We knew the day would finally come and today it has. Google Analytics is now letting users opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics. It also works in all major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. The beta version of the opt-out app can be downloaded here. This is a double whammy when you consider Google has also just released SSL search which is the start of worrisome trend for the analytics professional and webmaster: The death of the referrer. Danny at SearchEngineland has a good take on it and its hard to see where this will end. What if analytics as we know it go back 15 years to just hits.

I can’t blame people for wanting privacy. Besides if you’re tech savy, you can block any web analytics easily. Heck, you don’t even need to be that technically inclined. There are dozens of plugins to make this happen. The concern I have is this: Google with their impressive trustworthy brand has just lowered the barriers for people who wouldn’t normally bother. They will get the kind of press and coverage any plugin developer would dream of. The result of which could be a mass of users who might not understand why or what they are blocking. They won’t even consider the consequences of blocking Google Analytics will have on their favorite websites. In case you aren’t aware, analytics are gold to webmasters. It is an essential tool to ensure the content created is popular to their audience. Analytics are used to sell ad space to potential advertisers and to set rates. Most importantly, analytics are used to make sure users have the best experience possible on their site. Now this can all come into jeopardy.

So what can you do? There are a couple of options. One is to pray that this announcement goes the way of Google’s other privacy tools, hidden in the Google Dashboard and hardly anyone notices or uses it. The second is to deploy another analytics program, such as Piwik or these alternatives . The last option is to consider the BETA solution called YMMV Real Websats to keep an eye on your Google Analytics Accuracy.

In the end, there is no need for panic. We have to remember that for us, these types of issues seem larger then they really are to the public at large. This does not mean we can ignore them. We just need to keep it in the back of our head: Google Analytics opt out is another variable to consider when you analyze your analytics.

Google Analytics Opt-Out Plugin and Analytics Accuracy is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

A couple of weeks we asked the question about Google Analytics: Is The Party Over When Everyone Opts-Out? Google announced the ability coming for users to “block” Google Analytics. Those using Google Analytics already have plenty to be concerned about. As Mozilla Firefox takes more share from Internet Explorer and more users install Adblock, No Script and other plugins, the quality of web stats has declined. You can deny it all you want but as more users choose to remain invisible, your Analytics numbers will become less accurate.

Its not hard to understand in a time where privacy is a great commodity, why people are choosing to hide themselves. At the same time, though, Analytics are essential to any serious webmaster who wants to cater to their audience. For those that don’t know, Analytics is more then hits. Analytics tell a story. They can play a big part in how a website operates. The information lets a webmaster know what topics/products are popular. It lets a webmaster know which pages work and which ones fail. And in some cases the ad rates a website can command is dependent on the amount of traffic it receives. So where does this leave the webmaster facing an accuracy issue?

There is a new tool that answers the challenge which we recently discovered called YMMV Real Web Stats created by Adrian Speyer. Its an open source PHP script using flatfiles, that gives you a new insight into your Google Analytics. Below is an image from a small test we ran (click for larger image):

In the example run on a sample page for during the week, we got 71 pageviews according to Google Analytics. According to YMMV Real Webstats, we really got 77 pageviews, with 6 pageviews blocked by Google Analytics. Also we learn 9 users blocked ads, and 4 had No Script. According to the tool, our Google Analytics is 91.31% accurate. While this tool is not super detailed it gives you some interesting information nonetheless. What I liked about it is it quickly gives you an idea of what plugins are used by your visitors and potentially how much info your webstats could be missing. What will be interesting to see is if they can develop the tool to take account of unique visitors, rather then page views and include an easier way to drill down to the page level. In the meantime, YMMV does give you access to the raw data (they need to work on this a bit more) so should you can use the data to make some deeper assumptions on your own.  We hope to see its development continue and look forward to seeing what the future has in store especially as Google Analytics accuracy continues to be threatened.

