This immediately took me aback because I was using Firefox version 10.0.1, the latest version.

I completely understand that Google wants people to use their products, especially Chrome. But to falsely warn me about my browser being out-of-date is preposterous.

Firstly, it doesn’t take much to pull the user-agent string (Browser, version and operating system information). A company as smart as Google and as fascinated by collecting data as Google does that kind of data collection naturally. So, if this is truly a bug then to Google, I say: you’ve been advised of a bug. The user-agent string clearly ends with “Firefox/10.0.1″

The same thing also happened with Internet Explorer 8; although not with IE 9 of Google Chrome.

On the support page that lists system requirements for Docs, Google clearly states:

Google Docs supports the two latest versions of the following browsers:

• Google Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Internet Explorer²

The footnote discusses one exception with Internet Explorer 8 and the drawing tool. IE 10 is not an official release yet.  So 8 and 9 are the latest two versions.

However, you can’t help but wonder if this “oops moment” is something larger, in an attempt to get people to start using their Chrome browser.

I’m not sure what to make of this.I think Google’s smart enough to know 10.0.1 is the latest and greatest Firefox. Anyone else call shenanigans?

Visitor sessions are not all that Google Analytics changed. The following week, Google Analytics added five new reports that focus on showing when multiple channels that contribute to goal conversions. My Search Engine Watch article recaps all of Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnel Reports and how they all come together.

Why Multi-Channel Funnel Reports Are Cool

Plain and simple, these reports go a long way to hinting in which stage of the buyer behavior process a site visitor may be. If you’ve heard me speak about analytics before, you heard me say this:

Web metrics can tell you the what, when, where and how, but they can’t tell you why.

Visitors come to your site for many reasons. Some want to buy, some just want information. That information could be about your product or service or your value-added services. Or it may be the visitor already is a customer and wants to the decision to buy. The point is, unless you ask your visitor, you simply don’t know why they came.

By showing the all of the ways visitors arrived at your site through each individual visit, you can a feel for which referrals bring more conversions. Under previous reporting methods, the last referring medium got all the credit for the goal conversion.  Now, you can visualize just how many touch points there were with a site visitor before conversion.

Your campaigns are like players on a sports team. One referring source may bring in more traffic, another may bring get all the credit for conversions, but they all play a role. In soccer (or futbol, if you prefer), a striker who finishes is just as important as the midfielder whose tricky footwork got the ball to that perfect point so the striker could put it away. Both celebrate the goal. Both record statistics that eventually get lumped together as “points” on the stat sheet.

Your campaigns should be treated similarly. You may see a lot of direct visits getting the “last touch” to convert a site visitor. But was it unassisted? For a new customer, it is highly unlikely. However, without these new reports, and GA’s change in counting visitor sessions, knowing this would not be possible.

But My Data Are Different! Now What?

Granted, this will change your aggregate numbers. Brandt Dainow noted recently that the number of visits will now go up even though your traffic stays the same. He also quotes many responses that he’s seen complaining about this change. His blog quotes people who seem to be complaining that time on site has gone down, new visits are down and repeat visits are up. Of course, there are several who complain that their old data is now useless.

All of these statements are essentially true. The old data was useless because it was inaccurately reporting visitor behavior before. The art of Web analytics is to better understand what your visitors are doing so that you can properly measure if your business objectives are being met. If you read inaccurate data, you can’t measure properly. I’ll quote Brandt’s post:

Bob searches in Google for “buy books online.”  He then clicks an AdWord to Amazon.  After 10 minutes he leaves Amazon and runs another search, this time for “buy reference books online.” He then follows a different AdWord back to Amazon and makes a purchase.

Under the old system this would be treated as one visit. The sale would be attributed to the first keyword and the first AdWord.  The second AdWord and search term would be reported as producing zero visits.

Under the new system this is now treated as two visits. The sale is attributed to the second search and the second AdWord.

First off, I agree completely that there is a significant difference in how these are counted. Apart from that, I think the change is wonderful. There’s always been discrepancies between AdWords data and Analytics data. This new way of measuring visits (sessions) is more precise. I can now see there have been multiple costs attributed to this sale. If I’m tracking customer acquisition cost along with my goal amount, I now have a much better set of metrics.

