Pimp My Google Analytics!
Well, it seems our friends at Google were getting bored, because I just logged into my Google Analytics account and it has been given a MAJOR makeover!
Totally different, much more user-friendly look & feel!
Fantastic effort Google. I always found Analytics fairly painful to use, and certainly not very intuitive, but this new “generation” is very slick, modern looking and much more simple and obvious.
Here’s a pic of the dashboard, courtesy of the Google Analytics Blog:
Not everybody will see the new look straight away - in some cases, it might take several weeks to activate it in your account, according to their blog. Guess our MCC account does enough turn-over to get priority eh?!?!?! LOL 
For a smooth transition, here are a few helpful resources specific to the new version:
- Take a tour of the new version
- Report Finder Tool: will help you see where data from the previous interface is located within the new version (it is also linked to from within your reports on the left navigation menu)
- FAQs for more details about the new version
- New version features page
And as always, the Help Center, the Google Analytics Authorized Consultant program and the Analytics Help Forum are available to help you.
The new version of Google Analytics is easy enough for a layperson to understand, but also offers the sophistication experienced users need.
OK, that’s it for my first post in ages. Sorry about the long absence - I’ve been busy with other projects, but you can expect to see more posts on a semi-regular basis from now on.
Have a great day and please leave your comments about what you think of the new-look Analytics once you’ve had a chance to play with it.
Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 9, 2006 - Google announced today
that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share
original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following
the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate
community.
The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment
communities with Google’s expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising
on the Internet. The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience
for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities
for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience.
“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s
mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said
Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. “Our companies share similar values; we
both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together,
we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners
and advertisers.”
“Our community has played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating
a new clip culture. By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology
leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new
opportunities for our partners,” said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube. “I’m
confident that with this partnership we’ll have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue
our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.”
When
the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and
complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be
based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s
technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success
as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment.
Joel Comm Is Selling Keywords Now? What a Scam!
God, am I the ONLY person out there in the big wide world who is not frothing at the mouth about the newest “trend” to hit the get-rich-quick Internet Marketing community?
Joel Comm (of Adsense Secrets fame) has been promoting his 500words.com site around the net lately, and when I saw the site, a sense of deja vu wafted over me in a major hurry!
Reminds me of the pixel selling craze of a year or so ago, where everybody went ballistic buying 1 pixel ads on a site to get link popularity benefits from Google & co.
That was great for the first 1-2 players in the field, and it got a LOT of press and some good dollars for the early mover, but have you noticed that no one seems to be paying much attention to it these days?
Why, you ask?
Simple really - because it goes against what Google (in particular) and the other major search engines are looking for when it comes to measuring the worth of incoming links.
My philosophy when it comes to the “fad of the month” brigade is simple: If I can show it to a Google Search Engine “cop” and have him or her be happy that it’s legit and fair and honest, and give me full value for the link, then it’s all good.
However, if the Google cop laughs at me and asks me if I’m on drugs, I know it will ultimately be a waste of time. It might work temporarily, but once Google figures it out, they will add a small routine to their algorithm to ignore the value of links from sites like this.
Even more than that, I am really disappointed that Joel Comm is the one promoting this. Mr Adsense himself should know better than to try and get one past Google!
If his idea was SOOOO good, he would keep his mouth shut & just build these sites for himself to get the link popularity.
Instead, he’s selling the script to build the keyword sites instead - THAT’s where the money is. He’ll sucker in hundreds of get-rich-quick starrey eyed individuals who think they will make a fortune with it, and in reality, HE will make a small fortune and probably only 1-2 others will as well.
Folks, use some critical thinking here PLEASE!
If this was really as good as he says it is, why is he selling the system instead of using it for himself?
Simple really - he makes money on the people who buy the links AND he makes money on the people who buy his script.
However, I can guarantee you that within 6 months (probably less), Google will be giving links from these sites little or NO value. All these word links are doing at the moment is drawing traffic from the buzz, which is nice, but not sustainable long term!
If you want link popularity, spend the money you would have paid Joel to buy his script and/or buying a word on his site, and pay someone from rentacoder or elance to write you some unique articles instead.
