted a white paper at the news section of the WAA site named Web Analytics Key Metrics and KPIs. If you visit that news item, you can then download the white paper from that site. It is very encouraging and I like to see more pressure on the analytics companies to take action on this.

I know Urchin (Owned by Google) is aware of it, but I can not discuss their comments on the topic. Maybe we can drive up enough buzz on this topic that they take action or maybe not.

Is the Web Analytics Association doing anything? I am not being sarcastic, I really do not know. What I do know is that when you install any Web analytics program, each one will report different numbers. Today, I installed an open source analytics program named AW Stats just to test this. AW Stats reported about three times the level of daily visitors then Urchin 5.7. Even Urchin 5.7 compared to Urchin 3.0 reported widely different visitor counts. We need standardization.

In the mean time, if you are a publisher and you want to inflate your visitor counts, simply demo all the analytics programs and see which one produces the highest visitor count. Then tell your potential advertiser that figure. I hear Bryan Eisenberg, one of the founders of the Web Analytics Association, will be on Webmaster Radio: Wizards of Web today at 12:00 EST. Well that was an hour and 45 minutes ago, so maybe I missed it. Would have been a good question to ask.

End of March, shocking news came our way that Google Buys Urchin Web Analytics. Today I found a new thread at WebmasterWorld named Web Analytics by Google, which led me to a URL by the looks of http://www.google.com/urchin.html. The re-branding of my all-time favorite Web analytics package has begun, look what they did to the logo.

So here it begins. My biggest question is this the end of Urchin's appeal to professional SEOs? Of course, I can see Urchin's product striving amongst everyone outside of the SEO world.

Just got to Toronto now, but I had to post this Urchin/Google release...

As you recall, Google announced it agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation on March 28, 2005.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/urchin.html

Today, Google is dropping the price of Urchin On Demand, Google's comprehensive marketing intelligence and web analytics service, making it affordable for all sites large and small. This service, provides web site owners and advertisers data to enhance their user's experience and increase advertising return on investment (ROI).

Starting today, Urchin On Demand from Google, is now reduced to $199 per month, a 60 percent drop from the previous cost of $495 per month. With Urchin, Google is helping more website owners learn how users interact with their site. The knowledge provided by Urchin can benefit anyone with a website by enabling them to enhance the experience users will have on their site. Advertisers using any online ad medium can gain a better understanding of visitor preferences, optimize online marketing campaigns and redesign website content to maximize conversions.

Specific benefits of Urchin On Demand:
. Better Intelligence: Urchin helps site owners and advertisers understand how visitors find, navigate and convert on their websites.

. Higher Conversions: Urchin tracks visitors from all online sources including search engines, natural links, and any variety of paid advertising campaigns such as paid banners, keywords, emails, etc.

. Actionable Data: The service provides many reports designed to help users visualize their data and take quick action including: Funnel Analysis, Website Overlays, GeoTargeting, Ecommerce Reporting, Campaign Comparisons, Keywords Suggestion Tools, and much more.

The $199 per month Urchin On Demand also now includes report profiles for up to fifty individual websites (Urchin's previous offering included reporting for only one site). The price includes up to 100,000 pageviews per month. Users can add one million more pageviews for only $99 more per month.

In addition to the reduced price and increased number of profiles, Urchin On Demand is now able to import -pay--per-click costs directly from Google AdWords accounts. This data will simplify a user's ability to analyze the ROI of their online campaigns. This is the first integration of Google services with the Urchin platform. More information, including a 15-day free trial of Urchin On Demand, can be found on the new Urchin from Google website at www.urchin.com.

An other thread at Search Engine Watch forums named What is an SEO worth [in cold hard cash] seemed to start off on the topic of how much is a SEO worth by the hour, how much is a Directory lisiting consultant worth and how much are PPC consltants worth?

The thread kind of lead its way into comparing the SEO job with other types of jobs. The question began to turn around and now it seems the question being asked is as follows.

