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• The new email marketing metrics · 19 Jul 2011
  Email is still one of the most widely used Internet tools and, as such, a great marketing tool not to overlook. Like other web marketing tools, email marketing has an advantage in that it is also highly measurable.  That said, there remains much confusion among professionals on how to measure email marketing and what metrics [...]
• Google+ data liberation: a promise not yet fulfilled · 18 Jul 2011
  Ever notice how MS Office can import umpteen different document formats but export options are pretty much limited to Microsoft formats (by the way, rtf is a Microsoft format)? This is by design. Smart companies have realized that data is an asset, to use strategically, including as a barrier to keep customers from jumping to [...]
• A few quick thoughts on Google+ pros and cons. · 7 Jul 2011
  It might be wise to say up front that I’m ecstatic over the launch, albeit, in limited test, of Google+. Google+ is already a significant improvement over Google’s other, often forgotten social site, Orkut, and seems to demonstrate that Google has learned a lot from its other previous social efforts like Friend Connect and it’s [...]
• Joomla SEO: Removing useless meta tags · 24 Jun 2011
  Joomla is one of the most used content management systems (CMS) on the web, trailing only WordPress in popularity. Like other common web CMSes, Joomla requires a bit of tweaking in order to achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) bliss. One of Joomla’s annoyances is an insistence in spewing out bad meta tags. Fortunately, these problems [...]
• Google Friend Connect, social web tools worth another look · 24 May 2011
  While Facebook captures the hearts and minds of many internet navigators (around 600 million users as of January 2011), Google has been been working on its version of the social web, releasing a myriad of services which facilitate social interaction on the web. Some, such as buzz, were ill-conceived and justly lambasted on their release. [...]
• Google is more social than one might think – now if they could only coordinate the pieces · 24 May 2011
  Sometimes its easy to overlook how social Google has become – from Google Social Search which gives results from a user’s social circle more prominent display to Google Friend Connect which provides building blocks to make any website social. What becomes clear after perusing the list of Google social web tools is that Google seems [...]
• How to painlessly import contacts in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites · 18 May 2011
  It happens to every company and / or professional which wants to promote their products and services on social networks: they are asked to permit the social network to access a contact list in order to find contacts which are already on the social network and to invite others to join them on the social [...]
• It’s official, Italy is part of the elite ecommerce nations · 4 May 2011
  Google has finally launched Google Shopping search in Italy, more than 8 years after they launched Froogle, the original name for Google Shopping (called Google Product search in the US). Google shopping has been available in the UK and Germany since 2004. Figure 1. Google Shopping Search home page in Italy Companies wishing to include [...]
• Microsoft’s Internet attention deficit disorder (IADD) · 4 May 2011
  Microsoft may moan about Google’s Internet dominance, yet it Microsoft who notoriously suffers from IADD, Internet attention deficit disorder. Microsoft has a long history of launching internet products and services, only to abandon them. Rival Google has also killed many products, such as notebook and wave, but these were arguably peripheral to Google’s mission to [...]
• Use events to track 404 page not found errors in Google Analytics · 28 Apr 2011
  All web users encounter it sooner or later, the infamous 404 not found error page. Over time pages are removed from sites; incoming links from external sites break, a concept known as link rot, or may be wrong in the first place. errare humanum est (to err is human) – Augustinus Hipponensis Errors are pretty [...]
• Google’s autocomplete search suggestions target of Milan court order · 27 Apr 2011
  The Court of Milan has rejected an appeal of a January 21/25 order requiring Google to suppress automatic search query completion suggestions associating two defamatory keywords, truffa (scam, swindle ) and truffatore (con man, crook) with a person operating in the financial services sector. While Google performs some preventive censorship based on local social and [...]
• Dear company, it’s time to convert your Facebook profile into a page before it’s too late · 18 Apr 2011
  Many companies have created an institutional or product presence on Facebook using Facebook profiles. With 600 million active users every month (19 million in Italy alone), Facebook‘s digital piazza is an essential component of a digital media marketing strategy for most companies. There is, however, just one small problem which threatens the very existence of [...]
