More on WebTrends 8.1

I've gotten some of the dirt on the soon to be released new version of WebTrends (WebTrends 8.1). Here are the highlights of new features (remember this will first be released to On-demand customers and then as a download to software owners).

1. A new interface for both Admin and end-users
2. Graphics will no longer be generated using Java, but will be dynamically generated web graphics (i.e. jpg or gif)
3. Users will have the ability to e-mail and schedule reports from the profile interface (not sure if this will be a rights issue or not)
4. Admin logging - yes the feature we've been asking for. All profile changes will be dated and logged. Everything an Admin does (so they claim) will be logged. Open a profile for edit, it's logged etc.
5. No more icons on the right-hand side for Admins (analyze now and reanalyze icons that look the nearly the same) - instead they will be replaced with a drop down list to make it less likely that you'll click on the wrong icon and delete your profile.

You can view a sales demo of the new version at:
https://admin.acrobat.com/_a162502/whatsnewanalytics/

Now stuff from the rumor mill. There is going to be a big change in the pricing model. The cost of for the On-demand version and software version are going to be nearly the same and if you've chosen to buy the software, the annual costs will be much higher and perhaps close to the costs of the On-demand version. Final pricing hasn't been set (at least the person I talked to at WebTrends didn't know if had). The good news is that it looks like if you've already purchased the software, you'll be grandfathered in and won't face the new pricing model.

What does this all mean? It looks like WebTrends is trying to harder to move all new customers to the On-demand version of their product. While some businesses don't care, this means higher costs to for others, especially if they like to slice and dice their web site into numerous profiles and have ownership over their own log files.

Other news/rumors from WebTrends, version 9 is now off the drawing board. It has an internal name and development has started. Anticipated release date some time in 2008.

WebBuider 2007 Here I Come

I've just been confirmed as a speaker at this years WebBuilder conference in Las Vegas. This years conference will run from December 3 to December 5. I'm thrilled to be speaking at this years conference as usual. This speaking engagement will ensure my attendance at one of the industries most interesting web conferences anywhere plus it keeps alive my continuous attendance at WebBuilder conferences since the inaugural event back in 97.

WebBuilder was originally organized by CNet and eventually sold to FTP Publications who just after last year's WebBuilder conference was purchased by 1105 Media.

What makes WebBuilder stand out as a conference for web builders is it is the only conference to target the entire web development team. This includes everyone from programmers to project managers to the entire marketing team. There are conference tracks there for everyone and some that try to bring the different teams together. My topic this year is exactly that. Entitled "Designing with Web Analytics in Mind", will address the needs of the marketing team for measuring success and build a bridge with the web developers to ensure that the web site is designed and code in such a way to support the web analytic needs of the marketing and management teams.

More on my conference address at a later date. Once the conference web site is up and running, I'll be sure to post a link to it. For now, if you want to check out last years conference you can view the 2006 WebBuilder 2.0 web site instead and start planning to attend this unique annual conference.

Canadian Mobile Data Rates

Here is a very informative article about how appalling the mobile data rates are for Canadians. Turns out we are paying more then anyone else including some second and third world countries.

These high costs are no going to hold back the adoption of mobile web devices here in Canada and in turn, keep us backward when it comes to mobile e-commerce.

Article URL: news.stepforth.com/blog/2007/07/canadian-mobile-data-rates-are.php

Search Engines Tighten Privacy

Here's an interesting article from the Washington Post about Search engines and their privacy policies. In a nutshell, the major search engines are starting to reduce the the life of their cookie and the tracking of what terms you've been searching on.

This article is well worth the read for anyone concerned about Internet Privacy and search engines.

Read the article

WebTrends 8.1 Comming Soon

I just got word that WebTrends 8.1 is coming within the next 4 weeks to WebTrends on demand. I expect that it will be also available around the same time as an upgrade for people who have a local installation.

From the noticed I've received they are promoting better integration with the Marketing Lab 2 and WebTrends Dynamic Search. There is no mention of what enhancements or new features will be included in the analytics software upgrade.

Stay tuned for more information on this WebTrends upgrade as I get it.

An Amazing Web Site

This post is not about SEO, web analytics or WebTrends, but something truly amazing and still web related. Yesterday, I was introduced to an electronic hand held game an old kids and adult favourite - 20 Questions. While looking at the packaging, I noticed they had a web site www.20q.net.

Well today I checked out the web site and they have same game on-line. You can choose what language you want to think in including several different flavours of English (American, British and Canadian) then choose the version of the game. You can choose the classic version or one of several specialty versions like movies or Dr. Who, Harry Potter etc.

What is amazing about this web site is not only how often it guesses what you were thinking of, but that the site (OK the computer behind it) is learning at the same time. The goal if it guess in 20 questions or less it wins. If takes more than 20 questions, you win. Of course on the few times I stumped it, it shows me where my answers contradicted what was in its database as an excuse for losing. However, if enough people keep answering the same way it will learn and get even better.

So give it a try and try not to get addicted.

Monitoring Search Engine Traffic

One of the advantages of speaking at conferences is the chance to meet and socialize with other conference speakers. Recently at SES Toronto, I had the opportunity to go out for dinner with some 40 plus of these people.

During the dinner I had the chance to chat with someone from Google who actually works on the algorithm and I was able to get some very detailed information o the algorithm that almost contradicted what he had he said during his conference address. To be more specific, I got him to clarify his statement about coding valid HTML and its impact on SEO efforts, more on that another day.

The score of the evening was a chat with Richard Zwicky of Enquisite (www.enquisite.com). During our chat, he mentioned a beta product that his company had launched that allows any web site to get extremely detailed search engine traffic information that typically exceeds anything from all the web analytic products on the marketing (including WebTrends, Site Catalyst, etc.).

So we swapped business cards, and the next day I was given a personal demo of the Enquisite tool. I was impressed and immediately following the conference I registered for the beta. Ever since my account was activated, I've been enjoying rich detailed information on how people are finding my web site.

Features include:

• Splitting paid from organic traffic;
• Exact search phrases;
• Data drilldown by country, region, city, search engine, paid vs. organic, search term or any combination of these elements;
• Frequency of searches;
• Which page of search results they had clicked on;

This tool is a must have for anyone doing search engine optimization or search engine marketing. If you're using Google Analytics or any other analytics tool that doesn't easily split paid from organic traffic, the value is even higher. The best news it's free. All you need to do is go to the Enquisite site (www.enquisite.com), register and typically within 24 hours your account will be activated and you'll be given a java script to add to the bottom of all your web pages. It's that simple.

Once the script is activated, you just need to do a tiny bit of configuration to define how you identified paid traffic and away you go. You can now easily and accurately extract valuable information from all your search traffic. With this information on hand you can use it to further enhance you SEO efforts or paid search campaigns.

SES Presentation - Follow-up

Just a quick note to all those who attended my presentation at the Search Engine Strategies conference here in Toronto on June 12.

I was thrilled with all the positive feedback you gave me after the presentation as I wandered the vendor area and hallways of the Toronto Convention Centre.

Many of you asked me for the name of the software that dynamically sets different phone numbers on your web site. The company is voicestar.com.

As I mentioned during the Q&A of the session, I've only seen the demo of this software and am not currently using it. From the demo it looks great. So if you give it a try let me know how it works out.

Which Analytic Tool Are They Using?

Ever wonder which of the many web analytics tool a specific web site is using? Maybe not, but rest assured that if you start getting more and more into web analytics the question will come up from one of your clients or even yourself.

To help answer this question, the folks at webanalyticsdemystified.com have made a free tool available called "Simple Vendor Discovery Tool". This tool can help determine which java script based web analytics tool a specific site is using. Unfortunately, and for obvious reasons, if a site is analyzing traditional log files, it won't be able to help.

