Back on May 25th, Google released a browser add-on that stops (prevents) a users data from being sent from their computer when they visit a website that uses Google Analytics tracking. This add-on works for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google’s own browser – Chrome.
Of course, Google wants to be in the forefront of user privacy and at the same time providing website owners with more data so they can spend more promotional money with Google such as on Google AdWords or enterprise versions of some of their other “products”.
Remember the pop-up window? It wasn’t too long before enough people complained and browsers started blocking pop-ups by default and of course many greedy or unethical website owners were using the pop-ups for evil as well.
Now, I am sure that many web surfers don’t know about this Google Analytics blocking add-on at this time, so not much to worry about today, but what it brings to my mind is that of what would happen if it became a default standard for browsers (or some advanced virus protection software) to block Google Analytics, Omniture, or any of the other common Analytics tracking programs, in the name of improving user privacy? What about if enough of a percentage, unknown to you choose this down the road, how reliable will your data be?
Google announced their Gmail Priority Inbox feature today which will basically separate (re: filter) your email into 3 different categories as they arrive, essentially dividing up those emails into:
- Important and unread
- Starred
- Everything else
According to their blog post Email overload? Try Priority Inbox over at The Official Gmail Blog, Gmail will use a variety of signals to predict which email messages are important and over time using your email habits determine which “box” each arriving email should go into.
If you are an email marketer, will your emails end up in the Important and Unread “box”, my guess this early on is “probably not” if the recipient’s habits don’t have them opening your emails frequently or responding back. They even make a reference to it (bacn) in their post. Who knows for sure at this point, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out over time.
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Google is A/B Testing Their Business Services Page
By · CommentsThis week I noticed Google has been A/B testing their Business Services page. I always love to see tests that other companies are doing.
Google actually has 3 test pages going up against their control. The major problem I see as a current user of the existing page to log into my accounts is that there is no link to Google Analytics from the test pages (yes I know I could go direct, but I go this route out of habit). But as we all know, the proof is in the data of what works best for the goals they are going after.
Click on the thumbnails to see the full size pages and let me know your thoughts.
…continue reading Google is A/B Testing Their Business Services Page
Bing Announces Release of Updated Bing Webmaster Tools
By · CommentsBing announced Wednesday the release of their updated Bing Webmaster Tools. According to a recent blog post by Bing titled A New Beginning: Bing Webmaster Tools, they reached out to webmaster and SEO communities for ideas and suggestions on how they could improve their Webmaster Tools. They started over and rebuilt Bing Webmaster Tools from the ground up providing webmasters with more transparency, more control, and more information to aid in optimizing sites for Bing.
They focused on 3 areas in the redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools to help you optimize your websites for Bing:
- Crawl – to provide you with more information on crawl issues (redirects, exclusions, etc.)
- Index – browse the Bing index to verify which directories & pages have been indexed
- Traffic – ability to analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data
Bing Webmaster Tools is still not as robust as Google Webmaster Tools in the information it provides, but it is a step in the right direction. I look forward to additional features they have in the works in the coming months.
Testing Video Engagement Using Google Website Optimizer
By · CommentsUsing Minimum Viewing Time as a A/B Test Conversion Goal
Sample Scenario:
- You want to add a page with a video or demo to your web site.
- You believe that it is important for visitors to view as much as possible of the video.
- You have 2 videos to test against each other, and your test goal is to determine which one of your videos keeps more visitors watching (engaged) for at least a certain period of time and plan to keep the one that engages viewers more than the other.
In this scenario, since your test goal is to determine which video users are more engaged in watching for at least a certain period of time you will therefore want a conversion to trigger and to be recorded in GWO after that set period of predetermined minimum viewing time.
Back to the Scenario:
…continue reading Testing Video Engagement Using Google Website Optimizer