As an SEM, what type of service offering should I offer? Should I charge hourly? Should I charge based on spend? Should I charge monthly? Or maybe, better yet, charge on the CPA (cost per acquisition) model. In fact, I have spoken with several well known SEO/SEMs and they all agree with Mikkel's statement:

This [CPA] model has turned out to be far the most profitable for me (as calcualted by prfots per working hour) and the one where clients stick around for the longest time (in fact, I never had one single client terminate such a deal - yet).

Today is pretty much a Tracking Conversion Measurements type of day, so I thought I share a thread currently being discussed at Search Engine Watch Forums. The thread is named Protecting Cookies from Deletion, where member cline discusses that the problem of tracking not only is an issue of users deleting cookie's manually but the anti-spyware programs that delete them automatically.

In the thread, a discussion has begun about alternative methods of tracking. seomike says "I think browsers should just be given a unique ID that is sent in their headers." It is an interesting topic, many users do not want to be tracked. Advertisers want to track users. It is going to be interesting to see how tracking users will change in today's Web.

It is not as "cool" as Google buying Urchin, but its still pretty big. WebTrends, one of the biggest names in Web analytics, announced that they will be acquired by Francisco Partners, a technology-focused private equity funds.

Press release at Webtrends and forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

Urchin is really one of my best friends, I use it daily, laugh with it, cry with it, but more importantly, I depend on it. Ever since Urchin first came out with its first product, I have had a relationship with them (I believe in 97 or 98). They have always built the most user friendly Web analytics packages out there. My clients don't have to be trained to use it and it gives them the power to say move large advertising budgets from one keyword to the next. As my father would say, it allows you to make "informed decisions." After all that is what the Web is all about.

I have been talking about Urchin at this site for a really long time. Give it a try, and do a search on Urchin at this blog. I have written an extremely comprehensive review of Urchin 5.5 in early 2004. Since then they have made numerous advancements and improvements to an already outstanding package. I even convinced some of my more tech savvy (also known as "geeky") colleagues to switch to Urchin.

Last night I was going though Bloglines and saw that John Battelle posted and entry named Google Acquires Urchin. I couldn't believe it, my first instinct was to email one of the founders and ask him if its true. He said it is and said he would love to tell me more but he was not allowed. But he is so delighted and so excited for the future. Battellemedia heard the price on the purchase was in the ballpark of $30 million. After emailing back and forth a few times with my Urchin contact, I quickly went to post a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums. I see that WebmasterWorld has a thread as well. SEO Chat has a thread also.

The folks at SEW forums seem to be as happy for Urchin as I am. Forum Editor, Elisabeth says "way to go Urchin crew!" Nacho, SEW Moderator, says " I'm so happy for the folks at Urchin." But there are some that are skeptical. If Google owns Urchin and Urchin is a vital tool in tracking your success on both the organic and paid search fronts, then Google has access to data - a conflict of interest. It will be interesting how this turns out. But I personally was never a fan of an ASP web analytics solution, that is why I am waiting for Urchin 6 to come out with a server install solution.

To summarize: I am so happy for you guys at Urchin! I wish you all the best and I hope this acquisition lets you build out even better tools.

Normally I would not post "PR pitches", but I actually think a few of you would be interested in this one.

ALISO VIEJO, CALIF., March 18, 2005 - NetApplications, an industry leader in Web-based applications that measure, monitor and market Web sites for the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME), today announced through its monthly Web site traffic analysis that the Firefox Web browser continues to gain in popularity at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

In February, Firefox users continued to flock to the browser with market share rising to 6.17% from 5.59% in January. Firefox's gain is Microsoft's loss, which finished with 89.04% market share - down from 90.31% in December 2004. Most other browsers maintained a steady and loyal user base.

"Firefox is currently the only browser that is increasing market share on a monthly basis and it is growing at the direct expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer," observed Dan Shapero, Chief Operating Officer. "Firefox appears to be the only challenger to Microsoft's market domination."