• Google Analytics v5 is promising, yet with many lost features feels unfinished · 14 Apr 2011
  Like many digital measurement aficionados, I’ve been taking the new Google Analytics version 5 through its paces, and mostly love what I see. Google nicely provides documentation on what’s new and a map to find specific reports which may have been renamed. What does seems to be missing is a comprehensive list of what’s missing, [...]
• Making the most of communicating bad news: the operational email as marketing tool · 11 Apr 2011
  A while back I looked at how companies use their web error pages to communicate bad news. No one likes problems, but damage to a company’s reputation can be mitigated if it is dealt with intelligently. Epsilon’s data theft incident A recent break-in at Email Service Provider (ESP) Epsilon offers a perfect opportunity to look [...]
• Web Success hasn’t been Measured in Hits for over 10 Years, Time to Update the News Style Manual · 29 Mar 2011
  Dear New York Times, I really do appreciate your attempt, day in, day out, to bring clarity to a complex world. I know it isn’t easy, especially with the disruptions the Internet has brought to your sector (and many others). While you may have enjoyed a historical role as a paper of record, the Internet [...]
• Rome court to Yahoo!: you’re responsible for piracy occurring on sites in search results. · 24 Mar 2011
  The ninth district court of Rome has ruled that Yahoo! may not link to sites hosting pirated versions of an Iranian film, About Elly. The case was initiated by the film’s distributor, PFA, together with Open Gate Italia, a public affairs company. The judge ruled that Yahoo is liable for contributory infringement, copyright infringement facilitation, [...]
• Facebook EdgeRank and 3 steps to optimize visibility in the Facebook News Feed (NFO) · 14 Feb 2011
  The Facebook News Feed contains a selection of highlights from Facebook friends, pages to which a person is connected on Facebook and, to a limited degree, groups. The news feed receives significant visibility in Facebook due to its prime location in the central column of a Facebook user’s home page and its ongoing updates. The [...]
• What Google Knows about Google… and a few other things · 24 Jan 2011
  There is a wonderful saying that one hears in big companies, particularly when discussing Knowledge Management – KM initiatives, “if only we knew what we know“. It is unlikely that Google is exempt from this problem, but their data-driven culture has launched several information dashboards which aim to overcome this problem by facilitating internal and [...]
• Dear Google, thanks for the instant preview, now please support the “nopreview” meta tag · 29 Nov 2010
  Website owners need way to suppress Google Instant Previews without losing search result snippet as well. Bing's nopreview meta tag is the solution.
• Web Text as Images: SEO & other problems overcome with @font-face · 24 Oct 2010
  The first web pages that appeared in 1992 strongly reflected their origin in the academic world, one characterized more by the written word rather than by visual presentation. Figure 1: A web page circa 1992 When graphic designers arrived on the scene, they tried to improve the situation, but before long many designers began to [...]
• Google Instant expands international reach to 19 domains · 30 Sep 2010
  Three weeks after its initial debut, Google Instant is now available in 19 of Google’s 182 domains. Interesting tidbit: Google included Italy in its first roll-out group, but Google Instant is not yet available for the tiny city state of San Marino, which also uses Italian. Not everyone sees Google Instant Google Instant is only [...]
• Google’s Own Chrome Browser Inflates Google Analytics Data · 25 Sep 2010
  Google has announced that a defective version of their chrome browser has inflated Google Analytics data from September 7th until users update their browser with a version released on Wednesday September 22nd. The less than perfect work-around is to filter out ALL traffic from the specific browser version involved, using an advanced segment Google has [...]
• Google Instant Changes Little – and Some SEO Considerations using the Italian ABCs · 10 Sep 2010
  So now that most of the uninformed hype surrounding Google Instant has been written, let’s take a hard look at what Google Instant really means for most companies and organizations. Google Instant is an interface change First of all, it is important to understand what Google Instant is and what it is not. Google Instant [...]