Link your primary keyword/s in the author resource box and publish the articles on your own site. THEN, modify the articles sufficiently so that they have at least 25-50% different wording & content to the original, and publish them on the major article sites like ezinearticles.com.
The value of the link popularity you will get from doing this will far outweigh any value you will get from the 500words site over the medium to long term.
Just this technique alone has got my biggest client to #1 GLOBALLY on Google for one of their primary keywords in less than 6 months. It took me about 2 hrs of work to publish the articles for him, and that’s all I’ve had to do since.
The link popularity he has earned from those published articles has steadily climbed and climbed, until it is now at #1 against 115 MILLION competing pages!
Now, THAT you can take to the bank. It’s a solid strategy, it keeps Google happy, and obviously it thrills my client and makes me look good.
What more can an SEO ask for! 
I love Internet Marketing, but I despair at times at how many people just chase the newest fad, hoping to get rich quick, instead of working smart & hard and putting together a quality site.
One-way Incoming Links from Directories
As with everything in life, there is an easy way, and there is a way that works effectively…
There are plenty of software tools out there that will submit your sites to the free directories…BUT, they come with a price, and I aint talking purchase price either.
It’s the same old story. If you try to cheat the system, the search engines will just ignore your efforts, which defeats the purpose of submitting to the directories in the first place.
Submitting the same entry (via software)Â to 50, 100, even 200 different directories is much the same as posting a copy of the exact same article to 1000 different article sites on the web. It will get indexed, and then promptly ignored, except for MAYBE 1-2 entries, by the search engines.
The search engines are wise to this spamming of the directories, and are ignoring entries that are the same.
Also, another thing about submitting a link to 200 directories is that those links will all show up on the next crawl of the spiders, and all of the major SE’s now monitor the growth rate of links to websites. If they see a massive level of growth in 1 day/week/month, and then no more after that, they automatically flag that site as suspicious, and it suffers for this. So, using a software tool to submit to a pile of directories in 1 shot is just a waste of time.
What’s the only way to avoid this problem? Submit a different entry to each directory, and the best way to do that is to do them manually… which is what everybody wants to avoid.
Think long term people - don’t spam the search engines, and your sites will perform better and last longer. If you can create sites that last for years in the SE’s, even if their rankings aren’t huge and their traffic isn’t massive, you get a much better bang for your buck than thinking short term.
That’s why just building scraper/spam sites for adsense earnings is a short-term tactic. At the end of the day, you will have to keep building new ones all the time to replace the ones that fall over after a month or 3.
Tag and Ping Disaster
Poor Sean Wu!
I wrote about him & his upcoming release of Tag and Ping the other day. I am guessing things went well, sales-wise, but the poor guy has been visited by Murphy (that famous Irish gentleman, whose law has been one universal constant in our world since day dot!) since then.
I just got home this evening, and found an email waiting for me from Sean…
Seems he had a major snafu with his autoresponder system:
Today I woke up to check my email - only to find
out in HORROR that my autoresponders from my
automation system has been sending me ALL of the
pre-programmed messages in the sequence
repeatedly… to MY inbox!At first I thought it was only doing this to me -
until I noticed that I’m getting a few complaints
from some people telling me that they’ve been receiving
up to 10 or more emails from my autoresponders,
in ONE day.Also, I’ve also noticed that some people are NOT
able to “opt out” of the sequence - even after
they’ve removed themselves from my autoresponder’s
database (I checked and their records have already
been removed - but the emails won’t stop for some
reason).*I’m also getting emails from ALL of my autoresponders
to MY inbox repeatedly too (and I can’t even “opt out”
of my OWN autoresponders!)
I hope the poor guy manages to sort this drama out! I’m sure its probably freaking him out a bit…
However, much more importantly AND significantly from my point of view is the latter part of this email, which says:
Third and finally - a BIG WARNING I want to give to
you:http://www.tagandping.com/warning.html
I’ve warned repeatedly, in EVERY teleseminar I did and
also on my Update Blog at http://www.tagandping.com/updates/,
as well as on the “Download Page” you are forwarded to
after purchasing the course…To NOT, in ANY circumstance, attempt to abuse or *spam*
the “authority sites” I mentioned in the course. I’ve
warned repeatedly that you should “go slow” AND add
valuable links & content… and NOT just links to your
own sites.The methods presented in the course are powerful -
BUT you MUST use it ethically.I’ve already seen some attempts to flood the authority
sites mentioned in the course with links to “page
generated” sites… and if you’re doing this - I ask
that you please stop.You should use these services the way that they’re
designed to be used - by adding valuable links that
other people will also find useful (in addition to
links to your own sites).DON’T overdo it!