So have some fun and check it out at http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/vendor_discovery_tool.asp

Search Engine Strategies - Toronto

For the third year in a row, I'll be speaking at Search Engine Strategies Toronto. While the search engine conference will run for two days (June 12-13), I will be speaking in the morning of June 12.

Look for me at the session entitled "Keyword Research: Purpose, Tools, and Tactics".

I'll be giving this topic a bit of twist by not talking usual SEO stuff, but about how to harvest data from your own log files. In essence using web analytics in support of search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Unfortunately, I'll only have 15 minutes to speak and I could easily devote several hours to this topic.

So if you're going to be in the Toronto area in June, keep this conference in mind. It is the only one of its kind to take place in Canada. If past experience is anything, it is well worth the cost of admission.

For more information visit the SES conference web site.

Paid Search and Spend Breakdown

Just read an interesting article based on a survey that was sponsored by WebTrends about paid search (SEM).

Some of the highlights from the article/survey include:

• 22 percent saying they run 1,000 to 10,000 keywords
• 31 percent stating they use 1-1,000 keywords
• 21 percent indicated they are running over 10,000 to more than 200,000 keywords

Most respondents indicated that they use multiple metrics for measuring success:

• "traffic" being the top choice at 44 percent
• "conversion" at 34 percent
• "cost per action" at 22 percent

What I found disturbing is that only 14 percent of marketers who responded indicated that they use "profit" to evaluate the success of their paid search campaigns. While I understand that measuring profit may not always be easy especially, when identifying web site conversion points is already difficult on most no e-commerce web site, however, not paying attention to profit or ROI means, that marketing mistakes will be repeated.

From a practical stand-point, I just believe it is laziness in configuring web analytic tools to measure conversions and assigning a value (profit) to these conversions. Followed by applying this revenue to the cost of the campaign for a clear indicator of ROI/profitability.

Read the full article - it is well worth the read

SEO and Baby Naming

Here is a great article from the Wall Street Journal on how important it is for you to rank high in Google for your name. The article goes on to talk about how people are even choosing baby names on how competitive their name (first name last name) is in Google.

What is interesting this is the same exercise that SEO professionals do before recommending specific keyword phrases to target for a business.

For more details see the article on the web site.

Keyword Spy - A new Tool in my SEM Toolbox

A friend just forwarded a great new search engine marketing tool to my attention. After just a few minutes of evaluating it in the free mode, I've added to my arsenal of search engine marketing (SEM) and SEO tools. The tool is Internet Spy (http://www.keywordspy.com).

This tool allows you to easily see how different keyword terms you've purchased are performing plus look up the keyword terms your competition is bidding on a well.

So far I've only tried the free version of Internet Spy and perhaps I'll dig into the old wallet to give the paid version a try. My first thoughts on looking at the costs are that it is a bit steep. At $19 USD for a single day, they may be pricing themselves a bit too high and when you look at an annual subscription price of $99 per month ($1,188 per year) they are a lot more expensive then paid SEM and SEO tools that I'm currently using.

So I'll stick with the free version for now, but I'll keep in mind the competitor's information that you can't anywhere else. So let me know if you decided to give the paid version a try. I'd love hear from you.

WebTrends 8.0d Download Now Available

WebTrends as of last Friday released 8.0d. This version contains the batch for daylight savings time plus a few other minor bug fixes.

I'm in the process of downloading it and as usual either WebTrends is swamped with downloads (which I doubt) or they are once again throttling the download speed. I'm on a high speed connection and barely getting dial-up download speeds.

Oh well,

Here is the link for all of you: ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/80d/wt-windows.exe

WebTrends & Day Light Savings Time

Great article from WebTrends on what you need to do before this weekends change to Day Light Savings time here in North America.

Basically you don't need to do anything if you're running your profiles with the default settings. However, if you are using the custom time zone settings, you need to apply a patch.

The article references WebTrends 8.0d, but a check of their download site does not show a version 8.0d being available. My guess is that the patch is the equivalent, unfortunately the article is a bit vague on this.

What's interesting is that the patch became available on March 2, barely a week before needed. Yet given the formal policies in most organizations about applying patches to production servers, I expect many organizations won't have the patch in place on time.

I also find it surprising that WebTrends hasn't issued a notice of the patch and instead has relied on a message being displayed when you log into your WebTrends. Since many people ignore these WebTrends marketing messages I'm sure many organizations didn't even get the message that there is a patch available.

Search Engine Market Share Update

I want to thank Patrick G. an avid reader of my blog for pushing me to research and report on the latest market share for the different search engines.

Like you, I use this knowledge when concentrating my SEO efforts for specific search engines or for my ppc (Pay Per Click) search engine marketing efforts.

The last statistics I reported on were received from Google Canada itself. I haven't received an update lately, but I've found a few web sites that are reporting these numbers on a global basis.

So are some different latest snapshots:

Comscore
Share of Online Searches by Engine
December 2006 - January 2007
Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Source: comScore qSearch

	Dec-06	Jan-07	Pt Chg vs. Previous Month
Total Internet Population	100%	100%	N/A
Google Sites	47.3	47.5	0.2
Yahoo! Sites	28.5	28.1	-0.4
Microsoft Sites	10.5	10.6	0.1
Ask Network	5.4	5.2	-0.2
Time Warner Network	4.9	5.0	0.1

If you're looking for global numer then take a look a these numbers from Netapplications.com (the numbers are based on traffic to the web sites they monitor).

Top 10 Search Engines and their market share for February 2007

Google 52.16%
Yahoo! Web Sites 10.43%
Google U.K. 10.20%
MSN 4.57%
Google Canada 3.39%
Google AdSense for Content 3.35%
AOL 1.59%
Google Germany 1.28%
Microsoft Live Search 0.99%
Yahoo! Web Sites U.K. 0.98%

Of course what we all really want to know is how this breaks down within the USA, Canada, UK, Germany etc. If I find this kind of details I'll post those numbers.

In the mean time, you can view the full details that are updated monthly at

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=1

Web Analytics & Daylight Savings Time

Much is being made about computers and switch this year to day light savings time happening two weeks earlier. Yes if you didn't download and install the appropriate patch, your personal computer will show the wrong time (off by an hour). So, what about your web analytics product?

As the clocks spring forward by an hour will you show an hour gap in your log reporting? The answer can be a bit complicated, but here goes the long and short of it.

If you're using a hosted web analytics tool like WebTrends OnDemand or Google Analytics, everything should be fine as I would expect these firms to have patched all their servers and planned for this change. If you're processing log files on your own server there are a couple of things to look out for.

First, is your web server or log data collection server patched and set to adjust automatically for the time change? If not, the entries in the log file will be off by an hour. Next, is your web analytics server and is it patched and ready for the time change. If either of these are not synchronized, then you'll have problems.

Just remember, the clocks are moving forward by one hour. So no matter what you do you'll see a gap as the clocks jump from 1:59:59 am to 3:00:00 am. The problem is if you don't see this event.

So plan and don't panic you still have a few days to prepare for it.

Podcamp Toronto - Review

On Saturday, I had the pleasure to attend the first day of Podcamp Toronto. Unfortunately, a scheduling conflict prevented me from attending day 2 of Podcamp Toronto. If I had known when I planned my schedule how exceptional Podcamp would be I would have made sure to have kept my Sunday open as well.

Attending Podcamp here in Toronto reminded me and many other attendees of the buzz that surround the web back in 1997 or 1998. I even took that feeling one level further and noted that the conference and speakers were truly throwbacks to the earliest days to the web, when like minded people would get together and share everything in order to spread the word and perhaps change the world.

