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| Trackur - Online Reputation Monitoring Tool Posted: 21 May 2008 09:41 PM CDT Today I’ve been checking out Andy Beal’s latest venture - Trackur. Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool that has been developed for companies and individuals wanting to take a serious look at what is being said about them in the blogosphere. I can also see the possibilities for using this tool for higher end bloggers who want to track what’s being written about them and/or their niche topic. The best way to get a handle on Trackur and what it does is to signup for the free 14 day trial. The second best way to understand it is to watch Andy Demo Trackur in the following video. There are of course free tools that you to monitor the blogosphere (including Google’s News Alerts and Technorati’s Watch Lists) but Trackur is a much more integrated package that is sure to appeal to a higher end user. You can see how it compares to Google News Alerts here:
The importance of such tools to bloggers is significant. Not only do they allow you to monitor what is being said about you and your company in the blogosphere - but to be able to set up tools to monitor when keywords in your niche are being mentioned is very important - particularly if you have a blog with a news focus. Starting at $18 a month and ranging up to $188 a month I suspect that a lot of ProBlogger readers will stick with the free tools - however for those looking for a more feature rich package Trackur will be a real option. PS: Speaking of Google News Alerts….Just as I was writing this post an email hit my inbox with one of my News Alerts. I set up one for “Darren Rowse” and here’s what it sent me today (click to enlarge):
It’s great to get news results and blog results like this each day - however…. 1. The first result (highlighted in green) is actually for a post written in May 2007 Don’t get me wrong - Google News Alerts rock and are an important part of my own monitoring of keywords that are relevant to me - however they’re not perfect and I know they miss a lot and put up flunky results from time to time - I guess you get what you pay for. |
| Using Google Analytics to Compare Search Engine Traffic Over Time Posted: 21 May 2008 02:32 PM CDT What statistics do you monitor in Google Analytics? I’ve written before on some of the statistics that I monitor on my blogs but one that I didn’t include is to look at the traffic coming in from Search Engines over time. Here’s one of my favorite ways to get a quick overview of whether my blog is on the rise or not with regards to traffic from Search Engines. The above graph (click to enlarge) is generated in Google Analytics and compares traffic from search engines to Digital Photography School (just the blog, not the forum) over the last two months. The last 30 day period is the blue line and the month before that is the green line. This graph immediately tells me that traffic is up from search engines over the last month.
The screen shot above (click to enlarge) shows that Search Engine traffic is up by 12.85% and also highlights where the rises in traffic have come from over the two periods (as well as other information between the two periods like the bounce rate, average time on site, pages visited per visitor etc). How do you get this graph and information? Here’s a quick step by step process (to do this you need to have run Google Analytics for at least two months). 1. Log into your Google Analytics account 2. In the left hand menu click ‘Traffic Sources’
3. Then select ‘Search Engines’ in the sub menu that opens up
4. This will open up the last month of your Search Engine traffic with a graph. 5. On the right hand side of your screen and towards the top you’ll see the date range of the last month. Click this open to get to this screen. 6. In that box you’ll see a ‘Comparison’ drop down menu. Click on the ‘Date Range’ option. 7. You can leave the blue date range as is - but with the 2nd date range (green) select the dates you want to compare. Then click ‘Apply’. Note: I always choose dates that correspond to the days of the week chosen in the 1st (blue) date range. If the blue date range starts on a Sunday and ends on a Monday make the green range start on Sunday and end on Monday too. While this leaves a few days not charted in between the date ranges it means that you’re comparing days of the week with the same days of the week in the two months. This makes it easier to see the comparison as the graph will usually rise and fall in the same pattern. You now can see how the two month’s compare. This is where my analysis often stops as it gives me a snapshot view of how things are going. But from this point there are any number of ways to drill down further including: Drilling Down Further You can drill down further to see a graph for each search engine by scrolling down the page a little and clicking on one of the links of the search engine you want to compare over the two months. This will take you to a page where you can see just the comparison in what traffic Google, or Yahoo might have brought. For example clicking on the Google stats takes me to a graph like this (similar to the above one as Google is my major source of SE traffic): Once on this page there’s more interesting insights to be had as they allow you to see your top keywords. For example I can see the comparison for the search term ‘DSLR’ for the two months which has seen a 17.03% increase in traffic as a result of people searching for that term. If I click on the ‘dslr’ link I can even see a graph of the two months again and the traffic for each day of the week for that particular keyword. This is useful if you’ve been optimizing a particular word or just simply to analyze one search result might have been having a significant shift. I now have some hints on a keyword that I might want to optimize a little better now. There are literally hundreds of threads of statistics that Google Analytics can provide you with. This is just one of my favorites. How do you use it to provide you with interesting and more importantly useful information on your blog and how it’s going? PS: Here’s another fun comparison for those of you who have been using Google Analytics for a longer period of time. Use the same process outlined above to compare longer periods of traffic. For example - here’s my overall traffic at DPS from the first five months of this year as compared to the first five months of last year:
There might not be a lot to glean from this graph - but it sure is motivating to look where you’ve come from - it’s a 94% increase. Something to motivate me for the next 12 months! |
| 2 Things that Are NOT Changing about the Web and How People Are Using It [VIDEO] Posted: 21 May 2008 09:06 AM CDT In last week’s video I examined 5 Emerging Trends in blogging. A few readers emailed to say that while they agreed with the trends I had identified that they felt a little overwhelmed by them and not equipped to embrace the trends on their own blogs. They were concerned that they were too far behind the big blogs and said that they felt like giving up. The emails reminded me of some of my own feelings when I started blogging. While I started out five years ago - at the time I remember feeling like I was too late to the medium. Other bloggers seemed like they were so much more advanced and in my lower moments I wondered if there was any point in blogging on. In this video I want to balance the 5 emerging trends in blogging with 2 things that haven’t really changed in blogging - things that I don’t seem going away any time soon. While the trends are worth keeping an eye on don’t lose sight of the basics - the things that don’t change! See the full sized video on YouTube, MySpace, Revver, Blip.tv and Viddler |
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