Now for an experiment of interest:  We’d love to see some other people download YMMV Real Webstats and share their data. Once you have a chance to deploy it, come back and post your stats, your url and the audience you’re after. It will be interesting to know how accurate everyone’s Google Analytics actually is and if certain verticals have a major Analytics crisis.

How Accurate Are Your Google Analytics? is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

As you know we are great fans of Google Analytics, naming it the best free analytics package in our test of free analytics vendors. Now comes the word that the party may be over. On March 18th, the Google Analytics team made the following announcement on their blog (our emphasis in bold):

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Obviously it is hard to comment without more details, but this is another example where using third party software can leave you out in the cold when they decide to change the rules. We know users have for years used no-script and Adblock to block analytics packages, but a browser plugin could spread this to more non-technical users. Time will tell what happens, but we feel your web analytics are too valuable to wait. You need to evaluate your options.

Thankfully there are many options to choose from. To help here are our choices. It is not an exhaustive list, but it might help you start your search:

Best Free Alternative to Google Analytics: Self-Hosted
There are many good free webstat tools, like Statcounter, what we are looking at are Analytics tools, which provide a bit more info such as goal and campaign tracking.We are also not looking at free hosted solutions because those can disappear over-night. Our vote goes to Piwik.org which we profiled at version 0.2.3.4 and have seen lots of great improvements since. To us it’s the most like Google Analytics, so the transition will be easy. They also get extra points for the fact they are self-hosted. The other free alternative we suggest you consider is Advanced Web Stats. Both options require self hosting.

Best Value for Money Alternative to Google Analytics: Hosted
To us, the best value for the money alternative to Google Analytics is GetClicky. A quick look a the comparison chart shows why we choose getclicky.com is a great alternative. The best part is the fact, they are one of the few services that supports Google Analytics campaign tags. That means if you have historical campaigns set up with Google Analytics, you can still capture the info with GetClicky. Its also a great way to check your “Google” numbers. Their price is under $120 for the superpro package.

Best Enterprise Alternative to Google Analytics:
This is a hard one, there is a lot of competition in this sphere, but if you have a site with a million pages a month, there are not many services that can handle you. Furthermore, the reality is at this level if your analytics are business critical, you really shouldn’t be using a free solution. It really gets down to what you need and what you are comfortable with. In our view Yahoo! Web Analytics is a great choice (see a good comparison here to Google. Keep in mind Yahoo! is has recently released a new version which added even more features. If you or your company decides to really spend some big bucks, you can also check outWebTrends as a robust Enterprise solution.

In conclusion, some have noted the opt-out will not have an impact. Personally, I am not sure — it depends on the simplicity of the opt-out and how much press it gets. If opting out of Google Analytics is really simple, adoption rates could be high. I also think it makes sense to start considering alternative analytic packages you can facilitate a smooth transition should you need to make it. It never hurts to have a “back-up” plan. Most importantly, you need a benchmark to watch your site to see if a significant delta arises in your Google Analytics and the secondary vendor you choose. To stay updated on the latest Google Analytics opt-out developments we welcome you to subscribe to our blog via email.

Google Analytics: Is The Party Over When Everyone Opts-Out? is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Recently we were working on a project where we needed an email marketing software. The goal was for something we could totally configure and customize, and not incur extra costs for a license or hosting. In our research, we came across PoMMo (also known as the post modern Mass Mailer), which in our view, one of the most underrated and missed gems of the open-source movement. We do add the caveat, that work by the principal developer Brice Burgess has seemed to have stopped (no release of new version since late 2008) so you’re basically on your own. Nevertheless, the bulk of work Brice and team has left behind, can get you started to having a great email marketing software of your own. This is not a project for the faint of heart, but with some time to tweak the code, you will have a very robust system.

