Google’s Chrome internet browser has managed to increase its share of the global market to over seven per cent, according to data from Net Applications.

The research company said Chrome increased its share from 6.73 per cent in April 2010 to 7.05 per cent at the end of last month, to retain third place with regard to total market share.

Microsoft continued to lose out, dropping month-on-month from 59.95 per cent to 59.69 per cent.

Firefox remains in second place with 24.35 per cent of the market, dropping from 24.59 per cent in April. Fourth place Safari has 4.77 per cent of the market while Opera took 2.43 per cent.

By Richard Morris

News home

The Conservative party managed to attract the greatest number of website visitors of the three main political parties last week, according to the latest available figures.

Data released by Experian Hitwise UK shows in the week to May 1, the Tories claimed just over 36 per cent of all visitors to the three main parties websites.

Labour took second place with 32.9 per cent of all visitors. The Liberal Democrat party was the only one to see a fall in its weekly share of visitors, down from around 39 per cent the previous week to just over 31 per cent on May 1.

Robin Goad, a research director at Hitwise UK, said: “Of course, visits to party websites do not equal votes, but they can still be an interesting indicator.”

News home

The Conservatives have the most popular website out of all the political parties according to March visitor numbers.

Survey results released by the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) show 150,000 unique visitors went to the Tories’ site in March. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats pipped Labour into second place with the parties attracting 115,000 visitors and 114,000 visitors respectively.

According to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau, UKOM general manager James Smythe said: “This data reflects the complexity and dynamism of the race for UK voters’ attention.

“Over the past 12 months the parties have taken turns to peak and dip in popularity, but it’s become more important to deliver your party message as we get closer to the election.”

The main political parties have been desperately trying to get their message across to the electorate in the last few weeks before the election, with paid search ads proving to be one way of getting through.

However, some industry experts have warned that politicians must engage with voters, and that currently there is a gap between what the main political groups are providing through the internet and what the electorate demands.

News home

Royal Mail, the UK's publicly-owned postal delivery service, has launched a new initiative promising to make it easier for businesses to improve their targeting of specific geographical areas which are most likely to buy their products.

The new Royal Mail Insight Tool uses information from the eBay market data programme to offer new insight to UK advertisers, and provides access to more than 140 million UK transactions carried out through the online auction site, giving advertisers and planners unparalleled insight into the purchasing behaviours of postcode areas across the UK (the equivalent of the US zip codes).

The data – which is anonymous and consists of 2.1 million individual postcodes which cover 26 million addresses – provides details of buyers’ purchase history, type of products bought and levels of spend, and is refreshed monthly to give continually updated access to the latest information on purchases around the UK.

“The launch of the tool underlines (Royal Mail’s) determination to be a true media owner by selling unique, bespoke audience insight as well as providing a communications channel to reach and engage with consumers and enhance their brand through the post,” said Royal Mail Head of Media and Development, Antony Miller.

The Royal Mail Insight Tool can provide breakdowns of spending habits regarding new or used purchases, peak purchasing periods, frequency and recency of purchase, age, gender, and the product brands purchased.

Categories covered by the service include baby; car parts and vehicles; clothes, shoes and accessories; computing; consumer electronics; health and beauty; home and garden; mobile and home phones; sporting goods and video games, as well as more than 200 sub-categories.

“It provides insight and audiences based on chosen variables of areas around the UK where certain product types are frequently being purchased, items sold and their average price,” Miller added.

“Based on this insight, campaign planners can identify other similar areas in the UK and deliver comparable audience demographics.

“This information can then be overlaid with Royal Mail data, a brand’s own customer database or a cold list, supplying access to a highly targeted base of prospects.”

For a start, do you think Baidu.com is a search engine? I certainly do, and so does Wikipedia. But when it comes to Google Analytics, things stop being so simple. Compare screengrabs 1 and 2 below. As we can see, on the first screen grab baidu.com is tracked as a referral site; on the second it is included among “Search Engines”.

The arrival of Bing was announced in late May, but until 6 June Microsoft’s new baby was “scanned” (pun intended) as a referring site in our clients’ logs (screen grab 2). Since 6 June it has grown up to be among search engines (screen grab 3). This kind of acceleration only happens in the Internet world, it seems, but nevertheless it doesn’t address the problem of incongruity when it comes to identifying and categorising tracking sources in Google Analytics. An article on Search Engine Watch blog, dated per 9 June, mentions that Google plans to include Bing in the default list of search engines.

