Great Work Ahmed Awwad- Best in success with your GAIQ achievement!

Ahmed Awwad submitted his Google Analytics Qualified Individual badge to us on 2012-01-17.

Skills

• Google Analytics Qualified Individual.
• 11 years of experience in web technologies and digital marketing.
• More than 5 years of Google Analytics.

Website Analytics, SEO, SEM, Market research, Consumer Behaviour, Social Media

Just Say no to (not provided)

Ask me no questions…I’ll tell you no lies

This is not a rant, nor am I bitching about the countless great Google products. I can’t help feeling a little taken back by data collection in Google Analytics now. I realize this program is free and enterprise class but something has left a bad taste in my mouth. Up until December 2011 this was an outstanding program to improve your website in many ways…marketing, graphic design, conversion and (my favorite) finding your money keywords.

In case you think this is some motor mouth rant, I want to share some of the time I invested in Google Analytics…

Google Analytics Shows you Less by Hiding Logged in Users Keywords

Keywords that are labelled as (not provided) means you will not see the keywords that “logged in” Google users use to find your website. It’s not the end of the world but in all likelihood it is going to continually increase its presence in your Google Analytics reports.

Have Your Say by Voting

2008-2009-Achieved Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC)

At the time I was working with one of Canada’s premier internet marketing companies. My role was to attain the level of knowledge required to pass the GAAC test. It took the better part of one year but after plenty of theory and practical education we became one of Canada’s first internet marketing companies to pass the elite GAAC company qualification

2009- Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ)

After my contract was fulfilled with the internet marketing company I went on to complete the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam. It was fun, challenging and left no room for posers.

2010- Google Analytics Introduction to Training Video Series

6 Sigma black-belt trained Mukesh Sharma approached me. He had heard through the grapevine that my knowledge base was extensive in Google Analytics. After several brainstorming sessions we decided to produce an extensive video introduction series on taking your Google Analytics Individual Qualification to Market. These videos would serve as an overview to the in-depth video training series we would produce immediately following the introduction.

2009- 2010- Google Analytics Training Videos

After producing the introduction we followed through with our plan and created a ten hour video training collection of Google Analytics training videos. It took us a great amount of time, effort and energy to produce these high quality videos.

2008- 2011- Supporter and Hardcore Google Analytics

Every client we perform our services for must have Google Analytics installed. If a valued client did not have Google Analytics installed we would insist on some means of measuring our campaign success and improved ROI.

Google Analytics Crossroad

Time is the most precious commodity we have. Time is money! After living, breathing, walking and talking Google Analytics for 5 years, reality has struck me right between the eyes. The primary objective for Google is their business model, not its user’s best interest. Of course there are some that would strongly disagree with me, I can respect that. You might say “What do you want for free?” My answer “The truth” In 2007 it was my decision to invest 5 years into Google Analytics, true dat! If I knew my keyword data was going to fade away in 2012 I would have started with a paid program such as Omniture.

I am not listing the above accomplishments to impress anyone or promote what I do. The reason for briefly outlining the time invested is to circle back to the phrase “there is no free lunch”. Although this software is free, I want to share some negative features about Google Analytics that I believe now make looking at other paid analytics programs worth perusing:

Google Analytics Cons

Data Privacy

If you understand the way Google Analytics works you would also conclude that Google owns your data. Sure, you can review reports and export data but the fact is their Meta crawlers see it before you do. Your data is likely used in Google’s massive Meta data set.

Google ran into some hot water in 2011 by the German authorities

“The German data protection representative Johannes Caspar has made it public that Google’s negotiation with the federal authorities about the future of its web measurement application Google Analytics (GA) in Germany have reached a dead end” Source

Google has worked to resolve this matter with German authorities.

Account Termination

If you breach any of their TOS your account will be terminated along with any of your report data. It’s not often that happens, but it does.

