Applications designed to extend the use of Google Analytics have been brought together in a new gallery.

Google has described Analytics not as a single product but as a “growing ecosystem of developers, tools, users, and partners”. And in order to highlight the tools being designed to help analytics users make the most of their data, the US search firm has brought details of the various applications together in one place.

There are currently just under 40 apps in the gallery, such as CallTrackID, which allows telephone enquiries to be tracked from various traffic routes including direct, organic, PPC ad, affiliate and offline, straight into Google Analytics.

Excellent Analytics is another application in the gallery which lets users work with their data in an Excel spreadsheet.

News home

Google is planning to upgrade its services in the next few weeks, affecting many services that are vital for SEO marketers.

One of the services which will be hit is Google Analytics, which webmasters and SEO marketers use to analyse traffic sources and levels of traffic to a site.

Google Analytics is used by SEO experts for a variety of purposes, including testing new products, and managing targets and spending for PPC campaigns. The message informing all analytics users of the outage has been displayed on accounts currently using the service.

The message displayed by Google says “Starting Mar 2, 2010, the Analytics system will be unavailable from approximately 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM (Pacific time) for maintenance.
“While you may not be able to view your most current data during this time, your data will continue to be collected and processed so you can view it once we finish.
“Thank you for your patience.”

No new features or filters are going to be added to Google Analytics during this period, and all account will be frozen so campaigns cannot be changed or stopped in the time period.

Google is making the upgrade to improve its service and boost the service’s reliability.

The end of the temporary cut in the UK's value added tax (VAT) rate from 17.5 per cent to 15 per cent, as 2009 bade its farewell, coincided with a big surge in web searches, according to Experian Hitwise.

Search terms such as ‘VAT increase’, ‘vat increase 2010’, ‘vat rate change’ and ‘when does vat go back up to 17.5%’ received their highest ever traffic on January 2 – but fewer than half of those who used these terms went on to visit official sites, Robin Goad of Hitwise UK said in his blog.

Nearly half of those searching for information about the VAT increase ended up visiting the Government website, while 13.3 per cent found more information through news sources.

Another 12.9 per cent of those searching visited business and financial sites, which paid for 26.8 per cent of the traffic they received, with business information sites such as Business Link bidding aggressively on a number of terms.

These figures overshadowed the performance of retailers’ websites during most of December, with just 4.2 per cent of searches landing on retail websites, although the sector saw a surge in traffic the week before Christmas with consumers trying to grab last-minute bargains before the rate increase.

Between December 21 and January 2, UK internet visits to retail websites increased by 13 per cent. The increase in that period was only two per cent the previous year.

The biggest increase during that period was in the house and garden sector, where retailers experienced a 67 per cent increase in traffic.

Other sectors selling big ticket items also posted above average increases, with the sport and fitness, computers and appliances and electronics categories all performing well.

ONE major retailer whose latest sales figures provided evidence that online sales are performing well was Marks & Spencer.

In a good quarter for the stores group, it reported that, while overall sales grew by 2.7 per cent in the three months to the end of September 2009, online sales had surged ahead by 30 per cent.

This clearly shows that the switch to online retailing is being successfully embraced by this iconic high street brand.

Analysts were surprised by the figures, having expected a like-for-like fall of about 1.5 per cent over the quarter.

M&S chairman Sir Stuart Rose attributed the results to better buying strategies and stock management. He also said he was confident the company had reached the bottom in its performance.

He did warn, however, that the re-introduction of the higher 17.5 per cent VAT rate was casting a cloud over the next period, and said that, despite lobbying from retailers he was “not confident at all it will be extended.”

And use of news searches surges ahead

Worldwide search statistics compiled by Google Analytics show that 2009 has been the year of natural search as, for the first time, it has generated consistently greater traffic than paid search.

But there is also a clear divide emerging from the Google Analytics figures.

They show that there remains a strong reliance on PPC search results in the territories of the Far East. This perhaps reflects a difference in cultures where a company’s trust among its customers is measured in terms of the amount of money it is prepared to invest in promoting its products and services on line.

SEO has also opened up a clear gap ahead of PPC searches when it comes to traffic volumes generated through news searches.

Indeed, while volumes of generic searches are staying relatively consistent, the big growth has been seen in searches of news reference sources, such as Google News or MSN News.

Over the five years to 2009, news site searches have grown exponentially, as consumers have come to trust them to be more independent than generic search. In this area, PPC and SEO searches stayed broadly level until the end of 2008, when SEO first took a clear lead, which it steadily stretched over the following year, and was continuing to do so at the time this was written.