• Google Autocomplete, née Google Suggest, the Precursor of Google Instant · 10 Sep 2010
  With all the brouhaha over the premiere of Google Instant, its easy to over look the fact that Google Instant isn’t really very new. In 2004 Google Labs launched a new tool called Google Suggest. Google suggest provided a list of potential search keyword phrases based on the keystrokes a user typed. Initially Google Suggest [...]
• Automatically download log files from hosting control panel · 7 Sep 2010
  I’m currently using an Italian hosting service, Webperte, for my Italian blog. The service is fine, except for one minor frustration: they don’t support ftp retrieval of the web server access logs used by log based web analytics systems such as Google’s Urchin. The official solution is to log in to a hosting control panel, [...]
• Web Analytics and the Missing Right Clicks Conundrum · 30 Aug 2010
  A web marketing professional naturally thinks a lot about the incredible diversity of a site’s visitor demographics. Old and young, male and female, well educated and not, affluent and not… but how much thought has been given to the right-clickers? No, not the right-handed, the right-clickers. Right-clickers are those who right-click on a link to [...]
• Comparison of Google Analytics / Urchin Tracking Scripts · 30 Aug 2010
  With the advent of Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code, many sites need to review the automatic tagging code they’re using to track items such as downloaded files and outgoing link clicks. Unfortunately Google doesn’t offer an official library for this purpose; each Google Analytics or Urchin administrator is on their own in selecting an extended [...]

• Google Trends for Websites, now with less data · 19 Aug 2010
  So who isn’t in love with Google’s competitive data tools for web marketing? Of all the sources of public web analytics, Google is potentially the most accurate. Why? No one else has the breadth of web data that Google has. Not comScore nor Nielsen. Not Hitwise. Not quantcast, compete nor Alexa. Forget their admittedly impressive [...]
• Say It Isn’t So: Marketing Resource Site Marketing Profs Seems To Be Cloaking Search Engines – Inadvertantly? · 29 Jul 2010
  Years ago savvy webmasters realized they could achieve better search engine visibility by creating two copies of a web page. One, text rich and graphics poor, would be seen by search engine robots, such as Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp and Microsoft Bing’s msnbot/bingbot. Everyday web users, surfing with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari, would see [...]
• Google removes Suggest result counts – even behind the scenes · 17 Jul 2010
  Figure 1: Once upon a time: Google Suggest with results counts Google Suggest is one of those wonderful features that makes Google irresistible. Ever noticed that as you start to type a query, Google provides the top queries which start with what you’ve typed? Initially introduced as a Google Labs experiment in 2004, Google introduced [...]
• Move over Basic Search Results, Google Rich Snippets are here · 26 Jun 2010
  For years search engine search results were limited to 3 basic pieces of information: a title, a summary and a URL. Attentive observers of Google search engine results may have noticed the appearance of additional information, what Google calls rich snippets, in certain results over the past few months. Some results contain review ratings, such [...]
• Yahoo Directories in Europe RIP. Did anybody notice? · 17 Jun 2010
  Yahoo! has closed some of their European directories sometime this year – their Italian and German directory URLs, e.g. http://it.dir.yahoo.com/, are now redirecting to their search page. Others may be impacted but I haven’t checked. At least the Italian directory is still in Google and Yahoo search results but not those of Bing. Yahoo Site [...]
• Search engine Teoma is back. But will anybody notice, much less care? · 5 May 2010
  If you’ve been using the web for years, you may remember glorious search engines of the past like DEC’s AltaVista. Eclipsed by Google, AltaVista lives on today as a test bed for Yahoo! technology, although that may no longer be the case once the Bing-Yahoo! agreement is fully implemented. Seasoned search engine marketing (SEM) professions [...]
• Twitter statistics slides presented by Biz Stone at Chirp developer’s conference · 15 Apr 2010
  Hard data on twitter usage has been mostly limited to rough estimates provided by third parties. At twitter’s first developer’s conference, chirp, we got some data straight from the source. The first piece of data is that 75% percent of twitter’s traffic is coming from the third party clients and services using the twitter API. [...]