Affiliates Can Be Tracked More Accurately, Too

After my Introduction to Analytics session at SES San Francisco, I spoke with three individuals from an affiliate marketing company who were wondering why their stats went all awry. We discussed the new change to the visits and how multiple affiliates would now be tracked differently. The response between the three was mixed. One got it instantly, while the other two were irked. They merely gave the first affiliate the link. Why? That’s all Google Analytics told them. Now, they would see multiple visits from multiple affiliates. By the time we were done talking, they knew they had some changes to make, but seemed to welcome them. Why? Because the data are now more accurate.

For sites that only paid the first click or the last click, there is a greater opportunity here. The “assists” are out there. And now they’re in plain view.

As many have said before me, this changes everything. Reading metrics about the whole of your site just doesn’t make sense. You don’t know at what point the visitors are at in being ready to buy. Maybe a site visitor was looking for your a job and your HR department. Who knows. One thing is certain: looking at multiple visits helps you know how long a customer truly takes to convert and what sources they use to make that happen.

I’m not sure I understand. I already use Google Alerts to track myself with Alerts. (And you should, too!) So why do I need it in a different place.  I mean it’s not like the Google Alerts section of the Dashboard is more than two sections down from Me on the Web; less than 100 pixels away. That is, of course, if I forget the difficult URL of google.com/alerts. So what’s the real deal?

The rest of Me on the Web section is only a few links to how to manage your identity online.  So how do you manage your identity online? According to Google, search for yourself. Then create a Google profile. What? Seriously?

You can’t actually use Me on the Web unless you have a Google profile. Convenient, no? (But you certainly can use Google Alerts!)

You know what other Google feature you can’t use without a profile? Google’s +1 button. And it makes sense; think about it. A +1 is, essentially, a “like.” Who likes it? Well, no one if there is no profile to go along with it.

The +1 button was a hot topic at SES Toronto recently. It was brought up in the SEO is Dead, Long Live SEO panel and in the Panda-pocalypse panel. In each, it was argued that the +1 button means nothing if there’s no buy-in from Google’s user base. I further conjecture it means nothing without actual human information, too. So what, then? Now Google needs you to get a profile. You’ve seen the commercials. They’re all about building a desire in you to “go Google” in hopes you’ll get a profile.

You can try to have social, but you can’t have a “network” without people. Whether or not Google Circles (or whatever it may be called) actually comes to fruition as a full-fledged social network, they need user acceptance. Google isn’t just coming out and saying they’re building a competing product and you should join. It truly appears they are trying to find other ways to make you join under a different guise. Once critical mass is obtained, then they can release the service that will bind all their existing social features together. Sneaky, no?

Cue Search Engine Strategies: Toronto.  Join the discussion in an open forum about the Google Panda update and how it affects small business. Moderated by Jonathan Allen, director of Search Engine Watch, the panel will feature a handful of SEW experts, of which I’m proud to included.

Have you lost traffic to your site since late-February? Among the plethora of other reasons why you shouldn’t miss it, SES Toronto is the place to be to get your questions answered.

The session in New York was full of good questions and even some good answers. Now that the update has hit internationally, this forum promises to pack the house. I can’t wait.

Google has always had a sense of humor. Previously, their blue screen error message looked like this:

Is this something we should be watching? Will Google be changing this every few versions?

Thoughts?

Here’s how it works:

When you search for something on Google, click a link and immediately hit your back button, Google will modify the result listing and give you an option to block the site. Google’s thinking is that if you go to a site and leave that quickly, it must not have been what you wanted. Here’s what it looks like:

Of course once you block the site, Google will allow you to take it back with a link in its confirmation area. If you change your mind further down the road, you can manage your blocked sites with a new feature added to the Google search preferences.

Naturally, you need to be logged in with a Google account to use this feature. If you are not logged in, Google will block the result for your session, but it will not remember on your future visits.

For now, Google claims they will not use the data they collect from people clicking the block tool in their algorithm. However, they say they may consider it in the future. Really? It’s Google. They’ve hidden their use of clickstream data before. How will Google use these data in the future. More importantly: how will they prevent it from being abused?

More info and commentary on the Google site blocking feature can be found at Search Engine Watch.

Specifically, I’ve noticed the lesser placement of 123people.com and experts-exchange.com. A bunch of other scrapers also appear to be missing from the first page of the  SERPs. Also  vertical “directories” – or at least sites that pass themselves off as directories. Sites in question, however,  have not been completely removed. In many cases they have been pushed back to the second page or beyond. But there are still a few instances where people scraping sites show up for certain name searches.

