Years ago MSN stopped displaying Google AdWords ads in favor of their own PPC advertising platform, MSN Adcenter. So why, after all this time have they begun to display AdWords ads again?

On Tuesday Jon Henshaw blogged an interesting find: A search for the phrase “colorations paint” brought up the standard MSN Adcenter ads at the top, a typical #1 & #2 listing for DiscountSchoolSupply, and a rather interesting third and fourth result. Sitting at #3 for this phrase appears to be Google. The URL indexed a link generated for DiscountSchoolSupply’s Google AdWords account! Read more…

An interesting article posted last week at Bloomberg, noted that China can’t spell Google, and that this may be playing a role in Google playing second fiddle to Chinese search giant Baidu.

“Internet addresses in China are based on the Hanyu Pinyin system that translates Chinese characters into roman letters. Sounds such as “gle” don’t exist.”

“G-O-O-G-L-E is not a normal Chinese spelling and people don’t pronounce it right,” Kai-fu Lee, Google’s president for Greater China, said in a Nov. 30 interview in Beijing. “Most people call us `go go.’”

As a result Google acquired the ‘G.cn’ domain to help users who misspell Google’s name.

China holds the internet’s second largest market with 162 million users, and Google only sees approximately 30% of this market, compared to Baidu with 61%. Credit Suisse Group estimated that in 2006 only 1 percent of Google’s revenue was generated in China.

In this article I am going to explain logfiles and their importance in website analytics from my perspective as a ClickTracks user. Before I begin, however, I want you to know that although I offer essential analytic consulting, I am a certified ClickTracks Analytics Professional and have dabbled in books on analytics, I don’t consider myself to be an analytics expert. In fact, I constantly find myself humbled by how much more there is to know. That said, I do know more than the average site owner and I hope that this article can shine a little light on this often confusing subject and save you some future headaches.

As many of you may know I am a huge fan of the logfile version of ClickTracks Professional, a website analytics package that I find indispensable for myself and my clientele. ClickTracks can do a lot to determine what is or is not working on a website; much more than expected in most cases. The one thing, however, that ClickTracks or any other logfile-based analytics tool cannot do is interpret information in your logfiles if it is not recorded. Unfortunately this is a common occurrence and many site owners have no idea that their hosting company is not saving information that could help them now or later when they find they need it.

The reality is that over ninety percent of the hosting companies I have dealt with have not been saving the vital data that a higher level analytics program needs; to work at peak performance if at all. In this posting I will provide an overview on this issue so you have enough information to approach your hosting company about making the required updates to their systems. If you are unsure you can even refer them to this article and/or the set of questions and details I provided below.

What is a Logfile?
First, let me explain the very basic idea of what a logfile is and how one is created.

Whenever you visit a website your browser requests information from the server hosting the website. This request is passed onto the server and in turn the server delivers the information requested by your browser. Whenever this exchange takes place your server saves the request along with a host of information about the requesting browser such as:

• the internet address (loosely connected to location) known as the IP
• browser type (Internet Explorer or Firefox or..)
• the screen resolution of the browser used
• time and date of the request
• the page requested for viewing
• the website the visitor came from (known as a Referrer)
• if applicable, the keyword(s) that were used to find your website on a search engine
• etc.

Once this data is collected it is saved on the server in a logfile for later use and over time it is often overwritten with new data so the files do not get too large; they bulk up very quickly especially on high-traffic websites.

How Can Logfiles Help Improve Your Website?
Now that you know what data is collected it is time to explain, in general terms, how this data can be used to help your website. There is a wide variety of information that can be gleaned from a complete logfile such as:

• How long visitors stay at your website or on a particular page.
• What pages they visited.
• Where visitors are viewing your website from geographically.
• What keywords were used to visit your website and which search engines were driving the highest volume and/or quality traffic.
• Which pages had the highest or least traffic.
• The average time a visitor stays at your website: often a great indication of the ‘stickiness’ of your website.
• You can determine the effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaign by tracking visitors specifically delivered from the campaign.
• Identify potential pay-per-click fraud using tools like ClickTracks Professional that has a click fraud reporting tool.
• and much more…

So What’s the Issue?
Many hosting company’s are smart enough to include a basic web analytics program with every account. These programs are decent for anyone who wants to simply find out the traffic to their website and a myriad of other basic stats. However, there is often a pitfall to these basic programs. You see in order to save on computer performance the hosting company usually sets their servers to collect only the minimal data these basic systems require. As a result, more complex logfile-based analytics programs may find themselves starved of the data they need to operate fully. This is where my clients have found themselves before; they have sub-par logfiles and are forced to try and convince their hosting company to change their data collection methods to meet more advanced standards.