One freebie from us, is when you start, explore themes/shared/css/default.admin.css. Some changes need to be made. Mostly for ease of use. Trust us, when we tell you, change line 24 to the following:

#content {
    /* display: inline-block; */
    margin-left: 200px;
    padding: 5px 15px;
    background: #FFF;
}

You’ll also want to play around in themes folder in general to make it more your style. Its really not hard though, as PoMMo uses SMARTY templates, so changes can be made quickly.

The main reason we are high on PoMMo are the features already present in the software. You can read the full feature list here, but these are the highlights:

As you can see PoMMo is a very powerful software. We were able to get ours up and running to satisfaction within a week. If you have basic PHP/MYSQL knowledge and Dreamweaver, you should be able to do it yourself as well. Its too bad development has been stopped on this software, but in all honesty, what has been left behind really does a superb job. As well, thankfully, there is active forum, with users contributing tips and workarounds. There is a working demo here, so you can check it out for yourself.

PoMMo: Best Open Source E-Mail Marketing Software is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

We wanted to wait a bit before we commented on Google’s newest release: Google Buzz. While it’s interesting as a concept for keeping in touch with family and friends, from a marketing perspective we think its something to pass on. By integrating it so closely with one’s email,  people are more skeptical to follow those they don’t know. Its also not uncommon for many users to have their social network segmented into different compartments online, and Google Buzz seems to take this away. And while Google did get 150 Million users by making Google Buzz opt-in, most of the adopters of this type of technology are already into Twitter, and have  no interest in a second account, that (for now) they need to update separately.

Then there is the whole privacy fiasco faced by Google Buzz. It has turned off many users who have opted-out and will likely never opt back in.  And as the bad press continues it does not help their case in getting users to to adopt this new tool. Google themselves took the feedback, and  made several changes. Nevertheless, some of the changes are draconian, like you can opt out of Buzz, but then your whole Google Profile is deleted.  Personally, I think Google should examine a separate domain for Google Buzz like Twitter, and make it optional for your “buzzes” to be made available in Gmail.

Nevertheless, one area of Google Buzz is making some headway. Many sites are now adding a Google Buzz button next to their Tweetmeme integration. You can see it in action at Mashable for example.  Mashable is a blog focused on social media and has over 2.3 Million followers. Actually Mashable is the perfect lab to follow the integration of Google Buzz. Below is an example of their share area for an article:

As you can see, (and all over their site), Google Buzz trails Twitter and Facebook. It might change in the future, but for now Google Buzz has not got the same penetration. We still suggest you have your brand name as a Google Account, but beyond this, Google Buzz is not something essential for your marketing plan.

Google Buzz for Marketing: Pass for Now is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

A while ago we spoke about the importance of having a website, but we should have added an important rule: Cheap website design can cheat you out of more business than having no website at all. Sure it’s important to get a website up for your company, but if you are serious about your business, you need to take your website design serious too. Using cardboard templates, wizards or testing your limited HTML skills is not the place for a professional website. At the same time, you are not required to pay a small fortune to get up and running.

I know I know, the question you now have becomes: “What is a fair price for a website?” But is that a question that makes sense? It’s all relative to how complex your website is, what features you want and how quick you need it. A good website designer will ask you these questions. You also need to ensure you have a plan for updating your content in the future. Nevertheless as a guideline, it is fair to be charged roughly $25-50/hour or about $250-500 for a basic site. We must caution you once again, this is price varies widely on what you need and the level of expertise of the designer.

Before you go to hire website design help, we suggest first you think about the elements you wish to have. The next step is to treat the process as anything else you would. Ask to see past work or see if you can talk to current/past clients. Don’t be afraid to shop around. Remember that building a website is not usually a set and forget job. Make sure you have someone you can call on for tweaks or a way to make changes yourself. We also recommend you select a company or person who will be around in a year or two. Most of all, make sure you are comfortable with who you select. They will be interpreting you and your company to all your internet visitors. You need to make sure you trust the person who will translate your vision.

