Slashdot humor:

“From the Download.com article: “It slows down your browsing. It makes some Web sites inaccessible for no discernible reason. It doesn’t even offer you any xiao long bao or pu’er tea for your troubles. But if you want to know what life behind the Great Firewall of China is like, then the Firefox plug-in China Channel is the cheapest and fastest way to experience using the Internet in China without actually being there.”

Okay, so it’s some plugin that uses a China IP proxy on download.com, humorous, but I recall you could get around it with *shudders* AOL five years ago…

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The announcement of Google Analytics’s new features provided for free will radically shake up the web analytics field for any agency seriously considering or working in the online advertising arena. In my opinion, what used to be a very niche and expensive area will be suddenly available at a far lower cost and to a far larger amount of people leading to a kind of golden age in web data analysis.

The older data analysis through log servers or bulky web analytics packages force companies to spend thousands or millions of dollars every year that often required a programming level of skill such as Sql (sp?) or at the least RegEx (something I had to learn originally for Google Analytics). Google Analytics new features removes the need for such a skill level and brings the ability to provide detailed analyses to a larger amount of people who can quickly and effectively test many kinds of problems, solutions, or findings.

Yes, there will still be a need for the higher level of deep data analysis, but in terms of needing to run an online marketing campaign as efficiently and profitably as possible, Google has opened the floodgates to make this a reality without having to either have a programmer do everything for you or sit and wait on the incredibly slow bulky analytics packages.

I can now run analyses across multiple accounts by the same client in an effort to see if there is an on-going relationship between multiple online marketing channels without having to download the data and do a large amount of data merging with data crunching. In need of an ad hoc report or a hopefully brilliant idea came to mind to test? Google Analytics allows the ability to quickly test the idea without having to get someone else to run it for you or to wait on the data to be collected. The speed at which web analytics data can be analyzed has been reduced dramatically, which in turn should make data analysis as interesting as someone doing analysis within Microsoft Excel. In fact, if you know how to do custom filters in Microsoft Excel, you will find the advanced segmentation in Google Analytics very familiar.

All this analysis brings higher level analysis down to a simpler level—those that quickly jump on this wagon of web data analysis will be the first out of the gate—particularly if a culture is set up—and will win the day in the web’s hyper-competitive environment.

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Word has already spread around about the upcoming seven new features for Google Analytics that is sending the web analytics and online advertising world abuzz. The seven new features to be added are:

1. User Interface refresh for easier dashboard control
2. AdSense integration into GA
3. Advanced visualizations: Motion Charts in five dimensions
4. Custom reports that can cut across multiple accounts
5. Advanced segmentation for simpler and deeper data analysis
6. The Google Analytics API for large data pulls
7. Automatic importing of AdWords cost data into Urchin

Rather than rehash each aspect, I will consolidate the best around the web about what Google has produced with these remarkable new features below:

User Interface Refresh:

[The] tabular layout of accounts is new, and very helpful. If you’re an agency, or a large company, you probably have access to multiple GA accounts. This layout makes it easy to identify performance at the account level.

Key to the new layout is the addition of metrics. Available metrics in are:

• Visits
• Time on Site
• Bounce Rate
• Completed Goals

One column actually does a date comparison. Choose one of the above metrics using the drop down at the top of the column and a simple date range using the buttons at the top right corner of the screen to determine how said metric has changed over the past day, week, month or year.

AdSense Integration (in private beta):

More detailed reports and opportunities to enhance performance and continue with on-going optimization.

Motion Charts:

Part-cool, part-crazy, this amazing tool allows you to see data in 5 dimensions! Data can now be visually displayed on the traditional X and Y axes but there’s also additional time, color, and size dimensions! The Motion chart is extremely useful for spotting peaks and valleys in data and identifying areas which should be analyzed deeper. While it comes with a slight learning curve or adjustment to get yourself familiar with the interface and how to best use the 5 dimensions, there’s no other tool that will give you this type of insight.

Custom Reports:

Many of us would like to create their own reports with their own key metrics and don’t want to be limited to the default reports in GA. This feature is quite user-friendly and allows you to drag-and-drop to create all kinds of reports!

Advanced Segmentation:

Advanced segmentation is a new feature in Google Analytics that lets you segment all data in a profile. […] We now have an incredibly powerful segmentation tool that we can use to identify which segments of our traffic are performing and which are not. This leads to more analysis on the under performing segments and (hopefully) increased site performance.

Google Analytics API (in private beta):

According to Google, the API is in private beta. […] Once the API is rolled out, expect some very creative custom reporting and very useful third-party data integration.

Automatic Adwords Integration with Urchin:

No need to have to rely on another team member or client to bring all the data together; now it should be integrated automatically.

