Published: February 8th, 2010
Today Matt Cutts announced a new way to track changes on a website even if it doesn’t have a feed. This fills a gap in what I have always thought to be lacking with static websites, as even the most complex of websites can be built on a blogging platform like Wordpress. Since most people check their feeds daily, it will be handy to be able to track website changes all in one place.
Used in tandem with Google Alerts, you should be able to get quite a comprehensive view on a competitor. For example, from tracking changes in their site to keeping an eye on competing search terms and brand names, you can be alerted immediately if they initiated a change that has got blogosphere talking.
If you don’t want certain pages on your website to be scrutinised in such detail, simply adding <meta name=”googlebot” content=”noarchive”> to these pages will prevent the Googlebot from allowing updates in Google Reader.
Now… what’s the url for Facebook’s privacy policy?
Published: February 3rd, 2010
Does your website deliver a large amount of performance data? Are you having a hard time filtering the information into a report? Start using Advanced Segmentation within the Google Analytics account and find out how you can generate reports with a even greater precision!
Google Analytics Advanced Segmentation allows you to analyse user behaviour or the effectiveness of certain subset of traffic. You create advanced segments to only include visits that meet a specific set of criteria. For example you can set up an advanced segment for visitors from different countries if you are running multilingual or multiple campaigns or you can include visits where a certain amount of money was spent. The greatest thing about advanced segmentation is the fact that you can also apply historical data and compare old performance data to how your site is performing now, what is more segments are easily accessible across all your accounts, profiles and any kind of reports so can utilise them nearly everywhere.
Published: January 27th, 2010
On the last day of 2009, Google confirmed that they had removed the Local Business results for many SEO, web design and hosting companies. So while the search results for [web hosting leeds] won’t come up with any local business results, [supermarket leeds] will come up with the familiar Google Maps with businesses located on them. However, many experts have pondered the strange fact that while [web hosting leeds] won’t appear in Google Local Business results, using the word ‘in’, like [web hosting in Leeds] does show Local Business results. Also, while most cities in the US and UK are affected, [web hosting sydney] and many others are not.
A Google employee, Joel H states,
“Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]… I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.”
“Using words in or near seem to be suggestive of a different intent. In the end, these search results will fluctuate as we fine tune our results pages to get the user the best answer.”
It is definitely confusing for many to understand the motives for this move by Google. Has this move affected your company? Or do you think that Joel is right when he says that this is “an accurate representation of user intent”?
Published: January 20th, 2010
Site Search within Google Analytics includes reports about visitors who frequently use search boxes as a form of navigation. Many websites contain a search engine that helps users find what they were looking for.
Google Analytics ‘Site Search’ reports will help you identify missing content on your site, refine search results for keywords and key phrases and most importantly deliver ideas for new search queries to use in paid search campaigns.
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