• ZDNet: Google Sites: A Sharepoint Killer?
• Information Week: Taking Google Sites For A Spin
• CNN Money: Google launches Web site creation tool
• SlashDot: JotSpot Relaunched As Google Sites
• Associated Content: Google Sites Adds to Google's Internet Empire
• Web User UK: Google launches sites for teams
• eWeek: Google Sets Its Sites
• Pandia Norway: Google adds free online eroom collaboration tool

Labels: Google

 Subscribe

Labels: Omniture, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

This past week at Global Thoughtz featured Social Networks for Analytics, Advertising on YouTube Australia, Facebook slowing down, the Japanese Advertising marketing, the Analytics Summit in India and more.

Social Networks - A Localized Global Phenomenon
Facebook, and social networks in particular, are a medium to “Simply be you, online!”. It is essentially different from everything that is on the web because it brings a flow of real people with real identities and real interaction with their friends, families, fans, followers and future…

A New Professional Network dedicated to Analytical Field
An interesting initiative is born last week in the world of analytical professionals. Vincent Grandville launched www.AnalyticBrigde.com , the first network for analytical professionals. Launched mi-February, it allows you to create your own group, publish your most spectacular statistical…

Advertising on You Tube Australia
Last week, Google hosted its second Google Geek Night in Sydney, which was a great occasion to review some of their products and especially You Tube. In Australia You Tube is: Over 3 milion unique monthly visitors. Number 1 Entertainment site on the Internet in Australia. Average user spends 35…

Facebook Growth Slowing Down?
Source: Techcrunch - The number of people who visit Facebook has been leveling off over the past few months in the U.S., and even dipped by about 800,000 individuals in January. According to the latest stats from comScore, Facebook attracted 33.9 million unique visitors in January, 2008, down 2…

iPhone Coming to Austria via T-Mobile
Weiner Zeitung : T-Mobile has confirmed that it will be Apple’s official iPhone launch partner in Austria. Company CEO Hamid Akhavan confirmed those plans this morning, promising that the network would begin offering the device in Austria during the first half of this year. T-Mobile is already…

Mobile Marketing Tips from Google Director
New Zealand Herald: Diana Pouliot, Google’s director of mobile advertising for North America, was in New Zealand for a conference where she provided some insight and tips on mobile marketing. What have you been doing in New Zealand? I’m participating in a conference being held by The…

2007 Japanese advertising market
According to Dentsu’s 2007 Japanese advertising cost report, more money was spent on the Internet advertising (600 bil yen) than magazine ads (459 bil yen) for the first time in history.The report shows that a total of 7019 bil yen was spent for advertising in 2007 in Japan, compared to 6940 bil…

Memories : Analytics Summit India 2008
(NIT Durgapur Welcoming The Participants for Aarohan 2008) Analytics summit at the NIT Durgapur campus went well along side their technical festival, Aarohan . It was a fantastic day, Feb 15th, when students, professors and Industry leaders sit together and talk about Analytics. (Stage Set for…

Compete against yourself
Webanalytics is all about competing. In most cases it’s about competing with yourself. In more advanced cases you can also compete agains the rest or specifically against your competitors in your industry. But in most cases, you compete against yourself. The good thing is that against yourself…

India Set to Lead Business Analytics Space
Today I was going through the Google Trends and I happened to search for keyword “Business Analytics”. The result surprised me. The keyword is frequently searched in India than US. And more to that 4 Indian Cities top the chart for frequently searched destinations. The picture will say more. …

Labels: global thoughtz, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

I was quite pleased with Day 1 of the Coremetrics Client Summit, learning many different ways that our clients can leverage Coremetrics as well as the services provided by the Coremetrics partners. 300 people were in attendence which made asking questions and having one one chats with Coremetrics analysts VERY easy.

Joe Davis, President of Coremetrics, kicked things off with a keynote discussing a few concepts including:

• There is more adoption of Internet technologies at an earlier age.
• People are not just consuming content anymore but rather creating and sharing content as well.
• Watching and listening to your customers is extremely important because they will show you what they want.
• It's not about just conversions anymore, it's about creating relationships and maximizing the life time value of a customer.

Laura Evans, Executive Studio Director, Resource Interactive, Inc. was up next and based her entire presentation on the concept of the iCitizen and the benefits of Open Brands (Revenue, ROI, R & D, Relevance, and Relationships). iCitizens consists of 4 different types people:

• First people who show expertise and knowledge surrounding a specific subject matter.
• Next is people who have a passion about a subject and often review and create content surrounding their passion.
• Third is Transparency where people show a desire with no corporate filters.
• Finally, there is notoriety which includes people who are online celebrities and have created a following.

