Tag: analytics

Is Google’s New TV Ad Model A Step Forward Or Backward?

Google is in the process of drastically changing how online advertising is measured. Last month, the search and advertising giant announced its Brand Activate Initiative that is geared toward addressing the measurement challenges that brand marketers face.

This new approach, which was announced at the Ad Age Digital Conference, applies a television ad model to digital advertising. On the DoublClick Advertiser Blog, Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising, wrote:

In the 1950s, brands slowly moved to TV, just as they have started to move online today. In both instances, buying and selling systems improved; audiences and new content quickly moved to the new medium; and the creative possibilities inspired great ad campaigns.

However, a key moment for TV came in the 1950 with dramatic improvements in measurement—like ratings and quantitative market research. Once major brands could see who they were reaching and what impact their campaigns were having, they fully embraced the medium, creating a multi-billion dollar industry…and TV’s golden age began.

Here is a video Google released detailing the new effort:

As part of the initiative, Google introduced two solutions: Active View and Active GRP (Gross Rating Point). With Active View, advertisers will only pay for viewed impressions. Active GRP, on the other hand, is what brings the television aspect to the table, and it is calculated by combining aggregated panel data with anonymous user data.

How do you feel about Google’s new ad metrics? Will they take the industry forward? Why or why not?

It is this online equivalent of the Gross Rating Point that has some people less than satisfied with Google’s initiative. Just Media CEO Dick Reed has been particularly vocal on the issue and slammed Google about the move on his company blog. According to him, the Active View element is a positive approach to helping marketers with online measurement challenges, but the Active GRP is another story.

“Where we have, I think, a little bit more of a challenge is to accept that we need to move to a GRP model, which is moving toward a TV-based model, when digital really has been doing so much more in analytics than TV has,” said Reed.

“It just feels like a step back in time,” he continued, “rather than pushing the TV industry to be more in tune with the current metrics.”

As he explained, digital advertising offers a very direct relationship between ads being viewed and the interaction with them. Therefore, he thinks the panel-based approach is a minimum offering when it is compared to the data the industry is capable of obtaining.

“We’ve got more tangible data on each individual ad rather than having to rely on panel analytics,” Reed pointed out.

Frauke Cast, Just Media’s head of analytics, also told us that Active GRP would have a “dramatic” impact on the industry. She explained that the CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) would become more valuable and expensive as a result.

Both Cast and Reed believe that Google/DoubleClick should set a higher standard as a leader in the industry. What’s more, they would like to see them work with other ad serving technologies to provide solutions for the entire industry.

“We want Google and DoubleClick to lead the industry – that’s what we expect from them as the major player – but what we would like to make sure they do is create initiatives that are not just for those people who are using the DoubleClick tool,” said Reed.

Cast also pointed out that an open metric system would have been preferred. Furthermore, since the standards that are established today will set the stage for the future, she believes Google should have brought in agencies, publishers, and others in the industry before it began its initiative.

“It should be our decision – combined decision,” she added.

Google is currently in the process of submitting the methodology behind Active GRP to the Media Rating Council for accreditation. The company also said there would be much more to come with the Brand Activate Initiative.

May 16, 2012
Google Analytics Social Reports Get Backlink URLs, Post Titles

In March, Google announced the release of new social reports in Google Analytics. These included an Overview Report, a Conversion Report, a Social Sources report, a Social Plusgins report, and an activity stream tab. Today, the company announced some further expansion of social reports. Google’s now showing backlink URLs and post titles within the social reports.

“The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002,” says Ilya Grigorik with Google’s Analytics team. “Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.”

“These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content,” says Grigorik. “Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.”

The social reports are certainly welcome to Google Analytics users, and any data Google can add to the mix is a good thing, especially since so much of it is now “not provided“.

There was actually an interesting report from Poynter this week about the impact of the “not provided” data on news sites, citing Adtrak, indicating that it’s having a huge effect. Poynter revealed that 29% of its own searches in April were not provided.

The “not provided” data, of course, comes as a result of Google’s encrypted-by-default search experience for signed in users.

Hopefully some of the new data Google is offering will help ease the pain.

May 3, 2012
Nine Analytics Tips to a Hassle-Free Site Migration

Many site owners and marketing managers experience data loss and lose visibility into their marketing activities and site performance which potentially could negatively impact the bottom line. This article examines practical steps to maintain and improve the quality of your data when upgrading or redesigning a site, or migrating to a site/new content management system. While the examples used here are Google Analytics specific, the approach is applicable to other analytics solutions.

Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

With a little bit of planning, business owners, marketing managers and webmasters would immensely benefit. Here are few items to review prior as you plan to upgrade your site:

Tip #1 – First and foremost review what are conversions (goals, users actions) you are measuring on the current site and how it’ll apply to the new site. You might be adding video, or downloads or new lead form, these new user actions should be tracked as goals in Google Analytics. Plan for it. Or maybe, you’ll be selling online on the new site, if so, plan for eCommerce analytics to measure where your online sales will be coming from, average order value and top selling products. If you will be using Google Checkout or Paypal, let your analyst/developer know to integrate.

Tip #2 – You’ve heard that “segmentation” is really important to understand the behavior of different users (new vs. returning, customers vs. non-customers, etc.), and you want to apply this concept to the new site. Identify those segments clearly and pass on the information to your analyst/consultant/developer and they’ll help you track it on the new site.

Tip #3 – Third-Party Systems: start looking beyond just your website. Are you passing information to SalesForce, SugarCRM, or other CRMs? Look for other tags from advertising and affiliate platforms and include them in your site upgrade plan, including Google AdWords tracker, comparison shopping sites tags, doubleclick or other tags.

Tip #4 – Analytics and websites do get technical so if you are a marketers, this is a opportune time to be super nice to your technical team :). Have a meeting with your analyst (or consultant) and go over your list of marketing and business measurement goals we discussed above, and ask them to plan the Google Analytics Tracking Code implementation for sub-domains or cross-domain tracking, or if you are using events or firing virtual pageviews, they might need to make updates necessary to maintain the same data collection method. Also, have your technical team pay close attention to URLs/redirects, especially for landing pages, redirects can create all sort of data mess if not handled properly.

Note: if the URL structure and page naming convention is changing, one or more of the following could be impacted, so plan for the necessary updates at the time of site upgrade: filters, goals, e-commerce variables, custom variables, advanced segments, custom alerts, custom reports with filters, dashboards with filters.

Site Launch – Congratulations!

You are very excited about the your new site launch, and you should be. Few more steps and you’ll be ready to celebrate!

Again, marketers and webmaster must work very closely here.

Tip #5 – First and foremost, and right after the site launched or if you had a site in a staging environment, you want to validate that the analytic code is on all your pages (turn to your favorite site scan software). Pay extra attention to key pages (landing pages/static pages and conversion pages such as thank you pages, form completion pages, e-commerce purchase complete pages, etc.). And while you are at it, run a quick hostname report. In Google Analytics this can be found under Demographics -> Technology -> Network to ensure you are collecting data only from your production web properties.

Tip #6 – You might be experiencing slow load times when you launch your new site for a variety of reasons. Don’t despair, GA has some powerful reports that come to the rescue. Discuss the Site Speed Reports (under Content) and identify and fix page or server issues.

Tip #7 – Go the GA reports and set up a date range comparison (equal number of days, and days of week before and after launch), then monitor your most important metrics. Here are some starting points: under Audience, run a report on traffic/key metrics/conversion by browser. Any major peaks and valleys pre/post site launch? If so, immediately inform your webmaster, there are potential issues with browser compatibility. Also, examine your traffic sources and goal conversion carefully. If the domain/sub-domain configuration wasn’t set up properly, you’ll see all sort of issues with self-referring traffic, visit inflations and other side effects. Don’t forget to review your Pages report for any error pages (404 pages) that site visitors might be experiencing.

Tip #8 – Automate. Yes, let Google Analytics do all the heavy lifting for you. Set up Custom Alerts (Intelligent Events) on all vital metrics. Without needing a degree in Statistics, GA will report to you if and when any of these metrics fall outside the norm. This is very powerful and a great time-saver. You’ll be notified when there is an issue (or a good thing) and you’ll act on the finding accordingly.

Tip #9 – Annotate – yes, you’ll few weeks down the road, you’ll forget what changes you made on your site. So take few minutes to annotate (by date) when major changes occurred, day of site launch, etc. Your colleagues (or consultants) who come after you, will be very thankful for the context you’d provided.

Note: while the above tips focus on analytics and maintain data quality, site migration or upgrade planning should include SEO and SEM planning. Look for the for search engine traffic and landing pages and report drops in ranking, traffic, engagement or conversion issues to your search marketing team.

Equipped with the above nine tips, you’ll be closer to a hassle-free outcome. By following these suggestions, your site will not only have that fresh new look you develop, but you’ll also have the necessary data you need to measure and improve the site and marketing performance and keep your visitors (and boss) very happy!

Editor’s Note: For a comprehensive checklist on analytics tips for a hassle-free site upgrade and migration, check out Feras’ recent post on the E-Nor Digital Marketing Optimization blog.