Podcamp speakers were quick to share tips, code and techniques. All speakers made their slides publicly available via the conference Wiki. To my surprise, the whole event was broadcast live. I took advantage of this by tuning into a couple of the Podcamp presentations on Sunday when I couldn't attend in person. While I was able to get the info from the presentations, there is nothing like attending an event like this in person. As I always say about conference, you can separate a good conference from a great conference by what happens between sessions and in the hallways. On more then one occasion, I was late or missed an entire session because I was involved in great conversations in the hallways.

My how this technology has change over the years, while to me it seems like only yesterday that people were conceiving the idea of broadcasting events live over the Internet and when my wedding was the first wedding ever broadcast live 8.5 years ago, it seem just so radical. Now the cost and the technology to do live broadcasts is within virtually everyone's reach.

So I learnt a lot about podcasting. Sessions covered everything from hardware, to software, how to publish your podcast, how to market your podcast and much more. There were even a few sessions on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and your podcast. While these sessions covered the basics, for a seasoned SEO professional like me, I saw a lot more opportunity.

Absent from the conference however were speaker egos, copyright notices on slide presentations and costs. Yes Podcamp Toronto was free to attend. Thank you to all the volunteers, speakers and event sponsors for not only putting on an incrediable event, but for allowing everyone to attend regardless of their financial abilities. I can't say I got my money's worth, but I can say that Podcamp Toronto was worth investing my time in attending and I can't wait until the next Podcamp.

Google Loses Belgium Court Case

Several months back I posted an article on how a group of Belgium newspapers were suing Google over listing headlines and snippets of stories in Google News. Well the court has ruled and Google has lost.

It turns out that the bigger issue besides the headlines and content snippets (which in itself contradicts the Belgium copyright laws) was the storing of copies of articles in Google's cache. Like most newspapers they offer recent stories for free, but then place them in an archive and charge for access to the archive. By allowing searchers to access the articles through a cached copy, Google was taking away potential revenue from the newspapers.

As with all big law suits, it is never over until someone gives up. On that note, Google is planning on appealing.

Read the full story.

Checking Backlinks in Google

Checking Backlinks in Google

As all SEO professionals know, the back link checker offered by Google (link:yoururl), has been intentionally broken for some time now. While there have been many reasons discussed for why Google broke their own application, it has left SEO professional with a broken tool for checking backlinks on the most poplar search engine, until now.

As of last week, Google has added a new tool to its set of extremely helpful tools available as part of its Webmasters program. According to the Google post on its blog, "Now you can use webmaster tools to view a much larger sample of links to pages on your site that we found on the web. Unlike the link: operator, this data is much more comprehensive and can be classified, filtered, and downloaded".

The good news is that everything Google promised in its post is true. You can now check backlinks to every single page in your web site instead of just the domain. There is a treasure chest of information just waiting to be discovered with this new tool.

The tool does come with some limitations. First and most obvious, you need to sign-up for the Webmaster program (not a big deal and it is free) and secondly you need to verify yourself and the domain you want to check backlinks for. This second step isn’t a big deal either, but it does require that you publish some code to the web site that you are interested in.

So go on and register and check out all the free features of Google's Webmaster service at http://www.google.com/webmasters

Remember if you have questions about this or any other post you can contact me by simply clicking on the Bitwine Icon in the right-hand column.

Video Blogs - BlogTV.ca

For Canadians interested in taking blogs to the next level comes BlogTv.ca.

BlogTv is currently in beta and it allows anyone with a web cam to broadcast live and even record the broadcast for later streaming. This is a free service and for now restricted to user in Canada.

I've just registered with a test account and will give it a try. I can see the potential of this type of service and am currently trying to differentiate it from the already established world of Podcasts.

So far by poking around the site, I've yet been able to find how I can download these broadcasts to my personal computer or video iPod. I'd love to see a subscription service to specific individuals or channels, so I don't have to visit the site every day. Perhaps that is something that will be forth coming as BlogTV moves its way through the beta process, but for now they are relying on Shockwave for streaming the videos.

One nice feature is they allow you to link your video into your blog. So here is a link to my first very basic test.

If you've ever wanted your own TV show, but just couldn't break into the industry here is your chance.

More details about BlogTV can be found on CBC.ca at www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/01/31/tech-blogtv-20070131.html

Tracking Blogs & Bog Conversations

Along the lines of del.icio.us has come a new bookmaking tool called co.mments.com.

co.mments.com allows you to create bookmarks of specific blog conversations that you want to track. This tool can be used to monitor blogs where you have posted a comment and want to see if anyone has responded, or perhaps you just want to monitor a particular blog entry to see if others have added comments (started a blog conversation).

Personally, I think this is an interesting idea. On several occasions I've posted comments blogs, only to forget to check back for a response. It was only days later that I remembered the posting and had to try hard to remember the specific blog.

This tool allows you the option of having blog comments e-mailed directly to you. This is a great alternative if you don’t want to subscribe to the blogs RSS feed. As another option, you can share to co.mnents links with friends or the public at large.

Because I think this idea has merit, I'll be giving it a try. It appears very easy to use and you can even arrange to be e-mailed when comments are added. Only time will tell if co.ments.com catches on like del.icio.us.

New Marketing Guy at WebTrends

In case you haven't heard, WebTrends has appointed Tim Kopp as its new CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). Kopp is responsible for all the company's marketing and branding.

Kopp joins WebTrends with over 10 years of marketing experience including his most recent efforts at Coke where he has served as VP-global interactive marketing for just under the past two years. According to one article Kopps is best known for convincing Coke to embrace the Mentos-Diet Coke geyser video phenomenon by sponsoring video contests at EepyBird.com.

Makes you think what he'll have up his sleeve to help promote WebTrends.

A Cranky Way to Search

A new search engine launched this week called "cRANKy" (www.cranky.com). This new search engine is targeted at web users who are 50+ years old.

Beyond adjusting the search result to list pages that cRANKy thinks are more appropriate to this demographic, it also limits the total results significantly and places content search based ads (provided InterActiveCorp's Ask.com aka Google Adwords) at the bottom of the page as well creating a search experience that is less confusing.

The user interface uses a larger typeface then on most search engine. The use of the larger typeface is sure to please all of us who are 40+ years old.

So if you're over 50 or even if your not give a try. Who knows "Try it. You'll like it"

BitWine Advisor

Some of you may have noticed a new ad on the right side of my blog the past couple of weeks. This ad indicates that I'm a BitWine Advisor.
So the question I've been asked is what is BitWine and what does it mean to be a BitWine Advisor.

First off let me state that BitWine is a Beta product that I found intriguing and wanted to explore further. It you go their web site http://www.bitwine.com you'll see a web site that looks a bit hooky and even a bit untrustworthy. Yet dig a little deeper and you’ll discover an interesting concept.

The concept is perfectly in line with the new Web 2.0 concept of a Mash-up (coming up with a good idea using API (application interface integration) with established web businesses) to develop it. In this case, they created a middle layer between Skype and PayPal.

First the BitWine middle layer is a database of people who have registered and defined a list of topics they consider themselves experts on. To find an expert on a specific topic say "WebTrends", you simply search on WebTrends and a list of those who claim to be WebTrends experts will appear along with a bio, links to their web sites/blogs and a per minute billing rate. Next, what BitWine does through Skype is monitor my on-line connection. So if I'm logged into Skype and available, they show me as available. You then have ability to simply click on my name and be connected immediately to me via my Skype connection. If I'm not on-line and you want to talk to me you can make an appointment using the BitWine calendaring service.

Of course you need to pay, so once you and I agree during our call that the billing should commence, I start the clock (you'll need to agree electronically) and BitWine calculates the charge on a per minute basis and handles the payment automatically via PayPal.