Sean, you should have thought of the “possibility” of some morons using your techniques to spam and/or abuse these sites BEFORE you released this product…
Where I live, we have a saying for this - something along the lines of locking the barn door AFTER the horse has bolted!
This is why I often describe the Internet Marketing field as a shark infested pool…Along with all the nice fish, there are plenty of sharks who really don’t give a damn what they do to get traffic and sales on the net.
It’s not just the black hat crowd, it’s also the unethical, the ignorant, and the stupid that screw things up for the rest of us, who are happy to earn a living online without crossing the line into inappropriate tactics and techniques that just muck it up for everybody else.
Let this serve as a warning to those of you who think it’s OK to cut corners and not care about the consequences of your actions. If you’ve ever complained about all the trashy spam sites in the search engines now, then know that these unethical people are responsible for them. Makes Google and Co’s life hard, so in order to deliver the best deal possible to their REAL clients, they are now making legitimate internet marketers lives difficult, just to cope with the spam and dirty tricks brigade.
I truly hope Sean Wu won’t be looked upon (in 1-2 years) as the guy who started the downhill slide for tag and ping, and destroyed the value of this technique and these social bookmarketing sites, etc. I wonder if he thought about this properly before he decided to release this product?
I wonder…
Delete Your Google Toolbar!
Ahhh…the Google Toolbar.
Much beloved of the web marketing & SEO fraternity.
However, I just deleted it off my work PC the other day, and I’m a full-time SEO / SEM specialist, so what gives?
Well, the truth of the matter is that it is no longer something I think I can rely on to give me quality information with regards to their Page Rank rating.
The search market keeps changing, and none more regularly than Google, and its become quite apparent to me that that little green bar that we all worship is getting less useful AND less accurate than it has ever been before.
I suspect Google knows this well, but are quite happy to let us all run around like silly dogs, chasing our tails and getting all in a lather about the Page Rank (PR) of any particular page. When we chase PR in preference to TRAFFIC (do any of you remember that little thing???), then its a sign that things are getting out of control.
Apparently it has been recently reported (IÂ have NOT verified this yet)Â that it’s very easy to fool the Google toolbar by the addition of several lines of code to a webpage. You can make nearly any page appear to have a much higher PR than it really does. There will (no doubt) be people out there who will try to play this to their (unfair) advantage, but they’ll eventually get caught out.
Remember, what goes around, comes around!
So, I have made an “executive decision” and removed the toolbar from my PC. That way, it doesn’t distract me from the real issue at hand, which is to build traffic with sensible ethical smart methods. No black hat scamming, no sleight of hand, and no outright falsehoods.
Just add quality unique content, get quality links, optimise your pages properly (title tags, etc), and keep doing this over and over. Eventually, your site will begin to rank well, and your traffic will grow. It’s really VERY simple.
Press Release: Australian PhD Student Gets Snapped up by Google
26 year old Australian student Ori Allon - a PhD student at the University of New South Wales, has been hired by Search Engine giant Google, along with his search engine creation Orion.
Young Allon, an Israeli-born, Australian student, has been working on the next generation search engine (code named Orion) as part of his doctoral studies.
It obviously has something of interest to the Search Engine market, because the bidders on it included Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft!
All 3 courted him (and the University of NSW), before Google won the bidding process for the license to use the technology from the University (who owns the rights to any research done by its students and staff).
The Orion technology has the potential to “revolutionize existing search engines”, according to a press release put out by the University of NSW. Amongst other things, it will improve search relevence, offering terms related to what was initially searched for.
Allon has previously given an example of a search on “American Revolution”, that could return results for “american history”, “george washington”, “Boston Tea Party” and other related topics.
