Antezeta Web Marketing

Web Analytics and the Missing Right Clicks Conundrum

sean — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:05:00 +0000

A web marketing professional naturally thinks a lot about the incredible diversity of a site’s visitor demographics. Old and young, male and female, well educated and not, affluent and not… but how much thought has been given to the right-clickers? No, not the right-handed, the...

[...]

Comparison of Google Analytics / Urchin Tracking Scripts

sean — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:04:40 +0000

With the advent of Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code, many sites need to review the automatic tagging code they’re using to track items such as downloaded files and outgoing link clicks. Unfortunately Google doesn’t offer an official library for this purpose; each Google...

[...]

Google Trends for Websites, now with less data

sean — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:14:57 +0000

So who isn’t in love with Google’s competitive data tools for web marketing? Of all the sources of public web analytics, Google is potentially the most accurate. Why? No one else has the breadth of web data that Google has. Not comScore nor Nielsen. Not Hitwise. Not quantcast, compete...

[...]

Say It Isn’t So: Marketing Resource Site Marketing Profs Seems To Be Cloaking Search Engines – Inadvertantly?

sean — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:50:16 +0000

Years ago savvy webmasters realized they could achieve better search engine visibility by creating two copies of a web page. One, text rich and graphics poor, would be seen by search engine robots, such as Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp and Microsoft Bing’s msnbot/bingbot. Everyday web users, surfing...

[...]

Google removes Suggest result counts – even behind the scenes

sean — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:41:16 +0000

Figure 1: Once upon a time: Google Suggest with results counts Google Suggest is one of those wonderful features that makes Google irresistible. Ever noticed that as you start to type a query, Google provides the top queries which start with what you’ve typed? Initially introduced as a Google...

[...]

Move over Basic Search Results, Google Rich Snippets are here

sean — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:53:25 +0000

For years search engine search results were limited to 3 basic pieces of information: a title, a summary and a URL. Attentive observers of Google search engine results may have noticed the appearance of additional information, what Google calls rich snippets, in certain results over the past few...

[...]

Yahoo Directories in Europe RIP. Did anybody notice?

sean — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:55:56 +0000

Yahoo! has closed some of their European directories sometime this year – their Italian and German directory URLs, e.g. http://it.dir.yahoo.com/, are now redirecting to their search page. Others may be impacted but I haven’t checked. At least the Italian directory is still in Google and...

[...]

Search engine Teoma is back. But will anybody notice, much less care?

sean — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:52:25 +0000

If you’ve been using the web for years, you may remember glorious search engines of the past like DEC’s AltaVista. Eclipsed by Google, AltaVista lives on today as a test bed for Yahoo! technology, although that may no longer be the case once the Bing-Yahoo! agreement is fully...

[...]

Twitter statistics slides presented by Biz Stone at Chirp developer’s conference

sean — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:03:56 +0000

Hard data on twitter usage has been mostly limited to rough estimates provided by third parties. At twitter’s first developer’s conference, chirp, we got some data straight from the source. The first piece of data is that 75% percent of twitter’s traffic is coming from the third...

[...]

Yahoo Search Marketing Tools: What’s at Risk & How to Avoid Surprises

sean — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:59:11 +0000

When Yahoo and Microsoft announced their Search Alliance in July 2009, only the high level agreement details were available: Microsoft will provide the development and management of search engine results technology (bing) Microsoft will provide the search and content network ad platform (adCenter)...

[...]

Domain & URL Strategies for Multilingual & Multinational Sites

sean — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:53:39 +0000

One problem search engines face when indexing and ranking a website’s content is to identify the target geographic and linguistic market a particular website page is trying to reach. The world wide web is indeed that, and the issue is particularly complicated for websites in languages which...

[...]

And then there were two: Microsoft – Yahoo! Search Deal at SMX West 2010

sean — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:46:37 +0000

With the approval of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal by EU regulators, search engine marketers will soon be working in a new landscape. In western Europe where Google dominates with about 90% of the market, it’s tempting to react to the deal with a big yawn. Yet Yahoo! often has a bigger...

[...]

Google giving up on China (for now). Bing, what say thou?

sean — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:16:40 +0000

Google’s very undiplomatic announcement that it is going to stop censoring its search results in China doesn’t leave much face-saving wiggle room for the Chinese government – a big no-no in Asian culture. Significant blocking of Google in China seems imminent – you...

[...]