Sounds simple enough does it? BitWine has also taken a page from eBay and asks users to rate their advisor after the fact. Hence one method of building up creditability and proving you are the expert you claim to be. Well so far, no calls but the Christmas period have just ended and as business start to ramp-up again who knows. Of course, this all depends on BitWine actively promoting their service or for me to direct potential business there. This brings us full circle back to the new ad on the side of my blog.

So here is an offer to my blog readers. Just to help me test out this service, I'll give the first person who calls via BitWine and mentions this blog 10 minutes of advise no charge.

11th Annual Webby Awards

I'm happy to announce that I've been selected as judge for this years Webby Awards.

For those who don't know, the Webby is the Oscar of the web industry. If you haven't heard of the Webby Awards before, check it out at http://www.webbyawards.com/.

If you're interested in submitting a site, you have until January 26th. Full details available at http://www.webbyawards.com/

WebTrends 8.0C Upgrade - Is it worth it?

One of the questions I'm frequently asked is "Should we do the incremental upgrades of WebTrends?" This question is a difficult one to answer as many of these types of upgrades fix very little and the problems they address may not be impacting your particular use of WebTrends.

So now with 8.0c out I'm being asked this again. First off I always tell everyone you should do every upgrade and keep current. It just makes sense. However, since many clients' installations are managed by their IT departments and performing a WebTrends upgrade, needs to be scheduled well in advanced accompanied with copious amounts of paper work, the answer may not always be that easy.

So here is my answer to the WebTrends 8.0c question. Check the list of fixes and decided if you really need the patches and fixes contained in 8.0c. Here are my two reasons for the upgrade:

One, WebTrends 8.0c includes the upgrade to allow WebTrends to work with IE 7;

Two, from my perspective, WebTrends has addressed one of my concerns with the product and the "Report Designer" module. In the past when you granted user permissions to all report templates, the Designer Module would appear in the navigation and when clicked on it appeared that you could change some of the Options settings as the screen would open up with editable fields. Fortunately, the save button was grayed out. On several occasions I'd have users asking what this was and why they couldn't save changes.

Well in 8.0c, WebTrends has addressed this to a certain degree. While the Report Designer menu item still appears, the link to the "Options" screen is no longer present. Access to the list of report templates and dashboards is still there, but only a list of these items appears when the links are clicked on. I still wish that WebTrends would stop this entire module from appearing unless a user has edit privileges, but I'll take what I can get.

All in all, WebTrends 8.0c is worth the upgrade especially if you're planning on rolling out IE7 in the near future to your organization.

WebTrends 8.0c Upgrade Now Available

WebTrends quietly released a version 8.0c upgrade on December 15th. Version 8.0c in now available for downloading from WebTrends' FTP server. It's been a few days since the upgrade was made available on the WebTrends FTP site (ftp.webtrends.com), but still no alert in my installation or others that I monitor. I'm sure one will eventually show up.

Don't remember a version 8.0b, don't worry about it. WebTrends only released version 8.0b for their on-demand service. Version 8.0c doesn't seem to fix much, even in their documentation there is no reference to IE7, I've yet to confirm if the IE 7 fix is included, but my preliminary test show all is OK. Still I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't done the IE7 WebTrends patches first.


I was hoping for more fixes and improvements, but for now all seems well. A list of the fixes is available at product.webtrends.com/wrc/8/issuesresolved/IssuesResolvedInWebTrends80.pdf
And the upgrade is available for downloading at
ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/80c/

Web Builder 2.0 Another Success

Just as in the past attending a Web Builder conference has proven worth while. The mix of people representing all aspects of web development is a great opportunity that you just have to take advantage of.

As I said before, I'm glad Fawcette who brought back WebBuilder after 4 years. I just hope this conference once again becomes an annual event and that I can continue my streak of attending every WebBuilder conference.

To Jim Fawcette, thanks again for the great conference and the opportunity to speak to this amazing group of people.

Ethical Blogging at Web Builder 2.0

I'll be doing a last minute presentation here at Web Builder 2.0 as slot opened up by a speaker no show. My chosen topic for today is "Ethical Blogging". There was a last minute request for a presentation and I was given the opportunity to choose my topic.

This is going to be an interesting presentation as I pulled together a mini slide presentation on what I think Ethical Blogging is in about 25 minutes. What will truly make this presentation interesting is I've recruited DL Byron author of Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business to join me for the presentation. The session will have very few slides and we'll be turning it into more of a live human to human conversation with all attendees participating.

Ajax and Web Analytics Problem or Opportunity?

This morning, I sat through the most imformative Keynote I think I've ever sat through. Scott Dietzen the President and CTO of Zimbra, kicked off Web Builder 2.0 with some great insight into the potential of using AJAX to build Web 2.0.

I'm not going to summarize his talk, but he really showed the potential in a way everyone from marketing people to hard core java developers could undertand.

I finally got to see some of the issues that the web analytics world is going to face when it comes analyzing this new generation of web sites. I know products like WebTrends claim to have a solution, and yes it should work. However, during the presentation, I may have discovered some other alternatives for more accurate reporting.

I talked breifly with Scott and hope to follow-up on it over the next few weeks. Perhaps between the two of us, we'll come up with a workable and easy to implement solution that will work across all web analytic tools.

Teaching the World about Web Analytics

Last week I had the privilege to deliver a 20 minute presentation on how to improve the accuracy of web analytics reporting to AIMS (Association of Internet Marketing & Sales) in Toronto. The presentation went extremely well as I was flanked on both sides by cases studies.

One of the cases studies addressed improving Search Engine Marketing efforts with analytics and the other was improving overall web site efficiencies with it. The irony was both of these presentations dealt with the travel industry.

Today in a few hours I'll be addressing the international crowd at WebBuilder 2.0 in Las Vegas. The subject is Improving ROI with Web Analytics. A very similar presentation to last week's, but this time it's just me.

So far the best part to the trip is my hotel room. While my flight here was uneventful (just long with a 2 hour layover in Denver), getting out of the Las Vegas airport was another story. I had to wait 30 minutes for my suitcase. Now I'm not a person who normally checks a bag for short trips, but with the layover I thought it would be the wise thing to do. Well never again. Now the worst part, after checking into Caesars Palace at the airport checking, I decided to take their airport shuttle ($7 vs. a $20 cab ride). What a big mistake, after rushing the length of the terminal to catch the next shuttle, I was told it was full and I'd have to wait for the next one. Well the next one didn't arrive for another 30 minutes. So basically it took 2 hours from touch town of my flight to the hotel.



The bad news continues, the room they gave me, didn't have a view. OK not a big deal, but when I looked out the window, I was right next to a roof top heating and cooling system making lots of noise. Fortunately, I complained and I'm not one to complain, but with a big presentation to do the next morning I thought I better. Well my hats off to Caesars Palace. Despite being sold out, they found me a better room. They gave a much superior room (about 3 times in size) as a no charge upgrade and it even has a reasonable view (35 floor vs. 4 floor).

Why am I telling you this? Simple, it is all analytics. Telling people it took you 2 hours to get to a hotel from an airport doesn't tell anything. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Once I break down the steps into a scenario we get to see where problems are in the process. If I hadn't prepaid for the shuttle, and had known I'd have to wait 30 minutes, I would have abandoned this scenario and the ROI for Caesars selling shuttle passes would have gone down.

While Caesars Palace gave me a less then desirable room at the airport checkin, they demonstrated a desire to fix the problem at some cost to themselves, they improved my experience got a nice writeup in this blog, made me feel good about being here which in turn may mean I'll spend a little more at least tell people about it. Hence a soft conversion that is hard to put into dollar values, but still a positive factor in the ROI equation.

