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Google Analytics: 00:00:00 Avg. Time on Site?

Fri, 12 Jul 2008 01:47:40 GMT

posted by smcandrew

If you have a blog or web site and use Google Analytics as your analytics package, you may have come across a disappointing statistic: visits of no length, or 00:00:00.

Here is an example of where you might come across this metric. The screen capture below is from another site I manage. This report is the Traffic Sources > Keywords report.

As you can see, for several keywords I’ve registered average visit lengths of no length whatsoever (00:00:00). That doesn’t sound good. Let’s look a little closer.

Keywords in rows 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are the 00:00:00 visits. They also have something else in common. Each of these visits is of only one web page (the value in the Pages/Visit column is 1.0 for each of these keywords). Single page visits, called Bounces in most analytics packages are handled different ways by different packages. Before moving forward, let’s be clear about what a Bounce is.

A Bounce, or Single Page View Visit is a visit in which the user arrives at a web page, and then leaves the web site altogether. If the user even refreshes the same page, it is not a Bounce. A bounce is someone arriving at your site, then doing one of several things such as clicking the back button, typing a new destination into the address bar of their browser, closing their browser program altogether (you get the point - basically anything but continuing to view pages on your web site).

OK. So all of our 00:00:00 visits were also Bounce visits. That still seems quite surprising. None of the visits registered even a second on the site? Well, the visits may have been a second, ten seconds, or several minutes. We just don’t know, and we don’t know due to the way Google Analytics calculates Time on Site (or Time on Page).

To calculate how long a user is on a page, Google needs two data points. It needs the time when a page was loaded (which in our case it has) and the time when a subsequent page was requested from the site (which it does not have). So, in lieu of that last piece of data, Google classifies these Bounce visits as 00:00:00 in length.

It would also stand to reason that every visit to a web site is registered as shorter than it actually is as the amount of time spent on the last page of the site prior to exiting can’t be calculated.

On a side note…
If you are reviewing metrics on individual pages, Google does not include Bounce visits into the equation when it calculates the average time spent on that page. For the average time spent on site, however, it does.

Google Takes a Run at YourTube

Mon, 10 Jun 2008 13:19:20 GMT

posted by bhartzer

Andy’s Update: AdWords TV Ads is not the announcement, as a Google spokesperson clarifies to us: “What we announced last week was an integration between Google Analytics and Google TV Ads (an offering within Google AdWords). Google Analytics has added a TV Ads report for AdWords advertisers who use both TV Ads and Google Analytics.”

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Surely you didn’t think Google would stop at YouTube when it comes to organizing for world domination the world’s information?

Last week, Google Analytics announced “AdWords TV Ads”, an all-digital system that distributes advertisers’ TV ads to participating channels nationwide.

The service allows you to upload your TV ad as a video file to your AdWords account and, with a few clicks, start a campaign by choosing from more than 90 nationwide TV stations to air the ad.

Sound cool? Well, the service doesn’t stop there. You can also specify the time of day and week, audience demographic, and type of program you’d like to target. Link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account and you track your online traffic while a TV spot is running. Metrics include:

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TOP Three Strategies For Success With The Search Engines

Sun, 14 Jul 2008 04:00:11 GMT

posted by dwainj

How To Get More FREE Traffic.

If I had a nickel for every email I received from a customer asking how to get better results from the search engines, I’d have… well, I’d have a WHOLE lot of nickels!!

In fact, it seems I’m constantly being grilled about the latest, greatest strategies for driving the MAXIMUM number of FREE visitors to your site.

But honestly, I’m really glad so many of you are paying attention to the search engines…

… because you’re SEVEN TIMES more likely to get a visitor through the organic (free) search engines than through a pay-per-click ad!

You can’t afford NOT to spend as much time as possible improving your site’s overall search engine performance.

With that in mind, here are my TOP THREE recommendations for improving your free traffic using the search engines…

Search Results Strategy #1: Speak your visitors’ language

No, I don’t mean English, Spanish, or Russian!

When I say you should speak your visitors’ language, I mean you should use the exact words and phrases they use to search for your products or services!