Yahoo Web Analytics (ex IndexTools) soon in no man’s land?

sean — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:52:52 +0000

When Yahoo announced their effective exit from the search engine business last July, the main points seemed clear: Microsoft will provide the development and management of search engine results technology Microsoft will provide the search and content network ad platform Microsoft will manage the...

[...]

Der Berliner Mauer, 1961 – 1989. Good riddance.

sean — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:11:32 +0000

As the western world looks at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I though I’d make my own modest contribution. I had the fortune to study in East Berlin in 1987-88, just before the wall fell. Sure there were tensions (communist darling Rosa Luxemburg’s Freiheit ist...

[...]

The real news behind the Google and Bing Twitter deals

sean — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:50:11 +0000

Yesterday we saw a lot of press and blogosphere attention devoted to deals being made between the two leading search engines, Google and Bing, and leading social media services Twitter and Facebook. Twitter search deals, while interesting, doesn’t yet merit much beyond a big yawn –...

[...]

Italian press to Google: you’re unfair (and we’re confused)

sean — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:51:21 +0000

This past week the Italian antitrust authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) conducted a search of Google’s Italian office and announced it was beginning an investigation into Google’s possible abuse of its dominant position in the Italian search engine market....

[...]

10 shadows hanging over Google: does Google have a dark side?

sean — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:35:41 +0000

In a recent article on Microsoft’s bing, I felt it necessary to temper my enthusiasm for Microsoft’s commitment to web search by noting Microsoft’s decidedly checkered record as a good net citizen. What about Google? It is almost too easy to write a glowing review of whatever new...

[...]

Bing – features and SEO recommendations, one month on

sean — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:14:22 +0000

At the end of May Microsoft announced its new search engine, Bing. Microsoft justified many of Bing’s new features by noting that 50% of search queries are either abandoned or refined – users aren’t getting the right answer on the first try, citing studies by Jakob Nielsen,...

[...]

Eying Search Engine Market Share in the era of Bing

sean — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:48:39 +0000

At the end of May Microsoft announced its new search engine, Bing. As data from Bing’s first full month becomes available, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at the current market share enjoyed by the major search engines in the US and a “typical” European...

[...]

Google Squared – expanded search engine results in a table

sean — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:06:41 +0000

One of the more exciting recent search engine advances I’ve seen in a while is Google Squared. Search for something which has multiple attributes and Google will try to build a structured table of results, adding columns for each major attribute it knows about. As an example, try...

[...]

Why SEO & Usability are like two peas in a pod

sean — Mon, 25 May 2009 07:11:43 +0000

Good user experience is fundamental for the success of a website: On the Internet, it’s survival of the easiest: If customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Give users a good experience and they’re apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But the Web also...

[...]

7 sources of link intelligence data and key link analysis considerations

sean — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:47:50 +0000

It may seem like a cliché but on the web no website is an island. Any site worth its salt will have accumulated inbound links and will most certainly contain outbound links to other resources on the web. Indeed, one can easily say that without links to interconnect websites, there...

[...]

Google AJAX Search results, tracking in Google Analytics and, um, an API rant

sean — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:58:51 +0000

As many may know by now, Google has been experimenting for a few months with Ajax (JavaScript) based search results. One problem with the initial trial was that no referrer information was passed when a user clicked on a search result, “breaking” the historic ability of Web Analytics...

[...]

Microsoft finally concedes search engine battle to Google

sean — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:08:27 +0000

It was bound to happen. In an economic climate of belt tightening, Microsoft has finally done the unthinkable. First there were those 5,000 layoffs. Then there was the abandonment of adCenter Analytics, Microsoft’s web analytics solution. Yesterday Microsoft announced it was discontinuing...

[...]

Microsoft Throws in Web Analytics Towel, abandons adCenter Analytics

sean — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:39:18 +0000

To judge by an e-mail I received, and this post Microsoft is abandoning the Live Metrics solution it relaunched as adCenter Analytics. On a personal level, this reminds me lot of another web area (book search) where Microsoft competed with Google but later got cold feet and pulled out. I hope Yahoo...

[...]

Simon Says… or is it Google Says?

sean — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:36:04 +0000

The rel=”canonical” link duplicate content panacea As many readers probably know, Google and other search engines recently announced support for a rel=”canonical” link attribute value. The new attribute value canonical (not a tag mind you, link is the html tag) can be used...

[...]

Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior

sean — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:49:08 +0000

This SMX West 2009 session looks at how internet users interact with search engines and how that might influence search engine interface design and our SEO efforts. Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro Speakers: Larry Cornett (@cornett), VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Gordon...

