• Email Opens
• Bounces
• Email Forwards
• Links Clicked (ClickThroughs)
• Spam Detection
• Amount of Successful Deliveries
• New Subscribers
• Opt Outs

Labels: Email Marketing, Web Analytics

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comScore has just published a press release containing a review of internet activity in 2007. Google, Facebook, OfficeMax, Demand Media were amongst the largest gainers from 2006 to 2007. Both the Yahoo and Time Warner sites saw a drop of 4 and 5% respectively from 2006.

comScore Core Search Report *December 2007 vs. December 2006 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University LocationsSource: comScore qSearch 2.0
Core Search Entity	Search Queries (MM)
	Dec-06	Dec-07	Percent Change Dec-07 vs. Dec-06
Total Core Search	8,348	9,636	15%
Google Sites	4,317	5,629	30%
Yahoo! Sites	2,300	2,211	-4%
Microsoft Sites	871	940	8%
Time Warner Network	465	442	-5%
Ask Network	396	415	5%

Top-Gaining Properties in 2007

A study of the growth in visitors among the top 100 U.S. Internet properties revealed that 2007 was a strong year for several of the largest properties.

comScore Top 20 Gaining Properties by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors* (U.S.) December 2007 vs. December 2006Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet UsersSource: comScore Media Metrix
	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Dec-06	Dec-07	% Change
Total U.S. Internet Audience	174,199	183,619	5
Everyday Health	2,690	12,073	349
Glam Media	7,994	25,028	213
OfficeMax	5,130	15,339	199
Demand Media	5,999	14,958	149
Yellow Book Network	4,386	10,388	137
ValueClick Sites	6,339	13,013	105
Facebook.com	19,105	34,658	81
WorldNow - ABC Owned Sites	8,714	15,474	78
Craigslist.org	14,075	24,468	74
Experian Interactive	8,054	12,500	55
Yellowpages.com Network	16,168	24,453	51
AmericanGreetings Property	11,982	18,102	51
Comcast Corporation	18,716	26,445	41
UGO	8,450	11,912	41
The Mozilla Organization	10,948	15,267	39
Answers.com Sites	10,707	14,899	39
Wikipedia Sites	38,585	51,851	34
iVillage.com: The Womens Network	13,545	17,234	27
AT&T, Inc.	23,833	30,212	27
Internet Broadcasting Systems	9,894	12,394	25

Labels: AOL, comScore, Facebook, Google, Yahoo

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Labels: global thoughtz

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Labels: Compete, eBay

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Recently at MacWorld, Apple announced the release of their newest, thinnest laptop the MacBook Air. It's one of the most sophisticated technologies available in that it can hold all of the components which comprise a laptop yet still remain amazingly thin. Today over at the Wired Gadgets Blog they wrote about a parody MacBook Air Video(from YouTube) which poked fun of the "paper like" design and its cost of $3000.

Here is the original MacBook Air Video:


Here is the Parody of the same video:

Labels: Apple

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Labels: Video Analytics, Video Optimization, Web Analytics

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• Leveraging high image rankings: You may have top rankings for your images in both the image results and universal/blended results but what are visitors doing when they arrive at your site? Search Engines such as Google show the exact page where an image resides (after clicking throuh on an image) therefore this is a great opportunity to funnel visitors deeper to your site. The different images queries which refer visitors to your site can help dictate the type of content you should surround your images with.
• Should you freshen up your images? You definitely should. Similar to textual content, keep visitors coming back with images that continue to match the visitor's query (and intent). The most important point is to maintain the names of the images as well as the textual content within the alt attribute.
• The ROI on Video: Video is an excellent way to promote your brand and services to visitors but how do you know when a given video has maxed out its potential. I recommend checking out trends for views, comments and clickthroughs (and again what visitors are doing after the click through). These trends should help show whether or not the video is still engaging visitors. If you are seeing the trends flat-line you know it's time to add some new content.
• Visitors know what they like to watch: If you're thinking about enhancing your video strategy with some fresh content then I suggest you look to your visitors for help. Look at the comments they leave (if you've uploaded YouTube or MetaCafe) and secondly look at your internal search terms. Both of these areas are ways visitors have engaged with your content by providing feed back so why not show visitors what they want?

Bonus Tip*

This next strategy is not directly related to video or images but the concept is something you maybe able to apply elsewhere. I have two travel sites: BC Travel Guide (.ca) and British Columbia Tours (.com) and I am looking to rank highly for "Kelowna" or "Kelowna British Columbia." So I created a Kelowna themed page on each site, both with keyword rich content, interlinking and images. The results are too early to tell but this allows me to test the level of authority per domain, the return per domain and the potential for having 2 sites rank highly for a few phrases.

