Calling all online marketers on deck! There are new spiders crawling all over your adwords. Interesting article on Goolge’s new bots and how they affect Quality Scores on Adwords.

Content from Axandra.com-

“Facts of the week: Google uses a new spider to index web pages

Google is using a new crawler software program for their AdWords advertising system that automatically spiders and analyzes the content of advertising landing pages. The name of the new crawler is AdsBot-Google. If you see such an entry in your web logs then your web site been visited by the new bot.

What does this mean to your AdWords ads?

Google tries to determine the quality of the ad landing pages with the new bot. The content of the landing page will be used for the Quality Score that Google assigns to your ads.

Google uses the Quality Score and the amount you are willing to pay to determine the position of your ads. Ads with a high quality score can rank higher even if you pay less than others for the ad.

If you don’t allow Google’s new spider to index your web pages, then your AdWords quality score will go down. Google has an official statement on its AdWords pages:

“While you can exclude your site from review, this will provide us with little information about your landing page’s quality and relevance. Therefore, if you restrict AdWords from visiting your landing pages, you will experience a drop in Quality Scores for your related keywords.

(This will cause higher minimum bid requirements for any landing page for which you’ve restricted access.)”

What does this mean to your organic search engine rankings?

If you use cloaking on your web site and if you advertise your web site on Google AdWords then Google now has another way to find out that you’re cloaking.

Serving different pages to different Google spiders can get your web site in trouble. We explained this in a previous issue of our newsletter.

Your landing pages should be relevant to the search term that you target in your AdWords ads. If you’re not sure how you can optimize your Google AdWords ads, our AdWords eBook might help you.

Your landing pages should be related to your ads and they should convince your web site visitors to buy something on your web site. Good landing pages work with PPC ads as well as with organic search engine listings.”

This info was long awaited and now it is finally here…Thanks Axandra.com
Special thanks for Black Jack Vane for providing this blog!!!

The main problem of an inadequate onsite search tool is online business don’t understand how important this function is. What they are miss out of by not measuring onsite search is the information they can find out about the visitor. How? One on one communication with the visitor and the website.

Why do visitors use onsite search? There are several reasons why a visitor may decide to use the search funciton on a site. Below are a two reasons why visitors used onsite search- navigating the site was too complicated to find relevant information or the visitor found interesting content and wanted to engage even further with the website by searching for more related information. There are more possible reasons why visitors used onsite search. Hurol Inan is a search analytic expert. His site ofters many interesting information on the subject. Check it out but wait a few minutes. I still got a little gas left in this rant.

The key fact of measuring an onsite search engine is the chance to find out if your speaking the same language as your visitors. You can spread the information gathered from an search analysis to your marketing and content teams. Design and usability staff can also used the information. They can learn how to better communicate with their customers.
Bottomline, webmangers stop under estimating onsite search engines by not measuring performance. If you are, you are more likely missing out on very valuable information that has an impact on the company’s bottomline.

Google is known for search but that was yesterday and today, and in all likelihood, still in the future. Will Google only be known for search tomorrow? No, no, no, uhh, no.

Google has already been steadily reaching out it arms and grabbing onto new territory. Some of the areas that Google has ventured into are video, mobile solutions, SMS, Google Earth, blog, and many other services. If you want to learn more about Goggle˘‚¬„˘s services, click over there—-Google Services.

Now this blog isn’t about what Google is doing now, it’s about what it might be doing next with its’˘‚¬¦.. web analytics tool.

Why did they give for free? They have their “official” reasons why but I think there˘‚¬„˘s more. I want to look through the two way mirror. You know, underneath the surface, like seeing the iceberg not just above the ocean waterline, but below line where the impressive stuff is.

Theory 1: Some people I have spoken with believe Google may or has been considering selling off the data they are collecting from their web analytical tools to research groups, for example Jupiter Research or Forrester. Why and for what?

Uhh, make sense doesn’t it? With Google˘‚¬„˘s information capital they have access to literally any type of online industry out there that you can think of. That type of information is like finding the newest form of energy that will power the Earth’s consumer for the next millennium. All they have to do is sell the raw data to research firms and let them manufacture a finish product.