I can’t TELL you how many times I see people building their sites around the words THEY themselves use to describe what they’re selling, even going so far as to optimize their sites using the name of the product!

Why is that a problem?

Well, let’s say you sell the "GutterClear 3000," a tool that comes in pretty handy to clean out all the gunk in your gutters without ever having to get up on a ladder.

Now, let’s say there are thousands of people out there looking for a really cool tool for hands-free (and ladder-free) gutter cleaning.

Do you think they’re all going to sit down in front of Google and type "GutterClear 3000"?

Not likely, right? Chances are, they’re going to describe what they’re trying to accomplish, or what problem they’re trying to solve ("gutter cleaning tool," "clean gutters without ladder," etc).

So even though you’ve got the #1 spot on Google for "GutterClear 3000," the product remains unsold, because nobody is using that word to find it!

And please, never assume. Use a good keyword research tool, like Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery, to be sure you’ve identified the EXACT words your potential customers are using to find you!

Search Results Strategy #2: Make sure your pages are search engine friendly

Once you’ve done your keyword research, and understand how your customers are searching for you, you can use that information to create a site that will appeal to the search engine spiders, which, in turn, will improve your rankings.

The higher your site appears on the results page, the GREATER the chances that people will click on it!

So be sure you use your keywords in your:

Title tag — This is the title of your site that usually appears in the actual search engine results. Search engine spiders often look at the title tag FIRST to understand what your site is about.
That makes the title tag one of the best ways to appeal to both potential visitors and search engines at the same time!
Headline and subhead — By including your main keywords in your headline and subheads, and wrapping them in <h> tags, you’ll be tipping off the search engines that the site’s content reflects what’s in the heads and subheads, which is an SEO plus.
At the same time, by displaying your best keywords in the headline and subheads, your visitors will see that they’ve come to the right place the second they land on your page… and be more likely to stick around.
Salescopy — Because the search engines "crawl" your site looking for information about how to categorize your site, and also check to see how relevant your copy is, you want to make sure you include your keywords in the site’s copy.
But don’t get carried away! Search engines can tell when you’re cramming your site full of words JUST to get better rankings, and will penalize you for it… and you want to be sure your site actually makes sense to your visitors!
Meta tags — Your description meta tag normally contains the "blurb" that appears with the link to your site on the search results.
Your keyword meta tag contains your strongest keywords relevant to each page.

Neither of these, on their own, will be enough to improve your site’s rankings, but when done properly, they help give the search engines a more accurate ’snapshot’ of what your site is about.
Image (alt) tags — Search engines can’t "read" images, but they can read the text that you use to describe the images.
This descriptive text, called an "alt" tag, is one more way to add multiple strong keywords to your site, again increasing your overall chances of being categorized for that particular term.

Another way to use your keywords is in the way you ORGANIZE the pages in your site.

Make sure that all of the information or products on a page are related or relevant. The LAST thing you want to do is confuse the search engine spiders with a mish mash of words on any given page that don’t make any sense together.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that it’s the WORDS on your site that give you the overall competitive edge when it comes to your search engine rankings, so resist the urge to "fancy" sites by using Flash, tons of graphics, or other unnecessary elements.

The more clearly you spell out what your site is about by using your keywords, the better your chances of raising to the TOP of the results page!

Search Engine Strategy #3: Keep your site up-to-date

Like death and taxes, it’s INEVITABLE that your site optimization will change… and what’s working today may not get you ANY results three months from now.

That’s because, over time, people, markets, search trends, and even keywords change…

… so it’s crucial that you constantly monitor your top keywords, and make changes to your site as necessary, in order to maintain your dominant position in the search results.

You should be setting aside time every WEEK to make sure that you’re still optimized for the best keywords!

And if you CAN’T seem to find the time each week to do this, then consider hiring someone to help. Trust me: it’s an investment that should MORE than pay for itself with increased traffic and sales!

By following these three strategies for maximizing your search engine traffic, you’ll not only improve your search engine rankings, you’ll be able to send more qualified traffic to your site.