Labels: Image Optimization, Universal Search, Video Optimization

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As we all know Microsoft has recently released their second quarter earnings and they did very well: $4.7 billion, or 50 cents a share, on revenue of $16.36 billion.

But how does Microsoft make money? The table below starts to segment their revenue by their various online/offline channels.

How Microsoft Makes Money	Three Months Ended December 31			Six Months Ended December 31
(In millions)	2007	2006			2007	2006
Revenue
Client	4,238	2,669		2,669	8,283	5,975
Server and Tools	3,284	2,847		2,847	6,186	5,343
Online Services Business	863	625		625	1,534	1,161
Microsoft Business Division	4,814	3,512		3,512	8,921	6,944
Entertainment and Devices Division	3,060	2,968		2,968	4,988	3,978
Unallocated and other	108	(79)		(79)	217	(48)
Consolidated	16,367	12,542		12,542	30,129	23,353
Operating income/(loss)
Client	3,243	1,929		1,929	6,488	4,599
Server and Tools	1,132	986		986	2,016	1,787
Online Services Business	(248	(116)		(116	(510	(232
Microsoft Business Division	3,140	2,146		2,146	5,801	4,387
Entertainment and Devices Division	334	(306		(306	470	(430
Reconciling amounts	(1,120	(1,167)		(1,167	(1,866	(2,165
Consolidated	6,481	3,472		3,472	12,399	7,946

Below are some additional details on how Microsoft makes money - Source: Zdnet: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7706

• Microsoft’s $16 billion in revenue is a company record.
• The company’s client unit–think Vista and XP–had operating income of $3.36 billion on revenue of $4.33 billion. For the same quarter a year ago, Microsoft’s client group had operating income of $1.84 billion on revenue of $2.58 billion. Translation: For all the whining about Vista folks are buying it.
• Enterprise sales are strong with Microsoft’s business division and server and tools unit posted double-digit revenue growth rates. The business division–Office, Sharepoint etc–in the December quarter reported operating income of $3.18 billion on revenue of $4.81 billion.
• Microsoft’s server and tools business had operating income of $1.72 billion on revenue of $3.28 billion in the December quarter.
• Microsoft says it is seeing “healthy demand from both businesses and consumers in the United States and our growth in emerging markets is especially strong.”
• Xbox 360 console sales hit the 17.7 million unit mark. That’s a lot of units for a relatively small profit. In the December quarter, Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division had an operating profit of $357 million on revenue of $3.06 billion.
• But Microsoft’s online services division–MSN etc.–still isn’t making money with a second quarter operating loss of $245 million on revenue of $863 million.

Microsoft Financial Reports:

Current Fiscal Year

• Second quarter 2008 earnings
• First quarter 2008 earnings

Prior Fiscal Year

• Fourth quarter 2007 earnings
• Third quarter 2007 earnings
• Second quarter 2007 earnings
• First quarter 2007 earnings

Labels: Microsoft

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Over the last couple of days I have been digging into the ZoomInfo API (using C# - ASP.Net) to first of all better understand the API and secondly to leverage the data provided in order to use it for things like company profiling, competitors, and key contacts at a given company.

The ZoomInfo API gives you the ability to:

• Search for any person in the ZoomInfo database by name.
• Search for any company in the ZoomInfo database by name, domain, industry, keyword, geography, or company size.
• Get detailed information such as description, industries, address, stock ticker, key people, mergers and acquisitions, and more on any company in the ZoomInfo database.
• Get a list of competitors for any company in the ZoomInfo database.

Below is a sample URL to make an XML request for the ZoomInfo data:

http://api.zoominfo.com/PartnerAPI/XmlOutput.aspx?query_type=people_search_query&pc=&firstName=Brian&lastName=Balfour&key=

The "key" has to be generated by concatenating the following parameters:

1. First 2 letters of every search term in sequential order (*** Note for the Company Competitors Query, supply the whole CompanyID)
2. Your Shared Secret
3. Today's day (not padded with zero)
4. Today's month (not padded with zero)
5. Today's year (4 digit)

Below is a method you can use to generate the MD5 code:


// Create an md5 sum string of this string
public static string ZoomEncode(String str)
{
System.Security.Cryptography.MD5CryptoServiceProvider x = new System.Security.Cryptography.MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
byte[] bs = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(str);
bs = x.ComputeHash(bs);
System.Text.StringBuilder s = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
foreach (byte b in bs)
{
s.Append(b.ToString("x2").ToLower());
}
return s.ToString();
}