Later in the afternoon I attended various sessions put on by Coremetrics experts where I got insight on the topics of:

• Attributing revenue/conversions to proper channels across throughout a consumers' life span.
• Segmenting data in numerous ways such as referring sources, content, products, etc....
• Measuring web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX, Flash, Blogs, RSS, Widgets using Coremetrics.
• Behavioral re-targeting using LiveMail as well as best practices for email campaigns

Labels: coremetrics, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

A January 2008 report, The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Marketing Platforms, Q1 2008, surveyed 73 marketers and found that “nearly 60% of respondents lack the ability to manage marketing processes and resources and coordinate interaction management across channels.” The report goes on to say that “given the scope of their responsibility, marketing leaders look for platforms that integrate processes across the department, deliver tools that enhance collaboration and productivity, measure overall performance, and deliver on the promise of integrating marketing across channels.”

Coremetrics Connect is specifically designed to help marketers address the pain points of integrating the various components of their online marketing campaigns. The Coremetrics Connect platform provides a single, consistent and accessible data source that enables marketers to acquire data about visitors, analyze trends and opportunities based on key visitor segments and act on this data for effective targeting throughout all their marketing channels.

“Coremetrics Connect sits at the center of PETCO’s efforts to match our passionate community of online users with performance data to make significant strides in our online business,” said John Lazarchic, Vice President of E-commerce at PETCO. “By leveraging the integration of Coremetrics with Bazaarvoice, our provider of user-generated content reviews, we’re able to accurately see the impact of our user-generated campaigns.”

Accredited Coremetrics Connect Certified Partners include:

Labels: coremetrics

 Subscribe

Labels: Google, Microsoft

 Subscribe

Today Andy Beal, of Marketing Pilgrim, launched a new online reputation management tool called Trakur.

What does Trackur do?

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool. With Trackur you can setup searches and automatically monitor the web for keywords that are important to you.

Who is Trackur for?

Trackur is the perfect solution for anyone that wants to track news, blogs, and other social media. You can track your own name, your company brands, industry trends, or even your competitor's news! In fact, you can monitor any keywords you wish.

Why should I use Trackur when Google Alerts is free?

Google Alerts only monitors content available through one of Google's search engines. Trackur monitors many more web channels than just Google. In addition, Trackur allows you to save items, sort them, share them via email, and subscribe to an RSS feed--Google Alerts offers none of these features.

Trackur comes in 3 different versions: Standard is $88 per month, Pro is $188 per month, and Enterprise is $388 per month

Labels: reputation management

 Subscribe

• Multichannel Measurement: Tying Online and Offline Together - Thomas Mann, Bank of AmericaWilliam Greene, Coremetrics
• Best Practices in A/B Testing: Matt Cardwell, Quicken LoansKate Heintz, Coremetrics
• Measuring Engagement Workshop: Eric Peterson, Web Analytics Demystified - John Squire, Coremetrics
• Search Engine Optimization: How to Play the Game - Jessica Maier, Calendars.com Kelli Blankenbaker, Coremetrics

Keynotes this year will feature:

• Laura Evans, Executive Studio Director, Resource Interactive, Inc.
• Eric T. Peterson, CEO and Principal Consultant at Web Analytics Demystified
• Kenneth Seiff, CEO, Diet Channel Network, Inc.

Labels: coremetrics, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

As a writer you always hope that your content gets picked up by some of the more popular blogs and news portals in your vertical. The search marketing industry has many different news hubs which regularly make mention of the best content within our industry, here are few good ones to try to get mentioned in:

• BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs: A list containing more than 400 popular SEO/SEM blogs which was created and is maintained by the TopRank Blog.
• Search Newz: Everyday they highlight 4-5 of the top stories within search marketing. Additionally authors get a picture of themselves with their post.
• Search Brains: A search marketing news aggregator comprised of 60 of the most popular online marketing blogs.
• Web Pro News: Their "Blog Talk" section features daily updates on the latest topics within online marketing.
• 9 Rules: A directory which qualifies different types of content from the millions of sources on the internet.
• Search Engine Land's SearchCap: Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz hand pick and highlight some of top stories from the search marketing industry each day. Additionally they mention the most popular articles from Sphinn.
• Sphinn Hot list: Making it on the front page of Sphinn shows that your peers appreciate your content.
• Linky Goodness from Marketing Pilgrim: Everyday Andy Beal and his team pick a select few posts/articles that the industry is talking about.
• Adage Power 150: 575 blog ranked using metrics such as PageRank, Technorati Rank, Alexa Rank, Feed Subscribers and more! Hey Adage, we should be on your list!
• Daily Search Forum Recap: The Search Engine Round Table team recaps the day's top stories from the online marketing forums.
• Top Web Analytics Blogs: Avinash Kaushik ranks the industry's top web analytics blogs based on Technorati Rank and Feed Subscribers.
• SEO Moz Roundup: Similar to their regular posts, SEO Moz performs a detail recap of the week's most interesting stories.
• SEO Space Top 7: A monthly recap of the top 7 stories in the industry. To be on this list you better do something real important.
• Search Engine Journal Blog Awards: Yearly blog awards spanning industry topics such as PPC, SEO, SMO, Link Building and more.
• SEMMYs: An annual awards event honoring the great content produced across the search and online marketing industry.
• This Week's Must Reads: Web Analytics World's very own weekly recap of search marketing and web analytics content.