To your success,

Derek Gehl

P.S. There’s MORE to them than I’m able to cover in this brief newsletter…

… so this month we’ll be releasing the SEO Whiteboard Series videos, that Kevin Carr from imc{search} has put together to help you with your SEO efforts.

Here’s the first in the 10 part series… SEO Antics. Stay tuned for the rest of the series.

Internet Marketing Tips Featuring Derek Gehl

TOP Three Strategies For Success With The Search Engines

Google Analytics Desktop Reporting Suite on Adobe AIR

Tue, 9 Apr 2008 10:54:50 GMT

posted by multikm

Google Analytics Desktop Reporting Suite version is available now. Which Google Analytics desktop reporting suite is power by Adobe AIR with multiple-platforms supports and uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all features of Analytics.

As Google Analytics has been well know free website analytics service that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. However, Google Analytics services able access via web only.

But now, Google Analytics AIR beta allows you to add multiple profiles of multiple Analytics accounts under one roof. If you previously need to logout from one Analytic account to get in another, now with this desktop client you don’t have without needing to open a browser anymore. Google Analytics desktop reporting suite supports most of the functions of the web version. It’s also lighter and greatly enhance the experience in statistics analyzing.

Google Analytics Desktop Reporting Suite has a neat animated interface, great user-friendly approach, almost the same functionality as the original browser version. The profile manager section can help you define multiple accounts and easily switch between them.

Beside that, Google Analytics Desktop Reporting Suite also a great feature is the possibility of having multiple tabs while you browse your reports. This can be of great use if you need to swap between tabs and consult different reports. Also powerful data grids that allow you to filter your displayed stats are present. Finally the possibility of exporting to PDF, XML and Excel is always at hand.

To install Google Analytics AIR on any operating platform, you download Adobe AIR install first then you just can install Google Analytics AIR beta. Plus more, This Google Analytics Desktop reporting Suite is free for now and that no major bugs are present. Worth to try Google Analytics desktop reporting suite.

Download Google Analytics AIR Beta and Adobe AIR

Download Adobe AIR beta 3

Download Google Analytics AIR beta 3

Tags: google_analytics, google_analytics_desktop, google_analytics_AIR, web_analytics_software, google_desktop_web_analytics

5 Lesser Known Google Analytics Features

Wed, 14 Feb 2008 13:26:48 GMT

posted by bhartzer

Google Analytics is a great program that can do a lot more than most people realize. Here are a few features that you may not know about:

Capture internal search stats. This is a newer feature of Google Analytics and a very nice one. Not only can you see what a visitor put into your internal search box, but what page they were on when they made the search and what page they chose in the search results. Any internal search will work as long as it passes the search variable through the URL. Here’s a short video interview with Google’s Brett Crosby on some of those features.

Filter out domains. Let’s say your Google Analytics code somehow got on another site and your stats were getting tainted with irrelevant data. No problem. You can create a filter to not count anyone from specific domains you add in. Oddly enough, you can also filter out your own domain so your stats flat line. Not a good idea to do that though.

Track document downloads or specific links. Adding a small piece of JavaScript to any link will tell Google to track when someone clicks on that link. This works for PDFs, Word documents, email address’ and external links. It also works if you want to see which two links on the same page are generating more clicks. Even though they go to the same URL, you can tag one link as ‘link one’ and the other as ‘link two’ and Google will track the clicks separately for you. Bonus Tip: If you have a Wordpress blog, you can instantly tag all links across your blog with the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin.

Export to Excel. For any newbies, this is a time saving feature. Just about any report can have the data exported to a CSV file which Excel can open. You can now stop copying and pasting most data out of Google Analytics and into Excel and save yourself some time.

Filter yourself out. This feature is a must do for any company. Find your static IP address and then set up a filter so Google knows not to include traffic from your company network. This ensures that your stats are not inflated due to employee’s surfing habits. This also is something you should consider for any partner companies. If you have a web development, or SEO company who is constantly checking out the site, filter them out too.

Those are just a few of the features that I’ve used and haven’t seen too much written about. If you have some unique Google Analytics tips, please do share.

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