Web Analytics for Business Insights and intelligence

For one of my blog HP BPO analytics, I recently published an post “Hewlett Packard bagged the Top PC Vendor award” and when I opened the blog and saw on a Google Adsense, I was surprised to see it was displaying some adult links on Adsense Advertising, How can it happen? I checked all the keywords which are displayed on the Adsense and none of them found on my posted article or any relative synonyms.

Have anyone observed similar pattern, please do comment.

My blog link (one of the blog post) is placed in GoogleBlog - I know its not a big surprise as it pings back all the link in the list or related article but the good thing is its placed #3 (third) in the list which driving traffic.

I had recently written a blog on “How does google Index blog post published so quickly?” the same has been placed in Google blog’s similar Article.

Have a look

But to be honest i am exicited about it

I had actually promised writing about Implementation on Mobile Analytics using Omniture SiteCatalyst as a Web analytics solutions, But due to time constraints I couldn’t managed to write on it, But I will definitely will write about it actually its on queue : )

Well without disappointing this time something on Web Analytic Metrics, We normally get the request from our partners to enable MUVs ( Monthly unique visitors)  to some of the specific reports however most of the time we push them to use DUVs (Daily Unique visitors) instead of MUVs, specially if its support sites.

There is couple of reason for this,

• For me DUVs and MUVs are just numbers to watch the trend month over month for particular section of the website (you know even Avinash is also not too fond of Daily Unique Visitors : ) )
• It drives cost to the company in enabling this additional metrics to any reports.

For this reason we normally ask what is the business value that’s going to drive using MUVs in particular report, believe me 99% of them didn’t had any reason other then just watching the trend of the unique visitors.

If you ask me, Visits, Unique Visitors (Daily or monthly) are just number to watch the trend and the number of people visiting the website, that is they are not an Action Driving metric (A perfect example for Action driven metrics is Bounce Rate - A sexist web metric - Avinash Says : ) )

Due to frequent request, for MUVs (Monthly unique visitors) we have decided to enable DUVs (Daily unique visitors) for whom it requests and educate them to “Estimate” Monthly unique visitors, its little tricky here, it’s just an estimated number of Monthly unique visitors but might not be accurate.

Let’s see how in simple calculation we can calculate Monthly unique visitors using Daily unique visitors.

Assume you need MUVs in most popular site section report, however it has only DUVs enabled, here are the simple steps to add calculated metric MUVs

1. Pull Daily Unique Visitors for one month (site level)
2. Pull Monthly Unique Visitors for one month (site level)
3. Calculate the ratio of between them.
4. Pull the report where you need to MUVs from DUVs 
5. Calculate Estimated MUVs metric by Multiplying DUVs by Average ratio created in #3

1.      Pull Daily Unique Visitors for one month (site level)

2. Pull Monthly Unique Visitors for one month (site level)

3. Calculate the ratio of between them.

i,e Ratio = MUVs/DUVs

4. Pull the report where you need to MUVs from DUVs
5. Calculate Estimated MUVs metric by Multiplying DUVs by Average ratio created in #3

Have a look at the difference between the actual and the estimated Monthly Unique visitor, its negligible or I would say it’s acceptable anywhere between 10 to 20% of discrepancy.

Please drop in your comments just in case if we have better way of calculating Monthly Unique Visitors or if you feel calculation displayed above is wrong or your recommendations if any.

Note: This was not my orgninal idea, it was proposed by my co-partner who is a program manager.

By the way everyone knows (by now atleast) Google has its new “Chrome - Google’s Web Browser” its pretty cool for browsing, its great way or great example on what user wants to feel happy while browsing…

I was wondering why would Google want to build Browser, well they have reason for it, have a look here from Google’s Word - Why Google Wanted to Create Its Own Browser

What I like about Chrome?

1. Way Browsing elements are arranged
2. Wide Browsing area
3. Fast browsing experience
4. Incognito feature - its called InPrivate in IE8

However what I dont like is the memory its taken while browsing, I might be wrong (Please comment it If i am) which slows up the other application, I am getting the feeling that, thats one of the area Google has to concentrate as it was the same issue with Google Desktop.

Anyways, Lets see what I have felt using chrome in details.

1. Way Browsing elements are arranged

What if, if you get exactly what you want in-front of you ? that’s what it happens in Chrome when you open a new tab, it thumbnails all the previously browsed websites in front of you, you need not type in again. Though all browser shows recently typed URL as you typein couple of character but its always presentation and reachable matters website thumbnails are ready in-front of you just click it, don’t you agree with me?

Have a look at some of them.

2. Larger Browsing area

t has larger browsing area which is most required while browsing, if you can observe status bar is smartly built like a  mouseover effect, what i meant is it displays on when you type in the URL on the address bar and while loading and it vanishes while its done !! isn’t it great and wanted feature.