Better still, the article was prompted by checking GA this morning and finding that Google itself was tracked as a referral site (screen grab 4). In other words, as great as Google Analytics is, it absolutely needs to be improved. And while I’m on it, I will say that the first thing it must improve NOW is to automate tracking of clicks on outgoing links. You still have to add a piece of code on the outgoing link, including files and images, if you want to see how many visitors clicked on it. You used to be able to see those clicks in FeedBurner – until it was completely migrated over to Google, and they got rid of the feature altogether. Considering that some newcomers, like Clicky Analytics, offer you tracking of outbound clicks as a part of the package, I just cannot see any sense for Google Analytics not to notch this mechanism up and include outbound clicks in reporting. This is a very natural expectation of a web analyst, to say the least.

SG 1 - Baidu.com tracked as a referring site.

SG2 - Time period from 1 Jan till 5 June 2009, baidu.com is tracked as a search engine, but no Bing in sight yet...

SG 3 - Time period from 1 Jan till 6 June 2009, Bing appears among Search Engines.

SG 4 - Google is tracked as referring site in Google Analytics, 11 June 2009.

One cannot thank eConsultancy enough for publicising their experience of tweaking advanced segments in Google Analytics, to enhance the data granulation and to help us see Social Media sites on the chart. Previously, when we wanted to see and analyse visits from Social Media sites, we would do so via Referring Sites under Traffic Sources in Google Analytics. Now, in a few simple and quick steps, one can create a segment that will display just the data they need.

Over at eConsultancy you can read more about the experiment. In short, you can either create filters under a new website profile (but do not delete the main one!), or you can go via advanced segments. We chose the latter, since the data can then be accessed within the main website profile. So, as a matter of giving an example, here is how the things stand for ourselves and for one of our clients (the left and right images, respectively (or top and bottom, depending on how you are viewing this)):

What instantly comes to mind is that this cannot be a one-size-fits-all type of exercise, and it helps if you already have an idea about the Social Media sources that send you traffic. For example, eConsultancy does not include either Flickr or YouTube. We do not have a YouTube account, but we do use Flickr, and in the data capture from 1 January to 6 May 2009 Flickr has been the fifth traffic source for our site and blog.

Better still, building on eConsultancy’s experience, we created two separate segments for Twitter and Facebook, as these channels were consistently driving traffic since we have started using them, hence it was interesting to see the competition. We created two segments, one called “Twitter streams” with the following regular expression values: “twitter|tinyurl|bit.ly|tr.im|cli.gs”; and another called “Facebook”, with “facebook|new.facebook” as the regular expression value. See below the way this comes out in the chart (it also includes visits from Flickr):

Overall, since the beginning of the year, the traffic from these three sources – Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr – has accounted for 6.3 per cent of all visits to the blog. What our experiment shows is that similar segments can be created individually for other Social Media channels. In our case, this simply serves to graphically exemplify that, as far as Social Media and Networks are concerned, Twitter and Facebook are our most loyal traffic drivers so far. But when there are several competing channels, it makes every sense to create dedicated segments for them. What this will serve to do, is to better analyse the traffic and optimise the use of Social Media sites accordingly.

In addition, the value expression in an advanced segment field is limited to 256 characters. What could potentially be done, is all the Social Media traffic sources can be broken down to the ones that consistently deliver a lot of traffic and the ones that can be lumped together. For example, you would end up having segments for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and LinkedIn; and the “Other Social Media” segment would include traffic from all other sites that do send visits to your site or blog but in a less consistent, impressive or otherwise important way.

Finally, if you are still unfamiliar with how to track Social Media responses to your content with the help of a Greasemonkey script, here is the post by Erik Vold on UserScripts, to get you started: Social Media Metrics Plugin for Google Analytics.

And many thanks to @technicalfault and @mattorchard for discovering the story and bringing it to our eyes on Twitter.

]]> http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/2009/05/06/tracking-social-media-referrals-in-google-analytics-econsultancy-tip/feed/ 0 http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/2009/03/18/who-will-be-crowned-king-of-social-media-part-1/ http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/2009/03/18/who-will-be-crowned-king-of-social-media-part-1/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:48:12 +0000 Samina Ali http://lakestar.hexel.net/wordpress/?p=538 Continue reading →]]>

This year is predicted to be the biggest year for Social Media and with the increased reliance, trust and value of consumer opinions and product reviews, most people will be scouting for the best offers and purchasing online.