• Yahoo Search Marketing Tools: What’s at Risk & How to Avoid Surprises · 9 Mar 2010
  When Yahoo and Microsoft announced their Search Alliance in July 2009, only the high level agreement details were available: Microsoft will provide the development and management of search engine results technology (bing) Microsoft will provide the search and content network ad platform (adCenter) Microsoft will manage the relationship with self-service advertisers Yahoo will manage the [...]
• Domain & URL Strategies for Multilingual & Multinational Sites · 7 Mar 2010
  One problem search engines face when indexing and ranking a website’s content is to identify the target geographic and linguistic market a particular website page is trying to reach. The world wide web is indeed that, and the issue is particularly complicated for websites in languages which have a broad geographic reach such as English [...]
• And then there were two: Microsoft – Yahoo! Search Deal at SMX West 2010 · 21 Feb 2010
  With the approval of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal by EU regulators, search engine marketers will soon be working in a new landscape. In western Europe where Google dominates with about 90% of the market, it’s tempting to react to the deal with a big yawn. Yet Yahoo! often has a bigger impact on our search [...]
• Google giving up on China (for now). Bing, what say thou? · 13 Jan 2010
  Google’s very undiplomatic announcement that it is going to stop censoring its search results in China doesn’t leave much face-saving wiggle room for the Chinese government – a big no-no in Asian culture. Significant blocking of Google in China seems imminent – you don’t go to great lengths to build the great firewall of China [...]
• Yahoo Web Analytics (ex IndexTools) soon in no man’s land? · 9 Nov 2009
  When Yahoo announced their effective exit from the search engine business last July, the main points seemed clear: Microsoft will provide the development and management of search engine results technology Microsoft will provide the search and content network ad platform Microsoft will manage the relationship with all but an elite group of advertisers Yahoo will [...]
• Der Berliner Mauer, 1961 – 1989. Good riddance. · 9 Nov 2009
  As the western world looks at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I though I’d make my own modest contribution. I had the fortune to study in East Berlin in 1987-88, just before the wall fell. Sure there were tensions (communist darling Rosa Luxemburg’s Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des anders [...]
• The real news behind the Google and Bing Twitter deals · 22 Oct 2009
  Yesterday we saw a lot of press and blogosphere attention devoted to deals being made between the two leading search engines, Google and Bing, and leading social media services Twitter and Facebook. Twitter search deals, while interesting, doesn’t yet merit much beyond a big yawn – we’ve already had decent, if imperfect, search via Summize, [...]
• Italian press to Google: you’re unfair (and we’re confused) · 30 Aug 2009
  This past week the Italian antitrust authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) conducted a search of Google’s Italian office and announced it was beginning an investigation into Google’s possible abuse of its dominant position in the Italian search engine market. The case was triggered by a complaint from the Italian Federation of News [...]
• 10 shadows hanging over Google: does Google have a dark side? · 5 Aug 2009
  In a recent article on Microsoft’s bing, I felt it necessary to temper my enthusiasm for Microsoft’s commitment to web search by noting Microsoft’s decidedly checkered record as a good net citizen. What about Google? It is almost too easy to write a glowing review of whatever new service Google unleashes. For example, Google Maps [...]
• Bing – features and SEO recommendations, one month on · 21 Jul 2009
  At the end of May Microsoft announced its new search engine, Bing. Microsoft justified many of Bing’s new features by noting that 50% of search queries are either abandoned or refined – users aren’t getting the right answer on the first try, citing studies by Jakob Nielsen, Enquiro and internal testing. Microsoft also said that [...]
• Eying Search Engine Market Share in the era of Bing · 20 Jul 2009
  At the end of May Microsoft announced its new search engine, Bing. As data from Bing’s first full month becomes available, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at the current market share enjoyed by the major search engines in the US and a “typical” European market, Italy. The real test [...]
