tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-284906912009-10-29T08:40:49.362-04:00This blog concentrates on search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and web analytics. Despite this desire, if I come across something that I find interesting, you can be sure I'll post something about it.Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.comBlogger156125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-16040812532648196462009-10-27T13:29:00.005-04:002009-10-27T13:42:24.335-04:00

It's hard to believe it's been a year since the last PubCon marketing conference in Las Vegas. To me this is one of the best organized and informative conferences of the year and I start looking forward to it as soon as the last one is finished.What makes this conference so great, is it the location or the quality of the speakers or something else? As to location, unlike many others, I'm not a

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-70542156269649084022009-08-20T11:30:00.004-04:002009-08-20T14:19:51.083-04:00

According to Hitwise and reported by Search Engine Watch today, the best quality search engine in Canada is Bing despite being ranked 6th in popularity.http://www.searchengineland.com/best-search-engine-in-canada-hitwise-says-bing-24208The primary reason given is that Bing is doing the best job of localizing search results. Through our own tests at K'nechtology, we've seen very little difference

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-44535240511764947672009-08-17T08:47:00.002-04:002009-08-17T08:56:09.154-04:00

Two weeks back, WebTrends announced version 9.0. As with all recent upgrades this version is only be released to users of WebTrends on Demand. The good news is they expect by late this quarter or early October to release version 9 for the installed version.This approach is both good and bad for users of the software version. The bad part is obvious, we don't get our hands on this latest version

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-47327177636427604952009-08-17T08:35:00.002-04:002009-08-17T08:47:02.973-04:00

If you've been following my near daily tweats (http://twitter.com/aknecht), you'll know that I'm speaking again this year at PubCon. PubCon which will run from November 10 - 13 in Las Vegas is by far the best networking industry conference I've ever attended. The combination of numerous sessions and what seems an endless number of nightly events make it ideal for making industry friends.PubCon is

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-36288413919538813522009-07-20T21:29:00.003-04:002009-07-20T21:35:59.962-04:00

Last month my company K'nechtology Inc. became the first Canadian partner for AT Internet. AT Internet provides a high-end web analytics tool which competes in the market space currently occupied by such giants as Omniture Site Catalyst and WebTrends.For the past 4-5 weeks I've been giving it a trial run and loving it. Today I started a 4 day training course which dives deep into the product as

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-47967943500043780142009-06-10T13:41:00.002-04:002009-06-10T13:55:08.406-04:00

For the past two days, I was totally engrossed in Search Engine Strategies (SES) Toronto show. My hat goes off to this years conference organizers at Incisive truly came through and took all the negative criticism from the past couple of year and turned it around.Change from the Toronto conference centre to the Sheraton Centre was by far the biggest improvement. No longer were attendees and

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-8826438414515425962009-05-21T13:25:00.002-04:002009-05-21T13:50:31.275-04:00

Since late February I've been involved in an interesting SEO project with a branch of the British Government. In essences, I've been mentoring teams at 3 different institutions on the there SEO efforts as part of a pilot project.The project has the following steps1. Basic SEO Training2. A technical review of their web sites along with recommendations (conducted by me)3. Implementation of any

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-60482825095754953272009-05-21T13:21:00.003-04:002009-05-21T13:25:00.462-04:00

In just over two weeks it will be time again for this year's Search Engine Strategy (SES) conference here in Toronto (June 8-10). Despite the economy, I expect a good turnout for this event.If you're contemplating going but are a bit unsure keep this in mind. Based on this year's agenda, the majority of the talks will be focused at people just getting involved in search engine marketing to those

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-56267221832604349332009-05-21T13:18:00.002-04:002009-05-21T13:20:52.897-04:00

I'm using Blogger as my blogging software and while I haven't posted anything for about 6 weeks, I just noticed that several of last posts starting in late February until early April are all missing.If really isn't appropriate for me to dig through my files and resubmit them, but I'll be keeping a closer eye on these posts to ensure what ever happened doesn't happen again.

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-50677693371557513022009-02-24T15:23:00.004-05:002009-02-24T15:28:08.168-05:00

WebTrends announced today the release of a second generation tag builder. The tag builder is used for generating customized SDC (Smart Data Collector) java scripts to be added to web pages for java script based web analytics for both WebTrends OnDemand and installed version of WebTrends.Details of the changes can be found at http://blog.webtrends.com/2009/02/24/

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-54377746527340851992009-02-17T09:50:00.003-05:002009-02-17T10:28:52.587-05:00

With the growing acceptance of Twitter into main stream use, the use of services to shorten lengthy URLs is growing. There are many of these free services out there on the web. Popular ones include:tinyurlbit.lyhex.iozi.mais.gdand many moreThe question becomes how do these services affect your web analytic reports? So let's start with the basics.First off, if someone is using a twitter

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-84700027693759299022009-02-12T14:14:00.002-05:002009-02-12T14:16:16.233-05:00

WebTrends has released an update for those of us who have the software version. This update includes an update of the latest search engine list including Twitter and an update of the browser list.It is simple to download and fast to upgrade.To download or for more information go to:http://www.webtrends.com/support/browser-and-keywords-updater.aspx

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-63769792879816603922009-02-03T14:00:00.002-05:002009-02-03T14:04:21.229-05:00