April 17, 2012
IBM Acquires Varicent Software & Gains Analytics

Today IBM announces yet another software company acquisition. This time its Varicent Software, a noteworthy provider of analytics software for compensation and sales performance management.Varicent automates the collection and presentation of sales data across finance, sales, human resources and IT departments to uncover trends, analyze data, and improve efficiency and performance.

The addition of Varicent brings new power to IBM’s analytics capabilities and provides even greater value to their enterprise clients. It also furthers IBM’s efforts to integrate more technology with less maintenance and introduce more cloud-based solution.

Les Rechan, general manager of business analytics at IBM comments on the acquisition:

“The acquisition of Varicent advances IBM’s efforts to drive analytics capabilities into the hands of front line employees to transform business operations and ultimately improve the bottom line,”

“For the thousands of sales organizations still relying on silos of data, spreadsheets and e-mail to manage sales, there is an enormous opportunity to apply analytics to this vital area of business and uncover new, untapped growth opportunities.”

Dan Shimmerman, president and CEO of Varicent also comments on the acquisition:

“Sales Performance Management is still viewed by many in the industry as an art versus a science, but there is plenty of opportunity for this mind set to change,”

“As part of IBM, we can now bring our technological expertise in maturing and advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales function to a broader range of clients across the globe who are looking to improve their processes, and strategically align incentive compensation with profitable growth.”

These services are in demand like never before and IBM has picked up on the need at a critical time when banks, insurance companies, retailers, information technology and telecommunications providers need these analytics tools to create plans of action and reorganize forces to work efficiently and deliver maximum results.

IBM has amassed one of the most comprehensive and valuable analytics patent portfolios available. This latest acquisition makes IBM a no-brainer for enterprise customers interested in highly-effective analytical solutions.

April 13, 2012
Google+ Pages In Google Analytics Soon To Be A Reality

It looks like Google may be gearing up to offer even more social data in Google Analytics than originally thought.

Arvid Bux at DutchCowboys.nl (via State of Search) blogged about a presentation Google gave, indicating that you will soon be able to connect your Google+ Page with Google Analytics.

WebSonic posted the actual slide, revealing the news. It says the feature is “coming soon”:

Last month, Google announced that it would soon be releasing new social reports in Google Analytics. Google said the reports were aimed at helping users: identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to conversions, understand social activities happening on and off site to help you optimize user engagement and increase key performance indicators, and make better, data-driven decisions in your social strategies.

There is a Social Sources report and an activity stream, which does include data from a lot of places, but lacks some key social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon.

Since the announcement of the social reports, Google has also announced new site speed reports, as well as new email and PDF exporting features.

April 10, 2012
Facebook Page Insights Tool Gets Some Improvements

Facebook is making changes to its Page Insights.

“The updates are designed to give you more insight into what happens when people engage with your Page posts and share them with their friends,” the company says in a post on the Facebook Studio blog. “If someone shares a Page post, we’ll attribute impressions of those shares to impressions from the original Page post. We’ll also be capturing Page post impressions on an ongoing basis. Previously, if a post received impressions after 28 days, those numbers weren’t captured.”

All Pages will see the changes within the next few days in Page Insights, according to the company.

Facebook Page Insights data is updated daily, and becomes available within 24 hours after the day is complete.

The company recently announced realtime insights for websites using social plug-ins, and made some improvements to App Insights.

In Facebook’s blog post, the company also mentions that Cathay Pacific has reached nearly 30 million friends of fans on Facebook, and provides a video case study.

April 4, 2012
Google Maps Analytics For Business Opens Up Troves Of New Site Data

Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for any business working on developing their brand in how it allows businesses to study many different variables such as where the web traffic is coming from, how much time was spent on their site, and so on. Google Maps announced today that, similar to how Google Analytics allows webmasters to evaluate what works and doesn’t work on their website, businesses will now be able to use Analytics with their Google Maps in order to evaluate the interactions of customers as they toggle the Google Map embedded in the business’ homepage.

For example, if your business is in one of the many locations where Google Maps has made available the 45 degree view, you can change the map on your business page to display this vantage. With Analytics for Google Maps API for Business, you’ll be able to see whether or not this change increased the interaction visitors have with your map. You’ll be able to assess other interactions visitors have with your map, which Google explains in the provided demonstration video below.

Other interactions you’ll be able to see include whether or not a visitor uses Street View and if they bookmark your business to their Places.

The Analytics for Google Maps API comes with the Google Maps API for Business package.

April 4, 2012
Google Analytics Gets Some UI Tweaks

Google announced the launch of an updated user interface for Google Analytics. The company says the tweaks were in response to user feedback (they do listen sometimes).