[...]

What’s New With Social Media Marketing?

sean — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:02:43 +0000

Search Engine Marketing is part of a bigger web ecosystem. At SMX West 2009, three habitués of the social media scene shared tips on successfully promoting a website using social media. Moderator: Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors Speakers: Chris Bennett...

[...]

The human dimension of Search Marketing

sean — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:04:12 +0000

I love the web. Despite being somewhere in Italy, I’m able to follow many professional conferences like SMX West through session write-ups posted online. After all, it isn’t always possible to attend conferences in person. Yet even when the post quality is high, there’s something...

[...]

Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results

sean — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:13:31 +0000

In the search engine optimization business there are several recurrent discussions with new client prospects. The most common one by far is around why conversion reports should be used for search metrics rather than traditional ranking reports. Jaws drop when people hear that two different Google...

[...]

SEO Session: Up Close With Google Blog Search

sean — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:56:57 +0000

Google Blog Search is Google’s vertical search engine which focuses exclusively on blog content. While overall usage is probably pretty low, results from Google blog search are starting to appear in Google’s web search as part of their “Universal Search”, more generally...

[...]

In-house SEO: SEO Reporting & Scorecarding for Management

sean — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:30:33 +0000

One of the nice things about web marketing is the wealth of data available to use in decision making processes. Web marketing data also helps in getting and maintaining management support for SEO activities. This SMX West session focusing on in-house SEO considered what data to present to...

[...]

Google, the spy we love

sean — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:53:16 +0000

Passing through the Frankfurt Airport on my way from Milan to SMX West, I couldn’t help but notice the front page of Germany’s weekly newspaper, Die Zeit (The Time). Google. Der Spion, den wir lieben. Google weiß alles. Der Internetgigant aus Kalifornien macht uns das Leben leicht....

[...]

My website has disappeared from Google. What do I do now?

sean — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:58:29 +0000

One day you note a fall off in the traffic Google sends your website. As Google is the main source of your traffic, as is the case for many websites, alarm bells naturally start ringing. Investigating, you realize that the site does not appear at all in Google or has poor visibility at best in [...]

[...]

Extra long descriptions showing up in Google search results: test in progress?

sean — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:44:41 +0000

Several Italian SEO practitioners have noted seeing Google search results with snippets about double the normal length1. Google’s query result snippet (the result summary or description) is usually around 150 characters or so. It may be the contents of a page’s html meta description...

[...]

Page views value little in the monetization of a website

sean — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:16:49 +0000

The title might be a bit provocative, but the topic is important for companies which want to insure their website is a profit center rather than a cost center. The number of page views tracked by a web analytics system is often a weak indicator of website monetization potential. With the advent of...

[...]

Google Crawling and Execution of JavaScript: where are we at today?

sean — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:51:39 +0000

For a long time, Google’s advice to website developers was to keep things simple to ensure search engine spiders could successfully crawl and process website content: Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If...

[...]

SMX West 2009: Do you know the way to San José?

sean — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:46:18 +0000

One sign that a profession has matured is in its ability to support a dedicated conference where professionals can hear and learn from presenters as well as interact with other practitioners (and potential clients & vendors). Search Marketing has had its very own conference since Danny Sullivan...

[...]

So many aspiring SEOs! – the SEO Quiz results are in

sean — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 01:47:15 +0000

15 questions, 5 weeks and 5 books: almost 700 people took the 2008 SEO quiz challenge. Note to the reader: this article was originally posted on our Italian blog on December 2nd. The quiz targeted an Italian audience; we’ve published this translation in order to allow a wider audience to...

[...]

15 questions, 5 weeks, 5 free books: the SEO quiz is here

sean — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 01:46:12 +0000

Note to the reader: this article was originally posted on our Italian blog on October 28th. The quiz targeted an Italian audience; we’ve published this translation in order to allow a wider audience to follow search marketing developments in Italy. It seems that the summer fun is now over,...

[...]

Search engine marketing acronyms: what are they talking about?

sean — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:25:09 +0000

That Americans like acronyms is not really a surprise to those who have worked for an American company. Acronyms are extremely useful as a conversational shorthand especially when working with unwieldy terms like search engine optimization. SEO is just so much easier to roll off the tongue. The...

[...]

