Web Analytics & Mobile Devices

Here is a link to an interesting article about the issues of measuring traffic from mobile devices and the short comings of the traditional web analytics products http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3629590

Of course, this article can't capture everything, but it missed one big point and the one I've been standing up for years on. While the article talks about the short comings of using java script based tracking (like Google Analtyics, Web Trends SDC etc.), it didn't talk about my standard recommended approach.

This approach means setting the user cookie at the server and not on the web page and recording this in the log file. Most mobile devises (to my limited knowledge) do accept first party cookies even if they won't execute most java scripts. So with the cookie controlled by the server and not the web page, you can track unique visits.

What I found most interesting from this article was the percentage of people who do some web browsing from their mobile devices in the use (19%). Here in Canada I don't know of many who except in an emergency would do any browsing (unless their phone supports WiFi). Of course the cost of data plans here is ridiculous hight when compared to the USA.

Regardless if this percentage is high or low, the reality is people are starting to surf from their mobile phones and we better be prepared to measure and analyze this traffic. Anyone who's attended one of my web analytics or WebTrends training classes lately knows I do reference this issue with mobile browsing and its growing impact on the world of web analytics.

SES Toronto 2008

Search Engines Strategies Toronto is back for its 5th year here in Toronto. This year's event will take place June 16 -18th.

For the fourth year in a row, I'll be speaking at this year's event (June 18th at 12:45). My topic for this year's conference address is "Keyword Research". This is the same topic as last year's address, but I promise to update my slides and give out some new information.

Joining me again on this year's panel is Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance. I've gotten to know Christine not only at SES, but at other search conferences throughout North America. She not only brings a big smile and sunny disposition to each presentation, but a wealth of knowledge and insight developed through years of hands on experiences.

SES Toronto, to my great delight is also increasing its focus on web analytics. Anyone who has ever attended one of my talks knows that I firmly believe that you can't do and SEO or SEM without sound analytics in place. That's why I'm thrilled to see June Li (Clickinsight) (June and I have teamed up before in Toronto to speak on the topic of Web Analytics) and Bryan Eisenberg (Future Now Inc.) two of the leading authorities on web analytics speaking at this year's conference.

So if you're only going to attend one search engine conference in Canada this year, make SES Toronto. As reminder to people in the US north east, Toronto isn't that far to travel and it is a very cosmopolitan place (the most multicultural city on the planet) with lots of fun activities and despite the recent increase in value of the Canadian dollar, it still is a relatively affordable place to travel to.

WebTrends 8.1a - Reissued

During a routine call to WebTrends technical support a couple of weeks ago, I was asked an interesting questions by them. The question was "Which download of WebTrends 8.1a was I using?".

This question took me a second to digest. I dug a little deeper to only discover that some time in the middle of January of this year, they posted a revised version of WebTrends 8.1 on their FTP site. This posting had no fanfare and no announcement. I guess they just assumed that anyone installing 8.1a would simply download the newer version automatically. They didn't think about people like myself and my firm to help companies install their product. We keep the latest version of WebTrends on our USB keys so our clients don't have to download them.

Not being told there was a revision is a little disheartening.

However that being said, I've personally did one complete install of WebTrends 8.1a from stratch and was by far the smoothest install of 8.1a I had to date. In fact, there were any problems what so ever. Of course, this client had a properly sized server with ample RAM and hard drive space.

I just completed a reinstall of 8.1a on my company's test WebTrends sever and all went smooth. We're going to be doing a bit more testing, but it is starting to look like the upgrade to WebTrends 8.1 might finally be good enough to recommended it clients. Let me test it a bit further before you take that big jump.

However, if you're planning on simply installing it from scratch on a new server without porting all your existing data, I'm very happy to now recommended it. As always, read the installation guide first and make sure you have a minimum of 3 gigs of RAM or 4 gigs of RAM per processor if you're planning on using the WebTrends GeoTrends module.

As always, if you can afford it, I recommend having a firm like my company (K'nechtology) or WebTrends itself come out and help you install and configure the product plus get your WebTrends Administrators some training. WebTrends is not a simple product to manage and a lot more difficult to install correctly than an out of the box product like MS Office or Adobe Photoshop.

European Link Building

I'm happy to announce that my firm K'nechtology Inc. has just been engaged to by Shred-it UK a firm specializing in secure mobile paper shredding and confidential waste destruction to help develop and implement a UK focused link building strategy.

K'nechtology has worked for years with the Shred-it UK's parent company Securit (www.securit.com) implementing various SEO and SEM strategies throughout its world-wide operations plus managing its web analytics software and measuring the success of all on-line marketing activities.

