February 20th, 2010
I enjoyed the article in Search Engine Land by Gord Hotchkiss in his interview with Stefan Weitz, a Director at Bing http://selnd.com/dp4AlL.
It highlighted one of the biggest challenges in Search today – language. How can search engines determine if you put in the search term ‘jaguar’ whether you mean an animal, a car or operatting system or something else that has only just become part of the language. The Search Engines are well aware of the problem. Presently the major Search Engines will tend hedge their best and return a mixture of results. This is very unsatisfactory as the results will be too diverse to provide any real useful information and will certainly require the user to refine the search.
Search Engines need to replicate ‘fuzzy’ human logic which outperforms Search Engines computing power. This is not unlike the Turing test, that is the test of artificial intelligence where a human can conduct a conversation with a machine without the human realising they are talking to a machine. One way to approach this is to know more about the person who’s doing the talking. This is why we see an increase in personalisation in search. Personalisation is not only about where you are, the time of day and what you have searched before but also your social network. Whereas Search Engines are beginning to use your location and time to return results they are all some way off working out a users social network.
There is still a long way to go in search and we can expect to see continuous changes from the Search Engines in their future developments.
Posted in Bing, Personalised Seach | Comments Off
February 4th, 2010
I thought it would be good to do a quick refresher on the use of sub domains with Google Analytics and Webmaster tools.
When dealing with subdomains such as subdom.example.co.uk it is important to get your analytics code right in order to get the most accurate results from Google analytics. If you just use the standard code on the main site and on the subdomains you will not be able to distinguish between example.co.uk/index.htm and subdom.example.co.uk/index.co.uk. Pages set up in subdomains are more than likely done so as they cover a specific topic. It would therefore be useful to analyse the visitors to the subdomain in isolation and also what they might viisit in the main site or other subdomains.
In order to have this flexability you should place the following line of bold code in your existing Analytics code.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try{
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._setDomainName(“.example.com”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>
You will need to set up a filter as well in order to see the subdomains names in the reports. Create an advanced filter:
Filter Type: Custom filter > Advanced
Field A: Hostname
Extract A: (.*)
Field B: Request URI
Extract B: (.*)
Output To: Request URI
Constructor: /$A1$B1
The results will allow you to view visits to the subdomain in isolation or as a total of all traffic to your site.
Tags: google analytics, subdomain
Posted in Google | No Comments »
January 22nd, 2010
We have launched a number of client Facebook fan pages over the past few months and thought we would share a few helpful pointers.
Facebook offers the fan page format which are best for companies looking to get a presence on Facebook. Fan pages are visible to unregistered users so can be indexed by search engines. Fan pages also allow you to send bulk invites to your friends as can any other group member.
You can use the Facebook editable language (fbml) to make custom changes to the pages with custom tabs and content. You can see on Wiley Text Books the custom images and tabs for give this Higher Education Publisher including a Student Discount tab and Recent Publications tab. Do have a look at some our client fan pages. The features have been built by a451 to customise each Facebook.
- http://www.facebook.com/wileytextbook
- http://www.facebook.com/sarovahotelsuk
- http://www.facebook.com/dominiquesvillas
Once your fan page is up and running your first target is to get 25 Fans. This allows the fan page to have a ‘vanity’ or custom url. Before officially launching your Fanpage it is worth getting 25 family and friends to sign up as Fans so as to market your custom url to clients and potential clients.
An email out to clients to join as fans is the next step. One of our clients offered entry into a prize draw of £100 of Amazon vouchers for all clients signing up as fans. The result was over 600 fans! It also resulted in a number of positive comments on the fan page.
You can restrict comments but generally they should be encouraged as it is a good way of interacting with your clients. We are tracking the visitors to the main Web site from various Social Media sites and will be blogging in the future with our findings.
Tags: fan page
Posted in Facebook | No Comments »
January 13th, 2010
Google announced it is will stop filtering the results on their Chinese search engine results as they previously agreed with the Chinese authorities. This is as a result of attempts by hackers to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents. There are larger issues behind the scenes but Google have said they are prepared to quit China altogether. The temperature is rising in this clash of communism and capitalism.
Although this looks like a point of principal from Google it must have an underlying commercial reason. Google is in the business of making money which it does well. Outside the core product of search Google has done well in the other areas they have expanded to such as Gmail, Google Docs and now smart phones with the Nexus One. They only enter areas where they stand a chance of becoming market leaders. They have the in house brains and money to achieve what they set out to do.