Support is Limited

Google does not directly support Google Analytics. They have structured a network of GAACs (Google Analytics Authorized Consultants) to address support issues. You can also call upon GAIQs (Google Analytics Qualified Individuals)

Recently (Aug 2011) a Googler shared his thought of the day with his Google+ buds…

“If you have a billion users, and a mere 0.1% of them have an issue that requires support on a given day (an average of one support issue per person every three years), and each issue takes 10 minutes on average for a human to personally resolve, then you’d spend 19 person-years handling support issues every day.” - DeWitt Clinton  

That is thought provoking but the reality is there are great support methods such as forums, blogs, chat, Google Instant messaging, and email available for paid products. Most notably, Google AdWords support has improved immensely.

Slows Web-Page Loading

After heavily using Google Analytics across thousands of websites I will support Google’s claim of 99.9% server uptime. I have experienced downtime on occasion where you’ll notice your web pages don’t fully load, depending on where you have placed the GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code).

It is recommended that you place the tracking code above the </body> tag so your pages will fully load if there are problems with the Google Analytics Servers.

Data Limit

I do not recommend Google Analytics to big data websites. If your website exceeds 10 million requests per month you may lose some or all of the data above and beyond that limit. You should also understand above1 million requests per day may cause issues with your (Google’s) data.

No Log Files

Some businesses would prefer raw or filtered log files to include in their Meta data. These files reside on the Google servers and are not available to users.

Not Provided

Recently Google has decided that users logged into Google will no longer pass the keywords along to Google Analytics. Take a look at your keyword data, if you see (not provided) it represents logged in Googlers. The keywords they use are not being passed along to your Google Analytics reports. It sucks!

Summary

Yes, there are many pros Google Analytics has but right now I am in a bad mood and don’t feel like discussing them. All I want is access to all of my keyword data once again. (Not provided) is (not cutting it) for me. The majority of my accounts show (not provided) as the number one referring keyword.

Just Say no to (not provided)

There is no doubt that my voice alone will not influence the Google Analytics engineers. In 2007 I had the pleasure of working with some of them during GAAC training. They are a smart group! I cannot believe these brilliant and talented developers cannot find a way to give GA users back the valuable keyword data they once had. It makes me think there is an underlying objective that has nothing to do with Google Analytics users and all to do with Google’s new social push (Google+).

In short, if you are seeing (not provided) in your keyword data help yourself to voicing your opinion. Together we might make a difference!

Have Your Say by Voting

Since 2005 Google Analytics has been the choice of most webmasters and marketers. It really was a great way to see more about the behaviors of people visiting your website.

Source

The main reason for its unparalleled growth was simply the price—FREE. How can anybody complain about that? Do you recall a saying most of us grew up with: “There is no free lunch”. That phrase is ringing clearly for many web marketeers that have seriously invested time in Google Analytics.

The time investment has been both enjoyable and fulfilling. But now all that time spent learning, endorsing, using, explaining, reporting, etc may be wasted.

My beef begins with (not provided) appearing in your Google Analytics Reports. What does it mean? According to Google here’s the skinny:

Keywords not provided (not provided)

“When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic.”-Amy Chang, Google Analytics team

Huh? “Only a Minority of Your Traffic”?

For me, insights into money keywords (keywords people use when they take a desirable action on your website) has always been at the top of my actionable reporting using Google Analytics as a tool of choice. I know we were told by team Google “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic”, but my Analytics dashboards are telling me a different story.

Website Example A- (not provided) up 316%

Here I have compared my last 2 months of keywords used by people to access my website against the two months prior to that. Not only is (not provide) my number one keyword but the number of people visiting this website as (not provided) are up 316%.

Translation- I cannot see what keywords (not provided) site visitors are using to find my website. The number of site visits from this source (Google logged in users) are increasing at a disturbing rate. With Google’s latest blockbuster, social search integration–expect the percentage of  (not provide)  visitors to increase ever faster.

Website Example B- (not provided) up 366%

Comparing the exact same timelines as above on a larger website, we can see the effect is even greater. In this (not provided) keyword example the increase of invisible keywords is a whooping 366% as well as my number one referring keyword.