Oh, and as bonus tip. If you don’t have a domain name, and the designer gets one for you, make sure the ownership is in your name and with your email address. If ever you decide to move to another host or web designer, you want to be able to do so without having to track them down or to negotiate to get what is rightly yours.

If you decide not to pay for website designer, we highly recommend you avoid the templates from hosts and ISP’s, and seriously think you should consider using WordPress as your website platform. Sure it will take a bit to learn how to do what you need, but the output will be 100 times more professional and unique then most of the templates out there. Remember, your website is a reflection of you and your business. If you want to be successful, look like you already are. If you put out a sloppy unprofessional website, people will have trouble taking you seriously. Unfortunately, this is the new norm. So don’t be quick and cheap. Put some thought (and money) into your website plans. Good luck!

If you have a tip to share, or have a question, leave it in the comments below…

Cheap Website Design Can Cheat You Out of Business is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

A great tool in your arsenal to keep track of you competition is Google Reader. If you are not aware, Google Reader is an RSS reader that allows you to read RSS feeds. An RSS feed (also known as Really Simple Syndication) is an xml file format used by web publishers to advise their audience where frequently updated works are involved—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio or video. We even use it on our website. See our RSS feed here. You can easily subscribe to an RSS Feed at most major sites by looking for RSS feed Icon ( ) and clicking on it. But what are you to do if there is no RSS feed on the site you want to track changes on? Unfortunately, the only solution is the time consuming  practice of  checking a site every time you wanted to see if something changed.

Now Google has unveiled a game changer that makes Google Reader a lot more powerful. This new feature gives anyone the ability to monitor changes to Web sites that lack RSS feeds. What does this mean? In markets where RSS feeds are not standard for websites,  for example in the B2B market, you can put any competitor Web site into Google Reader and updates will appear anytime a change or addition is made to a particular web page.

Google will create a custom snippets showing page changes (like below-click image to enlarge) that will allow you to quickly decide if the information is of interest.

As you can see, this is a powerful tool for keeping tabs on your competition when they do not offer an RSS feed. However, because this tool is so powerful, Google has offered a way for web publishers to opt-out of tracking. Nevertheless if some of your competitors opt-out Google Reader is still a quick, easy way to stay on top of your industry and trends. And of course, we also hope you will add us to your list by subscribing to our feed found here.

Tracking Your Competition With Google Reader is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Its not a secret that Facebook and Twitter are great avenues for promotion of your website. Almost every major  search engine marketing expert can offer details on how to optimize  your Facebook fan page or use a Twitter coupon campaign. We however, have a different take after several discussion with clients. Take a deep breath before you buy into the hype. Not every business should be in the business of producing social media content. For example if your company blocks Facebook and Twitter, does it make sense? First of all your own employees will have no idea of your promotions online, and when faced with questions from customers, they will not be able to see them. You also have to look at the industry. If your company blocks Social Media, isn’t there a good chance your target audience will be in the same boat. In a surveys done last year there are estimates that as low as 54% to as high of 76% of users are blocked from Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter at work.

So what is the next step? The most important thing to do is establish in your mind the target  audience. This will allow you to decide how to move forward with your campaign or even if there should be one. Remember, though, Facebook and Twitter have now permeated fully onto a new range of smartphones,  you can still get to your audience even if they are blocked at work. The real questions then becomes will your audience care to find you outside of work time  or follow/interact with you outside the normal channels if you are not providing value. What do we mean by this? For example if you have a retail business, social media can be used for coupons or to alert people to specials or new products- like 10% off Nike Sneakers for Twitter users who buy online in the next 24 hours. If you are selling B2B (business to business) services or products, the application of social media might be a bit more difficult.