“We are particularly proud of the attention to detail that our user experience team has put into making the interface easy to use, understandable, and beautiful,” says the Google Analytics Team in a blog post.

“The primary goal of this update is to bring more attention to the things that matter — your data, and how you analyze it,” the team adds. “We improved legibility of score card and table data, and refined our color palette to draw attention toward data instead of navigation elements.”

Other adjustments include: changes to information hierarchy and the graphed metric and select a comparison metric directly from the graph.

Graph and Table options have been made more visible, Metric Group selection has been improved, according to the company, and they’ve added some new icons to the left navigation for Audience, Advertising, Traffic Sources, Content and Conversions.

March 1, 2012
Facebook Page Insights Gives Business New Analytics Tool

In addition to Facebook announcing yesterday at fMC that users will start seeing ads with the mobile app, another tool that Facebook will be offering to businesses looking to expand their presence on the site is Facebook Insights. In a nutshell, it’s Google Analytics for your brand’s Facebook Page, but here’s a more detailed look at what the service looks like.

Basically, Insights allows all Page administrators and developers access to the Page’s metrics so they can see how their posts are performing across the site. Admins will be able to see how many Facebook users a post reaches, how many users it engages, and how many people then begin a discussion about it.

The information at the top of the page displays the main figures that businesses will want to pay attention to, but most telling is the Friends of Fans number. As you can infer from the name of this figure, it’s the total amount of people who are friends with the Page’s fans yet haven’t actually committed to being a fan themselves. Knowing how many prospective Page fans are literally one degree away from becoming actual Page fans will likely play heavily into how businesses develop strategies to attract those Facebookers.

The People Talking About This keeps track of the amount of Facebookers who are talking about the business among their friends. This doesn’t mean that any and all name-droppings of a brand automatically gets beamed back to a business’ Page. Information included in these metrics only includes Likes, Likes or comments on a post, responses to polls or events, mentions and photo tags, or anyone who check in via a business page. This means when you reply to a friend’s post and say, “Incredibly, you’re stupider than a bag of Doritos,” that kind of statement wouldn’t get included in Doritos’ official data. Well, it wouldn’t unless you actually tagged Doritos so as to link back to their Page.

Another peculiar metric to look at is the difference between Reach and Engaged Users. Reach merely refers to the amount of unique people that have seen a post from a business’ Page, whereas Engaged Users are people who have actually clicked something within the post (links, I imagine, as miscellaneous clicks on random text won’t be collected as data).

Insights also provides Page admins the demographic info of its fans. This metric is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s what it will look like in Insights:

It’s worth noting that, as far as the viewable data goes for Page audiences, businesses will only be able to use Insights for posts published after July 19th, 2011. Still, there’s a ton of data for advertising statisticians to play around with here that wil undoubtedly be valued by businesses as they seek to how best to market products to Facebook users.

March 1, 2012
SEO, Analytics, Financials, All In One Place

How’s business? It’s a question small business owners are asked a lot. But it’s one that is increasingly difficult to answer because of the complexities of running a modern business. WebControlRoom.com is a free tool that has been developed to help small businesses answer this question by providing a real time performance report with data from various sources in the one place.

In order to thrive, small business owners need to keep their eye on many different measures to know not only if they are on track now but whether things are heading in the right direction for the future.

Because of the myriad of different services used by small business owners these days, particularly web savvy ones, it’s not easy to get an overall picture of how things are tracking without logging into a lot of different places and manually piecing together the puzzle.

After battling with this issue himself, Australian small business web expert Dan Norris developed a free tool, WebControlRoom.com to do exactly that. By talking to popular small business services like Xero, Mail Chimp, Google Analytics etc, WebControlRoom.com is able to present a one page chart showing the key stats all in the one place giving business owners the important information in seconds.

But unlike other dashboard type services, WebControlRoom.com is not just about pretty charts, Dan explains. “Big companies love pretty charts. But small business wants the right information, quickly. By focusing in on month by month comparison data, the tool makes it clear which areas of your business are going well and which ones need attention”.

“Small business owners can open their report each day from their computer or their mobiles and within a few seconds identify issues or see areas that are performing well”.

Examples of the charts include current Google rankings so business owners can stay in top of how their site ranks for their chosen keywords and newsletter opens from Mail Chimp or Klout score to measure the engagement of their audience. Revenue charts from Xero show how this month’s revenue compares to last month and color and size coding on all charts makes is quick to pinpoint problem areas or see spikes in results.

In total there are 9 services and many more on the way and there is a slim lined version for mobiles that loads whenever the service is accessed from a mobile.

Other than supporting more services, plans for the future include a smart messaging system that provides users with sponsored improvement messages related to their performance.

