For a growing minority of your website visitors, i.e. organic visitors who are logged into a Google account, you will no-longer be able to see the keywords that they used to find you.

The announcement is a bit vague, and tries to explain the benefits of the change to the way keyword data for organic searches by logged in users is shown.

It’s a bit like when your bank sends a letter to say they’re increasing charges and tries to tell you it’s for your own good.

Understandably, the analysts are raging – just check the comments on the announcement.

Google have made this change, which is a clear deterioration in service, due to privacy concerns.

Why would the search term used to find your site be a privacy issue?

Well from your perspective, it doesn’t make a difference whether the user is logged in or not, because the data isn’t segmented by logged in versus not logged in, and there doesn’t seem to be any enhancement in terms of demographic data available. And either way, you can track against a unique reference using a custom variable and form data (not that you or I would do that).

But it’s the data that Google collect.

The search engines, including Google are regularly asked to provide data by government agencies and federal courts.

In fact, in the last recorded figures, for the 6 months between July and December the United States filed a whopping 4,601 requests for user data, of which 94% were accepted and complied with (partially or fully). Despite it’s size, the UK is up in the top four with 1,162 requests of which 72% were accepted.

Country	Data Requests	#
United States	4,601	1
Brazil	1,804	2
India	1,699	3
United Kingdom	1,162	4
France	1,021	5
Italy	837	6
Germany	768	7
Spain	359	8
Australia	345	9
Poland	272	0

If you’re interested to know more, here’s Google’s FAQ on user data requests and the full list of user data requests by country.

Many people will disagree with me here, but I personally prefer security over privacy, and would rather that Government agencies are able to see search data on certain topics, or to assist with court cases. Of course there are downsides, and there will be occasions where this information is used in a hugely negative way. But on balance, while I understand why Google have made this change, I’d like my keyword data back please.

They welcome feedback, so hopefully this will be temporary.

Credit to Sam for mentioning this today.

The post Analytics Keyword Data – Unavailable For Logged In Google Users appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This might be useful for anyone who wants to export and group data in Microsoft Excel by date – e.g. to quickly make sense of ranking results, Google Analytics exports or Basecamp time tracking data.

Pivot tables in Microsoft Excel are super useful, and sometimes you might want to sub total the information. There are so many directions you can shuffle the information in pivot tables, but it’s not obvious how to do this simple sub total.

When you have the information you need in the Pivot table, right click over a date entry, and click ‘Group’.

You will then have a list of grouping options for your dates.

Choose your grouping option, and you will be presented with your data in a neat high level view.

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What have they changed?

Currently, Google Analytics ends a session when:

• More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor.
• At the end of a day.
• When a visitor closes their browser.

If any of these events occur, then the next pageview from the visitor will start a new session.

In the new model, Google Analytics will end a session when:

• More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor. (Stays the same)
• At the end of a day. (Stays the same)
• When any traffic source value for the user changes. Traffic source information includes: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_campaign, and gclid.

Why have they made the change?

The change has been made to more accurately track the source, medium and campaign, etc. that the user visits from. The change is very minor, but will change the shape of the traffic sources shown in your Google Analytics account.

This change will increase the accuracy of multi-channel funnels, which helps you understand the user journey.

Is it a big deal?

No. Google estimates that this will result in less than a 1% change, so put the kettle on and chill.

*Images from searchenginejournal.com and ideachampions.com

The post If You Use Google Analytics, Your Results Will Change As Of Today appeared first on PushON Ltd.

So if you’ve seen a spike in referral traffic since the 1st of June, then the reason this is probably the reason.

The same type of thing happened after the launch of Google’s own browser Crome.  It wasn’t tracking people’s use of Crome at the start… which was a bit of an oversight as it’s their own browser.

The post Google Analytics Tracks Bing As A Referring Site appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Advanced segmentation

You can do this in Google Analytics if you set up advanced segments – listing non paid traffic from each keyword you have decided to target (a new segment for each keyword).

Measure the performance of keywords

However, you may have some additional improvements in rankings and search traffic from people typing variations of your targeted phrases. And to judge the success of this, you have two useful reports to help you out.

Keyword report

Firstly, you can use the keyword report, select the time frame you want to test and compare it to the past ticking the box under the calendar.

Then using the comparison view to see your improvements in traffic and deteriorations.

You will be presented with something along the lines of this report, with your improvements on the previous period marked in green, and deteriorations in red:

Keywords with higher traffic than normal

Alternatively, you can use Greasemonkey to enhance your reports, with this is a fab trick that Sal Uryasev outlines on the Juice Analytics blog.

Once you have set this up, you can easily see how your traffic for each keyword from the last 30 days compares to the previous 30 days (or whatever period of time is most useful to you).  Your report shows something like this:

Once it is set up it’s quick and easy to see the results of all your hard work

The post Track Keywords & Organic Marketing Success appeared first on PushON Ltd.

There are a number of ways you can keep up to date with issues with your site.  I’ve added a list of some easy and cheap methods:

Track your error pages

Google Analytics is a free option, great for small businesses.  If you modify your code on your error pages, you can check regularly for broken links and problem pages (these may even be broken links from other sites or links typed in by users).

With this knowledge, you can fix issues with your site, request that other sites linking to you update their links, or create some custom content that people seem to want to find.