PubCon 2008

The dates for PubCon (http://www.pubcon.com) 2008 have just been announced. This years PubCon is happening November 11-14 and once again will be held in Las Vegas.

While the speakers list and agenda haven't been finalized, it looks highly likely that I'll be speaking during at least one session at the conference. If this year's conference is anything like last years conference it promises to be highly informative, a great networking opportunity and one great time.

So block off these dates and get ready to say hello to Vegas. One word of advice, don't plan on leaving early on the 14th. This has traditionally been the day of the big networking event and something you really don't want to miss.

As always as I know more, I'll post more on this event.

New SEM Conference

I know its been a while since I posted, and now I have a backlog of news items. So here is the first one.

A new Search Engine Marketing conference has been announced. The conference entitled SEM Canada (http://www.semcanada.org/) will take place in Calgary Alberta on September 4 and 5. At a cost of $895 Canadian for a two day event, this conference has a very attractive price tag.

The conference features some great speakers including Andy Beal, Christine Churchill, Todd Friesen, Ken Jurina, Richard Zwicky and of course myself. As it stands now (agenda hasn't been completely finalized), I'll be speaking at two sessions and moderating a 3rd.

For those who've never been to Western Canada this is a great excuse. The conference is on the Tuesday and Wednesday right after labour day, so I'd suggest flying out early and spending the weekend in mountains (i.e. Banff or Lake Louise) or head out to one of my favourite spots in Canada the Alberta Bad Lands especially Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park.

More on this conference as I find out, but for now check out SEM Canada web site and think about registering.

Search Engine Market Share and Web Site Traffic

An interesting article in today's issue of USA Today Money section (unfortunately not on-line article to link to). It's a story about the rise, fall and future of Yahoo.

I won't go into details of the article, but the article itself contained the following information:

Search Engine Market Share for December in the USA
1. Google 4 Billion searches Market Share 56%
2. Yahoo 1.27 Billion searches Market Share 18%
3. MSN 995 Million searches Market Share 14%
4. AOL 340 Million searches Market Share 4.7%
5. ASK.com 160 Million searches Market Share 2.2%

Source Nielsen Online

So is it any surprise when working on an SEO project that in virtually all cases we only concentrate on Google?

Blue Man - Las Vegas - SEO

So what do the Blue Man, Las Vegas and Search Engine Optimization have in common? Yes, the Blue Man is a fun pack 2 hours entertainment event at the Blue Man Theatre at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. Yes, Las Vegas recently was home to PubCon's Search Engine Marketing conference. But the fact that both have Las Vegas in common doesn't make Blue Man = SEO.

What they have in common is the marketing team behind the Blue Man show; understand search engine optimization and the importance of building links. During the Pub Con, the Blue Man invited several of us to attend their show. The cost of admittance was to ensure we wrote a review of the show and ensured that it would be published on-line with a link to the show. They clearly understand the importance of viral/word of mouth marketing and of link building. With each link to their show web site, they increase the importance of the site in the eyes of all leading search engines. So the distribution of a couple of handful of tickets to leading bloggers and SEO people can easily lead to the selling of hundreds of more tickets.

Yes, I saw the show free of charge, but does that mean you shouldn't pay for it. As a reviewer, I was entertained even before the show started right through to the closing routine. Simply waiting for the show to start and reading the stages electronic marquee (ticker tape) with humours messages about turning off cell phones was entertaining. Even as the show was just about to start, they singled out several individuals in the crowd including yours truly. As I gazed upon the ticker tape I noticed my name flashing across it, with the message "Let's welcome Alan K'necht an all round good guy who knows everything!". My simple waving of hand wasn't good enough; the marquee then got the entire audience to chat in unison "Stand Up Alan and take a Bow".

After I took my bow and they directed their attention to others in the crowd, the show began. The show a combination of amazing drumming, visual effects, humour all from the emotionless Blue Men is something to be experienced. The only complaint was at times the band with their use of neon and blinking lights was a bit distracting from the action of the Blue Men.

So if you're heading to Vegas, I highly recommend this show.

Spock the Next FaceBook?

People are always looking for what the next big thing on the web is going to be. Almost a year ago I wrote about Facebook. Back then it was still redistricted to people at educational institutions. Well it opened up to the rest of us and as the say "the rest is history".

So what is the next big thing? While I won't put any money it, give Spock a look (www.spock.com). This site is the ultimate web site for ego surfing. It is a search engine of just people. So type in your name, type in my name and see what comes up. You might be surprised.