WebControlRoom.com is available for free to the public as a beta release now.

February 29, 2012
Cirque du Soleil Oscar Performance Steals The Show According To Twitter
We’re already aware that Twitter was pretty much dominated by Oscar discussion on Sunday evening, but what part of the show really set users’ thumbs in motion? Was it host Billy Crystal’s opening routine? Was it when Meryl Streep shocked with her Best Actress win? Was is when The Artist won Best Picture as the close of the ceremony? No, no, and no, according to Twitter analytics company TweetReach.

Apparently, Oscar viewers were most compelled to tweet by the high-flying acrobatics of the Cirque du Soleil performance.

TweetReach tracked over 2 million Oscar-related tweets Sunday night and they say the biggest spike in activity was 18,718 tweets in one minute during the Cirque du Soleil performance.

The twitter chatter was varied in its assessment of the performance, but it no doubt had people talking:

@gavinpurcell
Gavin Purcell“When I think movies, I think Cirque Du Soleil!!!” – Nobody in this dimension #oscars 11 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@KeriHilson
Keri HilsonThat Cirque Du Soleil performance was AH-MAY-zing!!! 11 hours ago via UberSocial for BlackBerry ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@KelleviZion
Kellie HunterWow! #Oscars. Cirque Du Soleil. I. Am. Speechless… 11 hours ago via Plume for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@Hadzilla
Jeffrey HadzListen close and you’ll hear thousands of people Googling how to spell Cirque du Soleil right now. #Oscars 11 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

Here’s the Cirque du Soleil segments, courtesy of Mediaite:

TweetReach’s list for the top ten Twitter moments from the Oscars includes some big award moments as well as some of the comedy bits (like Zach Galifianakis & Will Ferrell) and J-Lo’s possible wardrobe malfunction:
1. Cirque du Soleil performance.
2. Octavia Spencer wins Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Help.
3. Hugo wins for Best Visual Effects.
4. Meryl Streep wins Best Actress for The Iron Lady.
5. The Artist wins Best Picture.
6. Zach Galifianakis and Will Ferrell present Best Original Song award to Bret McKenzie for The Muppets.
7. Christopher Plummer wins Best Supporting Actor.
8. Jennifer Lopez and her possible wardrobe malfunction.
9. Jean Dujardin wins Best Actor for The Artist.
10. Angelina Jolie presents Best Adapted Screenplay to The Descendants.
What was your favorite moment of the night? Let us know in the comments.
February 27, 2012
SES London: Google Talks Bounce Rate, Social Signals You Should Be Measuring

Search Engine Strategies London is going on right now, and Googler Avinash Kaushik gave a keynote address that appears to have left attendees inspired.

State of Search’s Louis Venter has an extensive account of Kaushik’s speech. One interesting part is what he says about bounce rate. I’m not sure if these were Kaushik’s exact words, but Venter writes, “Bounce rate shows you how much you suck.”

One issue that’s been debated in the industry is how much of a signal bounce rate is in Google’s algorithm. If this is the message Kaushik is sending, however, it stands to reason that this is the message Google is sending. He is, after all, the digital marketing evangelist for the company, and the analytics guru.

Another highlight was the following list of “things you should measure for social contribution” as Venter conveys:

1) Conversation rate – if you talk does anyone care? The number of audience comments per social contribution will help measure this.

2) Amplification rate – 70, 000 people follow Avinash, his second level of people is over 1 million people. # forwards per social contribution is a key metric to cover too.

3) Applause Rate – # positive clicks per social contribution

4) Economic Value – sum of your macro and micro conversions and how they contribute to your overall picture

Here’s some Twitter reaction to the event so far:

@louisventer
Louis VenterAvinash was awesome, here is the post i wrote on it http://t.co/UKHi4lcq # seslondon 10 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@rod_izumi
Hiroto IzumiGreat Opening Keynote of #seslondon 2012 by @avinash ! Hope to see you again soon again in Japan. http://t.co/bYQO6Vcs 5 hours ago via HootSuite ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@wellertimothy
Tim wellerHITS . How Idiots Track Success. Great quote from Avinash Kaushik at #seslondon 11 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@adCenter
Microsoft adCenterSome pictures of day 1 #seslondon http://t.co/bWyVFUNN @sesconf – more people in the pictures tomorrow! 4 hours ago via CoTweet ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@louisventer
Louis Venteris re-targeting right for you? great session at #seslondon http://t.co/MbvOE44K 5 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@leeodden
Lee OddenThx! RT @willquick: I pray to God that @LeeOdden is putting those slides online. Amazing information. #seslondon 5 hours ago via Echofon ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@AndrewGirdwood
Andrew GirdwoodA ranking in position 3 or 4 with review stars can generate as much traffic as number 1 position, says @guylevine #seslondon 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@patrickaltoft
Patrick AltoftKey Linkbuilding Strategies Presentation from SES London #seslondon http://t.co/wNS0KPt7 via @patrickaltoft 6 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@avinash
Avinash Kaushik@matt_mcgowan Thanks Matt, it was great to open the conference. Great audience, great Incisive staff! #seslondon 7 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@leeodden
Lee OddenSEO Migration Plan: A Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail @SESLondon http://t.co/TAcosYVY 1 day ago via bitly ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@anthonybpalmer
Anthony B PalmerPPC Tools of the Trade #seslondon http://t.co/p2umTS96 1 hour ago via twitterfeed ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@paoloalbera
Paolo Albera53 Best Tips from #SESLondon Day 1: http://t.co/2xnLf3l2 by @kevgibbo (via @seoptimise) 14 minutes ago via Tweetbot for iOS ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@JonDMyers
Jon Myers#SESLondon Day1, 3 Panels moderated, @guylevine @daxhamman @andymihalop @refinedlabs @monetate Karl Blanks @alistairdent top speakers! 58 minutes ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@Ideasfordad
dan patmorePleased with how my #seslondon presenting is shaping up now 🙂 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@kevgibbo
Kevin Gibbonsaudit & benchmark, preserve URLs, update backlinks/301, submit new sitemap & work w/ SEO agency from day 1 @russosullivan #seslondon 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

Attending the event? What has been the best part to you?

February 21, 2012
Google Analytics Gets 9 New Languages

Google Analytics users know that the product just underwent a transformation to a new version, and now Google is adding even more accessibility features to the service.

Today, Google has added functionality for nine new languages to Analytics.

The new languages are: Arabic, Croatian, Hebrew, Hindi, Latvian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, and Ukrainian.

We are confident this will improve the usage of Google Analytics across the world, and help website owners and AdWords advertisers get even more out of their internet marketing efforts. Happy data mining!

These nine new languages bring the total to 40 total languages available to Google Analytics users – “quite the polygot,” Google+Analytics+Blog%29″>according to Google.

If you wish to change the language for Google Analytics, you must be using the new version. Make sure you’re logged in to your Google account, then click on the settings button at the top right.

Google Analytics has also updated the help center to support these nine new languages.

February 8, 2012
Tracking Marketing Response: Building Your Measurement Framework
As you learned in my previous article, Win With Data: A Guide to Improve Your Bottom Line, you understand that no matter what type of website your organization has, tracking marketing response is key to improving the overall performance of your website, marketing and the bottom line. The primary three steps of building your measurement framework, which I presented are
- Documenting your objectives
- Understanding the uniqueness of your marketing channels, and
- Choosing your metrics
But you’re not done yet! To continue the process, take advantage of the four remaining steps that will help you take charge of managing your marketing initiatives.

Context is Key

Keeping in mind your initial overall objective of reporting on what matters to your business, look at both “big picture” as well as specific data derived from the information you’ve gathered. When examining this data, remember the context in which the data has been taken. This gives a whole lot more meaning to your reports.

For example, if you sell online and seasonality is important to your business, don’t just report that you made $2.5M last month. Add context (as you see in the graph), by adding a previous month to show revenue increased by 22%. Add in the same month last year (and show off that 46% increase!). And last but not least, show your “planned” numbers, as well as how close or how far you are from meeting those targets.

Let the Computer Do the Work for You

Arrange for automatic reporting so you don’t have to babysit your site. Now this doesn’t mean that you get your analytics set up and you’re done. Consistent monitoring of your site is important. We’re talking about managing your analytic data by arranging for detection when significant changes occur. Specifically in Google Analytics (and who doesn’t have access Google Analytics these days), set up alerts to automatically flag issues (or positive trends) and bring them to your attention. This gives you more time for strategic work, and less time focusing on watching traffic, conversion rates, etc.

Build Effective Reporting Tools into Your System

Now that you’ve got the first five steps down, you’re ready to compile all your data in a useful and comprehensive presentation. Bring everything that matters; social media, offline marketing, web analytics, etc. into one reporting interface where you can organize and review.

Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Bing, SalesForce and Facebook all offer ways of extracting data. There are several tools available to help bring all your data together. I’ve seen organizations use a manual (painful) process and some with a very sophisticated data warehousing solution, and then everything in between. For Google Analytics users, many data export options are readily available, including the one we recommend, ShufflePoint.

This program allows you to export and integrate data into Excel and PowerPoint with the click of the mouse!