Below is a method you can use in C# to retrieve the XML provided by the ZoomInfo API. It takes into account the type of request made, for company detail or company competitors:



public static String getCompanyDetail(String companyDomain, String queryType, String companyID)
{
StringBuilder urlBuffer = null;

urlBuffer = new StringBuilder("http://api.zoominfo.com/PartnerAPI/XmlOutput.aspx");


urlBuffer.Append("?query_type=");
if (queryType == "company_detail")
{
urlBuffer.Append("company_detail");
}
if (queryType == "company_competitors")
{
urlBuffer.Append("company_competitors");
}

urlBuffer.Append("&pc=");
urlBuffer.Append(zoomInfoKey);

if (0 != companyID.Length)
{
urlBuffer.Append("&CompanyID=");
urlBuffer.Append(companyID);
}

if (queryType == "company_detail")
{
urlBuffer.Append("&CompanyDomain=");
urlBuffer.Append(companyDomain);
}

String keySeed = "";

if (0 != companyID.Length)
{
keySeed = companyID;
}
else
{
keySeed = companyDomain.Substring(1, 2);
}
keySeed += secret + DateTime.Today.Day + DateTime.Today.Month + DateTime.Today.Year;

urlBuffer.Append("&key=");
urlBuffer.Append(ZoomEncode(keySeed));

try
{

HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(urlBuffer.ToString()) as HttpWebRequest;
request.ContentType = "text/xml;charset=\"utf-8\"";
request.Accept = "text/xml";
request.Method = "GET";
using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)
{
using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
String temp = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
return temp;
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Debug.Write(ex.Message);
}
return String.Empty;

}


Labels: C#, ZoomInfo

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comScore has just released a report containing a list of the top 10 Facebook Apps as well as the apps' US penetration.

“Top Friends” by Slide was the top ranked application during the month, with more than 6.2 million engaged viewers (18.5 percent of the Facebook audience), followed by Movies by Flixster with 5.2 million (15.4 percent), and SuperPoke! by Slide with 3.6 million (10.8 percent). Slide contributed three of the ten most engaged Facebook applications in November, while RockYou! contributed two.

Top Facebook Applications* November 2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Widget Metrix
Facebook Application	Engaged Widget Viewers (000)	Penetration of Total U.S. Facebook Audience
Total Facebook.com Visitors	33,660	100.0%
Total Facebook Applications	20,649	61.3%
Top Friends (Slide)	6,230	18.5%
Movies (Flixster)	5,199	15.4%
SuperPoke! (Slide)	3,626	10.8%
Compare People	3,503	10.4%
iLike	3,449	10.2%
Super Wall (RockYou!)	3,237	9.6%
Likeness (RockYou!)	2,693	8.0%
Quizzes	2,583	7.7%
FunWall (Slide)	2,107	6.3%
Graffiti	1,647	4.9%

Labels: comScore, Facebook

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Before starting my initial post here at the Web Analytics World blog, I'd like to take a moment to say hello to all readers, and thanks to Manoj Jasra for inviting me to contribute. I'll attempt to post as regularly as possible. For those who don't know me, I'm the CEO of a search analytics firm called Enquisite, which offers a product called PPC Assurance that audits and verifies PPC campaigns; a big step beyond click fraud analysis.

I decided that for this first post I'd shed some light onto a way you can use your analytics information to help you better understand your traffic patterns.

A lot of people like to monitor their rankings. Really, that's not as important as understanding where in the rankings your customers come from. It doesn't matter if your site has moved from page 6 to page 3, if it still doesn't result in visitors. I've seen reports which claim that people regularly go 5 pages deep in results to find a web site. The numbers don't substantiate those claims.

From a search engine optimization perspective, (or PPC), all that matters is customer acquisition. While it's rewarding to see a site move from page 22 to page 3, and there will doubtless be an increase in traffic, there's no question victory is only found on page 1. Allow me to explain why.

When giving presentations on website analytics, or when demonstrating Enquisite I like to use a two slides to demonstrate the difference in traffic between first page placement and second and third page placements.

This first chart shows search referrals over a one year period. Visits referred from a listing on the first page of search results are noted in red with blue, yellow and green indicating referrals from second, third and fourth page placements. The audience sees a graph that naturally looks entirely red with a scale running between 0 to 5,000 daily referrals.


I should note, this graphic interface is pulled from the Enquisite update which is soon coming out, so if you are a present Enquisite user, you don't have this view yet. You will soon. You'll note that traffic spikes up and down weekly - Monday has the highest traffic, Saturday the lowest. Holidays usually account for the points where traffic really drops off. You can also see the summer swoon which really hits Internet wide.