Want to update your personal information or start a network of trusted individuals then go for it by registering. Spock has a rating system of the importance of individuals called "Spock Power". Simply add more people you your network and your power grows. As well, you immediately get Spock's recommendations of others who you might want to invite to your network because they are connected to you through someone in your network. Think of Spock as a blending of Facebook (the personal social network site) and LinkedIn (the business social network site)

You can also increase your power by establishing trust with others. Get people you know to confirm who you are and anything (tags) that you've used to identify yourself.

So why do I think Spock could be the next big thing, after all we already have Facebook and LinkedIn. I registered with Spock about 1 year ago and I didn't hear anything more about it or from it. Yet over the past 2 weeks I've started getting lots of "Trust Requests" from it. This means others are now starting to flock to it. Perhaps it's a fad perhaps not. Either way, people are starting to use it and if you want to be up on the latest social networking sites, you better take a look. And while you're there, why not add yourself to my network as a K'necht-It reader.

Las Vegas Web Conferences Wrap-Up

It's hard to believe that it's been 2 weeks since the wrap-up party from PubCon. I know I promised to keep you posted on events and news from both Web Builder 2.0 and PubCon, but work and life sometimes gets in the way of the best plans.

To summaries both events, both were great in different ways. Web Builder 2.0 as predicated brought to together developers, web project managers, usability specialist and so much more. The sessions were top notch and giving the speakers a full hour each gave them a chance to go more than just surface level on their given topics.

PubCon on the other hand was an SEO and SEM focused event. It was much larger and the sessions were composed of panels of experts (including yours truly). While this format gives the opportunity to hear lots of different views, by limiting the panellists to 9-12 minutes each, you don't get into much depth.

I always say you can tell a great conference from a good conference by what happens between sessions. Using this measure both conferences were great! PubCon gets an extra star for organizing a wrap-up networking session on the last day. Perhaps it was the free beer and soft drinks, perhaps it was squeezing almost a thousand people into the Brew Pub at the Monte Carlo or perhaps it was just the desire of people to get to know people at a deeper level.Whatever the reason, this was the highlight of PubCon. I met more new people that afternoon and swapped more business cards in 4 hours then I did over the first few days combined. Many of the speakers stuck around for this event and it gave the opportunity for the attendees to get to know us and to ask us those final questions they didn't get to ask during the sessions.

My personal highlight was watching Matt Cutts (of Google fame) and Danny Sullivan (from Search Engine Land) race their cellphones. It was IPhone (Matt Cutts) vs. The HTC 6800 (Canny Sullivan). I had to cheer for Danny as he has the same cellphone as I do (IPhones are not available in Canada). So with cellphones in hand and browsers open, the race began. Would the sleek design of the IPhone win over the large QWERTY keyboard of the HTC 6800. It was Mac vs. Windows Mobile and the winner is...

Well Matt Cutts did hold up a Search Engine Land sticker on his head.

Here's hoping that both events will take place again next year. If so, I can almost guarantee I'll be there.

Summary of Web Builder 2.0 2007

This years Web Builder 2.0 was well organized and had a great speakers. Unfortunately attendance was down a bit from last year and the rooms could have easily help 3 times the number of attendees.

One thing that became clear while attending several of keynotes and sessions is that world of Web 2.0 is maturing. There wasn't much new to say, just a few adjustments and adjusted forecast.

One presentation that stood out to no surprise was the Usability session with Jared Spool of UIE. While Jared didn't address Web 2.0, he did take us back to the early days of the Wang word processor and showed the "Evolution of Intuitive Design".

The one quote that stood out from his presenation besides pointing out that everyone uses the word "intuitive" incorrectly was "Who ever set the standard that an "*" means required? I want to find that person and kill him. Just kidding!".

Despite the small turn out, I still enjoyed Web Builder 2007 and the people I talked to loved the fact that this is only conference for the whole web team. Here's hoping there is going to be a Web Builder 2008.

2 Conference 1 Week

It's Wednesday and I'm half way through my 1 week in Las Vegas with 2 conference addresses at two different conferences.

This morning I wrapped up my second address with Presentation at Pub Con.

It was a great presentation on "A Top Down Approach to SEO". I was part of a 4 person panel which included : Mark Jackson, Lyndsay Walker and Paul Bruemmer.

The presentation contained lots of great tips and my slide on comparing poorly coded web pages (from an SEO perspective) as noose vs. a straight rope (the linear approach) was well received.

