Google Analytics: Change History Now Available

Hey Google Analytics admins! Ever wondered who added filters to your default profile? How about those new users added to your GA account? Or who deleted the regex include filter you spent all week writing?

Yeah it seems to be such a pain experiencing one or all of these problems and not knowing who or how. It is a common GA admin dilemma until just recently that Google Analytics announced that they are enabling Change History! Yes fellow GA admins, we can now see who messed up our settings, lol! But seriously, we can now track changes done in our respective Google Analytics accounts.

According to GA team, the Change History lists:

• Date column: The date and time of the activity
• Email column: Which Analytics user performed the activity
• Activity column: The Analytics object (e.g., account, user, profile, goal, filter), and what activity was performed on the object (e.g., added to account, created, deleted)

This feature can be accessed on the 'admin' tab and through the account list breadcrumb at the top.

**For confidentiality, I can't add an image of the actual change history of my account.

So is this a great update or what?! We do love data and tracking, now GA added the ability for us to track how one of the best tools of our trade is being used. Cheers!

Excel: Moving Alternate Rows or Copying Text from Alternate Cells

Quick tip: This has helped me a lot! I was extracting hyperlinks and I needed to get texts associated in a separate column. This was the data I had:

Column A, cell 1: (Website name1)

Column A, cell 2: (This is the website's link) - note that the word link was a hypertext that's why I needed to use the macros mentioned above.

Column A, cell 3: (Website name2)

Column A, cell 4: (This is the website's link) - note that the word link was a hypertext that's why I needed to use the macros mentioned above.

What I want:

Column A: Website Name

Column B. extracted 'Link' or URL so to speak

What I did:

On a new column (C), I keyed in 

=INDEX(A:A,ROW()*2)

and double click / drag down;

Result:

Column C, cell 1: Website1

Column C, cell 2: Website2

Column C, cell 2: Website3

Column C, cell 2: Website4

I just did some "copy as text pasting" and remove blanks and viola!

Hope this helps. Well if you want to be a macro superstar you can always use:

Sub Test()

Dim iLastRow As Long

Dim i As Long

iLastRow = Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row

If (iLastRow \ 2) * 2 <> iLastRow Then

iLastRow = iLastRow - 1

End If

For i = cLastRow To 2 Step -2

Cells(i - 1, "B").Value = Cells(i, "A").Value

Rows(i).Delete

Next i

End Sub

Enjoy! =)

Google: Penguin 2.0 to Roll Out Soon

Matt Cutts, Google's software engineer and Head of the Webspam Team has recently announced what to expect for SEO in the coming months. In a video released today he is proud to announce that Google will be rolling out Penguin 2.0 soon. It is very important to follow these SEO updates to help you in your digital marketing and online brand presence. Here is the summary of what he mentioned in this video:

• Google still aims to make all the changes that make a site compelling - it is of course through high quality content.
  
  
• Penguin 2.0 will target the black hat web span. This is more comprehensive than penguin.
  
  
• They will look up more on Advertorials that violate Google's quality guidelines. Advertorials should not float page ranks and should be clear in conspicuous disclosures.
  
  
• Upstream to deny the value to link spammers. They are looking to roll out a new system with a more sophisticated analysis.
  
  
• New comprehensive system to detect hack sites better. 
  
  
• Aims to help regular webmasters - algorithms to give more authority. E.g medical or travel. 
  
  
• Updating sites affected by Panda - find additional signals for sites that in the grey area that has quality.
  
  
• Refine host clustering - once you see a cluster of results from one domain in the first page you should see less in the succeeding pages.
  
  
• More for Webmasters - more concrete details and reports.

Coming in the summer of 2013.

Google is getting smarter and smarter so....

Black Hats Beware!

LinkedIn: New Privacy Policy Made Easy

Today, May 10th, LinkedIn has announced that they will be updating their privacy policy in the next week. LinkedIn said that they are committed to putting their members first that is why they made the announcement. 

These are the highlights for the Privacy Policy change are:

• They will be clarifying and simplifying language in these documents (use of legal words) to make it easier for members to read and understand.