All these topics are being covered in today's presentation, the only difference I'll be talking it about from a web site perspective and there really isn't a difference. There is always a customer at the other end.

More on Google & Belgium Court Case

Great artilce from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061127-123545

Google Being Sued - It's not what you think!

Google is quickly becoming the next punching bag on the street. When they were small and a private company most people just took them for granted.

Since they went public, Google has had their fair share of people suing them and with acquisition of Utube.com, you cam bet there will be more. However, I saw this article from "Yahoo News" http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061123/ap_on_hi_te/google_vs_newspapers_4 and thought that this must be a first. Google being sued for including someone’s content in their search engine (Copiepresse a French language newspaper in Belgium).

After all, it's the job of an SEO like myself is to get companies content in Google and not to exclude it. Of course, this court case specifically takes issue with Google News (news.google.com) and that they took content without permission.

Perhaps I've been in this came for too long, but search engines always assumed they had permission unless you told them otherwise. Isn't that what the robots.txt file is for?

In this instance, Google quickly responded and removed the offending content, but the lawsuit is still there. I'm sure Google is taking all this in stride.

It does beg the question; if legal challenges like this become successful does it mean the end of search engines as we know them? For now, I'll concentrate on getting my clients content up there and ranking well. After all, the more organizations that decided not have their content included, the better my chances are of ranking well.

Xenu Link Sleuth Updated

OK I missed this some how, but one of my favourite tools for web development and SEO work Xenu Link Checker was updated last month. A new version of Xenu Link Checker 1.2i was released October 16, 2006.

I love this tool first from a web development stand point as it allows me to quickly test a large site for broken links. I've yet to find a better tool.

From an SEO stand point, I use it much the same way, but this time as a bot/spider emulation. It allows me to view the sites linking architecture (site architecture) backwards. If there is a specific page that I'm trying to get ranked high in the search engines, then I run Xenu and make sure, first the page gets found. Secondly I can reference all pages that link to the page. I can then evaluate if the page needs more internal links or perhaps to be relocated within the sites architecture.

Either way this is an extremely useful tool for the SEO & Web Developer tool box.

A download of Xenu can be obtained at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

IE 7 Automatic Rollout Has Started

Yes, Microsoft has started the automatic roll-out of IE7. While IE 7 has been available as download now for several weeks, they have started pushing the upgrade via the OS automatic update utility as of late last week. Their plan is to have the roll-out completed within 3 months. I personally think this is a bit ambitious, but the reality is that by the end of Q1 2007 the majority of IE users will have been upgraded to version 7.

What does this mean to you? If you haven't done so, start testing your web site(s) and any web based applications to ensure they work with IE 7. If not, time to start fixing them before the clients start calling.

For more information on the rollout, read the following article from Yahoo News http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20061113/tc_pcworld/127851

A Good Web Conference in Canada?

One of my biggest complaints is that rarely do good quality web conferences come to Canada. Not even when our dollar was valued at 65 cents US, did the big US conference come here.

There were a few exceptions most notably Search Engine Strategy which now has an annual event here in Toronto. I've been fortunate enough to attend all three and even speak at the last two.

Well I'm proud to say it looks like an excellent web conference is coming to Canada. This February 6-10 in Vancouver and new conference called "Web Directions North" is coming. From what I've learned, this or a similar version of this conference was run annually in Australia and they've decided to bring it to North America. Of course if you're going to have a conference in Canada in February Vancouver is an excellent choice.

I don't normally plug conferences that I'm not speaking at, but I'll make an exception for this one. First off, there list of speakers is excellent. As well two people who I'm very found of and have had met at other conferences are speaking there. So if you've never had the chance to hear either of these two world renowned speaker Molly Holzschlag (Molly.com) and Kelly Goto (Gotomobile), and you'll be in the Vancouver area in February, I strongly suggest taking in this conference. In my opinion, just listing to these two Divas of the web world, you'll get your moneys worth.

If you do go to Web Directions North, please let me know you what you thought of it. Unfortunately, my schedule these days most likely won't provide me the luxury of attending this conference.

WebTrends & IE 7 Fix Works!!!

I followed the instructions from WebTrends and found only one item that didn't go as expected. Step 4, didn't completely stop every WebTrends service. So I did that task manually by accessing the Administration services list.

The whole process took about 5 minutes.

Take note, IE 7 hidd the SmartView Icon. I spent more time looking for it then doing this fix.

Let me know if you try that and it works. It was hidden on my installation to the right of the home button which was postion to the far right. I finally simply expanded this tool bar and lo and behold there was the SmartView icon.

All tests proved positive.

WebTrends & IE7 Fix Available

WebTrends has just released a hot fix for the problems that Internet Explorer was causing. These WebTrends fixes mean IE7 is now a supported browser and also include a fix so you can use the WebTrends SmartView plug-in for IE 6 and with IE 7.

For those using WebTrends on Demand, WebTrends has already installed WebTrends version 8.0b which includes the support of IE7, but not the fix for SmartView. The good news about these hot fix is that WebTrends has decided not to wait until they make version 8.0b available to the general public and instead issued the hot fixes.

I just got these links directly from WebTrends and haven't had the chance to test them. However, WebTrends assures me they will work.

So here is the links to the fixes:
SmartView - ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/80a/IE7/SmartViewUpdater.exe
WebTends - ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/80a/IE7/8.0a_IE7_Solution.zip

Be sure to follow these instuctions
1) Log in to WebTrends as an administrator.
2) Select Service Health under Administration | Monitoring.
3) Click the Shut Down System button.

4) After the system is shut down, extract the 8.0a_IE7_Solution.zip into your installation directory (e.g. "C:\Program Files\WebTrends"), overwriting existing files.

4a) If WebTrends is installed in a Distributed Architecture you will need to overwrite the files on each system WebTrends is installed in.

5) After this completes, start the WebTrends system database, if stopped (for example, the "WebTrends - MySQL" service in a MySQL environment)

6) Next, launch SmartViewUpdater.exe. After the installation completes, your WebTrends server will have an updated version of the SmartView in the component repository.

7) After the files have been overwritten and the SmartViewUpdater install completes, start the WebTrends system. To start the system, run “SystemShutdown.exe mode=start” from the command line when in \modules\analysis under the installation directory.

The next time users run SmartView from an updated server, they will be informed that a newer version is available and asked to upgrade. Once they select "Upgrade" the new SmartView client will be downloaded and installed over their previous version. The new version includes support for both Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

Good luck and please post a response if these WebTrends fixes for IE 7 work for you.

My Space so Yesterday

Great article from the Washington post on the pending demise of Myspace.com

I don't think it will disappear over night, but the teen market appears to be a lot smarter then the general public and especially parents give them credit for. According to the article teens are leaving myspace.com for privacy reasons and because of the creeps that are hanging out there pretending to be someone else.

Where are they going instead? It turns out many of them our heading to facebook.com.

Read the article for more information

WebTrends Doesn't Work with Internet Explorer 7

I was on the phone talking with WebTrends technical support about the problem I discovered with using WebTrends and the newly released version of IE 7 as mentioned in my previous post.

Their response is as follows:

• Yes, we've seen that problem before
• It doesn't occur with every instance of IE 7, sometimes people get lucky with IE 7
• Development is aware of the problem and WebTrends is working on a fix
• Expect the fix in the next release of WebTrends

As result, my personal recommendation is don't upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 if you don't have to and you need to use WebTrends. If you've upgraded already or if your organization forces the upgrade, or by mistake you let Microsoft upgrade your version with their automatic auto-update utility, then start using FireFox.

WebTrends & IE7

Yesterday I installed the first production version of IE 7 from Microsoft. So far, I'm not overly impressed in anyway.