Translation- (not provided) keywords began appearing in our dashboards around December 19, 2011. Over the last 4 months 2000 people have accessed this website. We have no idea what keywords they used. All we know is Google organic sent them, not the keywords they used to find you.

Do you Care? If you are looking for keyword data…does a bear poop in the woods?

Summary

From the many accounts I have checked, (not provided) began to appear in our analytics data around December 19, 11. Since then, it is trending up at an alarming rate. Is “alarming” the correct term to use? If you are looking for keyword data…does a bear poop in the woods?

Helpful Resources

• Not Provided- Shock and distaste at the removal of keyword data
• The beginning (not provided) spikes- Search Engine Lands weighs in, November, 2011
• A Call to Arms- Miranda Miller, January 12, 2012 calls us to arms against SOPA, Snake Oil SEOers and Google’s (not provided)

Submit Your Google Analytics Individual Qualified Certificate Here

If you have completed your GAIQ exam and passed—Congratulations! The next step is to let prospects, friends and business connections know. This is exactly where you need to be.

It only takes a few moments to upload your accomplishment to the web’s coolest directory of GAIQs.

Take a Look at GAIQ’s On-Board

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You can see more GAIQ listings on our GAIQ Listing Directory.

Tips for Google AdWords  – Language & Location Settings

At the beginning of the month, Google rolled out an update to its search algorithm called Fresh that affects 35% of the company’s search results. In comparison to Panda, another update that only affected 12% of results, the Fresh update is going to impact a substantial amount of users.

The point of the Fresh update was to provide searchers with more timely results, as the name implies. Google’s indexing system, referred to as “Caffeine,” makes this possible through its high-speed crawling of the Internet. Now when a person makes a search for something such as the President’s approval rating, the first results will automatically be ranked with preference given to sites that have recent content.

There are a few kinds of searches that this update impacts. Primarily, it changes searches dealing with current events. Users who see a headline on TV and pop it into Google will no longer see content that is months old at the top of the results. Instead, current events receive a preference. Regularly changing information that isn’t necessarily a current event will also be impacted by the new update. A search such as “What cars have the best gas mileage” will now return the latest information available, whereas before the results might have included an older page that matched the keywords more.

One aspect of search that the new update doesn’t affect is the rankings of pages that contain static information. Information such as who invented the light bulb or when the United States were founded will still rely on the old algorithms. Since this information doesn’t change, it makes sense that the rankings would still be based on how much the keywords of the search matched the page relevance and authority rather than when it was published.

As with any update Google makes to its search algorithms, the Fresh update is designed to help Google’s users out. By favoring content that has been recently updated, searchers will theoretically get the most relevant content first. There should no longer be any need to insert dates into search results to try to narrow the field.

Just as the update helps searchers, it also helps certain kinds of websites. News websites and sites that are generally large and updated frequently will obviously see the most benefit. Any site that publishes material regularly on should see a boost in their rankings, despite the presence of other sites that might have more keyword matches. Early on, the biggest boosts in search rankings were experienced by sites in the news category, as well as brand websites and video websites. A few of the sites that benefited the most were Last.FM, Squidoo and FunnyOrDie. As expected, what these sites all have in common is that they are constantly refreshed with newer content.

For websites who are adversely affected, the best way to counter the hit is to update more frequently on matters that people are searching for. By being the latest to publish content, sites can avoid being labeled “stale” by Google. It is important to note, though, that quality standards still apply, so there should be a balance of relevant and quality content being published. The algorithm accounts for previous versions of a page; so it’s not possible to slightly tweak a “stale” page in order to bump it up the search rankings, don’t even think that something like that will help you get your traffic back.

One interesting aspect of the Fresh update is that even though the focus is on providing the latest content, it doesn’t reintroduce Twitter updates into the results. Google had included Twitter updates into their search results until July of this year. Once the agreement expired, the two companies were never able to come to terms on a new one. With Google’s focus being on fresh content, it seems strange that they didn’t find a way to reincorporate Twitter into the results. With so many news stories being broke on Twitter first, it seems like Google’s Fresh update is still missing a huge chunk of the recent web, no matter how fast the company indexes pages. Even their Google+ social network is still too young to be the source of news like Twitter was which leaves them a bit vulnerable.