Microsoft Internet Explorer - 89.04%
Firefox - 6.17%
Netscape - 1.89%
Safari - 1.69%
Mozilla - .66%
Opera - .48%
Other - .07%

HitsLink(tm) is Net Applications' flagship product providing advanced website statistics and analysis for webmasters and eMarketers alike. The data has been collected from over 40,000 Hitslink.com-monitored global Web sites.

The HitsLink Enterprise Service starts at $14.95 per monthly subscription. A free trial is available at www.HitsLink.com/trial.

Continue reading "Firefox Continues to Steal Market Share from IE"

A new trade group has been formed, it is named the Web Analytics Association. I asked Ammon Johns if he had any direct influence with this trade group and he said no, but I find his recent campaign with the issues with referral tracking to be awfully close to the time this organization was set up.

If your interested in joining, it costs just $129 for one year, more information at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cms/?54.

A ClickZ article at http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3484526. Also make sure to check out the Committee Members and Corporate Members; including Coremetrics, IBM, NedStat, Omniture, WebSideStory, WebTrends, Visual Sciences, and others like ClickTracks.

Looks promising... Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch.

A while back I wrote a little entry here named Comparing Web Traffic Between Different Web Analytictical Tools, where I compared Urchin 3 versus Urchin 5.5. A new thread sprung up at Cre8asite Forums named Log analysis consistancy, where Moderator Adrian discusses his experience with Weblog Expert with Net Tracker. Will there every be consistency? Only when they all merge into one company, and everyone uses the exact same analytics program and version of that program. :)

Ammon Johns in a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Referral ID strings and referrer info, discusses his thoughts on the ongoing and future issues with capturing referral data. He says that due to spyware, other "applications and plug-ins strip referrer info from HTTP headers sent by browsers, making the HTTP referrer less accurate by the day." Many web analytics applications now resort to the use of both log files and JavaScript to capture this information, but "even this is sometimes blocked, and JavaScript is more often turned off than ever." Ammon said "It's [JavaScript Tracking] less reliable than HTTP referrer info."

In Ammons post, he discusses risky and safe methods to go about improving the tracking of referral information. But he then gets into some theory with the statement;

We might all decide that we'd use a refID=somevalue; query string parameter, which the engines can then look at to see if they'd teach the spider to automatically strip out that one variable, or perhaps even change the value - refID=Google; or refID=Yahoo for instance.

I am confident, this thread will turn out to be exceptional.

A thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Let's talk about shopping cart conversion discusses real people's experience with shopping cart abandonment rates. As mentioned in the thread, on average, the "75% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts". What is even more shocking is that "47% of ebusinesses do not know their shopping cart abandonment rate." I have reviewed some of my e-commerce customer's cart abandonment rates and they seem to be below the average on a whole. Some are higher then others, but overall they are lower.

Over the years, we have stopped requiring online shoppers to sign up for an account before buying online. We try to keep the checkout process as clear as possible. (1) Add item to cart, (2) Hit Checkout (which has all the costs on this page, tax, shipping, etc.), (3) Fill out the bill to, ship to, and payment information and (4) Hit Buy Now. In reality, most of our checkout systems seem like a two step process. Between the cart and checkout screen, I see on average lower then 70% abandonment. But between the checkout screen and the invoice page I see less then 50% abandonment.

On some of our other sites, where we can do more personalized tracking. We will send follow up emails to the customer, saying something to the affect of, "Save $X if you buy within the next 48 hours. Click here to retrieve your special discount." Or something like that. Plus we pre-fill any information that is possible, make those buttons you want to click stand out (buy now, check out, add to cart), and ensure costs and discounts are clearly visible on the site. Just make sure the shopper is comfortable.

I had someone call me yesterday about his online store, thanks Kim. And this person's site even confused me. Granted he sells a very customizable product, but you must clearly tell the user what action to take next. My firm has built far more complicated products that allow far more customizability, and I can not stress how important it is to ensure the 'personalization steps' are clear, easy, defined, and worry free.

In a thread over at Cre8asite Forums named Organic vs Paid traffic ROI?, there is a discussion going on about the different conversion rates and ROI seen between the pay per click traffic (paid traffic) and organic traffic (free traffic). I have personally heard at conferences that people are more likely to click on organic results over paid results. However, I do not remember hearing the differences in terms of conversions or ROI when it comes to paid versus free search.