The second slide that I use shows what happens when I choose to exclude all first-page referrals, leaving a graph whose tone changes dramatically as the scale drops from measuring thousands of referrals per day to measuring traffic in single digits.


On some days, there are no referrals from second or third page placements shown at all. This particular site is a little extreme, most site do get some regular traffic from pages 2+, but it serves to make an important point.

I use the transition to talk about the importance of page 1 placement for search engine optimization experts and for their clients. If your site is not found on page 1 for a key term, then there’s lots of gaps in your traffic. You'll see a marked increase in traffic on most sites as you climb the rankings and by hitting page 2. But that's nothing in comparison to being listed on page 1.

This holds true for anyone buying PPC ads as well. In fact, according to our data when searchers venture beyond page 1, the odds that they will click a paid ad drop remarkably.

For anyone running any kind of search marketing campaign you need to use this type of information to explain to a client why they need page 1 placement.

However, as there are only (usually) 10 spots on page 1 in the listings, the numbers show that page 1 is a lot more valuable than you, or your client, might have ever expected.

Finally, this type of information also shows that there's not a lot of value in "ranking reports" without the context of "do people actually search for that term?" This type of report shows you how often people really visit your web site for particular terms, and from where in the search results.

Labels: SEO

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comScore has released its search engine market share rankings for December 2007. In December it appears Yahoo had the biggest increase with an additional 0.5% jump.

In December, Google Sites’ share of core searches stood at 58.4 percent. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.9 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.8 percent), Time Warner Network (4.6 percent), and Ask Network (4.3 percent). Yahoo! Sites experienced the most significant market share increase, gaining 0.5 share points versus the previous month.

comScore Core Search Report* December2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch 2.0
Core Search Entity	Share of Searches (%)
	Nov-07	Dec-07	Point Change Dec-07 vs. Nov-07
Total Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	0.0
Google Sites	58.6%	58.4%	-0.2
Yahoo! Sites	22.4%	22.9%	0.5
Microsoft Sites	9.8%	9.8%	0.0
Time Warner Network	4.5%	4.6%	0.1
Ask Network	4.6%	4.3%	-0.3

Labels: comScore, Yahoo

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Hiwise has just released their 2007 holiday report. Heather Dougherty, Research Director at Hitwise and author of the report does a great job covering the retail trends, traffic sources, uses of Social Networking/Email/Search, and the key findings. Below is a summary of the report. Download your copy here.

• Strong overall traffic growth despite economic fears – The total market share of visits to the Hitwise Retail Index increased by 17% between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
• Shoppers flocked online on Thanksgiving Day to check out online-only specials and Black Friday promotions – The largest market share of visits to the Hitwise Retail Index occurred on Thanksgiving Day this year, an increase of 20 percent compared to 2006. This is the fourth year in a row that traffic has peaked on Thanksgiving Day, making it the busiest day online in terms of market share of visits during the holiday shopping season.
• Promotions drive season’s highest growth in market share on Cyber Monday – The Hitwise Retail Index comprising the top 100 retail websites received 5.07 percent of all US visits on November26, 2007, representing an increase of 26 percent versus November 27, 2006, with 4.02 percent of visits.
• Search and cross-shopping drive the majority of referrals – Search engines and other retail websites topped the list of traffic sources to the Hitwise Retail Index and together contributed 57% of upstream traffic in December 2007. Email also remained a key communication tool to help drive customers to retail websites.
• Traffic to comparison shopping engines (CSEs) increased during the 2007 holiday season – The comparison shopping engines experienced strong growth during the holiday season, as price conscious shoppers research holiday purchases. The market share of visits was 48% higher in December 2007 than last year.
• Retailer participation helped drive additional consumer interest for Black Friday ad websites – Traffic to Black Friday websites increased by 51% for the week ending November 24, 2007 compared to the same week in 2006 as a result of broader consumer awareness and a greater array of content from retailers.
• Nintendo Wii and Uggs dominate product searches – Nintendo Wii and Ugg boots were consistently the top searches among products during this holiday season. Interest in the Nintendo Wii remained strong leading up to the Christmas holiday even as retailers ran out of stock.
• Shoppers sought gift cards from credit card issuers – Visa and American Express gift cards were the most popular searches for ‘gift cards’ during much of December. Price-conscious consumers also looked for free and discounted gift cards to stretch holiday budgets.