• Google Squared – expanded search engine results in a table · 9 Jun 2009
  One of the more exciting recent search engine advances I’ve seen in a while is Google Squared. Search for something which has multiple attributes and Google will try to build a structured table of results, adding columns for each major attribute it knows about. As an example, try “Hitchcock films”. Figure 1: Google Squared search [...]
• Why SEO & Usability are like two peas in a pod · 25 May 2009
  Good user experience is fundamental for the success of a website: On the Internet, it’s survival of the easiest: If customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Give users a good experience and they’re apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But the Web also offers low switching costs … Only if [...]
• 7 sources of link intelligence data and key link analysis considerations · 28 Apr 2009
  It may seem like a cliché but on the web no website is an island. Any site worth its salt will have accumulated inbound links and will most certainly contain outbound links to other resources on the web. Indeed, one can easily say that without links to interconnect websites, there wouldn’t be a worldwide web. [...]
• Google AJAX Search results, tracking in Google Analytics and, um, an API rant · 22 Apr 2009
  As many may know by now, Google has been experimenting for a few months with Ajax (JavaScript) based search results. One problem with the initial trial was that no referrer information was passed when a user clicked on a search result, “breaking” the historic ability of Web Analytics systems to track search traffic from Google. [...]
• Microsoft finally concedes search engine battle to Google · 31 Mar 2009
  It was bound to happen. In an economic climate of belt tightening, Microsoft has finally done the unthinkable. First there were those 5,000 layoffs. Then there was the abandonment of adCenter Analytics, Microsoft’s web analytics solution. Yesterday Microsoft announced it was discontinuing Encarta, tacit acknowledgment that it has been trumped by Wikipedia. So perhaps I [...]
• Microsoft Throws in Web Analytics Towel, abandons adCenter Analytics · 12 Mar 2009
  To judge by an e-mail I received, and this post Microsoft is abandoning the Live Metrics solution it relaunched as adCenter Analytics. On a personal level, this reminds me lot of another web area (book search) where Microsoft competed with Google but later got cold feet and pulled out. I hope Yahoo remains steady in [...]
• Simon Says… or is it Google Says? · 11 Mar 2009
  Be careful when interpreting webmaster news from Google - just because Google says you can do something doesn't mean you should. Exmples include rel="canonical", URL rewriting and Flash support.
• Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior · 17 Feb 2009
  This SMX West 2009 session looks at how internet users interact with search engines and how that might influence search engine interface design and our SEO efforts. Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro Speakers: Larry Cornett (@cornett), VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Gordon Hotchkiss (@outofmygord), President, Enquiro Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager – Live Search, [...]
• What’s New With Social Media Marketing? · 16 Feb 2009
  Search Engine Marketing is part of a bigger web ecosystem. At SMX West 2009, three habitués of the social media scene shared tips on successfully promoting a website using social media. Moderator: Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors Speakers: Chris Bennett (@chrisbennett), President, 97th Floor Brent Csutoras (@BrentCsutoras), Online Marketing Consultant, Brent [...]

• The human dimension of Search Marketing · 15 Feb 2009
  I love the web. Despite being somewhere in Italy, I’m able to follow many professional conferences like SMX West through session write-ups posted online. After all, it isn’t always possible to attend conferences in person. Yet even when the post quality is high, there’s something missing, something that can’t be replicated virtually. Above all, its [...]
• Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results · 15 Feb 2009
  In the search engine optimization business there are several recurrent discussions with new client prospects. The most common one by far is around why conversion reports should be used for search metrics rather than traditional ranking reports. Jaws drop when people hear that two different Google users may see different search results for the same [...]
• SEO Session: Up Close With Google Blog Search · 14 Feb 2009
  Google Blog Search is Google’s vertical search engine which focuses exclusively on blog content. While overall usage is probably pretty low, results from Google blog search are starting to appear in Google’s web search as part of their “Universal Search”, more generally known as blended search. Blog content can appear in Google’s standard web search [...]