If you’re looking for tips or ideas, I would normally provide that here, but will instead strongly suggest you literally read each and every line over at Avinash’s analytics blog to jumpstart the creative juices. The downside is that I’m going to have to redo a lot of my setups now that I’ve put a lot of time and energy into, but at least the advanced segmentation is retroactive!

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Want this ability:

This would make my job more interesting:

The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG…

Just remember to stay sober, ok?

Mind-writing, would make a lot of lives easier when it comes to trying to write out the ideas or phrases in my head when I try to [poorly] blog.

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On my daily or so read of Matt Cutts, he tries to note what hidden text would equate to on television:

Now, I understand what he is trying to get at (although I believe having a millisecond subliminal ad would have been a better comparison), but I believe the best comparison would be invisible ink that you can write on a newspaper for coded messages. TV does not have the ability for this (although you could put in backward speeches, but that’s another thing entirely).

I’m more interested in the concept of “visible, but hidden” text.

Quoting a long ago Matt Cutts’s post:

If you’re going to hide text, doing “#EEEEEE” instead of solid white isn’t really an improvement. In fact, it can look worse, as if you’re trying to choose a text color that won’t be exactly the same as the background color, but still won’t be noticed.

Now, keyword spamming is a violation of Google’s TOS and I have no disagreement there, but the nearly hidden text is a legit and actual improvement. But, for fun’s sake let’s play a game of what you’re trying to hide in a sea of other things based on it not really being an improvement:

• Privacy statements and EULAs: They’re long, visible, but conveniently placed at the bottom of the page usually in smaller font that leads to a page filled with tons and tons of legalese text. These are not usually for people to read and understand (it took a month for one person to find a $1,000 prize for actually reading a EULA hidden within a test EULA).
• Text between images (aka ‘captions’): Helpful, but if you’re quickly browsing through tons of images, text quickly gets ‘hidden’ from users.
• Text advertisements within long articles: Ever read an article, following links to check their sources, and click on an advertisement (usually Google’s) by mistake?
• Scrolling text: Text shows up, then disappears, then shows up, and then disappears. Kinda annoying.

The point? There are legitimate uses for the variety of ways to show text, whether it’s subtle colors for better design, legal issues of privacy and EULAs, explanations for a family vacation, relevant text ads, and breaking news. The intent of why you display information is more important than the how (or at least should be).

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The recent beta launch of Yahoo’s Web Analytics made me think on my preference of Analytics programs for SEO and I thought I would provide my opinion in this matter on the following Analytics packages below. Keep in mind that I am only focusing on Google Analytics and Omniture since they are diametrically different and provide good examples of what to look for in an Analytics package for SEO. I am also not going to comment at this point on Microsoft’s since it is still too early to tell and as for Yahoo’s… well, let’s just say I want to wait awhile longer when Yahoo’s ability as a company to stay afloat is a little more solid.

Omniture and SEO:

Omniture as a web analytics package is one of the top-notch and most expensive out there providing highly detailed and great data for numerous marketing channels. That said, I am looking specifically for SEO, and sadly I have yet to see anyone with good SEO Analytics in Omniture.

Why is this? Essentially it seems that when it comes to organic search and web analytics, few companies take the time and effort to keep natural search in mind and as such, little data is available.

So what can you get for SEO and Omniture? Keyword level data; that’s about it. You can get some detailed level of data such as products via drilling down, but it is very cumbersome and time-inefficient to get all the data you need on a monthly basis. The nice part though is you can see what page you ranked for on Google or other search engines by that keyword, but it’s not as helpful as say position or very easy to download.

What’s missing? Well, the main problem is that Omniture often puts organic and paid together as “search” so that you cannot tell what area people are coming in from! It has been the greatest frustration of mine when working with Omniture. Additionally, due to the way that Omniture is set up, it is not an easy fix–you have to go back to the Omniture people and request the change which takes time and money. This combination of non-paid and paid search means that I cannot tell what keywords people use to hit specific landing pages, only that they came in through a set of keywords.

(UPDATE 10/13/2008: Additionally, per the comments by Tiffany, you can request Omniture’s SearchCenter and get separated data that way.)

Furthermore, when you’re running a content-rich site, once again, the data that is often provided is limited to searches, revenue, transactions, etc., but not bounce rates or time on site. Therefore if I want to establish which pages are providing solid pageviews (eg: people who actually read something and not just hit a page and bounce), Omniture is a no-go.

I do want to make sure that those who are deciding between the web analytics understand one thing: It’s not that Omniture does not have these abilities, it’s that they are not standard! It means you have to prepare in advance what is going to be useful for all channels (or in this case, SEO) and be sure to note those things to the Omniture folks.

