SES San Jose - Analyzing the Web Site Analytics Players

August 23rd, 2007

Analyzing the Web Site Analytics Players - Now Called "Issues in Analytics" - SES San Jose 2007 - Day Four
by Laura Thieme

John Marshall, CTO of Market Motive - newly founded by Avinash Kaushik, John Marshall and Michael Stebbins, whom all were with ClickTracks.

This was a new session that I genuinely enjoyed.  It was sparsely attended, but that is not unusual for Thursday morning sessions as many have departed from SES by that time.  I was anxious to see what John and Avinash had to say.

John Marshall talked about some assumptions we make with analytics if we are running PPC ads, and are using a modern web analytics tool as opposed to using freeware such as Analog or AW stats.  ROI breakage, cookies and cookie deletion were not covered in this session.  John covered everything that can happen with just one click and how it can can look so different on the analytics software tool, versus the data in a CPC/PPC ad console.  We click an ad for example, "fresh fruit", in Google Sponsored Links.  Google counts the click, then the server responds back to the browser and redirects to destination URL of the site.  It’s a 301 redirect.  There are numerous errors that could occur in the interpretation.  Already you might have a 1% error because the browser could drop the redirect. 

Mobile browsers often don’t send the referrer at all, and it’s the browser’s responsibility to do this.  The browser needs to do a DNS lookup and now the browser has to pull this data.  DNS entry would not be in the cache.  The end destination depends on the ISP.  The advertiser can’t control what the searcher’s ISP is doing.  So there could be a 1% DNS lookup failure rate, or more.  Site redirects to hide tracking URLs.   This could cause a lot of problems as well.  THe logfile based solution could add a 5% error.  Javascript is actually more accurate in tracking clicks up to this point. 

Javascript tracking grabs element and the DNS lookup on Javascript source.  Execute tracking Javascript.  DNS lookup on data collector?

Logfiles vs javascript tracking - might be ultimately more

www.marketmotive.com/anatomy - jmarshall@marketmotive.com

Largest contributor to error is the actual implementation of Javascript tracking.  Also suggested we watch for redirection - it’s not always accurately implemented and tracking.

Great book - Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Eric Enge - Stone Temple Consulting

Eric started off by asking how many of us were concerned about accuracy in analytics - most of us were.  Not one person thought that analytics were 100% accurate. 

Eric showed 5 different packages, Clicktracks, Google, IndexTools, Unica, HBX.  The latter program reported the lowest number of uniques and page views compared to the other programs for the same site.  Another issue - sources of variance.  You get bad or ambiguous data, and some data is thrown out.  Packages make judgment calls.  Another issue is session tracking timeout.  Industry standard is 30 minutes but some use 15.  New SE visit starts a new session?  Clicktracks tracks every 15 minutes?? - need to verify this - Clicktracks will start a new session every time someone comes in from a search engine.  - need to verify this as well

Sources of error often implementation problems, misunderstanding the terminology.  For example, the visit URL vs the entry page URL.  Javascript placement is crucial.  The issue is the delay before the execution.  Best practice: bottom of page. 

PPC tracking scenario - cross check and calibrate, and track your orders with other tools.  Match up orders on the backend.  If you’re considering a site acquisition, use free Google Analytics or Clicktracks free version.  Cross-check the numbers and include this in your due diligence process.

Jonah Stein - Alchemist Media - installed three different tools on one website - and has compared the data. Jstein@alchemistmedia.com - Jonah was most interested in latency tracking.  Jonah must have attended Guy Kawasaki’s presentation - size 40 font for each slide.  Prices range, implementation ranges.  So you can set up the packages on your site, all of which results require a lot of assumptions and interpretation.  Are you comparing visits, unique visitors, page views as the baseline? 

Data from one tool company, that for their sakes will remain nameless here.  Orders according to one program measured 2,660, another 2,570, another said 2,624 orders.  87 orders from Index Tools showed revenue was zero.  131 orders from Clicktracks showed revenue was zero.  Two causes - authorization failure.  Also Clicktracks only captured revenue for the first transaction in a session. 

So how do you audit orders?  Unique identifier for each order, create two tables, join all that match, add all invoices unique to table 1, and all invoices unique to table 2 - and you come up with a number that is really accurate.

Avinash Kaushik - Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist - The Web Analytics - Inside Out in Fifteen Minutes

Data sucks so just get over it - he has a blog post that you should read - i’ll find the link.  Web Analytics an Hour A Day.  He’s also a consultant at Google, and most recently co-founded Market Motive with John Marshall (who was formerly the owner of Clicktracks).  Avinash is not a fan of web logs whatsoever.  It’s old world, black and white.  Marketers want to sell, IT folks want to protect their server.  It’s a tag world.  Javascript and other types of tags.  Packet sniffers are also possible in collecting data.  There are also hybrids where you combine a lot of things.  Most of us love javascript and favor it over other types of data collection methodologies. 