I find it even slower then IE 6 with just a slightly nicer user interface. I'm slowly going through all my application that use a web interface. While most perform correctly (if just a bit slower), I've run into many issues in using IE7 and WebTrends.

The problems seem to change between reboots and each test, but here are two of the big ones.

* when switching between reports IE hangs so you can't see additional reports
* java applets for graphics periodically fail to load properly in IE.

Of course, I'm having no issues with using WebTrends in Firefox. I'll be calling WebTrends later today to discuss fixes for these issues and to see if others are having them as well. I'll keep you posted.

Helping Raise Money With Search

I thought I had seen it all, but thanks to Blinkx.com, and my bookmark on "search engine optimization", I've discovered something wonderful in the world of search engines.

www.goodsearch.com has developed a new approach to entice users to come and use their search engine for searching the web. Goodsearch.com like many smaller search engines out there is powered by one of the bigger search engines and in this case it's yahoo.com. Like all players in this field, they make money by running pay per click advertising on their site, but here is the twist. Goodsearch.com donates 50% of its revenue to your favourite charity.

That's right your favourite charity and not a charity of its choice. You can choose from thousands of organizations already registered or add your favourite cause (charity, non-profit, school, etc.). This includes nominating your funds to go to your child's school for example. No you're not going to generate tens of thousands dollars a year for your charity or school, but think of the possibilities. According to Goodsearch.com, each search will generate approximately $0.01. So if a school has let's say 500 students and each parent does 2 searches a day that equates to a mere $10/day, but multiply that by say 365 days (1 year) and your cause has earned $3,650. If you're worried about the quality of the search results remember it's powered by yahoo.com and the quality will be the same.

Good search also has a utility that allows you to monitor and see how much money has been earned by the various charities.

This figure is of course an estimate and depends not only on the frequency that people search, but how likely they are to click on the generated ads. Remember only earning pennies at a time still adds up (just think of all those charity boxes on store counters) and if you're going to search anyways, might as well make some money for your favourite cause.

IE 7 Released

Microsoft has finally announced the production release of the new Internet Explorer version 7. IE 7 is now available.

Here is the press release. Take a minute to read and see what's up. Some interesting facts on the loss of market share to Firefox and Opera.

Now that it's out of beta, I might even download it for myself.

The connection between your marketing spend and the bottom line

Make the connection between your marketing spend and the bottom line

I don't know what's in the water these days, but I've been asked to deliver another talk on using web analytics to measure ROI. This time I'll be speaking here in Toronto at AIMS (Association of Internet Marketing & Sales).

The primary focus of my talk will be "Clearing up the confusion about cookies, privacy, and why 'hits' and 'unique visits' are meaningless for the majority of websites".

I'll be one of two presenters and this should prove to be an interesting event for all those who are interested in learning how to leverage their investment in web analytics software to improve the performance of their web site.

For more information visit the AIMS web site.

Measuring ROI with Web Analytics

I'll speaking at WebBuilder 2.0 this coming December. Web Builder is a Fawcette Technical Publishing (FTP) conference. My topic is Measuring ROI with Web Analytics.

While many people many have never heard of the Web Builder conference, it origins go way back to 1997 and was originally put on by C|Net before being sold to Fawcette who ran it for several years before sending it to the beach in the fall of 2002.

While Web Builder may have been on vacation, it's nice to see FTP bringing it back. What has always separated Web Builder from other web and Internet conferences is it doesn't target just one of the many groups involved in web development instead it tries to make the conference all encompassing for entire web development team. This covers everyone from the hard-core program to web managers and even web marketers.

It's always fun to see how the crowds at these conferences gel. Sometimes, everyone blends and other times, you can really spot the separation. What usually contributes to the blending is a great kick-off party or event the night before the conference. It will be interesting to see if FTP brings this conference feature back as well.

By speaking at this conference, it will ensure that I've attended every Web Builder conference since its inception. I've gone as a regular attendee and on many occasions as a speaker. Back in December 1999, I was speaking on virtually the same topic. Back then, the web bubble was nearing the point of implosion, and not many people wanted to listen to my message. I suspect that 7 years later the audience will be a little more receptive.

If you attend this conference, be sure to track me down and say hello.

More Video Search

With Google's acquisition of YouTube, web based video is being thrust even more into the Internet spotlight. Despite all the publicity, people still don't know how to find relevant on-line videos.

I've mentioned before some video search tools such as SingingFish.com and Google Video search, well here is yet another on-line video search tool. Check out blinkx.com/!


As on-line search goes, its average but it has a different reach which means it covers more then just YouTube or some of the other search engines. According to their on-line documentation, Blinkx has over 6 million hours of video in its database and "blinkx uses visual analysis and speech recognition to better understand rich media content". My limited testing of this, could neither prove or disprove that Blinkx is using voice recognition software to help rate videos, but what an interesting idea. Instead of relying on what video producers say a video is about why not look at the dialogue and the video itself.

One feature I thought was cool was their video wall. When this option is selected a wall of video thumbnails is created with all videos (that matched your search result) displaying at the same time. See something interesting simply click on the thumbnail to view it in full size and with audio. You can even create a hard link to this video wall that can be added to you bookmarks or even included in your blog. See below for the term "search engine optimization".

VOIP Speed Tester

Thinking about getting a VOIP phone or perhaps you're having problems with your current connection. Well I discovered this interesting tool that let's you test your Internet connection for both speed and quality of service. It then ranks the overall results. So now you can know if you're Inerent connection speed can support VOIP as well if you're having problems with your VOIP phone if the problem is your ISP or the VOIP provider.

It's a free tool and well worth checking out if you're think of VOIP.

My VOIP Speed

Below is a shot of the summary page of my Internet connection.

Web Analytics & Cookies

Measuring how many visitors are coming to your web sites is one of several critical web analytic measurements. But how do you measure visitors? In the good old days 10-15 years ago, you simply needed to track a visitor by their IP address. But those easy days of measurement are long gone with the introduction of proxy servers and large scale ISPs.

Virtually all web analytic tools on the market today suggest the use of persistent cookies to identify unique visitors instead of relying on the old and inaccurate measurements of IP addresses. The by tracking cookies, you can more accurately track user behaviour through the web site, track returning visitors, number of visits between purchases, average number of purchases by visitors, campaign effectiveness etc.

The real question we need to ask is just how effective are persistent cookies. Unfortunately, the answer may not be what you want to hear. First off, they are only as effective as the percentage of web site visitors who accept cookies. From my observations at various clients, I've seen an acceptance rate range between 60%-95%. The biggest factor in defining the acceptance rate is the target audience for the web site. When targeting tech savvy individuals especially those in the open source movement, I've seen the lowest cookie acceptance rates. When targeting general consumers I've seen the highest cookie acceptance rates.

Another factor, based purely on my observations is location. It appears that people in some countries are more likely then others to accept or reject all cookies. The following table contains some my observations. These figures were taken from a single client who operates multiple b to b web sites across the world all with the same target audience and promoting the same product over the last 90 days (bot and internal traffic excluded).

Country/Region	Acceptance Rate
North America	80.3%
Germany	85.3%
UK	88.5%
Ireland	90.0%
France	85.0%
Belgium	87.0%

While the above information may not be statistically relevant across all industry, it does demonstrate that the use of cookies to improve accuracy is not 100% as some would lead us to believe and the greatest concentration of people and organization suffering form cookie paranoia are located in North America. The reality is that cookies are still the best alternative available to us and are far more accurate then the use of IP addresses.