Blekko blocked ehow.com last month. Yet, it still appears fairly prominently (though no longer number one) on Google’s “new” results. For general how-to answers, I’m noticing a few different sites. For example, I’m now seeing for the first time Microsoft Answers – a site I didn’t even know existed.

Brent Rangen has a great analysis on the Google ranking algorithm change at Search Engine Watch.

Most importantly, businesses seem to have remained intact. I have noticed many smaller companies getting a boost. Is this, perhaps, because the spam is gone? Many clients for whom I have performed search optimization services, have maintained their ranking. Some have even gained a few spots. I have noticed that they all appear to have more competitors now.

To the rest of the SEO community: what are you noticing?

Yet, he’s still using Google every time someone visits his site. His Website, glennbeck.com, uses Google Analytics to count and track his visitors. This is public knowledge, able to be displayed for the world to see.

The above screen show shows lines 1316-1333 of Beck’s home page where the Google Analytics code is used. For you non-techies, this code is on every page of Beck’s site and is used to track every visitor to his site and what they do once they get there.

Beck also has Google ads running on his Web site. When visitors to his site click on these ads, it makes him (and Google) money.  Does he really need the few cents per click he gets from those ads? So, he’s tracking his visitors and making money from Google software. So much for using them less.

To the right is a screen shot of his Web site showing the ads.

So – not surprisingly – Beck’s whole Don’t use Google campaign is just more rhetoric than actual truth.

For the record, there are a myriad of free and commercial alternatives to Google Analytics. I found a whole list of them on Google!

And again (and no one’s copying here, right?) Microsoft accompanied the release with a conversational video that includes two “average Joe” Bing employees, which sharply resembles Google’s product videos.

The New Google Nav Bar

Google's new Nav Bar is a redesigned version of what was already there.

Google’s nav bar indicates both graphically and textually.  For comparison, below is the old style of toolbar.

What does it mean? Nothing special, really. However, it symbolizes the unity and consistency Google has been trying to bring to their properties.

Microsoft’s Toolbar for IE

Microsoft’s toolbar, on the other hand, is a true toolbar add-on for Internet Explorer. Probably meant to bring users back to using their browser, the toolbar features interactive widget-like content that starts unobtrusive pop-ups of specific content. Bing search is the centerpiece of the toolbar and includes suggested search terms, your search history and what Microsoft calls “Deep Links.”

According to the announcement, the Bing Team talk to consumers who want search “front and center,” not off to the side. The toolbar also includes news alerts, Facebook, maps, Bing Rewards and email. The email is not discriminatory, either. The demo video shows the toolbar quickly and seamlessly connecting to Gmail.

All the content appears smooth and integrated as part of a streamlined integration of tasks you want to accomplish.

From the video, Bing Bar project manager Charlie French: “A lot of people thought toolbars … are dying.” Yeah, I’m one of them.  He continues: “We thought maybe the toolbars that exist today are dying. But if we build this from scratch and focus on performance … We built some really cool stuff… the rich data.”

You can download the Bing Bar for Internet Explorer 7 or later, running Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP with SP3.

I’m sorry. Seriously? “Bing Bar?!”

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has been covering this story at great length. His most recent coverage actually tested the waters, comparing search queries and Google’s results against that of a relatively recent search bias survey conducted by a Harvard professor by the name of Ben Edelman. Last January, Edelman searched on 32 terms in each of the (then) big-three engines. For the purposes of his survey, he defined search engine bias as happening when a particular engine’s other vertical products appeared in one of the first three results.

Sullivan’s results and analysis significantly differed from Edelman’s.  I have to agree with Danny Sullivan and offer some counterpoints to Edelman’s survey.

In my opinion, Edelman’s conclusions are largely due to his flawed testing methodology. He chose a sample size of 32 terms upon with to search. A sample size of 32 is not statistically significant. Of those 32 terms, 12 were the actual name or a stem of a Google product name. This means that 37.5% of his terms are a result of  bias sampling. Additionally, 25 of the 32 terms (78%) were one-word terms, which are the most broadest of matches which make relevancy in results more difficult. There were no search phrases greater than two words used in his survey. Basic data analysis suggests poor sampling.