Labels: HitWise

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by Tim McAtee, Senior Analyst at Marketing Sherpa

The second edition of MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook has updated and added to the original edition for 2008. To that end, we nearly doubled the amount of information in the book, added dozens of examples of best-practices, and executed two all-new research studies. The result is a time-tested book of practical advice that is jam-packed with up-to-date hard data and solid examples.


One of the original studies undertaken for this book looked at a large sample of existing landing pages being linked to in current advertising and search marketing to get a quantitative overview of up-to-date landing page designs. The second original study was a survey that went to thousands of practicing marketers to get a qualitative look at attitudes towards landing page design, budgets, office politics, and current best-practices.

We found that landing pages, despite their incredibly important role in online marketing, are still regularly neglected by marketers, and that over one-fifth of online marketers are still making rather basic design errors on their landing pages. For example, 22% of marketers surveyed still have a “clear fields” button, often found on template-based forms, right next to their “submit” button. From a marketing or usability standpoint, this makes absolutely no sense.

For more sophisticated marketers, we’ve included quite a bit of information on how to go about testing and improving landing page designs. It’s interesting to note that among marketers not testing their landing pages, they were equally likely to see year-over-year conversion rates increase or decrease, yet marketers who ran any test, even simple ones, were at least 5 times more likely to see year-over-year conversion rates increase rather than decrease.

Aside from being loaded with factoids and practical knowledge related to landing pages, we’ve also made an effort to advise an embattled marketer on the best ways to go about fighting for a landing page design and testing budget, dealing with office politics, and navigating the many roadblocks to marketing success.

The 2008 Landing Page Handbook is online at our SherpaStore site.

Labels: SEM, SEO

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Microsoft Sites maintained its position as the top property with nearly 22.5 million visitors, reaching 94 percent of the Canadian online population. Microsoft was followed closely by Google Sites with 22.3 million visitors, Yahoo! Sites with 16.3 million visitors and Facebook.com with 15.4 million visitors.

Driven by holiday shopping, Apple Inc. and Best Buy Sites both gained several spots in the December rankings, while The Weather Network Meteomedia (#12) and Telus Sites (#24) also moved up several positions.
Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2007

Top 25 Properties for December


 

Top 25 Properties by Number of Canadian Unique Visitors* December 2007 vs. November 2007 Total Canada – Home and Work Locations** Source: comScore World Metrix
December Rank	November Rank	Property	Total Unique Visitors (000)      Dec-07
N/A	N/A	Total Internet : Total Audience	23,784
1	1	Microsoft Sites	22,449
2	2	Google Sites	22,274
3	3	Yahoo! Sites	16,331
4	4	Facebook.com	15,378
5	5	eBay	13,770
6	6	Time Warner Network	12,070
7	7	Wikipedia Sites	10,585
8	9	Yellow Pages Group	9,788
9	8	Amazon Sites	9,418
10	13	Apple Inc.	8,776
11	10	Canoe Network	8,388
12	18	The Weather Network Meteomedia	7,900
13	11	CNET Networks	7,678
14	16	Fox Interactive Media	7,670
15	14	Ask Network	7,485
16	12	CTVglobemedia	7,396
17	15	New York Times Digital	6,964
18	22	Best Buy Sites	6,812
19	19	Viacom Digital	6,702
20	17	Adobe Sites	6,226
21	20	CBC-Radio Canada Sites	5,894
22	24	WhitePages	5,294
23	23	Gorilla Nation	5,160
24	30	Telus Sites	4,945
25	25	TD Bank Financial Group	4,547

*Ranking based on the top 100 Canadian properties in December 2007.** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Labels: comScore

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BidVertiser has recently added the ability to integrate its services with FeedBurner, Blogger and WordPress:

1. WordPress Plugin to allow you to seamlessly embed the BidVertiser Ads in your feeds.
2. Solution for FeedBurner that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in your current FeedBurner address.
3. Solution for Blogger that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in the footer of each of your post feeds.

The integration is actually quite simple and literally takes less than a minute to setup. Below are the instruction for Blogger and Feed Burner:

Blogger (full instructions)

1. Login to your Blogger account.
2. Click Settings -> Site Feed.
3. Copy your BidVertiser Feed Code to the Post Feed Footer area.
4. You must also set Enable Post Pages to Yes (in Archiving settings) and set Allow Blog eeds to Full.
5. Click Save Settings.

FeedBurner (full instructions)

1. Register your ORIGINAL feed with BidVertiser (not the one you got from FeedBurner).
2. Login to your FeedBurner account.
3. Click Edit Feed Details.
4. Type your new feed address from BidVertiser under Original Feed.
5. Click Save Feed Details.

Labels: BidVertiser

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