Did you mean: porn or why not all keywords are suitable for SEO.

sean — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:15:58 +0000

In the not too distant past when we spoke of search engine marketing, we focused mainly on search engine rankings (SERPS) or, in other words, of being top in Google. A nice phrase, concise and effective. Visibility in search engines is very important, no doubt. But in the top spots in Google for...

[...]

SEO for a Blog – All roads lead to RomeCamp 2008

sean — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:18:22 +0000

One of the things that I really like about the Internet is that anyone who has a minimum of familiarity with a computer can communicate their ideas to a wide audience. Once upon a time the platform of choice was a personal site at geocities, clarence city or the like. In the meantime the blog [...]

[...]

Social media measurement and an example, this SEO Blog

sean — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:19:59 +0000

Recently a friend asked me for some pointers on the measurement of social media, such as blogs. I have found that Jeremiah Owyang has a lot of interesting things to say on this topic, as exemplified by has article What should we measure and the document Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A...

[...]

Improve search engine and keyword reporting in Google Analytics, a SEO strategy

sean — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:23:18 +0000

In three short years 1 Google Analytics has become an important tool for many companies looking to get more out of their presence on the web. Google Analytics’ wide range of website reports, from traffic sources to conversion rates, provide invaluable insight into a site’s business...

[...]

List of over 550 search engines and sources of traffic attributable to web search

sean — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:22:52 +0000

The following is a list of search engines and significant sites incorporating a search engine, such as ISP portals, which provide site traffic attributable to web search. The list can be used to verify if your Web Analytics system recognizes all the sources of organic search traffic and keywords...

[...]

Search engine detection in Microsoft adCenter Analytics

sean — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:27:18 +0000

Microsoft is the other main player, after Google Analytics, in the area of free Web Analytics tools for the analysis of browser centric web data. Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics is the successor to the former LiveSTATS thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition of DeepMetrix in April 20061. Why...

[...]

Are directories still useful for SEO and in increasing web site traffic?

sean — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:15:18 +0000

An ongoing question in search engine optimization (SEO) projects regards which directories might be useful for increasing incoming traffic to a web site and as a means in obtaining better search engine visibility. The question arises due to the importance that was once attributed by search engines...

[...]

Enhance your blog or website with Google’s Site Search. Measure the results in Google Analytics.

sean — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:47:07 +0000

You’ve done it. You’ve created a successful web site with compelling content. A loyal community of readers keeps coming back for more. SEO efforts have paid off too, with lots of traffic from Google, Yahoo!, MSN and minor search engines. Time to sit back with a fine Real Ale or a glass...

[...]

Who’s using Google for their organic and paid search results?

sean — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:10:17 +0000

An important consideration for Google AdWords advertisers is to understand just where their contextual ads might appear. Google notes that AdWords ads can appear on the: Google search engine Partner search engines (e.g. Aol, Ask.com, Libero / Arianna, Virgilio / Alice) Google owned web content...

[...]

Funny business searching for Milan-Rome flights in Google – AdSense Arbitrage at work.

sean — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:11:13 +0000

The traditional August break in Italy is a wonderful time to work on projects which linger on the back burner during the rest of the year. Last August led to the release of a free keyword selection guide (in Italian); this year’s focus is a Course on using the AdWords PPC paid search...

[...]

Web Text Search is Hard. Image indexing is even harder. Just ask Cuil.

sean — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:49:56 +0000

A new search engine, Cuil, has launched, in an attempt to become the next Google. Cuil was founded by people with experience from Google, AltaVista and IBM – sufficient enough to get the mass media’s attention in the dog days of summer. Rather unfortunately Cuil decided to tout...

[...]

Marketing the best of a bad situation: gracefully communicating downtime news on the web

sean — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 06:01:34 +0000

The other evening Camillo Di Tullio, a.k.a. Dr Who, asked me via IM if I was having problems accessing highly trafficked social media websites like Facebook or LinkedIn. In that particular moment, I wasn’t, but his question stuck a particular cord. We’ve seen many downtime issues with...

[...]

Links and Algorithms behind Blog Statistics: BlogBabel reopens.

sean — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:03:13 +0000

I couldn’t help but notice the reopening of Italy’s primary blog classification service, BlogBabel. Just over a year ago I wrote about BlogBabel: “While it is worth keeping in mind that BlogBabel’s ranking is just one measure of the importance of a particular blog, Ludo...

[...]

BLVD Status Analytics in free public beta test

sean — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:15:43 +0000

I found an interesting announcement over at 97thfloor.com of a new Web Analytics tool, BLVD Status. Two significant impediments have historically hindered the uptake of Web Analytics by businesses. The first has been cost. Professional Web Analytics systems have been fairly expensive, both in...