Labels: SEM, SEO

 Subscribe

Yesterday at the Google Analytics Blog, Kristen Nomura wrote about how to drill down in Google Analytics to view your paid search referral data. The ability to find the paid search referral data is very simple, however it's the complex bid decisions you can make based on ROI that show the true power of something like Google Analytics (or most analytics). If a given set of phrases drive thousands of referrals to your site and if those same visitors aren't returning and additionally those phrases aren't converting, are they really working that effectively for you?

Furthermore, Kristen shows a quick example of how to tag paid search campaigns from other engines (besides Google) to help show the entire picture for your paid search efforts.

Manual Tagging for non-AdWords PPC Traffic To get started with the manual tagging process, our URL Builder tool comes in handy. You can actually use this tool to generate URLs to track any online marketing campaign, but that’s a topic for another post. For paid search campaigns, the main thing to remember is that the campaign medium must be set to “cpc” or “ppc”.Imagine you are driving people to a landing page, www.example.com/landingpage and have a campaign to promote your delicious chocolate product line.

Labels: Google Analytics, ppc, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

Technorati at one time was heralded as one of the most popular blog search engines, providing quick updates and an easy method of tracking topic through tagging. In fact, I believe tagging became really popular couple years back because of Technorati. Back then Technorati's ranking algorithm, which is based on the number of blogs linking back to you, was also a credible way of assigning a level of authority to a given blog. The Technorati rank has declined in popularity over 2007 and looking at the data from Alexa, Compete and Google Trends, so has Technorati.

Compete shows a decrease in traffic of over 20% from last year:




Google Trends



Alexa

Labels: Technorati

 Subscribe

• Implementation Guide: 80 page manual full of in-depth answers and insight based on Semphonic’s years of Omniture implementation experience
• 20 Point Quality Assurance Checklist: for prevention of data collection problems
• Implementation Project Plan Excel Template: lays out all of the tasks for managing a successful SiteCatalyst implementation
• Functional Specification Excel Template: the key documentation a user needs to map business requirements to metrics to tag implementation.

With Semphonic’s Implementation Toolkit for Omniture SiteCatalyst, staff will learn:

• How to set tags to ensure complete collection of data;
• The keys to collecting Web 2.0 content, such as Flash and AJAX;
• Strategies for using SiteCatalyst custom variables for capturing survey and form data
• How to use eVars to track success events
• Best practices for using eVars and s.props
• How to manage a SiteCatalyst implementation project
• Who key stakeholders for tagging issues in your organization are and how and when to involve them in the implementation process
• And much, much more…

Click Here to Purchase - 10% Discount (use the code manoj1008)

“Omniture provides a rich, powerful and extremely flexible suite of web measurement and optimization tools. However, all of that power does come with a price,” states Gary Angel, President of Semphonic. “Getting started with Omniture – measurement design, implementation, Q&A and debugging, and
reporting strategies – can be challenging – and our Implementation Kit provides
proven methods on how to chart a smooth sail through what can seem like rough
waters.”

Labels: Omniture, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

CMS Watch, released research today that finds enterprise search vendors are evolving at a more rapid pace than their products. The research was released in conjunction with The Data Warehousing Institute’s winter conference in Las Vegas, where CMS Watch analysts are leading several sessions.

This analysis stems from CMS Watch’s most recent release of The Enterprise Search Report 2008, which evaluates 20 major enterprise search vendors head-to-head. While several vendors, such as FAST and Mondosoft, have been subject to acquisitions, and others, such as SAP and Oracle, have recently released search offerings, in many ways product marketing is ahead of the actual technology.

CMS Watch’s Netherlands-based contributing analyst, Adriaan Bloem, served as lead researcher. "Despite several large infrastructure vendors touting new search offerings, the technology underneath looks strikingly familiar," said Bloem. "Oracle’s Secure Enterprise Search is a mix of inherited pieces from Text and Ultra Search," Bloem added, "while IBM’s OmniFind is really a collection of acquired technologies.”