In the thread, one member says:

I use PPC for one site which also comes top for the same keywords.

One great thing about PPC ads is you can turn them on and off, and experiment. At first I thought by having an ad show for a word we are number for was just throwing money away, so i turned the ads off, profits dropped, turn them back on profits increase, repeated just to make sure.

Results could suggest a few things,
1. Our ad text appeals more to some people more than the description/title in the serps � can�t please everyone.
2. Some people will click on the ads first, so its either us or a competitor.

No major difference in conversions, if anything the PPC converts better as i make sure the ad is very relevant. Have tried several niches with PPC and lost money, PPC is not always the answer, a lot can depend on the product/service. One thing i would recommend is to continue to use PPC for as long as it makes a profit and don�t stop just because you come top in the serps(test this, each site may be different)

This can make for a very educational thread.

A thread over at Cre8asite named exit page statistics query discusses a statistic named bounce rates. This statistic is a very useful metric when trying to understand a page's strengths and weaknesses. It basically tells you percentage of entrances on the page that resulted in exits without viewing any other page on the site.

In the thread, Ammon discusses why sometimes, a high bounce rate is something positive for the the site. Why? Well if they sell ads on a CPC basis, each click to exist the site is money in the owners pocket. But for many other sites, high bounce rates are not preferred.

This blog has a very high bounce rate from the home page, 72.05% for the month of September. But it is expected, most people come to this site daily, read the entries on the index page and leave. There is no reason to click deeper most of the time. Compare that to my corporate site, it is a small fraction of what the bounce rate is on the search engine roundtable. I make an effort to encourage the Web visitor to click deeper for more information.

It is also important to look at a users click path but that is for a different article.

I am extremely excited to get my hands around the latest version of Urchin named Urchin 6.0 On Demand. It looks like they are listening to us search engine marketers. A few things I am extremely excited impatient to try out are the following features:
- Funnel Optimization
- Advanced Visitor Segmentation
- Comparing Detailed Data Based on Date Ranges
- full feature list.

I would just like to expand on the "Funnel Optimization" feature that I have been patiently waiting for ever since I finished my review of Urchin 5.5. It was in my review that I discussed the concept of Goal Based Funnel Analysis. It looks like they nailed it on the head, and with the style, as Urchin so often does. Take a look at some of the screen images below of Urchin's Funnel Optimization. I also recommend taking a look at the flash demo. As soon as I get my hands around this product, I will make sure to write a review on this product.

View Large Image

A thread over at Cre8asite named Deciding What Not To Track / Measure discusses an interesting question. What metrics should be tracked and which ones should not? The thread creator, who I respect, says "what you choose not to track can play as great a role in creating a successful online presence as what you choose to measure."

I agree with that statement, but only if you look at that statement the other way around. Its like the story of the ostridge bird hiding its head in the sand when its scared. The ostridge feels that what it doesn't see can't hurt him, but in reality, the environment around the bird can be very dangerous even though one is unaware of ones surroundings. Thought it would be cool to include a picture of an ostridge now, brought to you by terra.com.

I am of the opinion that one should track every metric possible for a particular site. Of course, if your tracking tools have a negative affect on site performance (speed) then be smart about it. Even if you do not want to look at a particular metric today, you might want to look at it in a week or a month. This way, if need be, you can be prepared for the environment around you.

As to which metrics you should track? All of them. :) Here is a quick list, but I am sure I will be missing many:
- Traffic including sessions, pageviews, hits, bytes
- Visitors including visitors by day, sessions by day, unique visitors, unique sessions, visitor loyalty, and session frequency.
- Pages & Files including; requested pages, downloads, page query terms, posted forms, statuses and errors and even deeper
- Navigation including entrance pages, exit pages, bounce rates, click paths, length of page view, depth of sessions, length of session
- Referrals including search terms, search engines, errors...
- Location f users by domain, countries, ip address
- Browser and Robots visiting you
- Screen resolution, screen colors, languages, Java versions, JavaScript versions, time zones
- Of course all the e-commerce information
- And then even better, tracking the details of your site by goal or transaction completion through lead source, keywords, campaigns, a/b testing, latency reports, day parts and click fraud.