[...]

Search engine Ask.com no longer crawling the web. Weakly powered by Google?

sean — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:49:05 +0000

Many search engine optimization professionals have long hoped that Ask.com, the scrappy search engine underdog, would give the big three (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft) a run for their money. In July 2006, we saluted Ask.com by documenting their little known Ask.com API data interface....

[...]

Are Italian publishers still diffident when it comes to Internet Book Search?

sean — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:37:14 +0000

This was the question posed to Santiago de la Mora, Google’s European Partnerships Lead, Books, at Editech 2008: Editoria e innovazione tecnologica, Milan, 27 June 2008. In the article that follows, I’ve attempted to paraphrase Santiago’s presentation of Google’s Book Search...

[...]

Flash is still a problem for SEO (and the web) despite Google announcement

sean — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:21:58 +0000

I just discovered that someone on a Web Analytics discussion group misconstrued the recent Google announcement of better Flash search engine crawling support to mean it is now good to use Flash when developing web sites. Nothing could be further from the truth. While Google’s move is welcome...

[...]

People, Internet and Enterprise Business, all without mentioning Google.

sean — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:52:43 +0000

Last Wednesday I had the fortune to attend a world class conference on social behavior and technology applied to medium and large sized businesses. Not in San Francisco. Not in Boston, where I worked for 4 years. Not in Milan, even. In Varese. Right, Varese, once known more for shoe production. The...

[...]

Psst: Your Competition is ignoring Internet Search Marketing, are you?

sean — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:18:44 +0000

The inside scoop on how you can get a competitive advantage by including organic search engine visibility in your marketing mix. One of the primary goals of traditional advertising is to create demand for a product or service. An advertisement awakens latent demand by bringing attention to the...

[...]

Search marketing is different: how to gain a competitive advantage by insuring a successful SEO project

sean — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:17:06 +0000

In a related article, I consider how Internet search marketing remains a niche focus for a few early adopters despite laser-like targeting and measurement abilities. As a relatively new media, search engine mechanics and user interaction with search engines remains a bit of a black box for many...

[...]

Are you an accomplished woman vying for a place in President Obama’s Cabinet?

sean — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:41:44 +0000

As Barack Obama prepares his challenge against John McBush, one of his many challenges is to engage and motivate the many constituencies which supported the Hillary Clinton candidacy. It is unlikely that the white racist contingent will rally around Obama’s message of hope any time soon;...

[...]

9 SEO Security Tips for WordPress

sean — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:40:00 +0000

In theory, this is a marketing blog, focusing on search engine optimization, web analytics and other web marketing topics. So what does WordPress security have to do with Google and SEO? Well one downside of the extended web ecosystem is that the same idiots who jump the queue in the supermarket...

[...]

Remove WordPress version information from your blog and feeds

sean — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:28:22 +0000

By announcing to the world the version of WordPress you are running, you greatly simplify the work of a hacker. Peter Westwood’s post documents how to suppress output of the WordPress version number in feeds and blog posts. I’ve packaged his code in a very rudimentary WordPress plugin...

[...]

Astra2Connect and Tooway close the Internet digital divide with satellite to home service, maybe.

sean — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:47:39 +0000

Regular readers of this blog be warned – this article is about the internet infrastructure needed to insure Internet users are online in the first place. We can perform all of the search engine optimization (SEO) we want, but if our target audience isn’t online due to lack of access,...

[...]

Search engine optimization for websites in multiple languages

sean — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:09:15 +0000

A common issue facing companies and organizations with an international presence is how to deploy multilingual sites across one or more Internet domain(s). In other words, should one put all the sites on a .com or .org domain, perhaps taking advantage of directories on the web server to separate...

[...]

Top level domains, subdomains or directories for Search Engine Optimization of multilingual websites?

sean — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:00:55 +0000

Companies targeting multiple linguistic markets on the web have a lot to think about when planning their Internet strategy and execution. Ideally, search engine optimization should be part of their strategy considerations. In this article, we look at a technical marketing issue of website...

[...]

Google Analytics’ Web Statistics Benchmarking Service

sean — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:29:06 +0000

Last summer I looked at the different web statistics available for benchmarking the competition. From a marketing point of view, the result wasn’t very good. Poor methodology and a lack of transparency mean that most publicly available web statistics are worse than useless: by providing a...