If you'd like to read more on the presentation, Mark has a great summary of the presentation on his blog

The Night Before Web Builder

Another year has gone by and its time for Web Builder. As usual there are lots of speakers and lots of interesting topics being covered. While nothing has made me jump with excitement and highlight a specific session, I'm sure there is going to be lots of great information being exchanged.

My presentation on Web Analytics is now all ready to go and is rock solid with just a touch of humour and lots good information. The sad news is it is the last session of the day. And with a conference starting at 8:30 am and going until 6:00 pm I don't know how many people will still be there come the 5:00 pm start time.

I'll be sure to post any interesting tips and gossip I hear during the conference.

It's hard to believe that it is 10 years since I attended my first Web Builder conference in New Orleans. Back then all this was so new and the excitement of just being with others in love with this emgerging technology called the web as a communication tool gave the conference a buzz that I have never seen or felt before or since.

So keep your eyes on this blog for some great info. Remember that I'll be speaking and attending PubCon from WebMaster's World starting Wednesday.

The best news so far is that I've been comped a ticket to Blue Men for tomorrow night and there is going to be one big blow out party sponsored by Microsoft this week. I'm sure there will stories to tell from that party.

SEO from Scratch

For a change I'm getting to work on a search engine optimization project the proper way. My firm has been hired to do SEO for a start-up company. What's nice to see is this start-up is making search engine optimization part of the project plan right up front.

Before they even engaged a design firm, they had identified their SEO needs and started working with us to help define the requirements that the design firm must meet. Now SEO is part of the entire project plan.

I'm looking forward to not trying to retro fit SEO into poorly designed page templates, or trying to fix a site just after it was launched.

I'll be posting more about this project as various steps have been completed. On of the challenges faced my start-ups in the SEO world, is that of longevity. The search engines give some wait to how long a domain has been around. So instead of keeping everything under wraps until the site is launches in 2008, or just leaving a standard "Under Construction" page of a hosting company's parking page as a place holder, we launched a subject matter place holder page, which has a few keyword phrase in it. What will this do? First, it helps establish the site in the search engines eyes and secondly it starts telling the search engines what this page/site is about. So take a look at the place holder for 479 Popcorn to get an idea of what I'm talking.

More on 479 Popcorn as the next steps in SEO project are completed

Google's Market Share US

Overall the number of searches in the US in October increased 12 percent from September to 10.5 billion. Google's market share continued to increase to 58.5% or 6.1 billion searches during this period according to comScore.

Just remember that all searches are not created equal and these numbers include searches on such web properties as YouTube and other search engine web properties. What does this all mean? If the experts are right, then the US search market is destined to resemble the Canadian market where Google has well over 80% of all searches. In essence, Google is becoming a monopoly when it comes to search.

Here are the other major search engines' market shares for the US in October:

• Yahoo - 22.9%
  
• MSN - 9.7%
  
• Ask - 4.7%
  
• Time Warner (AOL) - 4.2%
  

To more information please see the Yahoo News article

WebTrends 8.1A Success at Last

After numerous attempts to get the new WebTrends version 8.1a working on my test server I finally succeeded. That's the good news, what I had to do to get here is another story and the bad news.

First for those who've been following my blog posts on WebTrends can tell that I haven't been happy with the new version of WebTrends. I've been on the phone regularly with WebTrends technical support staff and just couldn't get it working the way I wanted. As someone who installs, configures and manages WebTrends for clients across North America this has been disappointing to say the least.

Since WebTrends 8.1 release back in August I've had a few opportunities to do clean installs on new servers. They went relatively OK as long as we got all the setting right the first time. If the client had first tried to install WebTrends and then I needed to reinstall to add missing components that's when another set of nightmares began. But these nightmares got me on the road to figuring out the good clean installation.

So now back to my test server. On several occasions, I had WebTrends 8.1 working, but speed was an issue and it kept crashing. In the end, I was one of the problems. This is a test server and I was using Windows XP Pro as the OS. Because of the version of IIS isn't a full version and only allows 1 web site to work at a time. I had previously used this instance of IIS to host my test SDC server. This was problem number 1. The SDC component even when it wasn't operation seemed to cause a conflict. And when I'd switch between them WebTrends would crash. So I deleted the SDC component and WebTrends ran, but it ran slow.

My WebTrends test server has been around for a while starting with version 7.0 and has always gone through upgrades. It was the 8.1 upgrade that ultimately was causing me problems. To get WebTrends to run properly, I latterly had to uninstall the previous version of WebTrends, delete all related files (OK simply rename the directory) including the instance of MySQL and start from scratch. WebTrends is now flying on my test server and I haven't had a single problem in days. That's good news for me, but if you have an existing WebTrends installation and need to upgrade you're not in the position to blow it all away and start over. So proceed carefully, do a complete server back up and be ready to revert if you run into problems.

