Archive for the ‘Google info’ Category

Having used this tool now for a few weeks, I am overall very impressed with it. It certainly offers some fantastic features to the user. A paid tool would be shamed at the depth of this system.

I particularly like the timeline comparrison which is so easy to set up and manipulate. It can show in an instant how the sites have been fairing, improvements are then easily highlighted for customer reports. The option I like is the calendar for the dates but then I use the timeline tab to slide the date block backwards to a different time period. Very easy and very effective for customers.

They have moved the settings around and when I first started to use the tool it looked like it was a much reduced version that had been boosted by graphics. what they have done is made it more iterative. So when you start looking at the stats, the questions asked and the info found can be followed along by adjusting the drop down sections in the centre of the screen. This is as opposed to having to drill down by using the right menu in the first place from a selection of many and then clicking into things that were not obvious ‘clickable’ options.

The useability is a massive improvement on the previous version. The way you can export to pdf then print is very quick and easy.

Anyone looking to ‘buy’ a new analytics package should take a look at this first. If you are looking to use a tool to help with your ‘search engine rankings‘ then this can provide the golden nuggets for you to work on. Getting the right phrases with this tool is easy.

Well done Google Analytics team.

Google have now amended their dashboard on the analytics. This is a totally new structure giving an easy on the eye approach. So far it looks good, but how good is it? Time will tell.

Google are continuing their work with Adwords. There is a new section which allows you to test out varies page settings and different layout options. You will a little bit of coding knowledge and naturally the access to the site to be able to get this to work. For people who just look after adwords accounts through a client centre this will not work as you have to be logged into the account for the url directly.

The feature will allow you to set tags up in the source code of your pages and these are place holders for the adwords system to place various defined tags and images. You may have an image of a person as opposed to the actual product you are selling and you can monitor your experiment through the adwords.

I have not gone into much depth here as it is fully covered in the Google adwords setup.

This is a great addition to the adwords world but you will need knowledge and the access to the account other than through the client centre.

The webmaster tools on Google have been undergoing some heavy development, the latest addition being the back links counter. This section of Google has had some great little features added to it and should be used regularly for monitoring the progress of your site.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Search engines are always striving for better quality results. This is to try and give the user what they want, the better the quality of results, the more likely the user is to keep using the chosen search engine. There is much talk of google being secretive and the SEO guys guessing what Google are up to. Lots of so called ‘SEO experts’ are working on much out dated information and especially when it comes to linking campaigns. Linking does play an important part for sure but the rules and weighting for links are changing as Google refines its search algorithms. All search engines work in a similar manner whereby they are trying to improve and also changing their algorithms. Your chosen search engine consultants should be up with the latest updates and be able to provide you with good advice. Bombarding your site with irrelevant links should not be part of that plan.

Google’s Sandbox Effect – Newly launched websites (especially those with highly competitive or popular terms) could face the sandbox issue. When a new site is launched, it may not be included in the ranking index, or despite its popularity, face very lows SERP rankings for some months, particularly if a new site becomes an immediate success. A relatively new site receiving a huge number of hits so quickly after launch catches Google’s attention immediately and can raise suspicions of manipulations of the page ranking. Sites with less competitive terms are still practically exempt from the ‘penalty’ while many new sites on more competitive terms are forced to endure months of dismal SERP rankings. This continues to be an issue recently.

Canonical Issues at Google – This issue is an indexing problem and involves Google’s indexing capability which still hasn’t been resolved. Recently, Google has begun to treat simple URL variations as different sites altogether – http://www.google.com/, google.com, and google.com/index.html are all treated as completely different web pages. This can cause various problems, the most pressing of which is the fact that your site could then be penalized for having identical content as what are apparently totally different websites, but are in fact just your own.  This problem can be addressed
The Supplement Index Problem – The supplement page problem issue continues to be an issue to some extent. While Google has addressed this issue fairly well, there are still issues with websites which are using RSS or newsfeeds to allow people to read stories found elsewhere. These sites are also being penalized for duplicate content, and finding themselves placed in the supplemental index.