The overall impact of the update will be difficult to gauge for the first several weeks. While preliminary data is available, webmasters will adjust their methods in order to climb the search results again. What is clear about the update is that, whether for better or worse, the update has fundamentally changed Google’s search service, once again.

Don’t Talk Like a God

Respect the fact that people are reading your content with the same or more knowledge than you have, Know-it-alls are not generally likeable people. Every single contribution you make (post or reply) should have wholesome substance to the topic of the conversation. You are trying to win the respect of people, not flog your business. Who are you? What is your area of expertise?

“Teach me, help me discover, give me a warm a fuzzy feeling”

As you begin to get involved, every message you post becomes a part of your brand identity to your audience of friends and followers. In time, your helpful messages will paint a clear, honest picture of who you really are!

“Curiosity Always Kills the Cat”

People learn who you are and begin to associate you with the lighter side of your area of expertise. They cannot help but going to your site and learning more about how you can help them. In the magic moment where you cross the line of trust with a spectator they may just find their way into your sales funnel because they know you and want what they learned about in the social network. It’s the way it works—~it’s human nature! In all social networks people will follow you when they are ready. When that happens, it’s the key to a trusting relationship—but the door is not opened yet!

Where Are the People That Want What You Got?

There are countlessf different social platforms out there! How possibly could you ever find people you can relate to? This question really begs for the bigger question…who is your target audience?

• Clients that exist
• Prospects
• Leads
• Abandon Clients
• Demographic Audience

Once you identify who your market target is, learn how they are engaging networks. Now we need to find them. Tto do that, knowing the various types of networks will help you find the best places to hang out. Some of the more common types of networks your audience uses include microblogs (Twitter), blogs (blogger) video (YouTube), forums (Digitalpoint). There are millions of other (less common) social media platforms I am not mentioning here as well.

Testing audience participation is a great way to zoom in on your target audience (people that share common interests).

Find Trust in New Friends!

When that happens people will gladly step out of the social channel into your sales funnel if they truly believe you are going to help them out. There is NO WAY to cheat trust and win! When traditional marketing people recognize that real involvement is a requirement, marketing in the social sphere will make more sense and truly help brand recognition. Yes, it takes more time and planning but the reward opportunity is only limited by your own imagination. At this point the transition from social to sales lies totally in your follower’s mind. There is no push or sense of urgency, it is a natural progression that stems from your online social persona.

Sooner Or Later…Better Sooner

It is not a question of “if” it is a question of “when” your business will engage social networks. If you look at Twitter you can see names like CNN News, Google, Tony Robbins etc. Additionally, when you get close to your marketplace you may learn things that cause you to re-engineer your sales process because of what the people are saying or asking for. It is how the master minds create pinpointed solutions that are irresistible offers.

Social Networking Thoughts to Ponder

Baby Boomers Love Social Networking

Although Facebook was created for kids by a kid (Harvard undergrad student Mark Zuckerberg, 26 years old in 2011), parents are connecting with old high school friends, flames, and even teachers. Currently 33% of internet users have memberships in social networks. This is an increase of 8% from 2005 as reported by Pew Internet & American Life Project.

A few people I talked to in my age group had some very telling information for me.

1. James, 44 embraced social networks early in 2008 because he feels mobile again. After a horrific car accident that left him confined to a wheelchair the rest of his life, social networking gives him his legs back again. From making videos at YouTube to mingling with old friends on Facebook life is great for James.
2. After suffering from a stroke in 2004, Rudy, 55 decided to hook up with old buddies in a few popular networks. As a retired internet marketing professional he loves sharing his love for college football with network friends.
3. Joy, 44 is happily married with 4 lovely children—2 boys and 2 girls. After the kids hit their teens life has been challenging for her. Joy shares social space online with many other women that share raising teens as a common interest. As woman love to talk, conversations often go into careers, romance, and other interesting topics.