Current Players:

Indextools, WebsideStory, Unica, Microsoft, Google Analytics, Clicktracks, HBX, Coremetrics, Indextools, and Omniture.  It’s getting harder, however, to monetize web analytics because some are offering it for free such as Google and soon Microsoft.  The biggest issue in web analytics - it’s a stand alone data center that is not integrated with other data centers.  There is a lack of people investment.  Because people matter - by Jurriaan Kamp - building an economy that works for everyone. 

Web analytics is dead - by the WebTrends CEO - it’s all about marketing optimization.  HBX has custom excel reports.  Visual Sciences - God’s gift to analysis.  You can do anything you want with it.  Got retail?  Seems like they have Coremetrics.  Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience.   Indextools has not acquired anyone.  Custom reporting, anything by anything.  Enterprise class analytics for the cost of little. 

Clicktracks was purchased by J.L. Halsey - ease of use, unleashes the power of segmentation.

Unica acquired Nettracker, which allows you to do custom reporting, and allows multichannel campaign tracking. 

Microsoft will be a free tool.  Visual, free, and demographic segmentation.

Web Analytics Association has presented 26 new web analytics definitions, including building block terms, visit characterization, content characterization and conversion metrics.  I’ll find the link and post.

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SES San Jose 2007 - Day Three - SEO Reputation

Managing SEO’s Reputation - SES San Jose 2007 - Day Three
by Laura Thieme

Kris Jones (pepperJam Search), Kathleen Fealy, Jennifer Laycock, Shari Thurow and Jeffrey Rohrs talked about the issue facing search engine optimization (SEO) professionals - managing their reputations - all due to those in the industry who give SEO a bad name.  It’s just like any industry - there are some people who scam others out of some money, whereas the majority of companies offer ethical services and product delivery.  SEO and search marketing is no exception to the rule.  How do small SEO companies and single SEO practitioners compete with the companies who advertise in Google for guaranteed first page listings?  Kris mentioned companies who were offering $49.99 - $199/month service -guaranteed first page listings within 7 days.

This to me is about misleading advertising.  One of the panelists mentioned their desire for SEMPO.org to regulate this.  I also suggested Better Business Bureau, and a peer advisory review, which many industries support.  The latter suggestion was not well received at all by some of the attendees in the session, as well as a couple of the panelists.  The one panelist, whom I have not mentioned above by name, who indicated he did not believe BBB was the way to go, also added Traffic Power was part of BBB.  He also said he wouldn’t do BBB because no one there understanded technology.  This to me sums up a rather negative experience.  In my personal and professional opinion - to build reputation you have to give, dedicate, put your name out there, and do things that create positive reputation over a long period of time.  It’s expensive, everyone has their own opinion and there are always two sides to every story.  Managing reputation is not easy but required to lead a successful business.  I’ll add more to this story as I catch up on all these entries over the weekend.

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Are Paid Links Evil - SES San Jose 2007

August 22nd, 2007

SES San Jose - Are Paid Links Evil? - Conference Coverage Continues
by Laura Thieme

Packed session at the end of the day today on the topic of paid search links.  I came in late on Matt Cutt’s presentation, as I was finishing up mine in the other room and had people staying over for questions.  However, what followed were some Google naysayers and I felt like I had come in at the end of a great drama movie, and wished I could watch from the beginning.

I took some photos as there were absolutely no seats remaining in the session.  The overall consensus - regardless of whether they are paid or not, links are good.  That’s the non-search engine related opinion.  Google’s opinion might be very different. I need to come back and post more research on this topic from other sites, providing more research.  It’s 3:00 A.M. est and 12 midnight here.  I’ve just come back from the Google dance so I’ll post more tomorrow when time allows.

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SES San Jose - Images & Search Engines

August 21st, 2007

SES San Jose 2007 - Images & Search Engines
by Laura Thieme

Shari Thurow, Omni Marketing Interactive, talked about SEO, images, and search optimization.  For newbies to search, here’s some recap:

You need keyword rich text.  Information architecture and interface which includes your page layout, URL structure.  Link development is really important.  For the images on your site, you need to provide contextual content.  SHe talked about primary vs secondary text, including title tags, visible body copy, text at the top of teh page, in and around hypertext links.  Secondary: metatags, alt tags.  Look at the Google cache of the page for http://www.artic.edu - versus the home page without images loading.  Look at the alt tags.  Shari stated that it wasn’t because of the image alt tags that were causing them to rank, it was possibly due to inbound links.

Example: Yahoo’s auto page for Nissan actually provides more context for Nissan than the actual Nissan website.  She talked about MedicineNet, specifically for heart attacks.  Cross-linking includes keywords, the alt tags are optimized, the URL, the page title, body copy all about heart attacks.  The images are also optimized heart-attack.jpg.  She recommends jpegs are hyphens instead of underscores.  File names are rarely used to determine the content of an HTML page.  Optimize your images and call it what it is.