• The updated Policy will be presented in a page that will eventually become a Privacy Portal.

• Sponsored content will be introduced in the LinkedIn feed. This feature will give LinkedIn's advertising partners the chance to serve designated content that members can like, comment and share.

Here's a short, very informative and straightforward video posted regarding this update.

Google Person Finder: Google's First Aid in Boston Bombing

April 15, 2013 was a sad day for Boston as two bombs exploded at the annual Boston Marathon, thirteen seconds apart, at 2:49 p.m. EDT on Boylston Street, near the finish line, killing three people and injuring 183 others. As news broke, Google already knew what they can do to help - knowing where they are best at.

Search.

Google's Person Finder activated a search database for those registered, reported and known people in the vicinity of the tragedy. This .org site, which is already deactivated, was able to give users the ability to search the first and last name of a relative or a friend within the vicinity of the accident. As always, Google will give you the best match to your query (absolutely no AdWords here) and will tell you that person is alive, injured or deceased. Google said that the Person Finder was created to help people reconnect with friends and loved ones in the aftermath of natural and humanitarian disasters.

Google also announced that this is a temporary database and informed the public that this is a project together with Red Cross, for them to give direction on how to find or offer help. Searchers are also asked or go to Red Cross Safe & Well if they want to report or register missing persons.

It's just so cool.

http://google.org/personfinder/global/home.html

Adobe® Search&Promote: Business Rules and its Considerations

I drafted this post back in 2012 and never had the chance to publish. These are my thoughts in Adobe Search and Promote and how I came to understand the gems behind this marketing software. So here I am continuing what I started. :)

I had the chance to use Adobe Search and Promote for a value-added direct marketing company some 2 years ago. Adobe® Search&Promote is a cloud-based software that lets online marketers supercharge how visitors find, browse, and promote significant products and content on web and mobile sites. With Adobe® Search&Promote, you can easily push priority items based on company objectives and what visitors are actually looking for. It gives you the option to push promotions and merchandising activities by KPI-based triggers.

As I was working on implementing the front-end business rules, I came to realize just how powerful this tool is. It can push products - via category, brand or SKU. This tool can really be beneficial to especially to an e-commerce business. Imagine having the way to show your "not-so-converting" products to a search term? In one way or another, this will give you a possible plus on conversion for that item. I was able to test and play around the software, pushing products that will give more value to the company. I was in control. This is until I figured out the gem of using a great understanding of SEO best pratices and an in-depth web analytics along with this.

It is true that at the end of the day, "sales", "revenue" or "conversions" are important to many business above anything else. But how about user satisfaction, usability and customer impression? How would you feel that you are looking for let's say an optical mouse and you're getting the Bluetooth ones as first group results? Yeah probably you will refine your search but how about getting the same thing? Here are some points I realized and sharing with you:

• Website or internal search should be formatted in such a way like how Google does in their SERPs. Business rules and triggers need to balance your organization's objective and user intent. 

• Optimize Adobe® Search&Promote's feature of setting up categories and pricing to help users refine their searches. This will need proper implementation - a back-end team to make sure it works. Facilitate on the testing and be mindful of the bugs. With proper categories setup, users can easily navigate through your site considering their budget and brands they want. Again, give them what they want.

• If you need to push something - an old stock probably that needed to be converted, use the banners feature rather than giving it in the results list. Banners are not intrusive and users are aware that these are optional aspect of the site. If they are interested, they will click on it. Of course you can still sell your keywords to brand managers for banners ;)

• Respect top internal search terms and top landing pages. People are coming to your site looking for something. Understand your internal searches, what users clicked on, and where they bounce. This will give you a clear insight on where you are doing right, and wrong. 

I can attest that this software is powerful if implemented correctly. Through its wide range of customization including regular expressions, your triggers and business rules can make your business requirements far from impossible.

Remember, in any website reaching out to customers - may it be e-commerce or services, web usability should always be practiced and this can mean more returning visitors and loyal clients to your organization. Customer usability consideration is imperative in digital marketing success.