Google Tests Adding Analytics Data To AdWords

You’ve long been able to see AdWords account data in Google Analytics, but many marketers have longed for GA data in their AdWords account, as well. Google is currently testing such a feature in a limited number of accounts, as first noted by Periscopix.

Google isn’t saying much about it but a spokesperson sent me a statement saying, “We are currently conducting a small beta test to provide advertisers with more insight into campaign effectiveness.”

Though I’m not seeing this in my AdWords account, Periscopix says the metrics now appear in the Campaigns tab under Columns, where you can customize what columns appear on the page. In addition to the regular metrics — click-through rate, cost-per-click, etc. — the folks included in this experiment now see things like “Bounce Rate,” “Pages Per Visit” and “Average Visit Duration.”

The numbers would seem to be most useful to online publishers, who live and die by the pageview, but online retailers would also likely benefit from having this information close at hand. The data would allow marketers to more easily see, and optimize upon, these metrics that go beyond the first click to more in-depth interaction on the site.

Related Topics: Google: AdWords | Google: Analytics

New Alerts For Crawl Errors Via Google Webmaster Tools

Google announced they are now sending out Google Webmaster Tools alerts for crawl errors.

Google grouped the errors in two buckets.

(1) Site Error alerts for major site-wide problems

(2) URL Error anomaly alerts for potentially less critical issues

The Site-Wide Problems Alerts Can Include:

Your DNS server is down or misconfigured.Your web server itself is firewalled off.Your web server is refusing connections from Googlebot.Your web server is overloaded, or down.Your site’s robots.txt is inaccessible.

The URL Error Anomaly Alerts Can Include:

Server errorSoft 404Access deniedNot foundNot followed

Google said:

Since Googlebot regularly visits your site, we know when your site exhibits connectivity issues or suddenly spikes in pages returning HTTP error response codes (e.g. 404 File Not Found, 403 Forbidden, 503 Service Unavailable, etc). If your site is timing out or is exhibiting systemic errors when accessed by Googlebot, other visitors to your site might be having the same problem!

This is just one more reason to sign up with Google Webmaster Tools and enable email forwarding within alerts.

Related Topics: Google: Webmaster Central

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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Google SEO Services Sacramento

Google Stops WiFi Collecting Street View Cars After Privacy Concerns

The Google Blog admitted that they made a significant privacy mistake with some of their Street View cars. The wifi data collecting versions of the Google Street View cars were not just collecting publicly broadcast SSID information and MAC addresses but they were also collecting “samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks,” said Google. Google said they did not knowingly collect payload data and when they found out, they immediately “grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on the network.”

Google added that, Google has made a decision to completely stop using the WiFi data collection technology with Street View cars in the future. Those wifi collecting cars will be taken out of the rotation and not be used due to the privacy concerns expressed globally. In addition to these steps, Google promised to ask a third party to audit the software at issue and conduct internal reviewing procedures to ensure that the controls are in place to prevent these issues in the future.

For more information about this, please see the Google Blog.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: I spoke with a reporter today to explain what happened more, and I thought the metaphor might be useful to share.

Imagine that the transmissions you make on a wifi network to the sites you visit are like having a real-life conversation with someone on the porch of your house or the front yard.

As Google’s StreetView cars were like someone driving slowly down the street, recording all the front yard conversations that they could hear, as they went past.

Because the car is constantly moving, only a tiny bit of each conversation was being recorded. That’s the first thing that should be reassuring in all this — it’s not as if Google heard minutes or hours worth of what you were “saying” on the web.

Second, Google couldn’t understand all the conversations it was hearing. That’s because while the data was going out on an open wireless network, the conversation itself was encrypted. This is typically what happens if you go to a bank web site — a secure connection is established. It’s also what happens if you go to Google itself to read Gmail or use some other services.

In the metaphor, it’s as if some people were talking on the street were having a conversation in a language that only they and the other person could understand.

Third, there were some conversations that Google couldn’t understand at all, on wifi networks that had security running. In these cases, it’s as if Google could see that people were talking on their front lawn, but all they could hear was a mumble, nothing intelligible.

There’s no doubt Google has harvested a huge amount of data. Wifi “conversations” have been recorded since 2007, according to today’s blog post. But only snippets of those conversations have been stored, making the information fairly useless if it were to be mined — something Google doesn’t appear to have ever done nor plans to do, as it seeks to destroy the data.

As a PR issue, it’s a nightmare. Google just came under fire from privacy officials in 10 countries concerned about StreetView cars collecting photos plus about issues with the Google Buzz rollout earlier this year. The officials seized on two issues to claim that Google’s privacy mistakes were not “isolated” cases. Now Google’s got a serious third strike against it.

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Google Maps Sacramento

Google Looks To Improve Maps With 300 New Staffers

Problems in Google Maps are well known by now. From spam to bugs to its lack of support for local businesses, we’ve chronicled (as have others) the bumpy road for the number one maps site on the web.

Today, TechFlash is reporting that help may be on the way. Google is using staffing agencies to hire as many as 300 temporary staffers to improve Google Maps. The job descriptions come with titles like “Visual Data Specialist” and seem heavily focused on improving Google’s map data. Here’s one of the job postings:

Job Summary: Visual Data Specialist

Specialist will visually review images and complete specific feature tasks using internally developed computer applications. Role may include hands-on QC, training development and knowledge transfer.