There is no shame in not having a Facebook or Twitter page. You might really not need one no matter how tempting it seems.  Nevertheless,  creating content and owning the page are two different things.  Our advice regardless if you decide to get involved in social media n or not is at the bare minimum to grab the Twitter and Facebook name for your company. You want to make sure it is not abused or used by your competitors.  Create a Facebook Business Page, but keep it simple and include information which will redirect people back to your main corporate site. Grab you twitter profile, and make sure you tell people in the summary this is the official Twitter profile (maybe consider getting it verified) and tell them to visit your website. The beauty of this strategy is it locks up your name and allows you the luxury to decide later if it is worth developing further. Nothing would be worse, then realizing later you need a Twitter account and someone already has the name taken.  What do you think? Are you on Twitter or Facebook for your company account? How do you use it to attract customers?

Using Facebook and Twitter for Business Promotion is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

If you have a site which allows for user comments, you should be aware that being lackadaisical on “monitoring” comments can have an SEO impact ( as recently revealed by Google). So why it’s important to have open discussion and feedback, there is a rogue element who feels it appropriate to add comments with useless links and unrelated topics. Simply put, being constructive is not their goal.  So what should you do if your site is full of spam and you want to avoid issues with your rank within Google’s search engine? Start a clean up as soon as possible by deleting spam comments and ban the spammers from your site. The next solution is to adopt security measures to stop any new spam activity. Here are just some ideas according to Google:

• Disallow anonymous posting.
• Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming. (We recommend ReCAPTCHA)
• Turn on comment moderation.
• Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.
• Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
• Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.

If you are using WordPress we highly recommend using Askimet and Bad Behaviour. Both of these plug-ins will reduce your spam. It also helps if you modify your discussions settings in the “Before a comment appears” section. We recommend checking both ” An administrator must always approve the comment” and “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”. Experiment what works for you, but we know default settings will not work.

If you are looking for more info, Google has recently written on comment spam and what to do when your meta tags are hijacked by spam.

Why SPAM in your comments cannot be ignored is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

A couple of weeks ago Google announced some additions/changes to Google Analytics. If heard about it, or were unsure what it all meant, we hope to add some clarity.

More Goals, More Defined: Before you were only able to track four goals, and only by URL destination. now you can track up to twenty and they added the ability to  set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit. What does this mean? If you have an e-commerce site you normally would track new registrations, subscriptions, add to cart, and purchases. All four goals would be used.  Now with twenty you could track more  pages (maybe promotions of the day, that then lead to buying). As well, you now could keep track of how many customers spend time searching on your site, reading content, etc. In short, you can easily measure site engagement. Need motre? Google has a good video on Goal Setting.

How Many Mobile Visitors?: It’s easy to forget that there are other mobile devices beyond the iPhone, but there are. Most of them do not run JavaScript when visiting your pages, which mean you could have hundreds of visitors coming from mobile devices you were never accounting for. This is made possible by adding a server side code snippet to your mobile website  (download snippet instructions). Site built in PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX will be supported. A quick note, this is to replace current JavaScript code on your mobile site. You cannot run the old code and the new one.

Advanced Table Filtering: We have yet to see this in out Analytics account, but it is sure to show up soon enough (we hope). Basically, it allows you to filter results based on conditions without exporting the data.  Until it comes to our account (and yours) you can see it in action here.

Sharing is fun!: You might now be able to modify their dashboards, but if you have a Custom Report you created, you can share by simply sending a URL link to it. A pre-formatted template will automatically be imported to their account. You can also now select which profiles you want to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports with if you have multiple users to the same data.

And finally the most exciting: Intelligence and Custom Alerts!: This new change will provide automatic alerts to you via email when any significant change occurs that you define. So for example if your site normally gets 1000 visitors a day, and then you have a new campaign released and suddenly you have 10000 visitors in a day, you get an email the next day, focused solely on his new info, as you have defined. Avinash, has a must read post on the topic.

Google’s Analytics blog will be going into detail on each of these in next couple of weeks. We highly recommend that you add this blog to your reading list. We also suggest you read Avinash’s blog as well. It can provide you wonderful insights into understanding the importance of analytics and looking beyond page views.

Google Analytics Annouces Improvements is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More