PPC traditionally hits an annual high as Christmas approaches, with surfers looking for gifts, and presumably turning to the PPC results as they see familiar brands represented among them.

But for each of the last three years, that peak has been lower than in the preceding year, meaning that companies relying on PPC for their rankings at this time are almost certainly getting smaller returns on their outlay.

Google’s findings show clearly why so many companies are placing greater emphasis on securing listings in Google News, as these have come to be seen as more trusted and impartial than both organic and PPC results.

With the recession continuing to be uppermost in many people’s minds, there should be little surprise that one area of internet search which is booming is for discount vouchers, according to research reported in the Financial Times.

Internet searches in the UK for “discount vouchers” grew by 47.5 per cent in the year since last August, according to Hitwise, the internet research company. Google’s records show a 67 per cent jump in searches for the term “discount vouchers” between December 2007 and December 2008

Online discount vouchers are widely available, and offer savings on all manner of purchases. And the main users, according to Hitwise, are professional and white-collar workers, with about 70 per cent of them claiming to have used a money-off coupon in the last six months.

Recession-scarred consumers are embracing a thrifty habit that is likely to outlast any economic recovery: the use of online discount vouchers to save money on retail, food and other purchases.

Robin Goad, UK director of research at Hitwise, said searching for vouchers had become an established part of online shopping. “Consumer behaviour has changed so that people are looking online to research a product, looking at where to find the best price and finally doing a search to see if there is a voucher for it.”

Last year when we were all rocked by recession I vividly remember coming across one article. It stated that sex was “the most popular free pastime” in the UK.

The YouGov survey conducted over the Internet between 21 and 23 November 2008 interviewed 2,144 people and found that sex was ranked as the number one free pastime by most respondents. As Telegraph reported, “the credit crisis has encouraged Britons to seek out free leisure activities and the most popular is sexual intercourse”. For the record, women still preferred gossiping with friends, while men took the utmost pleasure in the under-the-sheets action. The weather also seemed to have its say, with 43 per cent of Scots spending their free time in bed, compared to 35 per cent of Londoners. One way or another, however, credit crunch has seen a lot of people having sex…

… and now Robin Goad from Hitwise reports that, amidst the unusual number of pregnancies in Hitwise HQ, “some have speculated that this might be something to do with the recession”. Looking at the search landscape, he notes that “it is particularly interesting to note how popular the ‘x weeks pregnant’ searches are”. And, taken from Hitwise blog, below is the chart that illustrates the surge in searches for “how to get pregnant” and “pregnancy symptoms” over the last 12 months.

Hitwise chart of pregnancy related searches in the UK

The full article over at Hitwise blog gives some strong hopes to the mothercare retailers, with further charts. So, hop over to read about Pregnancy and Baby Searches in full, and if you do, don’t forget to send your best wishes to Robin who’s currently on paternal leave to care after his wife and their baby boy.

There is a bit of kerfuffle over Amazon Associates program slashing an advertiser’s revenue from affiliate links posted on Twitter and Facebook. You can read the full story here.

The obvious question is – who is right: Amazon or advertisers?

Amazon’s argument, as per their T&C, is that the links must be posted on your site, i.e. the site that you own and that is actually registered with Amazon Associates program.

Advertisers’ argument is that Twitter, for instance, is no different from any other blog, hence posting links there does not constitute a breach of Amazon’s Terms and Conditions.

This is not to deny that Amazon has to refine its T&C, precisely in order to reflect the changes on the Internet. However, right now it is Amazon who appears to be correct.

For a start, let’s be upfront about the nature of Twitter. Your Twitter stream may “belong” to you by virtue of your username and your tweeting there, and is unique by virtue of you making choices over links, retweets, messages, hashtags, etc. But it is not unique in that much of the material you will have in your Twitter stream is unlikely to constitute your sole intellectual property. If you tweet a link to Guardian, Washington Post, or New York Times, you are sharing their intellectual property with others – but you are not creating your own intellectual property.

This is precisely what is stated in Amazon’s T&Cs:

The latter point is precisely what may be the main nail in coffin. Although you would not normally consider posting a link to another website to be a violation of intellectual property rights, the nature of Twitter is different in that you’ve only got 140 chars to play with. As a result, although you’re posting a link of your personal choice, you’d rarely accompany it with any other personalised content. On the scale of website content evaluation, a Twitter stream full of links and conversations (perhaps, similar to blog comments) is not quite different a spammy blog that rips the content off other sites or splashes Google ads all over the page.