Social Networking Growth Facts

• “The last six months have been a turning point in terms of people going from not seeing a reason for social networking to fully embracing it,” says Lance Ulanoff, editor of PCMag.com.
• Currently, 16.5 million adults ages 55 and older engage in social networking
• 25% of Adults 18 -25 are involved in social media- AND GROWING
• Are search engines using the voting side of social networks to help determine rankings?
• Facebook is seeing the most growth among users age 30 and older
• AARP.org unveiled its social networking platform

Create an Approach

You want to join a network and be received with opened arms.

The only two investments we have are time and money. Both are precious and limited. How can we put all this together and make sense out of it? It’s simply TOO HUGE to get your head around. Well, there is an approach to the social side of the internet that can help your business—it’s called a social network plan. What is a plan and how does it work? More than anything it is a change in thinking from the highest levels. Instead of sitting in a bush waiting for your competition to walk right by you, embrace business social marketing. When you join a social network it is your web property as long as you abide by the rules. It should be looked it that way and each part of a predefined, themed network grid that speaks to your business mantra in some way.

5 Steps To Prospect Your Network

1. Learn the Mood- Look around and see the flow. What are people saying, what is the content of videos are playing?
2. Information Collection- Based on step 1 you should collect information that is relevant to what they like. Sometimes you can post things if you are not sure and ask new friends what they think about it.
3. Comment Contribution- On other blogs, forums etc post your helpful comments—you are leaving a signature every time you post. Make comments helpful, educational and thought provoking
4. Relationship Building- talk to people that show interest in your comments. Answer questions pointed at you that put the asker in the right direction
5. Expand- Explore each network for other users that share common interests. Invite them to join your network. Find relevant groups—join them. Get to now the other members—invite them to join your network. When people join your network, talk to them; tell them you appreciate their involvement.

The above steps are perpetual—-consequent growth is relative to the time and effort put into the above steps. Don’t be so concerned about what you know, think about what they (Your new friends and followers) know. As long as you are cultivating good meaningful content people you connect with can quickly butterfly. Now you know the important steps lead to building trustworthy relationship with your audience.

Mind Mapping Your Business

When is the last time you stopped dead in your tracks and asked yourself; “What was I doing again?”. As our world becomes more advanced and you add new staff to your company, staying on target becomes more challenging. A company that can connect more dots will always serve its customers better. Not to mention the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. Can you feel me?

Process Mapping Advantages

• Your team can be one
• Connect more dots
• Develop a “One Write” system
• The right and left hand join
• Give clients a sense of ownership when they buy your service
• Visually brainstorm with your team and clients

Just because you are a valued visitor, I am offering you a peak at the power of Mind Mapping software that we use every day. It is intended to help you plan and manage projects. In every Mind map installation I have done, positive impact was immediate.

• Clients and staff became more intimate with the goals of their business.
• Management sees increases in productivity with a greater sense of control.
• A great way to structure and build your website and business.
• Use maps for preparing the rest of your marketing collateral for lead generation.

This is an All-in one solution for project management, site building, and marketing collateral generation that CANNOT be overlooked.

We have built up a library of process templates I think you will find interesting. In the Mind mapping video above I show a process that was mind mapped from scratch. We create them all the time and have templates that are available.

Mind Mapped Templates

• Google Analytics Installation Steps
• Google Analytics and Adwords Steps
• Tracking your Print Mailings with Google Analytics (Shown in Mind Mapping Video)
• Integrated marketing & organic On-Page SEO steps

Currently we are working with a few companies mapping out their business production process. Although I cannot discuss details, I can make a custom “One-Write” map for you and show your team how to use it.

Technical

These are all detailed maps that your team can follow from one page “the map”. We can offer consultation and advice with technical issues related to Google Analytics, PPC isolation in Analytics, data filters, Ecom, etc.  Staff is Google Analytics Qualified.

General

We can create custom business maps for any sector looking for a system or process to follow. Our maps can be exported as PPT, JPG, Word and PDF. They will interact with Excel spreadsheets and formulas.

This tutorial is based on the old version of Google Analytics.