In addition to legacy technology being re-packaged and marketed as new products, the research also found:

- Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST reinforces that despite recent product development for SharePoint search, it still lags other enterprise search players and is ill-suited for true multi-repository, enterprise-wide search
- While SAP recently debuted its own enterprise search tool based largely on the legacy TREX search application, the company’s recent investment in specialized search vendor Endeca demonstrates the vast differences – and gaps that still exist – in enterprise search products
- Though it's been nearly 3 years since Autonomy acquired prime competitor Verity, the sense of rapid change at the vendor, and with it their suite of tools, continues. Fusing disparate corporate philosophies and technological approaches has taken time, and there’s still a mish-mash of products and technologies in the works

To plot the current state of product and vendor evolution among major enterprise search suppliers, CMS Watch has developed a "Vendor Risk Profile."



A longer analysis of the chart can be found at: http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/175-Search-2008

Labels: CMS

 Subscribe

Labels: comScore, Google, Yahoo

 Subscribe

• Actionable Analytics: Best Practices for Taking Significant Action
  Presented by ZAAZ
  In today’s dynamic online marketplace, the race is on to find and retain the best customers while achieving the strongest ROI. There are a variety of tools and tactics available to help make this a reality, but the real leap occurs when you become data-driven and take significant action based on analytics. ZAAZ will present the best practices and insights they have developed during the past decade of working with Omniture.
• Using APIs to get the Right Data in the Right Places
  Presented by Bret Gunderson
  Using simple scripts can automate the data import/export process for you. learn how Omniture data can be exported to desktop widgets, executive summaries, CMS systems, BI tools and others, and how data can be imported from your Web server, call center, point-of-sale system or other applications into Omniture SiteCatalyst for reporting. Additionally, you’ll learn how reports and configuration settings can be managed via the Administration API.
• Use SiteCatalyst 14 to Measure and Optimize Video Consumption
  Presented by Bret Gunderson
  New video features in SiteCatalyst 14 inform you about which videos are being watched, (even which parts of the video are being watched), and how effectively video contributes to conversion. See how easy video is to track as the data simply collects to a single server. If you have video or are considering it for your site, this is a session you won’t want to miss.
• Landing Page Optimization for Search
  Presented by Joel Hall & Jason Bishop
  Pay-per-click costs are rising every quarter, yet many companies are experiencing falling conversion rates. We will discuss the strategies, techniques, and tips that will make your SEM and landing page optimization efforts more effective. Learn how search marketers can convert, not just acquire, more traffic by asking the question “What really matters?”
• Shortening the Cycle of Analysis to Action with Site Search
  Presented by Mercado and Omniture
  The power to significantly drive revenue is at your fingertips. When analytics and “searchandising” come together, the opportunity for nimble and effective merchandising decisions and actions increase substantially. Mercado will talk about the benefits of integrating valuable business metrics into merchandising practices, and why automating this process not only saves online retailers time and money, but also generates more revenue.

Labels: Omniture, Web Analytics

 Subscribe

WordPress is an excellent blog platform which provides complete customization which is both user and search engine friendly. Below are some of the tips, tricks and plug-ins that I use when I setup WordPress blogs:

Custom Meta/Title Tags

There are numerous WordPress Meta Tag plug-ins but I like to use this one offered by G-loaded. This Meta Tag plug-in adds Meta Tags to the Front Page, Single Posts, Static Pages and Archived pages. It is compatible for the following versions: v1.5.2 - v2.3.2.

For title tags I use the following code so that the title for the home page uses the blog's description and individual pages get the title of the post gets puts at the start of the title. The title can be updated in a file called header.php.



Feeds

By default, WordPress truncates content within a feed. I personally feel that offering full content within Feeds is actually more beneficial because it allows users to get a complete concept for a given post. Additionally I have noticed a higher number of subscribers when I switched from a partial feed to a complete feed. Using a plug-in such as CompleteRSS is a great way to offer full feeds.

With CompleteRSS you can say goodbye to invalid RSS and partial entries — your feeds show your entire article no matter what, bringing you the traffic you deserve, and no longer use the very-much abused 'content:encoded' tags that cause many feed readers such a headache.

