Tracking & Conversion Measurements Archives

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 standardi