[...]

State of the Net, Udine 2008

sean — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:11:49 +0000

So what is the state of the Internet in Italy in the year 2008? Armed with an ambitious, varied agenda spanning two days, speakers from Italy and abroad tried to answer this question during the conference STATEoftheNET, held February 8 and 9 in Udine. We didn’t need to wait long for an...

[...]

Become my friend, at least on Facebook

sean — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:16:22 +0000

For a long time I’ve resisted the tempation to create a profile in Facebook – one can’t be everywhere, no? (Andrey Golub being the exception!) Certainly there aren’t a lack of places online to find business partners. However, I recently received an e-mail from an American...

[...]

Social media to solar power: RomagnaCamp offered it all

sean — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:23:13 +0000

Fresh back from this weekend’s RomagnaCamp, I’m taking a brief break from a “posting hiatus” to report on the event. After a quick touristic visit to Ravenna on Friday, I caught the bus for Marina Romea. This turned out to be auspicious as I was able to met Giuseppe...

[...]

Now there are 6 ways to keep website content out of search engines

sean — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:45:18 +0000

Several months ago a client inspired me to write a comprehensive guide to keeping website content out of search engines. Usually website owners are focused on the opposite side of search engine optimization, insuring web content is well indexed. Yet, as many can attest, search engines can be all...

[...]

Are we still lying with statistics in the internet age?

sean — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:29:17 +0000

In the course of a search engine optimization project, I’m often asked during the competitor analysis phase why one website ranks highly in Alexa, while another ranks highly in an other statistics supplier’s top websites survey. As our two part article Web statistics for internet market...

[...]

Web statistics for internet market research: pick a number, any number

sean — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:16:40 +0000

How to perform competitor research using web statistics while avoiding lies, damned lies, and …statistics? Comparison with competitors is a fundamental element of business; even innovators need to know how far ahead they are in their market. The Internet seems to offer fertile terrain for...

[...]

Google ever present in Desktop Search with release for Linux

sean — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:35:23 +0000

More than two years after Google launched its Google Desktop Search for Windows application, limited initial support for the Linux platform is available. Of the top three major search engines which offer desktop search software (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft), Google is the first to try to win the...

[...]

Brand Confusion with Trenitalia’s Website

sean — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:37:35 +0000

Marketing professionals know that brands are worth big money. A brand name and logo serve as an instant shorthand to convey a mental image of a product or service. Companies invest extensively when developing and launching a new brand name. Once launched, brand names are fiercely protected. Looking...

[...]

Web Analytics Optimism in Italy

sean — Thu, 24 May 2007 07:40:43 +0000

Last November Luca Meyer organized the first Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) in Milan, in conjunction with the IAB Forum interactive marketing event. All of six people were present to represent the Internet’s accountability side in Italy. A pitiful number when you consider the thousands of...

[...]

Getting the most out of business oriented social networking services LinkedIn, Xing, Viadeo and Neurona

sean — Sun, 20 May 2007 16:38:35 +0000

In just a few years, businesses oriented social networking websites have taken off. The industry leader, LinkedIn, counts more than 10 million members despite only being available in English. To take advantage of a professional social networking web service, a user completes a professional profile...

[...]

Searching the World’s Information in Google’s Universal Search

sean — Thu, 17 May 2007 08:31:35 +0000

Over its short life span, Google has been diligently carrying out its stated mission of organizing the world’s information including web pages and documents, blogs, images, news, finance, videos, books, products & catalogs and local places. Each of these data types has had its own...

[...]

Google rolling out much improved Google Analytics V2

sean — Fri, 11 May 2007 20:57:17 +0000

Google is in the process of releasing a significant update to the free web analytics tool it launched to wide acclaim in November 2005. Although we’ve appreciated the professional feature set in Google Analytics, especially given the cost, the user interface was cumbersome at best. As time...

[...]

How do search engines, such as Google, handle JavaScript and CSS?

sean — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:52:15 +0000

A frequent Search Engine Optimization question is “how do search engines such as Google handle JavaScript and CSS?“ Historically, search engines processed web pages much like an old text video browser such as lynx. A search engine only “saw” what the simplest browser could...

[...]

Harnessing the knowledge of the masses with Google

sean — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:15:20 +0000

One of the common problems of writing in a foreign language is that of using the right expressions in the right context. As an example, is the English expression child’s play, a simple task or act, gioco di ragazzi or gioco da ragazzi in Italian? While linguistic websites will undoubtedly...