Allon is now working in Google’s Mountain View HQ in California, and could be a major figure in the company in the years to come, depending on how things shape up.
Naturally, SEO companies the world over will be keeping a close eye on this new development. “Every change at Google flows on down to the Search Engine Optimization market, and it should see another big shake-up of the industry”, according to Australian Search Engine Marketer Eran Malloch.
“A change to the SEO / SEM market driven by an Australian invention would be an exciting experience.” says Malloch. “I’ll eagerly await the outcome of Orion + Google - let’s see whether this gives the big G a renewed competitive advantage in their slowly dropping market share.”
Google Adsense is still working
I keep seeing & hearing rumblings about Adsense earnings going down across the net, especially from the adsense site builder brigade. At times, I have also expressed concerns about what’s going on with adsense, and whether its even worth hitching your trailer to their wagon…
Well, I just want to let you know that it is DEFINITELY still working, and I have seen it with my own eyes.
I have a client at work to whom I suggested he use adsense on his site. He has been trying to crack Google, Yahoo & MSN for a while, but he’s playing in a very competitive market, and its taking a lot longer than he had hoped for, to achieve the results he would like. Hence, my suggestion that he put adsense on his site, and hopefully collect a small token from the Adwords clicks he has been paying to send people to his site.
He started slowly, with a few bucks here & there and it picked up a little, but nothing drastic.
However, he rang me on Friday to ask me how much he is spending on Adwords at the moment. When I told him the figure, he gleefully told me that his adsense earnings for March have finally surpassed the amount of money he spends on adwords. In other words, his earnings from adsense are going UP, and even though he spends money on Adwords PPC ads to send traffic to the site to purchase his product, he is getting a proportion of them clicking on his adsense ads as well, and has now managed to jump ahead of the cart!
My next experiment is to see if we can better integrate his ads into the site so that his CTR goes up (it’s currently below 5%). If this happens (and I have every reason to believe it will), he may well double his earnings per month, without increasing his traffic by 1 new unique visitor per month!!! My adsense sites average about 10-12% CTR, so if we can at least double his CTR, potentially he will get a huge ROI on his current free & paid traffic!
Here’s the basics of his situation:
1) He has 1 website (not 10 or 100).
2) It is built around a specific niche topic and looks nice and has some good content on it - most of it unique.
3) He only gets about 2000 visitors a month so far, and he pays for nearly 50% of them via Adwords PPCÂ - yet, he has almost earned twice as much in adsense income this month as what he paid for the clicks!
4) His site is now self sufficient
My lessons for the day:
1) Build sites around a theme
2) If possible, have a significant percentage (20%+ if possible) of the content be unique
3) Grow slow but steady (drip feed)
4) Publish articles & get 1-way links to your site (do this slowly but steadily. A mad rush of links & articles that die out quickly tends to spook the SEs)
5) Integrate adsense properly into your site, so that it is not so obvious that they are ads.
6) Have a big site - lots of content is GOOD… Small sites rarely rate well on google, except perhaps for a semi-unique keyword.
7) It takes time to get results
8 ) Experiment to see if quantity or quality is better when it comes to how many sites you build. Quality takes longer but usually pays heaps more per site AND doesnt get kicked out of the SE index’s so quickly, if at all…
Experiment with your sites people. Don’t just make them cookie cutters of each other with the same 50 articles that everybody else uses, etc. Try different ideas. Track your results and see what works best.
I’m even earning money implementing adsense on mainstream commercial websites now, thanks to what I have learned from building my own Adsense sites. If you want some help doing this to your site, or someone you know, send me an email and I’ll be happy to chat with you about it.
Company tries to sue Google for being penalized
Poor Google! At times, you just got to feel sort of sorry for them. Now that they are mega-successful and a major player in the online economy, they have also become a target for every wacko, wierdo, crook and scumbag out there hoping to make a quick buck!
I just read (on Search Engine Roundtable) that:
“Late Friday news came down that Google has been sued by KinderStart.com, a parental advice site, for being demoted in the search rankings. KinderStart is trying to create a class action lawsuit for all Web site owners who have been blacklisted by Google since January 2001.”