No Menu and we dont want it either, how often do we use it, hardly for setting the connection? I am sure 99% of the users never touch the menu item which are displayed in the top its taken out in Chrome - we dont want it (I know its alredy came in IE7 release)

3. Fast browsing experience

Though I felt Chrome, is pretty faster, Firefox still cliams its 28% more faster then Chrome engine. They might be right also

4. Incognito feature - its called InPrivate in IE8

What is Incognito?

“Browsing in incognito mode only keeps Google Chrome from storing information about the websites you’ve visited” Good for you doesn’t keep track if you visit “family websites” lol and you need not explicitly clear the history, however you might have to put off or pause Google Web History tracking, as it still keep track of search history if you have logged in as Google user.

By the way all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window, hmmmmmm if everyone started using “incognito” or “inprivate” (from IE8) what happens to metrics in Web Analytics reports?

What will be fate of Unique visitors - everyone will be unique in this case? any thoughts?

Security flaws

A security expert has criticized what serves as the automatic file download feature that comes enabled by default in Google Chrome. They argued that it could be used easily by an attacker to trick a user into opening a malicious executable file.

Source - Wiki

But now the chanllenge part is how quickly (just in case) Chrome will acquire market share of in the browsers war. It took 5 years to capture 43% of browser market share for Firefox against Microsoft,

Have a look look at the detailed Browser Statistics Month by Month by W3Schools - http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Now its your trun - What do you have to say, Do you think Google Can succed in its Brower market? Please comment.

To Download Google Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/

Learn About Google Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html

I had recently published a blog post “Google Crawled my blog post in 32 min” well its no surprise or it’s not a miracle anymore, it’s actually a part of the blog services which Google accepts once after we published blog posts.

I started looking into deeper on how does Google actually crawls so quickly and later I found its a part of any blog service that it pings back all the blog search engines, and you can call it as “ping-o-matic“, In my observations once its published it will crawl and index quickly, however once its indexed it doesn’t re-crawl it again as quicker as it does for the first time, rather we never known when does it index for the second time if you make any further changes for your first time published post.

Just to give an example,

When there is a recent bomb blast in Bangalore, I was aware thousands of people start searching with keyword “bomb blasts Bangalore” however I wanted to check with the low traffic relatively so I updated my blog just with the heading, “multiple bomb blasts Bangalore” mentioning about the current situation of bomb blast thinking and also testing on a. whether it crawls very quickly posts which are recently published b. whether it will re-crawl if I edit it for the second time (You don’t believe my blog got suspended due to heavy traffic in a short time, Later I called the server administrator to make it to live again)

The moment I published it immediately crawled and my site was appearing in the second page for the keyword “bomb blasts Bangalore” and first page for the keyword “multiple bomb blasts Bangalore”, thats the ping effect within wordpress for every post published.

My second tests is to edit with the heading if it recrawls the changes, I changes my post heading to “Bomb blast in Bangalore, This time its Multiple” however even after 24hrs of time it not crawled the edited content.

Just to mention little bit more about the ping effect for Google, Last year Google has announced “Google Blog Search Pinging Service” where we can either ping Google Manually or We can set it for Automatic. Any Wordpress installed by default pings Blog search engines automatically once posts are published.

Here are the inferences

• There is NO surprise if the Google crawls the recently published post immediately and ranks in top of the page.
• Google might not crawl of index the edited content of the same posts.
• Blogs have or can have auto pinging service which pings all the blog search engines once posts are published.

Let me know your thoughts please, Just in case

Its pretty much handy, infact, i had observed few days back while reading my mail its similar to Google Experimental Search - Shortcuts

When I say shortcuts, its just for moving the mail cursor for up and down along with the opening part of it which comes very handy have a look at the shortcut table below,

Key       Action
J              Selects the next result.
K             Selects the previous result.
O            Opens the selected result.
<Enter>     Opens the selected result.
/             Puts the cursor in the search box.
<Esc>     Removes the cursor from the search box.

Did I said about “Google Experimental Search” above? have a look at clicking on itself. 3 new ideas, not so new a. Alternate views for search results b. Keyword suggestions. c. Keyboard shortcuts

Google had crawled my very new blog post in just 32 min !!!

I don’t believe this, rather even you don’t believe I am sure, I was started writing a blog post WATTT- Web Analytics Tagging & Testing Tool and I just clicked on the publish button and I kept tweaking for few min reading it for minor corrections, accidentally when checked if Google had crawled my site as my blog domain is kind of new, Surprisingly I saw Google had crawled the post which I have just published !!! Have a look at the screenshot

Please feel free to drop a comments if any of you had seen similar instance.