If you have no interest in website analytics you may find this whole scenario to be a non-issue. I completely understand, however, put yourself a year or even a month down the road when your website is taking off and you need to know more about the visitors to your website. You just might find yourself in this same frustrating scenario and it will seem absolutely insane how hard you have to push to get this data properly collected. Unfortunately, unless you are leasing your own private (dedicated) server from the hosting company they tend to set up their shared servers with only the basic needs of the majority in mind. As a result, the only way to force change is if more customers consider it a basic need – thus the reason for this article. Help me affect change so that you save yourself a headache in the future!

How to Be Sure Your Server is Collecting the Right Information
Most of you cannot check your logfiles for completeness with an analytics program so you will have to trust your server administrators to do their due diligence based on the following question.

Note: If you like you can just copy and paste the following question (noted in red) and send it to your hosting company support staff:

Hello,

I would like to make sure my website’s logfiles have the necessary information to run a higher end web analytics program. Is your server set up to collect the data on my website? I need this data to properly analyze the traffic on my website.

• Date and Time
• Client IP Address
• HTTP Method
• Requested file and Query string
• User Agent
• Referrer
• Status code
• Cookie (preferable, but not required)

If you are unsure of the answer or you need to set this up then please review the settings that need to be enabled on Apache servers or Microsoft Internet Information Servers; these pages include instructions if you need them.

Sincerely,
<>

My Hosting Company Disregarded This as Nonsense
I fully expect some will and that is because many website owners still care little or nothing about web site statistics so they have not even used the basic data to its fullest yet – and hosting company’s are aware of this. In fact, a good friend who owns a hosting company himself guessed around 95% of his website clients never even look at their stats. This is all true, however, does that mean that important data should not be collected for those who do want to delve deeper into analytics? I don’t believe so and the changes you are requesting will only increase the size of the logfiles for your website a small amount. Unless of course you don’t even have logfiles which is enough for me to recommend you take your services elsewhere.

Why Not Use Google Analytics Instead?
Google Analytics is an awesome solution for many small businesses. It does not require logfiles and it takes a marginal amount of work to begin acquiring proper data. In fact, I think it is a great tool for the majority of businesses that want to wade into a mid range analytics solution providing you are comfortable with Google having access to your stats. That said, there is one MAJOR flaw in using Google Analytics… it does not have reliable click fraud reporting. You see many of my clients use ClickTracks to monitor their pay per click campaign for click fraud which is not something I would ever trust Google to police itself on. That does not mean I do not use Google Analytics. In fact, whenever possible I use both ClickTracks and Google Analytics in tandem for redundancy especially when certain capabilities such as cookie tracking are not available from a hosting provider – Google includes cookies by default.

In Summary
Many website owners have no idea what they will or will not need in the future to properly administrate their online marketing campaigns. This article discusses a simple adjustment to the accumulation of website logfiles that I strongly believe all competent hosting companies should implement in order to provide scalability for their clientele. The adjustment will provide the additional information that a competent analytics solution will need to provide accurate statistics.

