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My initial response to Yahoo Web Analytics’ roll out for Yahoo Merchants is that I am very impressed. The installation process was tightly integrated with the Yahoo store platform, and as simple as pressing the “That was easy!” button. So far it looks like a very good cross between the Omniture platform and Google Analytics. I should be able to perform some advanced metrics with it, and update this entry as I use it more.

In a recession, the first thing in business operations is to cut down on marketing spend because sales revenues will naturally be lower than previous quarters as consumers have less disposable income on hand. On the internet, this translates to cut backs on PPC and display marketing with the hopes of natural search continuing to deliver search traffic to your websites.

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Not limited in a sense of functionality, but that natural search results in a 1024×768 resolution only displays the top two. Be shocked that natural search results take up less than 25% of screen real estate. So basically, there’s a huge diminishing return towards search optimization for Yahoo unless your site can potentially ranked #1 or #2 naturally.

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We all know that SmartFTP is no longer free. Too bad and boo hoo. It is always troublesome to see the end of solid freeware even though it was a lot of bloatware for a simple FTP process. Well, the fact that the SmartFTP client is no longer free only means you should be using a better alternative. Just recently I have discovered FireFTP integrated into the FireFox browser and loving it ever since. Thanks SmartFTP for pushing all your users away.

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While Google Analytics, Omniture WebCatalyst and other established forms of web analytics are napping, there are new breads of analytics being brewed under the radar to cater more specifically for web marketers who are in need of competitive analysis and overall site visibility analysis. All forms of web analytics are powerful when utilized properly, but what struck me with the wow factor is that this new web analytics tool was almost everything I would ask for as a search marketer simply from the preview session. When this tool is ready to be released into the public, there will be many interested parties that will openly want to hedge their bets with them.

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Google Trends joins the ranks of Alexa in providing competitive analytics for measuring a website’s traffic. Google Trends for Websites. This is surprisingly accurate since all the data comes from and install base of general users in the millions. Alexa toolbar used to be a good standard in measuring website traffic until the install base of tech users overtook the general population user base. This led to large inaccuracies reported by the Alexa tool bar and ranks.

Continue reading ‘Google Trends vs Alexa vs Compete’

Google Adwords has been written up for its price fixing practices on SEOBook by Arron Wall. You can read the article in its entirety at SEOBook. Anyone who have done extensive PPC advertising tend to agree with the unfair practices at Google that deal with arbitrary price floors, preferential pricing, and special ad units. But then again, Google is a publicly trade company that is for profit, and these may be seen as unfair price fixing practices, it meets about every profit motive of a monopoly in the internet advertising space.

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Notice how Google news carries no AdWords advertising? Because advertisers would be pissed off if news readers were clicking on their AdWords with no intention of buying products. Remember the success of AdWords relies on the high levels of successful conversions on every click.

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Does a PDF pass pagerank from the embedded links? The answer is not discussed in the wide open. However, if you were to search for PDF pagerank, and every pdf file returned in the search results are assigned pagerank values by Google. The Standford PDF paper has a pagerank of 8 while the actual host has a pagerank of 7. It may be safe to assume that popular white papers carry a lot of linkage authority. There are a couple of seo websites that have built their reputation on these types of white papers even if they are a little dated.

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Yes, it is very possible to beat Wikipedia on Google. For long lengths of time the Wikipedia entry that I had created for a particular keyword dominated the search engines, and my website has finally regained a higher position than the Wikipedia entry. May be Google is pulling the plug on driving so much search traffic to Wikipedia because certain search terms are not necessarily to the user’s best interest when they see Wikipedia every time they perform a search on Google. There’s a lot more useful information outside of Wikipedia.

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