Responsibilities may include any or all of the following: Quality Control all stages within the tool up to 100% of job:

* Launch computer tools and capture data with exceptional quality and accuracy.
* Ability to work on a computer for extended amount of time and stay focused on repetitive tasks.
* Run QA tools and answer key quality questions about images
* Data enter key metadata and other information as requested with high accuracy
* Identify critical problems with images
* Provide feedback and suggestions for improving application tools
* Validate content for accuracy
* Make outbound calls to verify data

Additional Requirements include:
Attention to detail and accuracy in data entry
Familiarity with computer programs, including browsers and other common online tools
Strong work ethic and ability to work with minimal supervision
Team player with exceptional interpersonal and solution-oriented attitude
Creative problem-solving and analysis skills

Qualifications:
High School Graduate, some college preferred
Strong English skills; ability to read and write fluently
Previous experience with computer or data entry and processing
Ability to stay focused on repetitive tasks
Ability to communicate clearly, verbally and in writing

But this appears to mostly be an extension of Google’s recent decision to ditch TeleAtlas and go it alone for Map data, both in the U.S. and in Canada, rather than an attempt to fight spam or improve service for local business owners.

TechFlash spoke with Google PR person Jordan Newman, who apparently mentioned that business listings will be at least part of their work:

Much of the Google Maps work will be focused on data management, said Newman. That includes keeping current on new business listings and the latest information on things like bike trails.

How much of the job will be focused on data versus business issues remains to be seen.

The temporary positions are full-time, pay $14.25 per hour, and may last for up to a year.

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Search Engine Optimization SEO Sacramento

SEO Is Not Free Traffic

100% Organic - A Column From Search Engine Land

One of the first jobs I have to do as a consultant going into an SEO engagement is to debunk the myth that SEO is “free.” SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. You need to hire staff or allocate internal resources to manage your SEO efforts. You need to enlist an SEO firm or consultant to help identify the opportunities and prioritize them, navigate the minefields, and up-skill your internal team. You need to outfit your in-house team with on the tools of the trade (SEOmoz Pro, Internet Marketing Ninjas, etc.), send them to the conferences (all the SMX conferences, of course!), provide them with training intensives (e.g., SEOClass, SEOTraining), and various other professional development and networking opportunities.

If you are paying an SEO firm or contractor, the cost is obvious. But the time you allocate your internal folks to SEO — and this includes the IT team, web designers, copywriters, project managers, as well as in-house SEO specialists — must be quantified and factored in, too. Then there are the “soft” costs that are harder to measure, including:

* The missed opportunity cost — Failing to optimize everything leads to lost sales. It’s hard to know how much, and which things accounted for what. John Wanamaker famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half!”. According to an iProspect study, over 66 percent of SEO recommendations go unimplemented a year later. What if that 66 percent represented the good half that John Wanamaker alluded to!
* The time-to-market cost — They say all good things take time, but the inordinate amount of time it takes for large companies to implement SEO initiatives equates to a serious amount of lost traffic. A major online retailer of outdoor gear spent over 1000 hours of IT time implementing URL rewrites and they couldn’t even finish implementing them all! How would you know this in advance? It’s really tough. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could flip a switch and be optimized?
* The cost of competing priorities — By asking your IT team to dedicate time to extensive SEO initiatives, you change their focus. What if one of their other — now displaced — priorities was more mission critical to the business than you or they realized? Having them take their eye off the ball could lead to disastrous consequences.

This all sounds very fuzzy, doesn’t it? Hard to quantify, hard to prove in advance. This is SEO’s “Achilles heel,” and why paid search usually wins over natural search in the budget battles, receiving the lion’s share of the search marketing budget. This is a travesty, considering the searcher’s primary focus on the natural results and the fact that a searcher interprets a natural listing as an implied endorsement by the search engine.

The allure of paid search is strong in part because of its predictability, but I’m convinced that natural search trumps paid search in overall opportunity. And besides, with paid search, the moment you stop paying is the moment you stop receiving the traffic. Stop investing in SEO and the traffic drop-off will come too, but it won’t be as dramatic and sudden as for paid search.

With uncertainty comes risk, and your natural rankings are full of uncertainty, and therefore risk. There’s no guarantee that a dollar invested into SEO will net 10 or 20 dollars in return. So take heed, SEO firms: de-risk your SEO offering and you will have the secret to success. Granted, you can’t control the engines’ natural ranking algorithms; however, you can introduce more predictability and accountability into your SEO. But it’s going to cost you. And it may require a paradigm shift, to a pay-for-performance pricing model for SEO services. SEO firms are starting to embrace alternative payment models, as evidenced by the session on this topic coming to SMX Advanced in June. Indeed, we at Netconcepts have performance-based pricing for our GravityStream technology platform — natural search traffic on a cost-per-click basis.

After expending some serious effort and cash too, you may finally find yourself ranking for some highly competitive terms, receiving traffic that you aren’t “paying for” like you would be for paid search. However, getting there was not free, and guess what? — neither is staying there. Now that you have that top spot, you have to keep it — against others who are forever trying to outrank you. This is especially true if the words you are ranking for are competitive. You are still going to need someone to build links for you and keep up with the changing SEO landscape and search engine algorithm updates.

Wouldn’t it be great if natural search traffic were free and never ending? Like manna from Heaven… Yet, SEO requires continuing investment. Invest in SEO as an ongoing marketing channel and your natural rankings will surely rise over time. Treat SEO as a one-time project, or dedicate insufficient resources, and you court obsolescence.

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