New Google Analytics still poor experience
Back in May I gave the new Google Analytics design a negative review, primarily because it made it impossible to view at a glance how many people in what area of the world are viewing your site. I’d also panned it for making one unable to view both Page Views and Visits together simultaneously.
Despite my griping, they rolled it out anyway with this feature unchanged, and they made it impossible to view the data through the old UI as of July 19th. They report adding more requested features, but how about adding back some of the functionality they destroyed? Perhaps they’re more involved in getting the daily data processing issues resolved, and admittedly I’d agree that would surely be a higher priority. I’m just still flummoxed because it seems so unnecessary to revoke good functionality in the first place.
I’ve found yet another irritating change that I consider to be even more serious: you apparently can’t view the data in monthly units – only daily:
Why did they revoke the ability to visually compare monthly periods?!? Most search marketers I know like to compare overall figures from month to month since it tends to reduce some of the spikiness of short-term bursts, and lots of folks are using monthly billing cycles and such.
If I’m mistaken and there’s some where to set the period to display monthly, I hope someone will let me know. I hunted and hunted, and checked their help section to no avail. If they really did revoke monthly display, I can only reiterate further how bad this so-called “upgrade” really was! All glitz with little beneficial substance.
The Analytics team should borrow some of the members of the Google Maps team, since comparatively the Maps team seems to get it right a lot more lately.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 08/01/2007
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Filed under: Analytics, Google, Tracking and Reporting Analytics, Google-Analytics, Internet-Statistics, Statistics
Google Maps adds Microformat support to results
I was pleased to see that Google Maps team announced support of the hCard microformat today in map search results. This will make the export of address/contact info easier for users, and pave the way for perhaps greater integration between the map results and other applications. If you have a browser with a Microformat plugin feature, you can easily export listing information for use in Outlook or other applications you may have:
Can we hope that Google’s support of Microformats at the front-end of their application might also indicate that they may eventually support Microformats at the back-end? As you may recall, in local SEO tips I posted last year, I recommended that local business webmasters not just include their business address on their site pages, but to do so in the hCard Microformat. I was probably the first to propose doing this for local search optimization, even though there’s been no overt mention from the search engine representatives that this is necessary or desirable. So, why did I recommend doing that?
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/31/2007
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps Google-Maps, microformats
Google browser rumors resurrected
According to Ryan Naraine, Google has hired well-known browser hacker Michal Zalewski to help make their products more secure.
Zalewski has an established history of exposing security holes in various software products, particularly the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/30/2007
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Filed under: Google, Security Browser-Security, Google, Google-Browser, Hackers
Pay-Per-Action Ads may open up Google to being a victim of fraud
I was just reading Barry Schwartz’s report that Google is opting-in some AdSense publishers into Pay Per Action (CPA) ads. He poses the question of why would Google push these ads on the publishers who haven’t asked for it? The immediate answer I come up with is that this could actually be a test to try to detect fraud, since CPA is thought to be less prone to exploit. After all, the publisher would only get paid for these ads if someone buys – not just clicks on the ads on their sites. Perhaps the publishers that are getting opted-in are ones for which Google has had some question about the quality of click-through in their regular PPC ads.
I’ve been thinking that an unpublished problem with Google’s pay-per-action product is that Google itself is likely to become more a victim of fraud with these types of ads. Read on and I’ll describe…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/26/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Google, Paid Search, Tricks, Worst Practices click-fraud, Cost-Per-Action, CPA, Google-AdSense, Pay-Per-Action
Matt Cutts reveals underscores now treated as word separators in Google
After the recent WordCamp conference, Stephan Spencer reports here and here that Matt Cutts stated that Google now treats underscores as white-space characters or word separators when interpreting URLs. Read on for more details and my take on it…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/26/2007
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Filed under: Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, Keywords-in-URLs, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Google Quietly Decommissions Click-to-Call from Maps
Google quietly decommissioned their experimental click-to-call services from Google Maps. Previously, you could use the “call” links beside phone numbers in their search results:
It’d be nice if Google would officially mention when they remove such features from service, even if they were considered experimental. Quite a number of people reported using the feature, and some were even reliant upon it for making things like personal long-distance calls from within companies that didn’t allow employees to do so, or where long distance was actively blocked. Google didn’t announce the change on the Google LatLong Blog where you might expect, but instead stated it in a response to a user’s question in the Troubleshooting section of the Google Maps Help Group:
Of course, the service was introduced free, and no one can ever expect a free ride forever, and perhaps cell phones make click-to-call less attractive to users. Though, I would’ve expected they’d first see if they could get such a service to pay for itself through advertising before throwing it out altogether. For instance, each call could’ve been prepended by a brief audio ad or they could be displaying ads along side the call/maps interfaces while users were connecting through. Perhaps they just had trouble working out call quality issues.