As I mentioned before starting on March 31, 2009 SMX will be holding its first SMX Analytics conference in Toronto Canada. At this time, I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be speaking at this event on March 31 during the "Analyzing & Converting Organic Search Traffic" session.This promises to be a great event and remember that eMetrics will be on at the same time in Toronto as well. Great chance

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-21849729620868408692009-01-21T09:32:00.002-05:002009-01-21T09:36:26.359-05:00

Over the past few days I've received about 10 follows from various people in Twitter. I found it strange when reviewing their past Tweets all had the same single tweet. I was getting suspicious and then today I got a follow from someone I knew (and followed), but the Twitter ID looked different.Upon checking out the Twitter account I knew it wasn't him. So I decided I was going to investigate and

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-34507792325711347052009-01-07T15:35:00.006-05:002009-01-09T14:51:49.208-05:00

How do people spell your company name when they have only heard the name and have to idea how to spell it? Believe it or not, this is a very common problem relating to search. For example, my company's name is K'nechtology which is pronounced Connectology.On Tuesday, during a series of 10 radio interviews the name of my company was given out and only once was the spelling of the company name

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-54129860634914038692009-01-06T15:40:00.004-05:002009-01-06T18:29:22.479-05:00

For the best couple of days a virus that I'll call the "google virus" has been slowly spreading. The impact of this virus is that it hijacks your Google search results and redirects you to a spam site.Fortunately, I didn't get hit by this virus but a call from CBC radio here in Toronto alerted me to the virus. For a brief moment it looked like CBC Toronto was being infected. The good news was

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-73935597742421812052008-12-16T10:26:00.002-05:002008-12-16T10:35:56.831-05:00

In case you're not following me on Twitter, this is a must read new story reported by the BBC today (December 16, 2008).Security experts around the world are recommending that everyone (at least until Microsoft issues and emergency patch) stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer broswer (IE) and switch browsers due to a major security flaw in the browser.Read the full news article at: http://

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-37606688864948282102008-11-26T14:47:00.003-05:002008-11-26T15:06:56.999-05:00

One of the biggest questions many of us in web analytics have faced over the years was tracking visitors ow who click on which links that take users to 3rd party websites (external links). This is critical if you run banner ads, sell links, have partner sites etc.Over the years a number of solutions have been developed. Some of these worked reasonably well and have included using third part

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-50509515267817314942008-11-25T14:37:00.002-05:002008-11-25T14:42:30.829-05:00

Just got asked an interesting web analytics question. The client was reviewing the "Referring Domain" report in WebTrends and noticed a lot of direct traffic and that the site itself is listed as a referrer. They wanted to know why.This is a question that I'm frequently asked by users of various web analytic products, and so I thought I'd post my response for others.Direct traffic (as reported by

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-79543873117566852062008-11-24T12:11:00.003-05:002008-11-24T12:32:26.682-05:00

In case you haven't noticed the change yet in Google you will. Starting last week Google started to rolling out the ability for individuals (who are logged into their Google account) to start customizing their search results and even commenting on them.This is all handled through what is called the "Google Search Wikki". So now you have the ability to move specific results up or down and even

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-16899676147058282742008-11-17T16:19:00.005-05:002009-01-08T21:45:46.508-05:00

All those who know me, know that I don't jump quickly to the latest and greatest Internet gadgets. This is not to say I am slow to adopt good ideas, I just need someone to show me the practical side of it for business. And this has brought me to my Twitter experiment. If you have never heard of Twitter (www.twitter.com), you are not alone. Yet this simple tool is quickly gaining a foothold among

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-85956046376048745822008-11-13T09:18:00.006-05:002008-11-13T09:39:05.815-05:00

After thinking about my session at PubCon yesterday and if we as a group of panelist (Mark Jackson, Lyndsay Walker Blahut, Aaron Wall, myself and our moderator Todd Friesen) had one thing we were trying to stress I cam up with the following. "Get in the project plan!"Once you strip away the advice on how to and why you should use h1 tags, why writing good description meta tags and why using

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-86095943638119375442008-11-13T03:04:00.002-05:002008-11-13T03:12:25.503-05:00

At a evening networking event at PubCon I had the chance to chat with Matt Cutts about some rumors I was hearing about things under development at Google. He was able to proved a clear and precise answer. So here are my questions Matt's answers:1. What's with the indexing of Flash, what works and doesn't work? Matt was able to confirm what I had hear from Adobe last month, but that Adobe wasn't

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-66003357927442604282008-11-13T02:34:00.007-05:002008-11-19T11:46:07.158-05:00

Day 2 at PubCon turned out to be another inspiring day. It all started around 9:00 am with an truly inspiring keynote by George Wright from Blendtec. His keynote focused on how he took a $50 branding budget to purchase a few items video tape the owner of the company testing the company's blenders.While it the story may sound simple, the video went viral and before they knew it this small blender

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28490691.post-36451152477964987102008-11-12T11:33:00.003-05:002008-11-12T11:38:13.757-05:00

Why Page Rank is meaninglessWhile at PubCon, I attended a session where Bruce Clay was speaking. As part of his address he stated something that I've been saying for years, "A page's rank in the search results is meaningless".He went on to point out that the search engines are changing how they decided which page to rank. Most of us already know about how they adjust the results based on the

Alan K'nechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13622088835044804208noreply@blogger.com0