Theory 2: This one comes back to the night I mentioned at the beginning of this post. There are many ideas about how a search engine ranks a webpage. People keep trying to figure-out ways, both ethical and unethical, to crack, cheat, or trick the secret search algorithms in order to improve their ranking which will help improve their website conversion rate. Like other search engines, Google has to keep 3 steps in front of the crowd. One way I think the Google Team will keep its lead is by using their web analytics tool. In order to find the best and most relevant content pages for a search phrase, they might start looking at average time per page as one KPI. Bounce rate per page could be another indicator that could be factored into search algorithms. In a nutshell, Google has a wealth of new information capital that they can spend by testing for future search algorithms. Hey, I would do it.

Ummmmm, come to think of it˘‚¬¦what else could Google do with their web analytics tool? Do you have any ideas? Share with us, mate!

]]> http://www.blackbeak.com/2006/04/03/google-analytics-looking-through-the-two-way-mirror/feed/ 0 http://www.blackbeak.com/2006/03/30/raise-the-flag-i-smell-booty/ http://www.blackbeak.com/2006/03/30/raise-the-flag-i-smell-booty/#comments Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:24:38 +0000 Longhair Kidd Hank http://blackbeak.conversionchronicles.com/2006/03/30/raise-the-flag-i-smell-booty/ Raise the Flag! The Blackbeak smells booty!

Part of what will make or break your online business is how well you are able to separate your website identity from your competition. Differentiate or die is a slogan we yell on the Blackbeak.

Our beloved Captain Blackbeak is our symbol and as time passes over the web pages of change, our pursuit of digging up hidden treasures that lead to improving web conversion rates, shall be the backbone of what our symbol stands for.

Excuse me, but I˘‚¬„˘ve wash down some bumboo again into my belly chamber and I get a little emotional you know when I speak about the Blackbeak˘‚¬¦

What am trying to get at, listen up for a minute, is, if you are not able to make yourself stand out in a group, your visitors are going to make you walk the plank!

One way of avoiding the sharks is by designing a quality logo for your website. Paul Rand˘‚¬„˘s article ˘‚¬Ĺ“Logos, Flags, and Escutcheons,˘‚¬ť found in Graphic Design Forum, offers sound guidance for those of you considering on a new or redesigned logo. Here a quick read of what the article talks about.

˘‚¬Ĺ“Here’s what a logo is and does:

A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon.
A logo doesn’t sell (directly), it identifies.
A logo is rarely a description of a business.
A logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.
A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it means is more important that what it looks like.˘‚¬ť

In the end, having a well designed logo can help your website improve its conversion rate by what the logo can symbolize not only for you and your website but more importantly for your visitors.

Doctor, we need some remedies for fixing web usability. We’ve learned the basics in web usability but what more can we fix? Lucky for us, the Doctor was able to provide some insightful tips in an online video interview as part of the Great Minds in Development series by DevSource.

In the interview, the Dr. Nielsen discussed the importance of user testing, choosing between conducting expensive testing or cheap testing, whether to stay conservative or go with the windy trends of website design, why PDF is good for printing not for reading online, and the paradox of internal website search engines. He also gave good and bad examples of serveral big name webites regarding design and usability.

In the end, why does web usability matter? Check your web conversion rate before and after you’ve done testing and modifying to your website and you’ll have your answer! Booty Mates, say it with me, Booty!

I have to give a shout out to Blackbeak mate Dirty Ethel Roberts for finding and passing along this bit of hidden treasure!!! Arrrrrrrrrrr

-Longhair Kidd Hank

The interview covers many topics, for example; copy layout, resizing text, blogsite design, form abandoment, landing page, navigation, long pages versus short pages, flash use and web analytics.

The audio version is around 45 minutes long. If you prefer saving some time and want to hear the entire audio version later but need a quick fix of information, here’s a small tip for the text version. To find the area topic of your interest quicker, use the “Find in This Page” option in the Edit toolbar. You can find it in Explore and Firefox browsers. Type in the keyword or phrase in the search bar. Simple and quick.

This interview is packed with the little things that make the biggest difference in a website’s conversion rate, so feel free to follow the the headline motto “good designers create; great designers steal.”

-Longhair Kidd Hank

Here˘‚¬„˘s a sample buyer˘‚¬„˘s guide for web analytic tools that will help improve conversion. This sample guide sets you up to think and analyze what is out in the market and what questions you should consider asking to a web analytical tool provider before making an educated investment. Still need another voice of reasoning? How about a couple more opinions from the crew on helping you out which tool like, Google Analytics or HBX, to pick.

Remember mates, just because you built a website doesn˘‚¬„˘t necessary mean visitors will come. Get a tool that really matters and remember the Blackbeak when the sweet winds of ROI begin to lift your sales!

-Longhair Kidd Hank