A post over at HighRanking's Forum got me thinking. First, let me clarify that once you click on a result in Google or an other search engine, the engine knows nothing more.

Some people think that since you clicked from Google to page A, that Google knows how long you spent there, and if you made a purchase. Actually, my own dad was under the impression that Google knew if someone placed an order on a site if they came from the Google search engine. Sorry dad if your reading this but this really blew my mind.

In general, once you leave a search engine, they no longer know anything about your travels or actions. Now that that is out of the way, lets move on.

So the user gets to your site, you know where they came from and what they are doing on your site. Right? I'll assume you know this information, if not, then get yourself a decent Web analytics package. It is really a shame how ill-informed many of the smaller e-commerce site owners are about their sites traffic and conversion rates. If they tracked their traffic correctly, then making informed decisions on site changes become less guess-work and more metric based decisions. I keep getting to this, so I am sorry. Feel free to read my past entries on analytics.

Oh, and one more note, Scottie is right on.

This particular thread hit home this week. One of the forum members asks whether or not its part of the SEO's responsiblities to just obtain high rankings or help clients improve their business. One my favorite parts of being an SEO is the different hats ( and I don't mean colored ones) that we can wear to allow us to have a diversity of skills and knowledge to assist in the clients business growth, whatever needs they may be. Are you concerned with success of the business after the optimization? After talking with several clients and multiple friends this week I tried to explain that high rankings don't always mean high profits for their websites. I explained to them ways they need to change the layout or structure in order to accomodate the visitors behaviors better, obtain a great web analytic tool, and some visitor feedback. Because just sticking a website up and directing traffic to it, doesn't mean its not always going to convert! I have found affiliate sites in particular are quite good at converting visitors, and likely so they usually have to be experts in the area to capitalize on all the free traffic (while it lasts). If you find yourself with loads of free search engine traffic, but are not pulling more than a couple of sales today or none. It might be worth it to check out this thread at High Rankings.

Forum coverage on Rankings Vs Conversions, The real debate

I have discussed Web analytics and Urchin several times on this site. I am a huge fan of Urchin, and if you do a search on Urchin within this site, you can find all my posts on it. These entry is to discuss some of the new features added to the 5.6 versus, an upgrade from version 5.5.

You can view all the changes here, but I will highlight some of the cool enhancements that I noticed right off the bat.

First is a new view called "Bounce Rate" "report that shows how frequently visitors entered and immediately exited a site, by landing page." Take a look at this graph, click on the graph to see more detail.

We all know this is a very important statistic, that most of us try to get to by creating our own spreadsheets and working out the numbers. Urchin now made it very easy to view these bounce rates with a click of a button. Definitions of fields on enlarged view are: "Bounces" is the number of times visitors exited from the page without visiting any other pages on the site. "Entrances" is the total number of entrances on the page. "Bounce Rate" is the percentage of entrances on the page that resulted in exits without viewing any other page on the site. It is calculated as Bounces divided by Entrances.

Some other enhancements to note include:

- Wizard that allows the manual entry of cost and impression data for any campaign data point. This includes email campaigns.
- A much needed 'View by" feature on the date range setting interface that allows the user to view data on an hourly, daily, or monthly basis
- And more.

Keep in mind, I do not work for Urchin, I am just a very satisfied customer that loves tools to help manage a sites marketing efforts. Also the bounce rates on this site tend to be high, but I will assume that most people come to the homepage and then jump off. My other sites, the bounce rates are much lower dependent (dependent on the page).

Comparing ones Web traffic to an other's Web traffic when those two sites/servers run different Web analytical tools is like comparing Apples to Oranges. It is just not possible to accurately compare the two.