I am not sure what the deal is with HTML in WordPress (or Blogger for that matter) but they constantly mess up. There have been numerous occasions where I tried to copy and paste an HTML table from a different blog into one my blogs and ended up losing the table formatting completely. My suggestion is to find some sort of FCK Editor Plugin to replace the default editor OR to use the "copy from word" option located in the default editor. It looks like this:

Labels: Blogging, Web Analytics, WordPress

 Subscribe

• Clearer identity options on the comment form, which now highlights some of the more popular OpenID providers more obviously.
• Transliteration is now available in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu as well as Hindi
• Posts with more than 200 comments have them split across multiple pages.
• Layouts blogs now have a “Layouts” tab instead of “Template.”
• Better Persian translations and other BiDi layout fixes
• A fix to the long-standing incorrect label counts bug
• Safari 3 support for the Layouts template editor pages
• Faster loading times for the post editor
• Improved international support in the post editor’s date and time fields
• Compatibility fixes for Picasa’s BlogThis! button

Labels: Blogger, Blogging

 Subscribe

Labels: HitWise

 Subscribe

• Spark Notes: Long considered a busy high school or college student's best friend, the online study guide database now offers users an iPod-friendly version. Get summaries and analyses of books like A Tale of Two Cities, Beowulf, Hamlet and more.
• iPREPpress: This website provides study guides, travel guides and foreign language training, all compatible with iPods.

• GoogleGet: Get your Google News and iPod in sync by installing this software program. You'll stay current on all the top news stories, making you better prepared for class or work.
• Soundwalk: This site currently only sells CDs and MP3s, but you can use an MP3-iPod converter to check out unique self-guided audio tours like "The Bronx Graffiti Walk" or "The Paris St. Germain Walk."
• Pod CityGuides: This site has hundreds of city guides that are compatible with iPods, so no one has to know you're really a tourist.

• Learning Podcasting: If you want to create your own podcast to share your skills or expertise on a particular subject, read this in-depth introduction to podcasting from Wise-Women.org.
• Podtender 3.0: This software program will teach you how to make all kinds of tasty cocktails for your next party.
• PodGourmet 2.0: Teach yourself to become a master chef when you get recipes

• iGadget: Make your class notes, presentations, study guides and other materials iPod-friendly by using iGadget. You'll be able to move documents and files back and forth between your iPod and your computer easily and securely.
• Plato Video to iPod Converter: Use this app to transform all kinds of video formats into MP4 formats so that you can upload video clips and footage onto your iPod.

• iJourneys: Take walking tours in cities like Salzburg, Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris and Ancient Rome by downloading iPod-compatible guides from this site.
• Audio Bibles for iPod: AllBibles.com offers iPod-compatible Bibles for theology and seminary students, or for those who just want a more portable version to take along with them.

• iPod in the Classroom: Take a look at Apple's collection of lesson plans for teachers who want to use their iPod for classroom work.
• iLounge: Get together with other iPod users to find out about new things you can do with your iPod.

• ShowFootage: Browse through this site's library of video clips to make your presentations and projects more attractive.
• Audible.com: Find a large variety of books, newspapers and magazines ready to download to your iPod on this site. Categories include Romance, Classics, Business, History and more.

• Stanford on iTunes: Take a class from Stanford by downloading one onto your iPod. Or, you can find interviews with faculty and lectures to help you better understand the course material at your own school.
• University of California -- Berkeley: Classes from this well-respected school are available in chemistry, the social sciences, journalism and much more.

Labels: iPod

 Subscribe

The VisualCalc AdWords Dashboard is a web-based solution that transforms complex PPC data into interactive, easy-to-interpret graphs and charts that help you quickly identify and act on issues and opportunities, maximizing the effectiveness and ROI of your PPC programs. The VisualCalc AdWords Dashboard is a flexible solution that enables the display and analysis of virtually any combination of PPC data.

The VisualCalc AdWords Dashboard turns your raw AdWords/PPC data into graphical performance indicators, such as clicks vs. impressions, conversions by ad group, click through rate by keyword, etc. Indicators can be created for virtually any combination of Google AdWords or PPC data. These indicators are expressed by a variety of graph formats of your choosing, including bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, gauges and heat maps. Each time the underlying AdWords/PPC data changes, the indicators that use this data are automatically updated. Google AdWords indicator graphs are then grouped into customized AdWords dashboards that provide a visual, easy-to-understand view into the performance of your Google AdWords campaigns. The VisualCalc AdWords Dashboard provides immediate, visual answers to you key AdWords questions, such as:

• Which campaigns, ad groups and keywords are delivering the best return on investment (ROI)?
• How are key measurements such as impressions, clicks and conversions trending over time?
• Which keywords are generating the most clicks, conversions and sales?
• How do effectiveness measures such as click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate compare across ad groups and keywords, and how are they trending over time?
• What are the causal factors behind changes in clicks, conversions and impressions?

Labels: ppc, Sponsored

 Subscribe