There can be no doubt that the Chinese government would love to get it its hands on the emails of their dissidents and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that they might try. The history of the Chinese Communist government when it comes to any political opposition is one of brutal repression. If the hackers turn out to be government agents or some clever university students doesn’t really matter in the bigger scheme of things. Should the Chinese want to be seen to be addressing Google’s complaint then it won’t be surprising that someone will be arrested and punished.
Commercially Google wants to be in China. China for it’s part does not want a company with the stature of Google leaving China. China wants foreign companies that will be contributing to the growth of the country. If Google and the Chinese government come to some solution do not be completely surprised. A compromise on filtering and perhaps a crack down on some hackers and an uneasy truce.
Google management may want to re-read the legendary Chinese General Sun Tzu in his book The Art of War, especially the part that suggests that you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer – so you can keep an eye on them.
Posted in Google | No Comments »
January 11th, 2010
I saw this blog posting by Jesse Speak at Cubeworks. For me most Web design blogs seem to be written in a different laguage. This one I understood.
Are you planning a website re-design in 2010? If so you’ll want to show what a forward-looking type you are by leaving the Noughties look behind and embracing the 2010s. Here’s a quick roundup of styles that are proving to be more popular than ever as we emerge blinking into the light of the new decade. These are visual styles that are likely to see a growth during 2010. read more here
Posted in Web design | No Comments »
January 5th, 2010
We have launched our new Web site www.a451.co.uk. We used the Web Connect CMS from Pixl8. Web Connect is a ‘little brother’ version of their industrial strength CMS Preside. They have provided lots of ‘Active Objects’ which you can easily add into a container. We are finding straight forward to use, subject to our learning curve a few bugs, and are pleased with the results. As it was built with membership organisations in mind it was very easy to adapt for our client’s reports which are in a password protected area. We are looking forward to adding some new features and playing with the ‘Active Objects’ which we don’t have a use for YET!
Tags: cms
Posted in Web Connect | No Comments »
January 4th, 2010
During the past six months we have seen the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo refining their search engines to return results that take into account the users location and previous search history. What this means is that the results search engines returned to individual users will vary depending on where the users are and what they have previously searched on. Although we have not seen enormous differences in our result as of yet you can safely assume that the direction of search will be to continue to deliver search results tailored to individual users.
Additionally December saw the introduction of real-time search. The major search engines are spidering Twitter and other Social Media sites to return within minutes the latest ‘tweets’. Business will need to take account of this when considering their own use of Social Media and how to increase their on-line visibility. It is an opportunity and can form part of the regular updating of your Web site. This will assist in increasing incoming links especially from Social Media sources and visits to your site which can be monitored on Analytics.
There is no doubt that Search is becoming more involved with many more factors being used by the major search engines. Business users should not despair but use these changes as a opportunity to get a head start on their competitors. Local businesses should benefit from the emphasis on local results especially against the big national companies. That means local companies must ensure they highlight the local nature of their business and get the site listed in free local listings such as Google and Bing Local listings. All companies should be keeping their Web site updated with the concentration on writing compelling content and building links.
Tags: Bing, bing local, google local
Posted in Bing, Google | Comments Off
December 23rd, 2009
Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring visitors to your Web site. However it can be slightly confusing for clients who do not use Analytics regularly to understand the difference in the measurement of visits and visitors in their account. Visits is the number of times users have visited your site. These are also called ’sessions’. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session and will count again. However if a user leaves your site and then returns within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session. You can see that the same user can count more than once if there is gap of 30 minutes or more between them viewing your site.
A Visitor on the other hand is a term used by Google to try and give you a close as possible to definition of the number of actual, distinct people who visit your Web site. There is no way to know if two people are sharing a computer from the Web site’s perspective, but a good visitor tracking system can come close to the actual number.
‘Visitors’ represents the number of unique users that visit your site on a daily basis. Any sessions from the same user on the same day will be aggregated into a single visitor, but may represent two or more separate visits.
In the Absolute Unique Visitor report, all visits from the same user for the entire active date range you have selected will be aggregated so that they will be counted as a single absolute unique visitor, regardless of how many different days they visited your site and how many times they visited your site on each day.
So in summary a Visit is counted once within 30 minutes, a Visitor is counted once within a day and an Absolute Unique Visitor only once within the time frame you select.
Tags: google analytics
Posted in Google | No Comments »