Sample issues aside, any decent SEO knows that Page Title is the first point of on-page optimization. Google’s products all have Edelman’s “one-word” search term both in the name of the product and in the Title tag. In most cases, the term is the second word in the title tag (right next to “Google”, ie: Google Maps or Google Finance).

Danny further contradicted Edelman’s conclusions, citing Google’s “most important product,” search. He showed that a Google search for search engine didn’t even list google.com. A secondary service, Google Custom Search, cracks the top-10. However, the main Google search product does not. Surprisingly, search engine was not one of the 32 terms Edelman used in his survey.

When speaking to students about search marketing at RIT, I use several examples on visibility of brand. I pick on Pepsi, who is never found for soft drinks or other related terms. I pick on iTunes, who does not rank for music service. Lastly, I pick on Google. Google’s default search is not found for search engine, as Danny astutely points out. However, looking at other long-tail terms, Gmail ranks below many other services for free email or free email account. In fact, Google has ads running to promote its email service. Clearly this is a nod to the fact they are not stacking the deck toward their product.

Here are more non-biased, “long tail” terms:

• stock symbol lookup (Yahoo Finance first, Google finance not in the top-10)
• stock quotes (Yahoo is first with extra sitelinks and a more results link. No Google Finance)
• real time stock quotes (Yahoo, MSN and NASDAQ, not Google Finance)
• free photo sharing (Google’s Picasa is 5th behind Photobucket, Yahoo’s product and two blogs)
• video search engine (Altavista is here, really? But Google video and YouTube are not)
• free blog software (Google’s Blogger is 5th)

Less Stats, More Common Sense

If a company develops a product, then provides more specific products for particular verticals and has a method of integrating the two together to give a perceived better user experience, is that wrong? Each of the search engines are doing that. An image search or a video search are extensions of the search product. I will grant you that Email is not and neither are blogs or photo sharing.  However, if I perform a typical user result trying to actually find a service offering those products, Google does not appear to favor itself. Certainly not by Edelman’s definition.

Is this any different than a pharmacist? If I need a cough syrup recommendation, is the pharmacist really going to recommend a name brand over the store brand? I think not. This is true for many markets, tech or otherwise.

Should there be regulation? Hardly. Google publishes their guidelines, which companies should heed. There are still choices. While I have concern about the amount of information Google has indexed, I feel they have done nothing that merits regulation. They are one of many services out there. Clearly people are still using Dogpile, AOL search and even Ask. People know they have choices if they don’t like the results. Microsoft is clearly promoting that with their clever “what has search done to us” commercials.

Can we put this to rest and get the focus back on more relevent results?

If you’re not familiar with Android’s speech recognition, you speak to your phone and the waveform created gets transmitted to Google, analyzed and sent back to your device. This means for those who opt in to this service, your voice and your speech patterns will be sent to Google. How’s that for privacy issues?

Google promises they will protect your privacy. With as many PHd-types Google has, you would like to think they can learn a lesson or two from their previous privacy failures. Being overly cautious at this point, I read through their very concise and easy-to-read privacy policy.  Google wants to store the information in your Google account and encrypt the data using keys. As a techie, I presume this means public and private keys as is typical of standards-level encryption.  Google has this to say about they keys and the ability to access the data:

How do we protect the data?

The ‘electronic keys’ are designed to be accessed by machines. Very few people within Google, who passed careful vetting, will have access to them. The personalized acoustic and language models are binary files designed for use by machines.

So the data is encrypted both ways and at rest. It can only be accessed from a physical device, not by individuals searching around the data center. And they’ve put the human factors back into it, with special vetting procedures for those “very few” who will have access to these special machines.

If you change your mind about participating, Google says you can go into your account, turn it off and they will immediately destroy the keys, thereby destroying any way to access the data. They will also destroy the link between your device and the files and the data files, themselves.

Thoughts? Comments?  Will you sign up for this?

In a post announcing the new Mobile Ads channel, Google toted a video around Rovio Mobile – the team that brought us Angry Birds. In a video produced by Google, the top eagle at Robio Mobile describes his thoughts on how Angry Birds became such a success and how they brought it from idea to plush toys.

It’s not bad enough Angry Birds occupies all our time at work, it has to dominate a Google Ads YouTube channel, too.