I'm starting to like the new interface despite less than a handful of things that annoy me. I'm still waiting for at least one more round of patches/fixes with this version before recommend to clients to proceed with the upgrade. However, if you're starting from scratch there is now no reason to stay away from version 8.1a of WebTrends.

Log Scrubber Version 2.0 Released

My company K'nechtology Inc. this past Monday released version 2.0 of it's popular log scrubber.

For those who may have not seen previous posts about the Log Scrubber here is a brief overview. The Log Scrubber allows for the optimization of both Apache and IIS access log files. What does optimization of log files mean?

Log file optimization simply means removing unnecessary hit (line entries) from the log file. This allows for the size of the log file to be significantly reduced and speeds up the processing time your favourite web analytics tool.

For example, do you really need to report on all the .js and .css file calls in your log file? What about those up-time utilities that are hitting a web page every 60 seconds that you are filtering out anyways from your reporting. By removing these entries uses have typically reduced their log file size by 25% and in some case even more.

This is a big deal especially if you process your log files multiple times. The time savings can really ad up. As well, if you're using a product like WebTrends that charge you based on page views, you can remove specific page views before WebTrends process your log file and now save money as well as time.

The Log Scrubber is still priced at $199 until the end of the year and there is a free 30 day trial version also available. For more information on the Log Scrubber please visit the Log Scrubber product page or read the Log Scrubber press release.

Verifying your PPC Efforts

I'm currently giving the product PPC Assurance a trial run. PPC Assurance is a product from Enquisite that makes it easy to verify that all the clicks you're getting and paying for from your Google Adword campaign are legitimate.

According to their web site up to 10% of clicks you get charged for you shouldn't be charged for. Now if you're running a small campaign that may be just a couple of bucks a month, but what if you're spending thousands per month. In this case it can equate to 100's if not thousands of dollars each month and over the course of a year, we're talking big bucks.

So with a new client SEM campaign launching last week I decided to give PPC Assurance a trial run. The set-up looked simple and it should have been. However, my expectations and requirements didn't fit into the standard business model. So a few emails and phone calls later I was up and running with a clearer sense of how this product works. Knowing what I now know, it should taken less then 15 minutes.

PPC Assure basically sits on top of your existing Enquisite account (more on that great product another time) and measures every click you get from Google Adwords. With an API into Adwords itself, PPC Assurance verifies that every click you're being charged for match your campaign criteria. It then reports on inappropriate clicks and even has a mechanism for claiming refunds from Google.

Is PPC Assurance for you. The answer is no if you're running a Global campaign with no day parting settings and no audience targeting (language, country, etc.). However, if you like most of my clients running specific ads targeted at specific audiences (country, city, state/province, etc.) then PPC Assure is something to look into.

So far my trial test is going great. The campaign is set to only display ads to people searching within Canada in English. According to PPC Assure, about 8% of ad clicks are from outside that definition and that Google is charging for a little less then 1/2 of those (about 2.5%).

I'm going to run PPC Assurance for a whole month and then try the claim mechanism to see how it works. Keep looking here for more updates on this trial evaluation.

For more information on PPC Assure visit their web site at http://ppcassurance.enquisite.com/

SEM & Web Analytics

Here's an interesting article on the getting the big picture of Search Engine Marketing lined up correctly with web analytics. Basically it boils down to the problem of different camps and different responsibilities and objectives.

If you have a few minutes give it a read at http://semphonic.blogs.com/semangel/2007/11/search-engine-m.html

Baidu SEO

One of the benefits of running my SEO Tools and Resources Directory is people are always sending me in suggestions of new SEO tools or Search Engine Optimization resources.

I personally review all submissions and decide on which items to added to my ever growing list. Unfortunately, most submissions are not up to my standards. I was however pleasantly surprised by todays submission.

Today's submission was for an on-line article about Baidu (the most popular search engine in China) and how SEO for Baidu is different then SEO for Google or the other major search engines. While the English used in this article is not perfect, the message and methodology is clear.

Key points of the article include the use of simplified Chinese as the character set, use of specific meta tags (once again in simplified Chinese) and use of domain names an hosting locations. Over the SEO techniques described are nothing that don't apply to other search engines, but the specific combinations of elements are a bit different.

So if you're interested in marketing your web site to China and want to be optimized for Baidu give this article a read www.baidupro.com