[...]

Keep out: an often overlooked part of Search Engine Optimization

sean — Sun, 06 May 2007 10:26:54 +0000

Rare is the web professional who doesn’t know that building a great website isn’t usually enough to guarantee its success. Sites have to be visible in search engines for the keywords and phrases web navigators are most likely to associate with the site’s content. An entire...

[...]

Blog statistics with BlogBabel at ZenaCamp in Genoa, Italy

sean — Tue, 01 May 2007 12:59:48 +0000

Expats in Italy need to stay on top of professional and daily happenings locally while still engaging in the wider world. This task is made difficult by the vast quantity and quality of resources available in English (my native language), as exemplified by the BBC. Unfortunately, their Italian...

[...]

Internationalization of Web Sites at ZenaCamp, Genoa (Genova)

sean — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:51:31 +0000

At yesterday’s ZenaCamp in Genova, I gave a presentation on the main issues that are frequently encountered when creating sites for an international audience: Language Accented Characters and Symbols Language Variants Culture A particular focus was made on user issues, such as providing a...

[...]

8 Ways to Optimize Video for Search Engine Visibility

sean — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:52:15 +0000

If you had not already noticed, there has been an explosion of video on the web. Greater availability of broadband connections, coupled with the rise of video hosting and sharing sites, such as YouTube, has made online video accessible to the masses. In addition to classic search engine...

[...]

Audio & Video Multimedia Search Engine Optimization

sean — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:51:15 +0000

As broadband usage is increasing, many websites are increasing the audiovisual content available to attract and retain Internet navigators. Unfortunately multimedia, such as images, mp3 podcasts and video, presents a plethora of visibility problems for traditional search engines. Search engine...

[...]

8 reasons to avoid Flash (or Silverlight) like the plague when designing a website

sean — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 07:47:54 +0000

At a recent Legal Marketing Italia seminar, the question arose as to why a company’s web site doesn’t rank well, even for the company’s name. In Italy, the most common problem encountered with websites is the use of Macromedia / Adobe Flash to develop most or all of a...

[...]

Keep sections of web pages out of Yahoo! with class=”robots-nocontent”

sean — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:10:40 +0000

There are occasions when some content on a web page just shouldn’t appear in search engines. The most frequent example is repeating header and footer details, such as site copyright information. This site uses the hcard format to provide contact information site visitors can save in a vcard...

[...]

6 methods to control what and how your content appears in search engines

sean — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:25:11 +0000

While it may seem paradoxical, there are many occasions where you may want to exclude a website or portion of a site from search engine crawling and indexing. One typical need is to keep duplicate content, such as printer friendly versions, out of a search engine’s index. The same is true for...

[...]

Google Sitemap Standard Adopted by Three of the Leading International Search Engines

sean — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:20:45 +0000

Each of the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Live Search) have announced joint support of Google’s sitemaps protocol. 2007-04-11: Ask announces support of the sitemap standard. It is not yet clear if they actually use sitemaps. While Google and Yahoo do process...

[...]

Accented Characters, Symbols and Special Characters in HTML Documents: Considerations for Search Engine Optimization, Usability and XML Feeds.

sean — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:35:00 +0000

One issue many international Webmasters face is how to properly manage documents written in languages containing accented and other special, non-English, characters. Does it matter how the special characters are written? Do HTML documents need to contain both accented and non-accented words to be...

[...]

How to Specify an HTML Web Document Language for good SEO

sean — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:22:44 +0000

So you just wrote a stunning essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses – in Irish Gaelic. Will Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Ask recognize it as Gaelic, hosted as it is on your co.uk domain? Maybe. But you can given them a hint! The trick is to use all of the HTTP and HTML language code settings...

[...]

Unofficial documentation of Ask’s Web Search API

sean — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:05:15 +0000

In part one of this article, we set out to document the little known Ask web search API by providing background information. In this continuation, we’ll look at the actual API details. Update: Ask disabled access to their API on 6 March 2007. We are working on obtaining additional...

[...]

Decrypting Ask’s Web Search API

sean — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:13:06 +0000

In this article, we set out to document the little known Ask web search API available at xml.teoma.com. One of the many aspects of successful search engine optimization (SEO) is the periodic measurement of how well a site is performing in a particular search engine. Dimensions to measure include...

[...]