Geeze, what a pathetic attempt at getting some free publicity. I am quite sure they are hoping all the other google whingers, haters & complainers out there will jump on the bandwagon and put their hand up to join a frivilous class action.
America TRULY IS the land of the lawsuit in preference to taking responsibility for one’s actions.
While I don’t worship Google or anything silly (hey, some of my sites don’t get much action from Google, but I don’t bitch about it), I just am blown away with how many moaners & complainers there are out there, blaming Google for all their woes.
For pete’s sake people, let’s get a grip on reality here and remember that there are plenty of other SEs to optimise for AS WELL AS offline marketing.
The way I look at it, ANY free traffic I get from Google, Yahoo & MSN is a gift, not a right! If I don’t like them, I can take my site/s out of their indexes, and I am welcome to find other ways to get traffic to my site, just the same as the offline world does now and has done for hundreds of years!
Grow up all you babies and deal with it!!!
Don’t Fight Google’s Success - Take Advantage Of It
Hey there Website Owner, I just have a quick question for you…
While I realise you are ranking well for some of your main keywords on MSN & Yahoo, how are you doing for that and other more appropriate keywords on Google?
The traffic you’ll get for high rankings on Google will be more than Yahoo & MSN added together and then some, so it’s MUCH MORE value-for-money in terms of pursuing high Search Engine ranking results on Google than the #2 & #3 Search engines offer.
According to the statistics I’ve recently read, Google has nearly 81% of ALL the search engine traffic in Australia (and is similarly high in many other countries), which gives you an idea of how much traffic you are currently missing out just relying on Yahoo & Ninemsn.
If you do some quick searches and your web site doesn’t rank in the top 3 pages for your main keywords on Google (anything below the top 3 pages is pretty much a waste of time), then you’re leaving LOTS of traffic (and potential paying clients) on the table.
If you were to get (in particular) a first page ranking for one or more of your main keyword phrases in Google, you would be blown away with the amount of traffic and enquiries you get at your site, compared to what you currently receive.
Something else that’s important to consider when you review rankings is the amount of TEXT content on your site. The higher ranking sites almost always have lots of text content (articles, news, reviews, etc) on their site and the lower ranking ones don’t have much.
Here’s a quick experiment you can try for yourself. On Google, Yahoo & MSN, do a search for your top 1 or 2 keyword phrases, and note the sites that come out in the top 10.
Then, go to each of those 3 search engines and see how many pages of these sites are indexed, compared to yours. It’s easy to do this by just entering the following command in at each Search Engine:
site:www.domainname.com
(obviously substituting your site URL and the other top 10 site urls where appropriate)
If the number of pages in the index for your site is significantly lower than the competition, there’s one of your main reasons for a poor ranking (there are other factors, but this is an important one).
I often have prospective search engine optimisation clients give me the excuse that they are getting decent results from Yahoo & MSN, and anyway funds are tight, so they don’t want to invest in getting results in Google. You know, the old classic “Call me again in 6 - 9 months!”
However, what they don’t realise is that the additional income they would receive for a higher ranking on Google (from the ensuing customers it brought you) would not only well and truly pay for our SEO services but give them plenty of ongoing new clients, which would take care of any cashflow concerns they might have for a while to come.
Consider that many of the big companies in your market niche spend large sums of money to advertise on TV, Radio & Print to drive traffic to their web site/s & retail location/s, but a good SEO strategy will bring visitors to your site for literally cents on the dollar - a much higher ROI. According to Google’s statistics, a quality Search Engine strategy can achieve similar results but be 20 times CHEAPER than direct mail (for one example).
I guess the lesson here is not to be penny-wise and dollar-poor. Work out how many additional new paying clients you would need to get via Search Engine Optimisation results to break even with the SEO firm’s fee, and then go after the main game in town: Google.
Your return-on-investment for good Seach Engine rankings is way ahead of most any other form of advertising and marketing you can come up with, but you need to see the big picture first. Don’t wait until your competitor sees the light and takes action before you, or you’ll miss out.
Author: Eran Malloch is an Internet Marketing Consultant at WCR Internet Marketing, a specialist Australian Search Engine Marketing company. Visit our site to get a free web site analysis.