Google Analytics and SEO:

Google Analytics is on the complete opposite end providing a free web analytics that is more geared the search marketing agencies rather than to corporations like Omniture. This means the target audiences are quite different mainly as Google Analytics helps smaller companies with highly useful web analytics on the cheap with somewhat more limited options overall. That said, this web analytics program is a bonanza for SEO in my opinion.

Many things come standard within Google Analytics such as keyword level data for non-paid search and the ability to drill by keyword level and then set it to non-paid search, providing myself as a Search Strategist far more data than is available compared to Omniture’s basic settings. Furthermore, Google Analytics provides the ability to create filtered profiles so I can have a profile that will only include organic searches! This essentially means I can now have data such as time of day of visit, geographic visits, browser size, and safely know that everything in that profile is completely organic.

What Google Analytics makes up for basic level SEO analysis, it loses in terms of really far reaching analysis. Google Analytics unfortunately will not provide for SEO what page or position a keyword visit came in on (oh how I wish for this) nor tell me where the returning organic visit first came in on (eg: did they originally came in through email, then left and came back in through organic search).

My preference is strongly towards Google Analytics, but a very strong note of caution. Keep in mind that you are using a Google product–that means you are handing over a lot of potentially competitive data to Google and even your competitors (think Google Trends) and if you ever run decide to afowl of Google, there’s a lot of data available for Google to go through to prove its case.

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Daniel Kwan finds a forum about expats complaining how 10k RMB per month just wasn’t enough to live on comfortably and so he decides to go through his expenses finding that he estimates he spends around 5k RMB per month for necessities, dinner with friends after work, weekend strolls, bars & clubs, website ownership, and other stuff.

Sounds reasonable if you try to live somewhat frugally, but here’s the important thing he subtly notes:

Necessities

Rent + utilities: 0
Mobile phone service: 100 RMB/month
Groceries: 70 RMB/week
Dinner: 20 RMB/day average
Beverages: 4 RMB/day average
Haircut: 40 RMB/mo (Upper-body massage included!)
Subtotal: 1123 RMB per month

Zero RMB for rent + utilities?! Lucky man! That’s quite a savings for expats who like to live with the AC or Heater on while surfing the web, having a hot shower, watching TV, and other electrical uses.

Still, I’ll agree with him (even if he does not say it directly) that the complaints of 10k/month is not enough is bogus. Many of the expats want to live like kings in Shanghai and feel that the 10k (roughly $1500) will not cut it when you want to continually go to places like Xintiandi or Hengshan Road for foreign food.

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The perfect picture between a cat-lover and a proud nerd:

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I’m an avid computer gamer and will often not be blogging due to that and currently this goes to playing Spore. I have enjoyed creating creatures and buildings such as the ones below:

Feel free to check out my micahfk Spore page and follow my micahfk Spore creation RSS feed through it as well.

I have also put the Spore widget on the bottom right side of the page as well of my creations too.

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This election cycle has brought about a number of websites providing some rather cool interactive electoral maps to engage people and keep them coming back to their respective sites. As a fan of politics (and obviously the web) myself, below are some sites I have come across with the positives and negatives associated with them:

270towin (my presidential predictions were based off of this previously):

• Positives: Easy to quickly change states from red to blue to toss-up, can split Maine and Nebraska electoral votes, shows the number of winning combinations, probabilities of who can win, a long history of past elections, and a 2008 electoral simulator
• Negatives: The map looks too childish and only does presidential level
• Things to improve: The simulator should not be done randomly, but rather by how the polls close (eg: East Coast to West Coast). If they really wanted to impress people, they could do fake videos for each state acting like the media does by calling it throughout the night depending on how you choose the states (or based on polling data) as this would certainly keep people coming back.

RealClearPolitics:

• Positives: Solid map (looks professional), shows the electoral spread over time, provides an easy to see polling changes, and does Congressional level
• Negatives: No Maine and Nebraska split ability and does not explain how they calculate their results leading to charges of them being biased towards the Republicans (and even though the map still shows a very strong possibility of Obama winning, their testimonials pretty much come from right-wing sites or people)
• Things to improve: Multiple kinds of maps to show electoral power of states rather than just their regular size to understand the importance of how many votes a state actually has.

Economist:

• Positives: Innovative to have the world vote through the similarity of the US electoral college for the world, gives backgrounds on each candidate with latest news, and can quickly go from country to country to see information on them
• Negatives: The number of electoral votes for the US is incorrect (they have it at 432 instead of 538), no explanation on the number of online votes needed to show votes for either candidate, and cannot click on French Guinea as you can with Greenland
• Things to improve: Same idea of showing electoral power of states, could make it more interactive by running it as a future world-wide vote for leader of the whole world rather than for the US president.

Update (5:25PM):

FiveThirtyEight is another one that’s good for seeing polling predictions based on some statistical analyses, but not necessarily for people to interact with.

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