Tracking Search Engine Cache Page Views with Web Analytics

sean — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 08:56:44 +0000

A small percentage of search engine users may view a web site using a search engine’s saved copy of site pages, their cached version. The cached copy the search engine serves to the user usually contains links to embedded objects present in the original site: images, CSS stylesheets,...

[...]

Search Engine Crawlers: Who’s visiting my site and why?

sean — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 08:25:45 +0000

Organizations implementing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies will sooner or later consider monitoring search engine crawling activity. Before a web page can appear in search results, the content has to be discovered through a crawling or spidering process. This is done through software...

[...]

Google Zeitgeist has a Sibling, Google Trends

sean — Thu, 18 May 2006 05:29:04 +0000

Google Labs has launched a new search tool, Google Trends. It displays relative search volumes over time (from 2004 onward) for a set of user defined keywords and keyword phrases. Google Trends joins Google Zeitgeist, a static snapshot of top search trends. In some cases, news events are presented...

[...]

Top Keyword Search Trends in Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask

sean — Fri, 12 May 2006 08:00:27 +0000

An Introduction to Real World Search Engine User Behavior You were just assigned the task to update your website’s keywords. Not yet in the mood to pull out a thesaurus or check out the competition’s keyword meta tags? Then start with a bit of educational fun, reviewing how users really...

[...]

Google Maps, formerly Google Local, preparing for Italian Launch?

sean — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:01:29 +0000

It appears that Google will be rolling out Google Maps coverage for major European countries, including Italy, shortly. A preview with Italian data is available by using the Google Maps UK URL i.e. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=it. Google Maps is three applications in one: Local business search...

[...]

The Google Webmaster Dashboard, a.k.a. Google Sitemaps

sean — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 05:53:48 +0000

In order to index and display web content in their search results, search engines need to be able to find the content. The first generation of Internet search engines relied on webmasters to submit a site’s primary URL, the site’s “home page”, to the search engine’s...

[...]

Web Analytics: Embedded JavaScript Page Tracking Code vs. Web Server Log Files

sean — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 12:27:17 +0000

Web Analytics tracking choices with advantages and disadvantages Basic Web Analytics tools usually fall into one of two categories: Web server log file based JavaScript embedded page tags Both have advantages and disadvantages. By default, server logs contain much richer data than that usually...

[...]

Creating Search Engine Friendly Drop-down menus using CSS

sean — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 10:53:07 +0000

JavaScript drop-down menus are employed by many medium to large size web sites as primary navigation tool for site visitors. Drop-down menus offer many advantages. They are already familiar to computer uses who encounter them in almost all mainstream software. By collapsing when not needed, the...

[...]

Web Analytics Embedded JavaScript Page Tracking Code: Place at the top or bottom of the page?

sean — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:13:38 +0000

Hosted web analytics reporting systems commonly use JavaScript code embedded in site pages to track user viewings of each website page (alternatively the systems download and report on data contained in web server log files). Web Analytics system vendors provide instructions specifying where to...

[...]

UK and US English Dialect Considerations for Site Internationalization

sean — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 06:00:45 +0000

Search Engines and Site Localization While there are few differences between the UK and US English dialects which might lead to miscomprehension, Noah Webster‘s spelling reform does lead to interesting issues which need to be considered when designing sites for international audiences....

[...]

Google Labs has re-released the much-maligned Google Web Accelerator

sean — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 15:23:31 +0000

The Google Web Accelerator made a brief appearance in May 2005 before downloads were cut off due to a „maximum capacity of users” being reached. The Accelerator was criticized by many, with privacy and security concerns frequently expressed. Google Labs has made a reworked Accelerator...

[...]

Google launches Google Base, a searchable on line database repository. And classified ad server?

sean — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 11:16:14 +0000

Already master in the acquisition and management of mostly unstructured data¹, whether it be web pages or word processing documents, Google is now taking on structured data as well. Google Base, currently only available in English, allows users to insert data items which become searchable...

[...]

Former Urchin Web Analytics Reporting Service now free as Google Analytics

sean — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 05:19:16 +0000

Google has made its on line web analytics reporting service, Google Analytics, available free of charge to website owners. The service, bought several months ago from Urchin, previously cost a minimum of $2400 / year. The service uses small snippets of code embedded in each page of a website. When...

[...]

Howto – AWStats Enhancements and Extensions

sean — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 06:50:17 +0000

This area focuses on resources to enhance the functionality of the web analytics tool AWStats. These resources have been developed based on our client needs. As a contribution, we offer them here. Some may even make it into a future version AWStats! The information here is provided on a...

[...]