For those users seeking a good voice-over-IP (“VOIP”) solution, I guess they can sign up for Skype.
Update: I see this has also been reported by Grant Robertson at downloadsquad.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/20/2007
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Filed under: Google, Maps Click-to-Call, Google-Maps, voip
Where’s the Google search result?
I had a client ask me the other day where his traffic was coming from, since he couldn’t find his listing in the top few pages of search results for a keyword that was showing up in his analytics reports. The analytics system had reported that he’d received a number of visits from users who’d searched for “Keyword X” in Google and had clicked through to his site. Problem is, when he went and searched for “Keyword X”, he didn’t see any of his pages listed in the first dozen or so pages of results in Google, and he figured it’d be unlikely that a number of users would click very many pages deep anyway.
So, how did this traffic happen?
This isn’t the only time I’ve seen something like this happen. Probably a number of people have had the experience of calling up a partner or colleague to talk about something they see in the Google search results, only to find that the person at the other end of the phone sees a very different thing when they commit the same search in Google. The listing could be shown 9 places down from the top of the page instead of 2 places down, or it isn’t showing up at all for them while it’s showing plain as day for you.
Unfortunately, this is going to become a more and more common experience for webmasters. Google’s diversity of search products and results sets are becoming more and more differentiated for different users, and as this happens, people searching for the very same keyword are going to be seeing completely different search results. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/09/2007
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Filed under: Analytics, Google, Searching, Tracking and Reporting Google-Search-Results, Google-SERPs, Keyword-Search-Results, Personalization, Web-Analytics
Google Quality Scores for Natural Search Optimization
Google made big waves in the paid search marketing industry when they began introducing a Quality Score which impacted cost and rankings of AdWords advertisements. Similar quality scoring methods are likely in use as ranking criteria for Google’s natural search results as well, and Google’s Webmaster Tools may hint at some of the criteria. Here are some details of that quality scoring criteria and some ways for you to improve rankings with it.
Google provides a very rough “formula” for their AdWords Quality Score:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/02/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, google-webmaster-tools, Quality-Scores, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Spamscore
Google Maps could be chocked full-O-ads
I was glancing at Google Maps of Tokyo when I noticed just how many ads they have running in them! I can see icons for all sorts of chain restaurants for instance, including: McDonald’s, Baskin-Robbins, 7-Eleven, Royal Host, Mini Stop, Taco John’s, Denny’s, KFC, ampm, etc.
Now, we’ve already seen ads in Google Maps here in America, but in a much more limited deployment:
The Tokyo map ads are not clickable like the ads in the states.
What’s really different with the Tokyo map is the density of ads within the maps is much greater, and there seems to be much more variety of companies advertising. I can only see this as the likely future for Google Maps here in the US, too — more ads, from more companies.
UPDATE 3/18/2010: Mike Blumenthal reports on how icon ads have been added to Google Maps in Australia.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/20/2007
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps Google-Maps, Google-Maps-Tokyo, Map-Ads, Map-Advertising
Top 10 Reasons Vanessa Left Google
Well, the search marketing industry was mildly rocked this week by the news that the much-beloved Vanessa Fox will be leaving Google where she was something of a maven, spokesperson, and technical evangelista for some years. The news has left me rather verklempt! I can’t help but suppose that we’ll now all get to see her less or not at all in her new role working for the real estate website, Zillow.
I’ll be missing her Sandman t-shirts and Buffy references at the conferences, and I fear the subject matter will end up being a lot drier overall for her lack.
Though I don’t know that she’d need any SEO help, I must say that I happen to know a thing or two about local search optimization, if she would like to call me in for advice at Zillow! 😉
In appreciation for Vanessa, with warmest regards, here’s a little list I composed of the Top Ten Reasons Vanessa Left Google:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/15/2007
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Filed under: Google, News Google, Google-Webmaster-Central, Vanessa-Fox