Let’s not forget, as well, that many websites have stipulated in their Terms and Conditions that you cannot link to their pages – but usually we’d just assume that it’s OK to link to a website. Back in March 2009, one of Twitter users disclosed the number of newspapers sites that officially prohibit other sites from linking to them, which caused quite a stir in Twitterverse. Public sector sites are not lagging behind, unfortunately. Without knowing this, you may be running into a danger of doing something that constitutes an offence. Needless to say, if you do go against a website’s T&Cs, but also try and earn money off your “error”, you may lose more than just income from affiliate sales.

Another problem, arguably, lies in general site ownership, and maybe analytics and privacy factor. Some sites with pornographic content display “Share on Facebook” button, meaning that, if you want to share a juicy video with your Facebook friends, you can do that in a mouse click. However, your Facebook profile cannot be accessed by Amazon. You’re therefore violating Amazon’s condition under which your site must not promote sexually explicit content. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t actually visit those sites or share videos from there on Facebook – Amazon doesn’t know this and cannot check.

Analytics may be the last point to consider, and it will have to do with URL shorteners. I am personally doubtful that Amazon’s analytics is refined to the point when they can “elongate” a bit.ly, to identify the publisher ID. Everyone who saw an HTML code of an affiliate link on Amazon knows that it exceeds 140 chars, therefore shortening is essential. Bit.ly also runs into problems occasionally, thus although it is possible that Amazon creates their own URL shortnening app in future, right now by all accounts they prefer to be safe rather than sorry.

As we pointed out, there’s a lot of work the entire web has to do sorting out conflicting views and accommodating the biggest majority possible. But with the case of Amazon the situation is quite clear. If you run a website that displays the content you created and that is publicly accessible and does not violate the Terms and Conditions, then you can happily post full affiliate links there and earn money. If it is a Twitter stream consisting of links to content created by others, or better still a Facebook profile that is securely locked, then you will have to find other advertising avenues, if you want to be an Amazon Associate.

Announcing a new Google feature on your company blog before Google announces it? If me or one of my colleagues tried to do this on purpose, it would most likely not work. Of course, we all make observations about certain things we notice with the Search Engines, but to actually make an announcement ahead of the company who introduced the feature… well, it must take something.

But there it is, right in front of our eyes: Lakestar Media announces “Map Overlay” feature in FeedBurner two days (!) ahead of FeedBurner’s blog. FeedBurner’s post confirms all the observations made on our blog.

Announcing Map Overlay on the Company Blog

Map Overlay post on Google FeedBurner blog

One thing I cannot help taking a small issue with is the one in this citation:

“Hopefully, you will be able to use these data to better tailor content to your readership, and target lackluster markets. If you are one of our publishers who sells your own ads in feeds using Google Ad Manager, this will help you better target your subscribers“.

All this is good, but let’s have a look at “exact number of item views” metrics. We use several services to deliver our RSS feed to subscribers, and FeedBurner’s dealing with numbers never ceases to bewilder me. So the question is – what IS the “exact number of item views“? Are they the unique views? It is important to know which of your items your readers find interesting, but if they return to certain items during the day, then “unique views” evidently do not correlate with the number of subscribers. According to the screengrab I took on 12 June, we had 66 views of items on our feed – but the number is much lower if we look at the graph in Aggregate Item Views pane:

Most recent visitors in Google FeedBurner

Another question is – what is “the most recent full day“? The question is especially valid since FeedBurner experiences delays in reporting once in a while. Just for the purpose of not focusing too tightly on 12 June, I added the statistics for 11 June to the screen grab – but it is still much lower than 66 views we had according to Map Overlay. And finally, “clicks back to the site” are often not registered by Analytics.

Aggregate Item Use feature in Google FeedBurner

These issues are not raised by a die-hard geek who always seems to see the bigger picture behind any service or analytical package they come across, and thus is never satisfied. And at any rate, both Google and FeedBurner have been around for long enough to have heard that there are problems their services are not addressing. But, by the look of things, Google is more concerned about Bing than the incongruities in its data analysis services.

I was somewhat critical of the changes that occured to FeedBurner since it was completely migrated over to Google. Some features, however, were “tweaked”. There was a chance previously to see the countries and cities that sent visits to the site and feed. The site statistics in FeedBurner has now been disabled, but the feed statistics got a Google Analytics makeover. You’re now being served a Map Overlay of your visitors for the most recent full day, so see screen grab below for an example. Unfortunately, there it ends.

Map Overlay feature in Google FeedBurner