Automate Reports

Make life a little easier for yourself by automating reports. Several tools make it possible to send data directly to your inbox or web based and interactive dashboard Choose key performance indicators, set up the automation and analyze the data and take actions!

So there you have it. Seven steps to analytics reporting. Take your company to the next level in digital marketing optimization by following this framework, that will not only help you to understand your customers/visitors, but also to improve your site performance, achieve higher ROI from your marketing initiatives and gain better insight into your business.
January 27, 2012
Microsoft Announces New Atlas Search Desktop Tool

Microsoft announced the launch of the new Atlas Search desktop tool for Atlas clients.

“You can traffic up to 1mm keywords within 24 hours by simply exporting your keywords from the search engines, and then dragging and dropping the file into the tool,” says Microsoft’s Lori Goode. “Click redirects are created at the click of a button and ready to upload back into the search engine. No really, it’s that simple!”

@atlasadvertiser
Microsoft AtlasIntroducing a new way to traffic and measure your search campaigns!…http://ow.ly/8wAGD 4 hours ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

“OK, so the ASDT will keep traffic time to the barest minimum,” she continues. “But when you’re using the ASDT, you also benefit from deeper connections between search engine data and Atlas data. You’ll be able to pull search engine dimensional and fact data side-by-side with Atlas data in MyReports, giving you the ability to assess campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, and landing page performance.”

Reports, including Keyword Path Analysis and Search And Display Synergy have been updated to be compatible with new, simplified click redirects.

Microsoft also released a new API that will support the launch of a new Search Engine Management channel in the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance.

January 17, 2012
IBM Announces Social Analytics Services
IBM unveiled today a new set of software and services for social analytics in the enterprise.

The main software product is IBM Connections for analytics, real-time data monitoring, and collaborative networks through IBM’s SmartCloud services. Included in the new offerings, as described by the company, are:

New social analytics software that integrates wikis, blogs, activity streams, email, calendaring and more, and flags relevant data for action. It allows for instant collaboration with one simple click and the ability to build social communities both inside and outside the organization to increase customer loyalty and speed business results.

New software that integrates social networking capabilities with enterprise content management to better connect people with information so they can make informed decisions and act quickly.

The new IBM SmartCloud for Social Business simplifies access to business-grade file sharing, social networking, communities, online meetings, instant messaging, email and calendar. In addition, IBM SmartCloud for Social Business will deliver a cloud-based productivity suite allowing users to co-edit documents in real-time.

New messaging and collaboration software that brings the power of embedded experiences to the Web and mobile devices providing a single point of entry for all business processes.

“There is boundless opportunity for social business to transform how we connect people and processes, and increase the speed and flexibility of business,” said Alistair Rennie, GM, Social Business at IBM. “A successful social business can break down barriers to collaboration and put social networking in the context of everyday work, from the device or delivery vehicle of your choice, to improve productivity and speed decision-making.”

IBM also announced the beta release of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, Social Edition for “acting on any work flow process directly within the email inbox.”

The company says it intends to support mail, calendaring and contacts in a beta release of IBM Lotus Notes Traveler for Microsoft Windows Phone on Nokia and HTC devices within the first half of the year.
January 16, 2012
Google Analytics Site Speed Metrics Expanded

Google announced the launch of some new metrics for the Site Speed report in Google Analytics.

The metrics are aimed at giving webmaster a better understanding of how they can improve their website performance. Speed, we know, is a ranking signal for Google, so this is probably one worth paying attention to.

That said, Google’s Matt Cutts did kind of downplay the impact speed actually has on rankings. It’s a signal, but it’s certainly not the loudest. Still, it’s good for the user experience, and we know Google likes that. Of course, it’s always good to have a good user experience no matter what is impact from Google is.

In the “technical” section in each of the site speed tabs (Explorer, Performance and Map Overlay), there is new set of metrics.

“The Technical section of the Explorer and Map Overlay tabs provides details on the network and server metrics,” the company explains on the Google Analytics blog. “Similarly, the additional sections of the Performance tab shows summaries for each of these metrics. These network and server metrics are one component of Avg. Page Load Time; the other component is browser time, i.e., the browser overhead for parsing and executing the JavaScript, rendering the page and other overheads such as fetching additional resources (scripts/stylesheets/images).”

The site speed report also displays: avg. redirection time, avg. domain lookup time, avg. server connection time, avg. server response time, and avg. page download time.

“If you notice that some of the metrics are higher than expected, review your site operations and test if changes lead to improvements,” Google says. “For example, if you notice that Avg. Domain Lookup Time is high, you might want to change your DNS provider. A high Server Connection Time, on the other hand, is a metric that you might not be able to reduce.”