Of course, if you want to be 100% accurate, you'd need to have users register and log into your site and then track them by their user id. Of course, if you followed this approach, most web sites wouldn't get any visitors and then they wouldn't have anything to measure. Remember, web analytics is about measuring trends and measuring effectiveness and even with a cookie acceptance rate in the low 80's, you can still provide statistically relevant data

Video Search Google & Singing Fish

I've always been a fan of Sing Fish (www.singingfish.com) for searching for mp3, wav, other audio files and yes video clips. So if you’re on the look out for a search engine that very few people have heard give it a try.

If you're just searching for video clips, may I suggest the new Google Video Search (video.google.com). It's new and they also offer a space where you can up load and share your own videos.

I haven't tried the upload and share feature, but searches on some my hobbies did reveal some interesting home videos. I especially like somebody's windsurfing vacation video all 21 minutes of it. Makes me suspect that Google is offering lots of free space for your videos.

Press Releases, Blogs & Success

It's been 7 days since my SEO friendly press release on this blog was released. So now I need to determine if the press release was an immediate success. I can unequivocally state " yes".

You may be surprised by how my measure its success so let me say first what didn't happen and that I don't care about. The press release didn't drive thousands of visitors to my blog or my web site. Did I expect it to do so? No, but I did expect some increase in traffic and yes that did happen. In fact traffic on the day of the press release was a 150% more then usual and up until today (Labour Day) has been about 25% more then usual with the number of return visitors also increasing.

This alone is not a sign of success. Here are some other factors do make the press release a success.

* Press release was picked-up by Google News and Yahoo News
* Of the people who saw the on-line press release summary, 1 in 113 opened it up and presumably read the press release.
* Of those who read the on-line press release:
- 10.6% saved it as a PDF (presumably for future reference)
- 10.1% click-through to my web site and several of those visited more then once
- those who visited my site averaged 2 page views per visit.

It is these statistics, gathered from both my press release company, and my web analytics tool that I use to measure success. Based on my experience getting an press release open rate below 1 in 125 is a good thing, getting a 10% conversion (people who read a press release and click to your web site to find out more), is fantastic.

Now the best part, I've just finished an on-line interview with a journalist who read the press release. Assuming I get quoted in his article and they include a link to my site (in both the print and on-liversionson), I've garnered a valuable inbound link and expanded the marketing efforts the press release.

Once again, a press release when well written and SEO'd is a valuable tool in the SEM and SEO tool chest and can form part of your SEO Best Practices foundation.

Google Analytics Now Open for Business

If you've been itching to try Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics), but didn't because it trial was on an "by invitation only" status, you are in luck. Google has recently lifted that restriction and Google Analytics is now open to everyone.

It may have also been a worth while wait. Since its launch Google Analytics has added many new features that now allow it to complete with some of the major players. These include click map overlays similar to WebTrends SmartView and the one offered by Ominture's Site Catalyst.

So give it a try and I think you may like it. The level of reporting is still on the light side, but it's free. So don't complain.

Yahoo Click-Fraud Class Action

Something interesting arrived in today's mail. Yes traditional mail dropped off by a mail carrier. It was a "Notice of a Settlement" for a class action against Yahoo for Click Fraud.

The period covered by this class action includes January 1, 2004 to July 31, 2006. Take note that includes the period before Yahoo purchased Overture (at least to the best of my memory).

This seven (7) page document covers a log of material, but basically the outcome is even less exciting then the Google Settlement. There is no mention of how much everyone will get, but simply that Yahoo has to put in place a mechanism for companies who believe they were victims of click fraud to make a claim and then have it investigated by Yahoo and for it to become part of the final settlement.

Sounds like a lot of work to get back a few clicks.

Of course the lawyers did well again. They get $4,950,000 plus expenses up to $25,000 (US dollars of course). Not the same legal payout as Google got hit with, but still somebody is making money with all these law suits and it sure isn't the people who paid for all those clicks.

The only good thing to truly come out the click fraud legal actions (at least one can hope} is better tracking and monitoring by the Pay Per Click programs for click fraud so perhaps in the near future what you pay for in a ppc campaign will be for real web site traffic.

Free Business Apps from Google

In case you didn't hear it yet, Google yesterday formally announced that it is offering a free trial of the Beta of its new enterprise business application. This includes everything you see at www.google.com/a

So now you can have an enterprise version of:
* Google Mail
* Google Calendar
* Google Page Creator
* Google Talk

While I'm a user of Google Calendar for my personal calendar and have enjoyed using it with the ability of sharing my calendar with others (makes scheduling appointments much easier), I'm not sure of the others.

Do I really want to shift my business e-mail from its current provider to Google? Yes Google will be free, but who do I call when something goes wrong?

While free today and Google does promise that it will be free forever to all beta users, what happens when the new and improved version of everything becomes available and is sold as a premium service? Is this is just a fancy take on the bait and switch?

Just more offerings from Google, now add these to other offerings by Google: Writely (www.writely.com a free word processor) and Google Spreadsheet (spreadsheets.google.com) and you have a company which is ready to take on the entrenched Microsoft Office. Perhaps these products aren't ready for major corporations, but they do and will make sense to all the small and medium sized businesses out there.

It's strange that about 6 or 7 years ago or so, I had predicted at a conference that Internet and web would allow software companies to move their applications on-line. This had a few advantages, from the users perspective, they didn't have to keep buying upgrades and could always be on the latest version and it should cost less per user. From the software manufacture perspective, they can say good-bye to pirated versions of the software since there are no CDs out there to be burned and license keys to be hacked.

Well let's wait and see how all this plays out. It could become very interesting.

Blogs, SEO & Press Releases

On Tuesday August 29, my firm is issuing a press release formally announcing this blog. The questions may be why now after a couple of months or why issue a press release at all.

So let start with why wait. First off, I wanted to see if I'd be posting blog entries on a regular basis. I never planned on the one day thing, but at least one a week or so. Well a review of past postings shows, I have didn't always meet the weekly posting boal, but I've managed close to an average of one a week. There is no point in issuing a press release without having anything to show. Secondly, I wanted to see what would really happen without any formal announcements.

From my log files I've been able to see that several of my posts have attracted many visitors via the search engines as I had hoped they would. What's nice is many of you do appear to be coming back to read more despite the not posting comments to my blog entries.

So, I've started with the soft roll-out. Now out comes a press release. So why a press release? There are a couple of factors; first a high quality on-line press release with links to a specific page does create high quality external links an important factor in ranking well in the search engine results. Secondly and the most obvious is to drive traffic to my blog and perhaps increase the number of regular readers and in turn increase the value of my brand. Third and the last reason, is a well written press release (I believe this one is), may get picked up by on-line news engines like Google news and Yahoo news. This increases the probability of someone searching for an SEO or web analytics blog from finding mine and perhaps a reported looking for a quote on a specific subject that I've covered will come and seek me out and once again improve my brand.

From an SEO perspective, a well crafted press release is always a good thing. From a business perspective, it always good to issue one when you have something positive to announce, so why hold back.

So as an SEO firm that tells clients to issue SEO'd press releases, it is always a good time to "start eating our own dog food".

Free Skype To Landline - Have You Tried It?

As a regular user of a VOIP (voice over IP) telephone system and regular user of Skype (an Web based VOIP network), I was intrigued by Skype's offer earlier this summer of free Web to landline calls in North America.

I love using Skype to talk to friends and family all over the world for free. All they require is the free Skype software, speakers and a microphone. Now throw in a web cam and we have live video calling. Truly amazing to talk and see the person who you're talking with in real time. Of course depending on your bandwidth, the person on the other ends bandwidth and the overall available bandwidth on the network this can range from a great call with OK video to a poor quality call with very jerky video.

In my experience, when you turn off the video, Skype delivers an OK quality voice call. So now I could call for free friends and family throughout North America (assuming I'm in North America) for free who don't have Skype. Of course with my Primus TalkBroadband VOIP line I already had unlimited calling in North America, but for others who only had Skype this could be a real money saver and extremely convenient.