Here’s a link to the instructions, Keemo has written up.

Check out your goal funnel

Here you can identify issues (not necessarily just errors), with your conversion path. This may uncover a particular problem page, which puts users off buying or signing up.

If you’re using Google Analytics, you can set this up quite easily by changing the settings and adding each url used for a purchase process.  Other Analytics packages allow you to do this also.

Now, about that 10 page checkout process…

Monitor your server status

If you’ve got an advertising campaign on the go, it’s important to check for server outages.  Sign up to something like Monatastic, which will send you an email every time you need to pause your advertising and kick the server.

Ask your users

You can install a couple of feedback tools which can ask your users about their experience of the site, or view what they do. Use ClickTale for videoing your users path, Google Talk Chatback to let them ask questions or talk to you, and 4Q to ask them how their experience was once they have finished.

More fantastic tips on fixing usability issues with your website here: Conversion Rate Experts.

Fresh eyes

Get someone else to look at it.  Ask them to complete a set of tasks, and talk to them while they’re doing it. When you’ve designed a process, it’s obviously logical to you, but is it logical to everyone else?

The post What's Wrong With My Website? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This works with Outlook 2007, and the tracking we are using is Google Analytics

If you don’t have access to amend your website

1. Use the following url to generate your tracking link: Google Analytics Link Tracker
2. Using the details in the following format:
3. Click on the Create URL button, and copy this long url
4. Create a new email message
5. Go to the Insert menu
6. Select Signatures
7. Select your default signature
8. Insert your tracking urls, and remember to amend the display text to a short pretty url or some anchor text
9. Save it and test it works by creating a new email message, inserting your signature (if this isn’t done by default), and checking your links look good and work in Rich Text, HTML and Plain Text.

If you do have access to change your website

Option 1

Ben suggests an alternative method if you have access to your website code.

1. Use the following url to generate your tracking link: Google Analytics Link Tracker
2. Create your tracking url described above.
3. Creating an index page, and use a server side redirect using the following code:(or the ASP equivalent) stick that right at the top before the html tag and it will seamlessly redirect.  Your ‘Location’ is the tracking url that you created.
4. Create a short directory, eg http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg
5. Put the index page in there and use the link in your signature http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg.

Option 2

Alternatively, use a client side redirect:

1. Use the following url to generate your tracking link: Google Analytics Link Tracker
2. Create your tracking url described above.
3. Set up a redirect by creating an index page with this code** in it:
4. Create a short directory, eg http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg
5. Put the index page in there and use the link in your signature http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg.

The benefit of this is that it works with plain text as well as RTF and HTML.

*Gathered moss along the way

**Code is nicked from Google as Ben’s code was stripped from his comment by our security features.

The post Track Email Signature With Google Analytics/Outlook 2007 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This is the bit :

“Every site should be designed to meet 4 essential goals: acquire, engage, convert and retain. Take your list of micro goals (and related insights) and assign one of the 4 essential goals.

Examples:

• Get maximum traffic from organic search (= Acquisition)
• Get users to read product description (= Engagement)
• Get users to purchase products (= Conversion)
• Get users to come back (= Retention)”

Read the rest of the post here: Defining actionable & business-driven KPI’s – a practical methodology

For your website to be useful (to you and your user), you must ensure your site has these steps in place, and that you have a way of getting people back (e.g. an email newsletter, follow up call or RSS feed).

You then need to ensure you have your goals tracked with your analytics package.  And based on the results of your marketing campaigns (using these defined goals), you can make more informed decisions about what to spend your budget on next, what needs to be improved, etc.

You can then do more than just tick the box of “yes I have a website”.

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The new features are in Beta, and will be applied to everyone’s accounts in the next few weeks.

I can’t wait for these to go live.  It will be a great way to get more value from your Analytics data, and it will make it easier to create meaningful results for clients.

This feature, Motion charts allows you to perform multi-dimensional analysis on your results.  By selecting up to 4 metrics, plus time, you can get visual representations of the data that is important to you, and see how it changes over time.

I also love this idea, Advanced segmentation.  Again, it lets you drill down to the metrics that you’re interested in, and allows you to compare against overall traffic, revenue generating traffic, or whatever you want!:

Similar to Advanced segmentation, you can create advanced reporting.

There will also be a Data Export API which allows you to take your analytics data and mash it up with other data… perhaps enabling the keyword stats/ranking report that Mark was pining for.

You can read more about these new features on the Google Analytics Blog.

So excited…  I need to get a life.

The post Fab New Features In Google Analytics appeared first on PushON Ltd.

I was thinking that the ability to plot points or add little descriptions to dates on analytics graphs would be ideal as it would allow people to track changes that they have implemented. So for example if you have recently acquired five new authority links then you could mark this point on the graph and then in the coming months see how the new links have affected your traffic levels. If you think how often we make changes to a strategy or campaign. Being able to monitor everything in one place would be idea. Anyway I would love to hear your ideas on this one or if you have come up with any other ideas.

I asked the guys in the office and they had some other interesting ideas. The ability to view rankings against the keywords driving traffic to your site was a particularly nice one. This would not be a difficult thing for Google to implement considering some of their other services. Another good one was being able to see conversions as an actual number rather than percentages. It’s often difficult to relate to a percentage.

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