“To most significantly increase your website’s speed, evaluate your Site Speed report for metrics that have the largest values and target those for improvement,” Google adds.

For example, for a high average redirection time, you might evaluate whether redirects are even necessary. Google suggests also checking to see if a specific referrer is causing high redirect latency. For high average domain lookup time, you might change DNS providers. For high average server response time, you might reduce your backend processing time or place a server closer to users. For high average page load times, reduce your initial data size.

December 14, 2011
Adobe to Acquire Efficient Frontier

Adobe announced its intent to acquire Efficient Frontier to bolster its digital marketing strategy. The company seems to have been more focused on this side of its business with recent acquisitions and partnerships (such as its partnership with OptiMine Software and its acquisition of Auditude). Probably not a bad idea considering the direction Flash is going.

“The purchase bolsters Adobe’s strategic focus on digital marketing and expands the company’s solutions, which are central to how digital marketing and advertising is created, managed, executed measured and optimized,” an Adobe spokesperson tells WebProNews.

Efficient Frontier will add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization features to Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite.

“With the explosion in global Internet advertising, our customers need to know where, when and how to spend their digital marketing dollars to get the greatest return,” said Brad Rencher, SVP and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business. “The addition of Efficient Frontier will give our Digital Marketing Suite customers a leading platform for turning ad spend into business impact.”

“Adobe’s vision of digital marketing is perfectly aligned with the Efficient Frontier approach – use data and intelligence to manage risk and drive ROI across a growing number of digital channels,” said Efficient Frontier President and CEO David Karnstedt. “Adobe customers will have greater insight into how their social, search and display spend impact one another and how to optimize their cross-channel campaigns.”

Included in the pending acquisition is Context Optional, a subsidiary of Efficient Frontier.

@ContextOptional
Context OptionalExciting News! @Adobe announces definitive agreement to acquire @efrontier (and @contextoptional ) 1 hour ago via Social Marketing Suite · powered by @socialditto

Context Optional provides Fortune 500 companies with brand management, monitoring and analytics tools.

Adobe itself, it says, currently captures nearly five trillion digital transactions per year for over 5,000 customers, which include some of the world’s largest publishers, ad agencies and advertisers.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

November 30, 2011
YouTube Analytics Replaces YouTube Insight
YouTube announced the launch of YouTube Analytics, which replaces YouTube Insight. The company says it aims to make it easier for users to learn about their audiences.

Features include:
- A Quick Overview: A new overview provides all of the information that you care about quickly, while also enabling you to easily access more detailed information.
- More Detailed Reports: Analytics now includes more detailed statistics so that you can have a more precise understanding of your content and audiences.
- Audience Builders: Discover which videos are driving the most views and subscriptions.
- Audience Retention: See how far viewers are watching through your video in the new audience retention report.
YouTube’s Creator Playbook has been updated showing how to use the new Analytics:

YouTube is also sharing this related infographic:

YouTube Analytics will be released to everyone using a modern browser throughout today.
November 30, 2011
Tablet Problems, Analytics & The Kardashian Wedding

I have to say, it’s been a bit of a slow day for infograhpics, but we were able to dig up a few interesting ones, including one from the FCC, one about analytics (a hot topic given recent Google announcements) and one about the Kardashian wedding (yeah, why not?).

View more daily infographic round-ups here.

The FCC looks at the impact of tablets on Spectrum:

Kissmetrics provides a 2011 web analytics review:

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++

Source: The 2011 Google Web Analytics Review Infographic

Brilliance looks at the Kardashian wedding from August vs. the average wedding:

Brilliance Loose Diamonds

October 19, 2011
Google Encrypted Search Means No Info For Individual Queries

Google announced that it is going to begin encrypting search queries with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as the default experience at Google.com when you search logged into your Google account. http://www.google.com will become https://www.google.com.

“This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe,” says Google product manager Evelyn Kao.

There’s a chance that your Google experience will be slower with SSL because the computer your’e using has to establish a secure connection with Google. This is interesting, considering that Google has put so much effort into speeding things up.

It’s worth noting that you can just go to https://www.google.com when you’re signed out, and still use encrypted search.

Naturally, webmasters and SEOs are contemplating the effects this will have on search engine optimization and analytics.

Sites visited from Google’s organic listings will be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Google, but they won’t be able to receive info about each individual query. They will, however, receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to the site for each of the past 30 days in Webmaster Tools.

“This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic,” says Kao. “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

“When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” says Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”

“We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she adds. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”

Google is making the encrypted search available on all of its search properties except for Maps.

October 19, 2011