Da Vinci Planet » Google Analytics

Spy on Web Analytics Tracking Scripts Using WASP

Da Vinci — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:55:11 +0000

Most people know that Web analytics providers like Google Analytics and Omniture use JavaScript to track user activity on Web sites, but many people do not realize that ad networks like Google Adsense and DoubleClick also track user behavior. It’s even scarier for Web site owners to realize that these third party services have complete visibility into your Web site traffic. WASP is a Firefox plugin that shows what each of these providers are tracking on the page that you are viewing.

Once you’ve installed the plugin and accepted the terms and conditions, you will start seeing the WASP icon in your browser’s status bar that tells you which tracking tools it has identified.

Clicking on the icon will open a sidebar with a tabbed view of all the tracking tools. Each tab represents a tracking instance on the page you are viewing, e.g. an ad, and shows the detailed data that is being sent to them.

WASP is a very useful debugging tool for implementing Web analytics solutions like Omniture because it gives you an easy way to see if you have tagged your Web site correctly. I used the “Omniture debugger” until recently when I heard about WASP in an Omniture training session.

12 Free Analysis Tools to Optimize Your Website

Da Vinci — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:17:25 +0000

Webmasters and bloggers are normally quite SEO savvy even if they’re not SEO professionals. However, they often neglect SEO efforts and forget about all the useful Web analytics and keyword research tools that are available and so I thought I’d remind readers about some of them. Web analysis tools are getting better everyday so it is good practice to regularly analyze your Website to identify changes and new trends in search traffic. Here is a list of essential tools that you can use to analyze your Website and traffic and to optimize your site for search engines.

Website Analysis Tools

1. Google Analytics

This should be your starting point, it doesn’t have to be Google Analytics, there are many other Web analytics tools, but you have to have a good Web analytics tool. Using your Web analytics tool you can see what keywords or phrases people are searching for to find your site, which search engines drive the most traffic and what content users are finding. There are advanced Google Analytics tricks that you can use to get more out of the tool.

2. Google Webmaster Tools

This is where you create a Google sitemap and get to see how often Google indexes your home page. Webmaster Tools offers pretty much everything that Google is willing to tell you about your site and how it’s indexed. Google recently added the ability to set the geographic target of your Website and you can also opt-in to enhanced image search which can improve indexing and search quality of images on your Website.

3. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Yahoo’s version of Webmaster Tools. It doesn’t provide as much information as Google’s, but you can add a sitemap or RSS feed and get some information from Yahoo! about your site. Yahoo doesn’t display cached dates like Google does, but Yahoo! Site Explorer shows you when each page on your site (and other sites) was indexed or cached.

4. Xinu

Provides a dashboard view of key SEO indicators of a Web site, including PageRank, number of pages indexed and backlinks. The Diagnostics pane provides details on things like domain name, page size, HTML tags and gives you a thumbs up rating. It even tells you how long your site has existed and the blog owner.

5. Poodle Predictor

A good search engine simulator tool. Enter your URL, click on “Poodle Search” and then on “Diagnostic View”. There are many other search engine simulator tools, but I like how this one displays the results.

6. SEO for Firefox

A Firefox plugin that provides easy access to SEO related information about a page or link. When enabled it highlights “nofollow” links in red.

Keyword Research Tools

7. Google Trends

Search engines don’t share detailed search statistics, but you can use Google Trends to get a good idea of how popular search terms are. If you have a keyword that ranks #1 then you can use that as a base for comparison against other keywords to get a gauge for how much traffic one could expect from those keywords. Since the main purpose of the tool is to see trends it is of course very useful to see if keywords are growing in popularity. There’s also a section called Hot Trends that lists the current 100 “hot” keywords. These keywords offer good AdWords opportunities.

8. Microsoft adCenter Labs

As described in a previous post on keyword search funnels and demographic predictions, adCenter Labs gives a very interesting perspective on keywords and helps you to better understand what your users look like and the thought process that they go through when doing searches. The Search Funnel and Keyword Forecast tools are particularly cool.

9. Yahoo! Buzz Index

A service by Yahoo! that resembles Google’s Hot Trends. The Yahoo! Buzz Index shows the day’s top 20 searches in various categories including actors, movies and sports.

10. Keyword Discovery

Search term suggestion tool. They offer a free tool that lists up to 100 top keywords for a given keyword or phrase ranked by the number of searches over the last 12 months. The premium version of Keyword Discovery has a lot more functionality and a much slicker interface than Wordtracker.

11. Wordtracker

Probably the most popular subscription based keyword research tool, but like Keyword Discovery they also offer a free keyword suggestion tool that lists the top 100 search terms ranked by searches.

12. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The tool is really intended for paid search research, but it is a useful keyword suggestion tool.

Which blog application is right for you?

Da Vinci — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 22:02:43 +0000

Over the last couple of months many people I know, mostly non-technical, have shown an interest in creating their own blogs. It is very easy to set up a free blog, but it gets a little more confusing when you are more serious like wanting your own domain name. So based on level of seriousness, here’s my recommendation to find a blog solution that works for you.

Not serious
If you want to simply create a blog for free and do not care too much about domain names and getting email accounts for your domain, then sign up with one of the many free services, e.g:

Maybe serious
If you think that you are serious enough that you would purchase a domain name and pay a few dollars a month for hosting, but want to test the waters first then I suggest that you first sign up with wordpress.com. You will get a free blog that will live under myname.wordpress.com, where the “myname” part will be replaced by the username you choose. Then choose a theme, create some posts and play around with it to get familiar. The reason I suggest using WordPress is because I recommend WordPress for the “Serious” users and so it will give you chance to familiarize yourself with WordPress Administration.

Serious
Primarily if you want to use your own domain name and add custom features like Web analytics code and sell adds. To set up a blog of this nature requires the use of several services and will cost about $50/year. Google will become your best friend. Here’s what you need to do:

Happy Blogging!