If you have ever used Facebook then this video by the geniuses over at Train of Thought (a comedy sketch group) will surely give you a chuckle:

Today I have been busy polishing off a feature article for tomorrow’s SEO newsletter but in the midst of that I came across a few articles and posts that caught my eye:

• My Twitter friend and social networker extroardinaire Tamar Weinberg wrote a great article that shows which social media networks she networks across different social sites:
  “How Do You Network On Social Sites?“
• ResourceShelf has links to recently posted research papers by Google employees. These papers can be gems for foretelling the future of search: Recently Posted Research Papers and Biblographic Info by Googlers. Special thanks to Barry Schwartz and his helpful Tweet that brought me to this info.
• The unofficial Facebook blog (“AF”) discusses the incredible potential of social shopping heralded by Facebook’s recent Beta test of a payment system. You will be hearing a LOT more about this very soon.
• Did you know that Democrats “participate more fully in social technologies”? This is just one of the interesting nuggets found in this fascinating post by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research: Social Profiles of Political Candidates. The posting has excellent information sourced from a Forrester research document.

The issues surrounding online privacy have been a hot topic on the web lately, and Ask.com has taken the concern a step further with the introduction of AskEraser.

Ask announced the launch on Tuesday in their official Blog. This new feature added to the Ask site provides control for the searcher over how their search activity data is handled. At any time users have the ability to turn on the service which will result in their search data being removed off the Ask servers within a number of hours. Information removed from their servers will include search terms, clicks, IP addresses, and any user or session IDs.

Using AskEraser could not be any simpler. When visiting Ask.com you will see an “AskEraser” link at the top right corner. Clicking this link will bring up a window explaining the service and provide you with a button to turn it on. Once on, the link at the top right will expand to offer you an on / off toggle.

AskEraser is all part of the move to expand the end user’s privacy. While it may be a smart move for Google to follow suit, I suspect this feature is one they may not move towards.

In an effort to compete with Google Maps and Google Earth, and to capture the traffic of one of the UK’s most visited websites, Microsoft has purchased online mapping service Multimap for an undisclosed sum.

According to a press release issued by Multimap on Dec 12, “Multimap will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft as part of the Visual Earth and Search teams in the Online Services Group.”

“The addition of Multimap enhances Microsoft’s position as a leading provider of mapping and location platform services,” said Sharon Baylay, general manager of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand our platform business beyond the U.K. and globally. We are thrilled to welcome Multimap onboard.”

Multimap is among of the UK’s top 100 tech companies, and is one of the leading online mapping services. Their services include street-level maps, road maps, door-to-door travel directions, aerial photos, and links to location information and services.

My original article on Wikipedia’s history of controversial editing was labelled “Is Wikipedia Corrupt?” At the time the title was meant to only raise awareness, however, coincidentally since that article premiered the popular online encyclopedia has been thrashed by mainstream media for some highly suspect behaviour.

Case-in-point, the Register published an article noting how Wikipedia outright banned over 1000 homes in Traverse Mountain, Utah, and an entire company (Overstock.com) in an effort to quash a Mr. Judd Bagley who had recently stated on his own blog that Wikipedia editors were “using their powers to hijack reality.” The Register article (which I sourced that quote from) goes into 5 detailed pages of description on how this went down and I must say, I was very unimpressed with Wikipedia by the end of it all. For more information and background on this case please give it a read – it is well worth it. Read more…

On the 6th of December at Pubcon Las Vegas I was fortunate enough to speak with Karla and Lacy of PRWeb.com; two wonderful ladies who were running PRWeb’s exhibit booth. After a short discussion I decided it was time to put Karla and Lacy in the spotlight. You see I have used PRWeb many times in the past and I have always been impressed by its excellent press release promotion network. PRWeb is the perfect vehicle to get the word out on your new products/services and the circulation of your press release can provide valuable incoming links to your website.

According to a press release issued Tuesday morning, metasearch has signed a deal to extend its multi-year agreement with Yahoo, allowing them to continue displaying Yahoo text based advertising (Yahoo Search Marketing) and their organic web search results.

“Yahoo!’s unique partnership with InfoSpace provides an important opportunity for us to help connect advertisers with online audiences that use metasearch for their searching needs,” said Dean Stackel, Senior Vice President Business Development for Corporate Partnerships. “This partnership is a key component of our broader strategy to enable advertisers to efficiently reach highly targeted – and therefore highly valuable – categories of Internet users.”

Infospace includes a number of branded sites including Dogpile, WebCrawler, and WebFetch. The exact terms of the agreement were not noted in the press release.