Format graphic images correctly.  Minimize download time.  Use alt tags for your images.  Use captions and labels whenever possible.  Content surrounding the image is also required.

Liana Li Evans - Image Search, Commerce 360

Google’s Universal Search is changing the organic landscape.   Image optimization for SEO purposes, reputation management and blogging/social media are creating opportunities.  Hot 2007 Toy: Squawkers - image search in Google - it’s Squawkers McCaw showing up from a CNN Money page.  Only eight of these images were retailers who would benefit from showing up here.  Some fascinating search results for Hurricane Dean, Hilary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani.  Results can change daily.  It can quickly become an issue of reputation management.  You’ll be shocked when you see some of the Hilary’s images on Yahoo Images.

Chris Silver Smith of NetConcepts

Are social image communities doing well with pagerank?  Flickr has a page rank of 8, 160M plus pages are indexed, title, tags, H1, and links are allowed.  Others didn’t do as well across the board.  Fotki did okay and is popular in the UK.

He covered Flickr.  Title, H1, captions, tagging, cross-grouping, comments, sharing, alt text, optimal linking hierarchies, date taken and page views displayed. 

Pictures with good contrast seemed to work better in his experience.  Think creatively to optimize your site - make sure your title is unique.  Write an article.  Consider loose licensing for pictures.  He’s taken pics for major conferences and allowed press to use his pictures for free, as long as they link back to his site and mention his company.  If covering geographic location, consider using a GPS program to automatically tag.  Post as many pictures into Flickr, more pictures resulting in more traffic.  Post each picture on del.ici.ous.  If you are photo blogging, add a Digg link at the end of your text.  Add flickr pics to Yahoo Travel/Local.  Google Enhanced Search has an image labeler through webmaster tools.  Add images to businesses through Google Maps.  Google acquired Neven Vision and introduced image recognition software.  New parameters &imgtype=face for search results.

Ask.com - how can we make ourselves image search friendly?  Appealing to popular terms - be clear and direct but add qualifiers.  For example, Mackinac Island Bridge Walk 2007 - Bizresearch. 

 

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SES San Jose 2007 - Day Two - Tuesday Sessions

SES San Jose - Tuesday August 21 - Day Two Session Coverage
by Laura Thieme

I will be presenting at 10:30 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning on Measuring Success & Web Analytics, so I will not be blogging live during that session emoticon.  I will be posting live throughout the day during other sessions.  I’m presenting Dynamic Database Driven Websites at 3:00 PST today.  I will catch up on the notable comments on those sessions in the next couple of days, making updates when possible.  The infamous Google Dance is tonight at Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View.  I’m sure to have some video and picture footage from that to post.

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SES San Jose - Vintage Tub Dinner at Hakone Gardens Co-Sponsored by Bizresearch, Range, doubleclick Performics, pepperJam Search, Epiar and Hitwise

August 20th, 2007

SES San Jose Vintage Tub & Bath Dinner Tonight at Hakone Gardens (www.hakone.com)
by Laura Thieme

I landed in San Jose (at SES San Jose 2007) this afternoon and am on my way to Hakone Gardens for the dinner that we are co-sponsoring with the agencies mentioned above.  I am excited about seeing this place.  Traci Couts went last year and raved about it.  I am headed over with friends and will upload some pictures later tonight.

I speak on Measuring & Web Analytics in the morning and on Dynamic Database Driven Websites tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll be posting updates throughout whenever possible.

Updates Tuesday Morning:

Hakone Gardens were beautiful - I often feel like I don’t make enough time to take pictures when I’m entertaining.  It was an absolutely wonderful time catching up with some of my favorite colleagues  - always great to hear everyone’s updates on what’s happening in search engine marketing across the nation, in the leading companies, and by the leading technologists.

I will be uploading videos to Google Video & YouTube throughout the week.  I’m presenting in just a couple of hours at 10:30 PST on Measuring Success, Web Analytics.  I will be talking about traditional website analytics but also the need for social media analytics.

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SES San Jose 2007 - Blogs, Dinners, Speaking Engagements & More

August 12th, 2007

SES San Jose 2007 - Video Blogging Sessions, Dinners, Parties and More
by Laura Thieme, 10 Year Veteran & Search Engine Marketing Expert

One week away - I will be speaking at the SES San Jose 2007 Search Engine Strategies conference on Tuesday, August 21st for Dynamic Database Driven Website Promotion and Measuring Success - Website Analytics sessions.  Bizresearch will also be co-sponsoring the Vintage Tub & Bath dinner on Monday night, August 20th at Hakone.  I will be video blogging that evening and posting to YouTube and Google Video.

I will also be blogging and when possible video blogging other events.  Stay tuned.

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