The Search Engine Watch team has decided to take it upon themselves to help businesses by conducting an analysis into the “Sweet 16” Social Media Networks that companies should leverage, as highlighted below:

The match-ups for region-1 include Facebook ‘v’ Yammer and Delicious ‘v’ Orkut. It was found that Facebook was extremely good for setting up groups and fan pages and with over 170 million users worldwide it is the fastest growing social media network.Delicious is an extremely good social bookmarking website to save and manage useful bookmarks to articles and resources as well as to determine the popularity of these articles. Orkut is the most popular social network in India, Brazil and Latin America. This makes it a brilliant marketing tool to target the market in those areas.Yammer is an internal private social network, registration to this network is only permitted if a valid company email exists. The network can reduce the size of your outlook inbox considerably by leveraging it to make company announcements, leaving outlook to send emails that actually require a response.

The next dose of “Who will be crowned King of Social Media?” will look at the match-ups for region-2 as well as the winners and losers of region-1.

The effects the recession is having on businesses are very different. Manchester Evening News has reported today it was about to cut 78 jobs. The overall job-cut figure announced by MEN Media is about 150, and all weekly editorial offices will also be closed. The production of weeklies will be switched to the main office in Scott Place in Manchester. This is certainly an invitation to revisit the adaptation of the traditional media to the demands of modern communications, specifically how the print newspapers and traditional PR are embracing the Internet.

At the same time, Daily Mail reported about a Taiwanese boy who won himself an island “in a Taiwan lottery aimed at boosting spending during an economic downturn”. Well, actually, before we all get too excited and envious, here’s a small print : “According to the terms of the prize, the boy and up to seven family members can visit the island five times, for trips that last a maximum of three days”.

The two quite opposite examples of dealing with recession. However, both openly demonstrate that recession is all about making cuts, be that VAT, staff, or prices. Which is precisely why 2009 IS the year for Social Media. The beauty of this has so far been in that Social Media is free. In a way, this is a classic “what you see is what you get” kind of thing, which made a lot of marketers cautious about adopting Social Media in the past. Because Social Media is often free, and the tracking tools, however bespoke, don’t give a complete picture, and the metrics of measuring the success of a campaign are not streamlined and vary, depending on the Social Media or Networks that are in use, there seems to be no beaten path to follow, and this effectively puts the potential adopters off. Another implicit fear associated with the use of Social Media is the resonance your brand activity is going to receive throughout the Internet. There are plenty of tools out there already that assist at “buzz monitoring”.

Myself, I strongly feel that 2009 is going to be the year of noise. We already see that articles on the use of Twitter are appearing with some astonishing rate, and some companies have already looked into monetising the service. Nevertheless, here at Lakestar Media we will be looking at measuring the success of Social Media campaigns, and by the end of 2009 there will have been a lot of intelligence to help streamline the campaigns and reporting, and to actually see the tangible RoE (Return on Engagement) of a Social Media campaign.

For anybody who is using Google Analytics to track website performance, Google has introduced a new qualification called the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ). The course is free to take at the Conversion University but the 90 minute examination fee will be $50 USD per exam taken.

The course has been introduced because of the increased focus on digital marketing and performance monitoring. For those who already know how to use the software, the course will be a refresher and an opportunity for individuals to be classified as qualified users that can leverage the usage of Analytics in their organization as well as for their clients.  Once the Google Analytics IQ exam has been taken, it will remain valid for 18 months from the pass date.

Currently, the examination is only available in US English. The benefits of the examination include things like having tangible evidence and validation that the individual is proficient in using Google Analytics and the qualification can be shown on the individual’s curriculum vitae. The qualification also gives the individual satisfaction that they have the most current and updated knowledge of how to use Google Analytics to make the most of their online presence.

With Dell revealing that their Twitter profile helped them generate over $1 million in sales volume in 2008, other brands may now be considering how their own social media campaigns can be monetised alongside brand promotion and customer engagement. One application aimed at helping businesses with this is twtQpon. This innovative service allows brands to create coupons for Twitter followers, served via a dedicated landing page, and then linked to from their Twitter profile.

Twitter is expected to roll out a formal business model this year, which may include the option for businesses to create a premium corporate account. Whatever positive or negative impact developments like this may have on the likelihood of other brands stepping up their marketing efforts using micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter, these channels have the advantage of “warming up” their targeted audience prior to engagement, by creating a following of users and potential brand ambassadors. According to recent Hitwise research citing a 133% increase in voucher searches in 2008, the market for discount hunters looks set to grow even further and coupled with the economic downturn could well see more brands take the lead from Dell in their social media marketing efforts.

Dell now have over 80 country specific Outlet-focused Twitter properties including one for the UK .