websites by more-clix

How should you measure traffic to your website? [BT broadband office]

2007-07-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting article from BT

How should you measure traffic to your website? [BT broadband office]

One of the web's most attractive features for marketers is its measurability. Since the very earliest days, web servers have kept logs of files downloaded, users' IP addresses, referring sites, and even the software used by each visitor. More modern methods, based on javascript or 'web bugs', took it to another level. All this gives visibility, and a depth to the data, which no other marketing channel can rival.

But what exactly should you take as your measure? In the old days, it was 'hits' - literally, the total number of files served by the server. Pages, graphics, everything. It soon became obvious that this was open to all kinds of manipulation: put five images on your page, and you could claim six hits each time someone visited the page. Boost your traffic overnight by adding a few more images to each page. This ultimately led to 'page impressions' - counting the pages themselves, not the individual elements - becoming the most favoured metric.

Now, newer web techniques are beginning to call that into question, too. Many sites are making use of an approach known as 'ajax' - which allows for parts of a page to be refreshed without the whole page reloading. This is unquestionably a good development: it makes for a much smoother, faster user experience. But it makes something of a mockery of the 'page impression' concept. If I click to load a page, then click again to reload a particular element within that page, do I score one or two? The former is more easily justifiable, but you can bet most site owners would rather count every individual click as a new 'impression'.

Now, in a press release (PDF) published last week, leading market researchers Nielsen//NetRatings have come out in favour of time-based metrics:

Total Minutes is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using (rich applications) and streaming media, but also of Web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications.
As an example, they note that MySpace beats YouTube 10-to-1 in terms of page views, but only 3-to-1 in terms of total time spent on the site. Intriguingly, this new measurement knocks Google off the number one spot for the first time in recent memory: AOL, Yahoo, MSN and Fox all do better in terms of Total Minutes.

So what's the right thing to do? I've personally reached the conclusion that the only metric which really matters to a business is - guess what? - profitability. All the other web measurements can be useful in terms of tweaking your strategy, your message or your customer service. I'm as addicted to statistics as ever I was, checking my own page impressions several times daily. But no amount of page impressions will, in and of themselves, pay the mortgage.

Times Article: 13-07-2007

2007-07-16T01:57:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the Times highlights some interesting information re sponsored links.

The general outline is included below:

From The Times

July 13, 2007

Google in court for
misleading its users
on paid links to advertisers

Bernard Lagan in Sydney and Rhys Blakely

Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, is being taken to court for allegedly deceiving millions of users over links that are paid for by its advertisers.

In the first legal action of its kind, Australia's competition watchdog is seeking an injunction to stop Google from displaying search results that did not

expressly distinguish

advertisements.
The Australian Competion and Consumer Commission claims that Google has engaged in deceptive or misleading conduct in relation to the use of its paid links. It also seeks an injunction to prevent Google from displaying the paid links of advertisers that claimed an association with other businesses or competitors where no such association existed.

Google said that the claims are

without merit

and that it

would vigorously defend the court action. Google said the action was an attack on all search engines and the Australian businesses, large and small, who use them to connect with customers throughout the world

.

EXPERT VIEW

"If the courts rule Google needs to be a pro-active policeman instead of a reactive philosopher the world of the web could be radically changed"

Rhys Blakely

But the legal dispute has prompted fears of a wave of similar challenges in other countries that will test the advertising methods used by Google and other internet companies.

Revenue from sponsored links have helped to propel Google's stock market value to $169 billion (£83 billion) since it was started in a Silicon Valley garage by two university students 8½ years ago.

At the heart of the dispute is the way in which Google displays the results of searches. Advertisers are clearly identified at the top of each page and in the right-hand column. But those same advertisers are likely to feature in the main search results, where they are not identified as sponsors. This, the Australian watchdog claims, constitutes an unfair trading practice.

The legal action has surprised the IT sector. Even in Australia, IT companies believed that the dispute over internet advertisers had been resolved by the Federal Trade Commission, the US regulator, as long ago as 2001.

The commission ruled that paid search results could be displayed to search engine users so long as they were clearly labelled as

sponsored links

. Google and other big search engines such as Yahoo! and Microsoft have adopted the commission’s ruling.
John Butterworth, head of the Australian Interactive Media Industry, said last night:

I can’t see that there is any deception going on when they [Google] make it perfectly clear in writing that they have sponsored links

.

The legal action arises from a separate investigation by the Australian competition watchdog, which started in 2005, after two car dealerships complained that potential customers who used Google to look them up were being first offered a link to a newspaper that carried used-car advertisements. The newspaper had paid Google for the right to use the names of the motor vehicle dealerships in its sponsored links, thus drawing people searching for the dealerships to the newspaper site. The newspaper was in competition with the motor vehicle dealerships for used-car buyers.
The threat to Google is that the courts will rule that it has a responsibility to police such behaviour. Google sells millions of keywords every day. Regulating auctions to make sure that bidders own any trade-marks they are trying to buy would be complicated.

The real risk is that similar rules would spill over into other parts of Google's business, to make the company responsible for all search results, not just the sponsored ones.

The group is involved in a legal battle involving YouTube. After buying the world’s largest video-sharing site for $1.65 billion last year, Google was served with a $1 billion lawsuit by Viacom, the media giant behind MTV, which alleged that Google was not doing enough to prevent the appearance of bootlegged clips.

If the courts agree with Viacom and Australia's car dealers that Google needs to be a policeman, the internet could be seriously affected.

MORE CLIX COMMENTS - Unfair to blame Google?

An excellent article. One can hardly blame Google that opportunist clients will use 'pay per click' campaigns targeted so they appear on the same page as their corporate competition. As more and more people are getting lazy and using the Google search bar to find a particular company's website they wish to visit e.g. typing in 'Hertz car hire' to find the Hertz website, rival local companies are using 'Hertz car hire' as their adwords so they appear in sponsored links on the same Google results page, no doubt hoping that their prices will appear more competitive and enquirers may click on their links.

One can argue about the ethics of this, but how or why should Google have to police and decide on the prohibitions that should be imposed.

As to why 'pay per click' advertisers also appear on the main page as well as in the sponsored links, isn't this just because of their good website optimisation? I'm sure it is in many cases, but would it be wrong to assume that Google may also (cunningly?) intervene so the search results it presents are 'customer relevant' to the key words typed in - so results do not simply become sourced to other displayed 'index list' websites that have signed up businesses from similar business sectors and mainly achieve high search rankings simply because of the high number of the reverse links to their own website.

Personally, I find these 'index' sites quite annoying as it seems you are often just repeating the Google search you have already made on the 'index' sites search facilities(usually unsophisticated facilities) and returning results that are usually not relevant.

The bottom line is that while some control in the sector could be productive, the bottom line is that Google needs to continually revise how it works in order to maintain its market sector i.e. satisfy the public the customers it serves. So far, in this Google has proved and is continuing to prove very adept.

Perhaps we should just let the market place decide.

Making websites work for you

2007-07-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

Now that Google has introduced its advanced analytics program for monitoring visitors to your website, business clients can find out exactly what pages their visitors visit and trace their movement from page to page to see whether their interest is maintained and a successful outcome (sale or contact us action takes place)

Optimisation and 'pay per click' are the buzz words currently, and this new facility from Google makes it so much easier to see how prospective clients react when confronted with the information on your pages. A high 'bounce' rate i.e. customers not staying on the page and leaving straight away may explain why you are not achieving much from a pay per click campaign.

Perhaps your keywords are inappropriate or clients simply do not like the way/style in which the information is shown.

Whatever the case the information can help you to revise your website as necessary or redirect your marketing campaign to more appropriate key words.