Let me explain, for Skype to Skype to work, both people have to be on-line. So if the person you want to speak to isn't at their computer you can't talk to them. With Skype to landline, you login in to your Skype account, dial their telephone number and your almost instantly connect.

The problem is the quality of the call. While on the web you might expect a poor quality call, but on a land line that is another story. I gave it a try a few times and was reminded on International calls I used to make 10-15 years ago. Where you talked wait a few seconds and hear yourself on the other end.

OK this is for free, but the person on the other end doesn't know it. I personally think if Skype is trying to promote this service in North America they need to improve their network routing within North America. I know of several Europeans who use this service regularly with Europe and are happy with the quality.

If you're using this free Skype to landline a try in hopes of evaluating VOIP overall don't. It simply isn't the same thing.

I gave a few VOIP providers here in Canada a try and all provided a good quality service (except AOL). For the most you can't tell I'm on a VOIP phone system regardless of where in the world I'm calling.

Dan MacLean over at ITworld Canada has a good editorial piece on why you shouldn't use Skype to evaluate VOIP. Well worth the read if you are thinking of going to a VOIP phone.

Access Log Scrubber Update

I'm happy to announce that versions 0.8 of our log scrubber beta is now available.

The biggest enhancement is that the scrubber can now open and process files that were gzipped. So now you can scrubb (remove unwanted entries) from your IIS and Apache access log files in the following formats

.log
.zip
.gz

To register for the beta trial simply go to www.knechtology.com/log-scrubber/log-scubber-30day-trial.html and complete the registration form.

For more detailed information on the Log Scrubber visit http://www.knechtology.com/log-scrubber/.

I hope to have the production version ready within 2-3 weeks.

Canadian Web Surfing Facts

I saw these interesting facts from Statistics Canada last week and thought I'd share them.

• 68% of adult Canadians used the Internet for personal non-business reason in 2005


• In Toronto, that number rose to 75%


• Almost two-thirds of adult Canadians who used the Internet from home used it every day during a typical month


• About six in 10 Internet users used it to read news or sports, or to conduct their banking online.


• More than 50% used the Internet to check weather conditions, make travel arrangements, to search for medial or government information and window shop.

I found the last point most interesting especially on the point about "to window shop". While it is always easy to see and measure the direct benefit ("ROI") of a web site sells something or has various on-line conversion points, it is difficult to measure the success of window shopping. Yet there is a benefit and we all know it. Think about how many restaurants have web sites. If they don't provide takeout and merely have a web site for promotion and letting people check out the menu then this site is purely for window shopping.

What about stores which operate both on-line and in the brick and mortar world. There must be some residual value of people merely window shopping on the electronics side to review product offerings and price. From the benefits side, this needs to be taken into account when assigning a true value to the company web site.

Microsoft AdCenter Beta - Review

In case you haven't heard yet, Microsoft has entered the world of search engine marketing with its own Pay Per Click search engine ad system called AdCenter which has been around for about 9 months now and servers ads on the MSN search engine (perhaps you didn't even know Microsoft had its own search engine). While still in beta, I've been privilege to be a participant in the AdCenter beta program for the past 3 months.

What is interesting is that for once Microsoft seems to have done something right. While PPC has been around for a long time already, and the industry is supported by many tools to support search engine marketers, Microsoft has taken the lead of these 3rd party tools and taken the best form Google Adwords and Overture by integrated them into AdCenter PPC engine.

Some features of AdCenter include day parting tools (the ability to set specific days of the week and times to run your ads), a keyword research tool (which incorporates the best of Overtures keyword tool, WordTracker and others) and a demographics tool. All these tools fall under its research tab.

The most interesting tool is the demographic tool. With this you can enter a specific word or phrase and see the demographic of who is searching on the phrase. You can find out the split between male and female web users, age bracket and income. What is suspicious is how does Microsoft know all this? Well according to one Microsoft rep I had the privilege to talk to at a conference they gather all this info when users register for their products such as HotMail, Operating systems, MS Office, etc. So how much value should you put into these demographics? To me the answer is how truthful do you really think everyone is when registering on-line for products. Have you ever stretched the truth? Regardless it at least has some merit and may be useful in targeting specific ads to specific keywords to a specific category of user.

While AdCenter does offer some limited geotargeting, for Canadian you are out of luck. AdCenter does not allow its ads to be targeted at Canadians (msn.ca). The reason is that Micorsoft Canada still has a deal in place with Yahoo Canada (hence Overture) to continue to server ads on MSN Canada Search.

As mentioned earlier this product is in Beta, but I now know Microsoft is taking PPC and AdCenter to heart. I was invited to participate yesterday in a survey of SEM professionals here in Toronto. The focus of this survey was AdCenter. I can not comment more on the survey as most of it is confidential, but I can say get ready for a strong ad campaign for when it comes out of beta.

For now AdCenter is still in Beta and I'll keep my eye on it to see if when its ready for prime time.

Why Pre-process Access Logs (Log scrubbing)

We'll I've finally released a public beta of my log scrubbing utility.

It's been 6 months in concept, several months of internal testing along with some limited user testing. So now I need some serious feedback before it can make the leap to a production version.

You might be asking yourself "Why Should I optimize my log files after all my web analytics program filters hits out of my log files?" The answer is really simple. Do you want to speed up the time it takes to process your access logs and generate more accurate results?

Think about it, each hit filter takes time to review each hit and decided if should include or exclude it from the reported results. Now repeat that additional time for each time you process your log files. The result can be everything from an extra few minutes to hours a day depending how much data is being filtered. For one tester, the simple removal of a single specific page (used as part of a 404 redirect) from its log files resulted in almost 9 million fewer pages a year that had to be filtered out of the analysis.

As to accuracy, it's so easy to miss setting a filter to capture variety possibilities. This may result is some pages being accidentally excluded or included in your results.

By pre-processing and reviewing the extracted data (log file dirt), you can be sure that only items you don't want are removed and significantly reduce the size of your web log files.

So give log scrubbing a try. For more information about optimizing (scrubbing) your access logs and to download the beta visit my website K'nechtology.

Stop Google From Using DMOZ Listing

Here is a great article on the new meta tag recently embraced by Google that was originally created by MSN.

Why do want to stop Google from using your listing in the Open Directory Project (ODP) aka DMOZ? Simply ODP has always been slow to update listings to reflect changes within company offerings or they might simply have it wrong. Either way, this could effect your ranking in the SERPs or even what is display as a site description within the SERP.

It's all covered in the article from Stepforth.

FireFox 2.0 Now in Beta

Mozilla has just released FireFox 2.0. It's a big jump from the current production version of 1.5.

Just take a look at the new or enhanced features
* Built in Phishing Protection
* Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
* Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
* Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
* Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
* Inline spell checking in text boxes
* Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
* New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
* Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
* New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
* New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
* Support for JavaScript 1.7
* Support for client-side session and persistent storage
* Extended search plugin format
* Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
* Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

Of course its still early in its beta, but keep an eye open for its release. To find out more go to http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/

Search Engine Market Share in China

Seems a lot of people have been reading my previous post about search engine market share here in Canada and in the United States.

So I dug up some more numbers for you. Hope you find this useful.

Search Engine Market Share for China
TMCnet.com reports:
Baidu leads with 43.9%
Yahoo is in second place with 21.1%
Google is in third place in China, with 13.2%

China Internet search engine sector achieved a total income of CNY 303 million in the first quarter this year.

TMCnet sources this information from the Beijing Modern Business Daily from the Tuesday, June 27, 2006 edition

The full article can be access at www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/06/28/1699289.htm