For example, around November and December of 2003 I upgraded to Urchin 5.5 Web analytics from Urchin 3 Web analytics. The way those two software looked at traffic was drastically different. My traffic server wide dropped about 75% due to the enhanced technology in the new Urchin 5.5 to more accurately track a visitor. See the chart below. The traffic on the left was from Urchin 3.0 versus the traffic on the right which is when the new Urchin 5.5 was installed on my server.

This is not about privacy issues. This is about how to make the most of your traffic. In a recent blog entry by Kim (Cre8pc) at Cre8asite's New Blog, she discusses Fredrick Marckini most recent article. I am not going to get into the details of the article, if you haven't read it - I will tell you its worth while reading.

Bill Slawski, from the Cre8asite Network, added a nice comment to Kim's post. Which inspired this post about why it is important to gather data on how and where your Web visitors are traveling through your site. Then making the necessary usability and navigational adjustments to your site to get them to where they (you) want them to go. This of course brought me back to my most recent article, which was a review on Urchin's Web Analytics software and how funnel based goal analysis would be the dream analytic for SEMs.

There has been ton of talk about search engine market share over at the forums and search engine related blogs. All saying that Yahoo has a ~30% share and Google has about a ~39% share. But what really matters is your traffic patterns.

Why is it that most of of the sites out there have 70% of their traffic from Google and 10% from Yahoo? Are the SEOs only optimizing for Google? Does search engine friendly design only apply to Google?

There can be many reasons why one site gets more of its traffic from Google over Yahoo. (1) Keywords rank better for a site in Google vs Yahoo. (2) Your site appeals more to the Google type of Web user. or (3) Google just really does have a better market share, over the estimated 39%.

There is a thread on this at SEO Chat, visit the Yahoo! Traffic today!

The Urchin Web analytics review I promised you guys is now ready for reading at http://www.rustybrick.com/seo_articles_8.php.

The bottom line for any marketing endeavor is return on investment (ROI). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has its place within a company's marketing department's online advertising budget. Most SEO campaign's aim is to have a positive impact on ROI and not only to rank number one for specific keyword phrases. Web analytics software gives you the necessary data to make informed decisions regarding your online marketing efforts. Ultimately, this affects the keywords you select and the pages you optimize.

This article will discuss Urchin's Web analytics software and how it can benefit a Search Engine Optimizer and their client's bottom-line.

- Overview of Important Web Analytic Features for the SEO
- Detailed Review of Urchin 5.5 and Campaign Tracking Module
   - Administrative Configuration
   - Reporting Review
   - Campaign Tracking Module
- SEO's Wish List to Urchin Developers & Web Analytics Companies
- Concept of Goal Based Funnel Analysis
- Web Analytics Article Wrap Up
- Back to SEO Articles

Overview of Important Web Analytic Features for the SEO »

I'd like you to meet Sally Falkow of falcoWeb is one of the moderators at Cre8asiteForums, in the Usability topic forum.

Shortly after accepting her moderator role at Cre8asiteForums, Sally was involved in a serious auto accident that nearly took her life. To my amazement she's managed to not only recover from her injuries, but she's worked to bring her career and business back into full swing. In addition to her falkoWeb newsletter, she's also launched a usability oriented blog called Websense.

In her blog Sally writes, on Tuesday, December 23, 2003, The Ten Top Mistakes on Websites.

"Statistics show that over 80 percent of websites are frustrating to use and that over 90 percent of corporate websites have technology on them that prevents them from being seen by search engines.

Bill Gates said that soon there will be only two kinds of businesses � those with an effective website and those with no business at all!

There is real marketing power in a website � use these insights to tap into that power."

Checking her archives, you'll see other writings and helpful links. One in particular is from Sunday, December 21, 2003, called Getting the most from your website in which she writes,

"The Web has moved from being a new information medium to a sales channel. Studies show that lead generation has overtaken e-commerce as the main reason to have a website. Your marketing department should be intimately involved with your website and they need to know exactly who is coming to the site and why."

and

"66% of all sales are lost right on the home page."

Wow! And some people wonder why I keep harping on website usability issues!