Yahoo Analytics was launched in April 2008 and is currently available for the websites hosted on yahoo store. Merchants can setup their Yahoo Analytics account by logging into the Store manager and following the given steps. Yahoo Analytics interface being user friendly gives minute information that might be useful for tracking website parameters such as day to day traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate and revenue tracking. When one activates the yahoo web analytics by default your check out page is set up as the final goal page, however you have the flexibility of changing it. There are various features such as customized reports, adding events, adding note, cross reference filters etc. that helps monitor website performance. The prime advantage of Yahoo Analytics is that it reflects the data within couple of minutes after the transaction is completed.

Here are some of the best features of Google Analytics which you could utilize to optimize your website.

1) Setting Goals – If you don’t set goals, Google Analytics is not going to take you very far. If you have an e-commerce site your goal would probably be a sale or if your business is newsletters your goal would be a registration. After your business goals are setup in Analytics, you can analyze a large amount of data about what’s working and what’s not in your marketing efforts.

2) Historical Data Comparison – In old Analytics there was no facility to compare how your site is doing relative to a different point in time. However, now we have new capabilities that allow you to compare two different time periods and chart them immediately. This feature helps tremendously in analyzing the performance of your website.

3) Geographic Data - You can also see how your website is performing for a variety of metrics like traffic, revenue etc. in different countries / cities etc. So you know where exactly is your traffic coming from.

4)Funnel Visualization - This is an awesome feature which helps you to figure out what exactly is scaring your users away as it gives you a proper analysis of the path taken by your users and where exactly your users drop and leave the process.

So go ahead and make the best use of the above features of Google Analytics for improving the search engine rankings of your website!

Social media is in vogue these days. There are tons of social media sites out there and many more are cropping up as I write. One of the reasons social media sites are popular is that they allow users to share & discuss information, exponentially increasing the ways in which people can connect. Since more & more online users are logging into social media sites, it makes perfect business sense to have a social media marketing plan for the coming year.

Reasons you need social media marketing in 2009:
Everyone’s using it
Everyone today is jumping on the social media marketing bandwagon. Your competitors are doing it since it is one of the best channels to build a brand awareness and link popularity. Apart from the competition, your vendors, partners & potential customers are using it. Everyone you know would either be using Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, MySpace and other high traffic generating websites so might as well go for it.

Faster than Traditional Media
The print and television media are realizing that sites like Digg, Delicious, Twitter etc. are much faster than traditional news wires. A perfect example of this would be Digg, if you Digg a particular URL, it will, that is the Digg-ed result will show up on Google SERP’s in a matter of hours. Due to this it makes sense to market your products or services on social media to target your potential customers.

Good Source for Natural One Way Links
With one way links being given more & more importance by search engines these days, social media marketing is one of the best ways to build quality, natural one way links. Moreover, these social media sites will place a link to your site on a page which either talks about your business or your industry so in addition to the link you also get relevant content.

More Searches means More Customers means More Business
Google is not the only source of information. There is a general trend that users looking for a particular product or service will move on to communities of like minded people once they are done with Google. Social Media sites provide the perfect platform to setup such communities where you can foster a healthy discussion about your offerings. Your best customers are ones who are passionate about your offerings and want to discuss them with others.

Paid Search Prices are seeing an upward trend
Pay Per Click is still considered to be a great solution for Internet Marketing but the market is getting tougher. Click prices are rising by the day and the high traffic generating keywords are eating up most of the budget. In this case an ideal solution would be to have an SEO strategy in place for the primary keywords and target the secondary keywords through PPC. For SEO you need links and one of the best source for one way links is Social Media.

SEO is getting tougher
Considering the speed with which Google and search engines in general are evolving, SEO is getting tougher and tougher. Gone are the days when all you needed to be on the top of Google SERPs was a few links and keyword rich content. These days you need much more than that and that much more involves a lot of money. In addition, personalized search is almost here and to stay on top you need more & more people visiting your site, staying on it and bookmarking it.

We all know how important setting up an XML sitemap and uploading to Google Webmaster tools is to manage the SEO of your site.

Well, on 13th January 2009, Google announced in their blog that they are launching a new sitemap generation tool (still in Beta phase). It is a software that improves the ability of search engines to find the content of your websites.

Previously Google had recommended the Python sitemap generation tool and many other services, like G Site Crawler that offered free sitemap generation. Google’s new sitemap generator works in a different way as compared to other sitemap generators.  Rather than crawling the site the new Google tool finds new and modified URLs from your webserver traffic, logfiles or files found on your server.  Google says that this method of sitemap creation is a fast way of generating this information and will also include the ability to create XML, code base and mobile sitemaps, that will also ping Google’s blog search in the process. It also creates industry-standard Web Sitemaps and automatically submits them to the search engines of your choice. Once you install and configure Google Sitemap Generator on your web server, it analyzes the way that users access content, then builds Sitemap files that contain the URLs that you want search engines to find. The New sitemap generation tool works with a plugin to the server which works with both, Apache and IIS servers.

Google Sitemap Generator takes a fresh approach to Sitemap generation. The previous generation of Sitemap generators created Sitemaps by crawling websites, so they did not necessarily improve on the coverage provided by search engine crawlers. In contrast, Google Sitemap Generator monitors your web server traffic and detects updates to your site whenever a user accesses a new page. The main features of Google Sitemap Generator are:

1. Creation of Sitemaps based on web server traffic, web server logs and web server files.

2. Efficient generation of Web Sitemaps used by many search engines, and of Google-specific feeds for Mobile, Code Search, and Blog Search.

3. Easy configuration. Once you’ve completed the initial configuration, no further administration is needed. But if you do want to tweak the settings, you can use a web-based administration console.

4. Easy filtering of URLs, based on URL patterns.

5. Automatic calculation of certain metadata, such as modified time and change frequency.

6. Automatic submission of Sitemaps for Web search.

Thus, Google Sitemap Generator is a next-generation tool that relies on web server filtering rather than crawling, provides enhanced features, and supports more formats.

We’ve heard about Bushisms, but has anyone ever thought of Googlisms?

I was interviewing someone for a job, and she mentioned that Google says the CEO of Yahoo is Terry Semel. Well, whatever happened to Carol Bartz. I asked her if she was sure that she had used Google to search and not Yahoo (!), and she replied in the affirmative.

I decided to search on Google and guess what… searching for “Yahoo CEO” does infact pull up a result, which says Yahoo! – Ceo: Terry Semel.

Google search result for

Try one more. Search for “which is the biggest search engine”. What do you expect? “Google” Well, the first result it shows is Cuil

Google results for

Let us know if you find some more Googlisms

Google, the search engine bellwether constantly updates its algorithms to ensure that searchers are getting the most relevant data and in the quickest data. Along with this, Google is constantly exploring new avenues and pre empting user patterns and launching products which searchers will use tomorrow. These experiments provide us, search engine marketers,  an idea as to what to expect from Google next. Since last year Google has been testing many services related to mobiles and I am sure that it will continue to do so this year too.

Android, is the perfect example to show how bullish Google is on mobile devices. Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices, based on the Linux kernel, developed by Google  It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. Google has also developed  the software that handset manufacturers will install in their devices. Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics, and Motorola are among the companies that have said they will produce phones that run on Android.

Moving to search, Google SMS is a feature through which users can SMS a search query to Google and receive instant replies. Thus one can query Google on the move, literally. This service is available in  US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Spain and India.  Google is continuously expanding this service to more countries, thus its clear that Google is going to focus a lot on these services.

Google has also modified its SERPS on mobile devices(Iphone, Android) to display search results perfectly. The images (courtesy:- SearchEngineLand) show how SERPS are displayed on mobile browsers.

Google on Mobile

The very fact that Google is modifying its SERPS for mobiles is a clear indication that Google thinks that more and more users are going to use mobiles to search.

Google has also started testing “Ads” on mobile search results page. Though only a few users have seen these ads but its a clear indication that along with organic listings we will very soon see PPC campaigns being run for mobile phones. Google has announced new mobile advertising options to target the iPhone, G1, and other mobile devices with full HTML web browsers. Advertisers can now create separate campaigns that are targeted specifically toward mobile searchers with smart phones. Additionally, since Google is now able to accurately map  mobile user location, it will show results (organic & ppc ) specifically catering to that particular area. The very fact that Google has modified its SERPS and included mobile targeting options shows how bullish Google is on mobile search being the next cash cow.

Google Ads on Mobile

Google Maps has also simplified directions on mobile phones which have Map client downloaded. The list of features that Google come up with specifically catering to mobile phones is just endless.

The important thing  for SEO experts , is to realise the vast oppurtunities and along with it the challenges that internet on the mobile has thrown up. SEO experts have successfully mastered the art of getting high search engine rankings on Google, however now their challenge will be to rank high for mobile searches . Moving ahead, the titles & meta keywords that Google displays on its SERPS will definitley not be the same that it will display on mobile browsers. Ranking below the first fold will bring in lot less visitors than it does on web pages. Basically, SEO for mobiles will be a completely new ball game. If search engine professionals dont get it right then they will definitley be left way behind.

Will keep this blog updated on further ‘mobile search’ developments .Wishing everyone a happy ‘09.

In another of its attempts to capture off line search markets Google now offers a service for mobile users in India who don’t have a web-enabled phone- You can now search for information on Google using SMS! The service is currently available in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Google charges normal messaging rates(dependent on service providers) for an SMS message. The Google SMS search service can be used for finding anything from the nearest bookstore or a restaurant in your area to movie timings, weather,currency conversion, flight status, cricket scores and a host of other things.

The query can be sent in normal Google search format to 97733 00000. One of the most useful features in SMS search is language translation. For instance, I could SMS “say hello in French” to 9-77-33-00000 to get the right French word. This transliteration is available in a host of Indian languages as well.

Google SMS Search could prove to be serious competition for the business of services such as the ones that charge a premium fee and delivering news or astrology updates or local telephonic search engines and yellow pages by sending information on the mobile phone using short codes.

The service is available for all popular cellular networks including Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Reliance, Spice, Tata Indicom and Vodafone.

Google has introduced Quotes on the Google News result pages. Searching for a person on Google news now results in a quote attributed to him/her popping up at the top of the search result page.