• In-house SEO: SEO Reporting & Scorecarding for Management · 14 Feb 2009
  One of the nice things about web marketing is the wealth of data available to use in decision making processes. Web marketing data also helps in getting and maintaining management support for SEO activities. This SMX West session focusing on in-house SEO considered what data to present to management, when to present it and how [...]
• Google, the spy we love · 9 Feb 2009
  Passing through the Frankfurt Airport on my way from Milan to SMX West, I couldn’t help but notice the front page of Germany’s weekly newspaper, Die Zeit (The Time). Google. Der Spion, den wir lieben. Google weiß alles. Der Internetgigant aus Kalifornien macht uns das Leben leicht. Zugleich aber folgt er uns im Netz auf [...]
• My website has disappeared from Google. What do I do now? · 3 Feb 2009
  One day you note a fall off in the traffic Google sends your website. As Google is the main source of your traffic, as is the case for many websites, alarm bells naturally start ringing. Investigating, you realize that the site does not appear at all in Google or has poor visibility at best in [...]
• Extra long descriptions showing up in Google search results: test in progress? · 23 Jan 2009
  Several Italian SEO practitioners have noted seeing Google search results with snippets about double the normal length1. Google’s query result snippet (the result summary or description) is usually around 150 characters or so. It may be the contents of a page’s html meta description tag, especially if the tag contains the search keywords, or an [...]
• Page views value little in the monetization of a website · 20 Jan 2009
  The title might be a bit provocative, but the topic is important for companies which want to insure their website is a profit center rather than a cost center. The number of page views tracked by a web analytics system is often a weak indicator of website monetization potential. With the advent of monetization programs [...]
• Google Crawling and Execution of JavaScript: where are we at today? · 10 Jan 2009
  For a long time, Google’s advice to website developers was to keep things simple to ensure search engine spiders could successfully crawl and process website content: Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, [...]
• SMX West 2009: Do you know the way to San José? · 5 Jan 2009
  One sign that a profession has matured is in its ability to support a dedicated conference where professionals can hear and learn from presenters as well as interact with other practitioners (and potential clients & vendors). Search Marketing has had its very own conference since Danny Sullivan started the Search Engine Strategies (SES) series 10 [...]
• So many aspiring SEOs! – the SEO Quiz results are in · 26 Dec 2008
  15 questions, 5 weeks and 5 books: almost 700 people took the 2008 SEO quiz challenge. Note to the reader: this article was originally posted on our Italian blog on December 2nd. The quiz targeted an Italian audience; we’ve published this translation in order to allow a wider audience to follow search marketing developments in [...]
• 15 questions, 5 weeks, 5 free books: the SEO quiz is here · 26 Dec 2008
  Note to the reader: this article was originally posted on our Italian blog on October 28th. The quiz targeted an Italian audience; we’ve published this translation in order to allow a wider audience to follow search marketing developments in Italy. It seems that the summer fun is now over, but not so fast: it’s time [...]
• Search engine marketing acronyms: what are they talking about? · 22 Dec 2008
  That Americans like acronyms is not really a surprise to those who have worked for an American company. Acronyms are extremely useful as a conversational shorthand especially when working with unwieldy terms like search engine optimization. SEO is just so much easier to roll off the tongue. The problem with acronyms is that it is [...]
• Did you mean: porn or why not all keywords are suitable for SEO. · 9 Dec 2008
  In the not too distant past when we spoke of search engine marketing, we focused mainly on search engine rankings (SERPS) or, in other words, of being top in Google. A nice phrase, concise and effective. Visibility in search engines is very important, no doubt. But in the top spots in Google for what? Here [...]
• SEO for a Blog – All roads lead to RomeCamp 2008 · 13 Nov 2008
  One of the things that I really like about the Internet is that anyone who has a minimum of familiarity with a computer can communicate their ideas to a wide audience. Once upon a time the platform of choice was a personal site at geocities, clarence city or the like. In the meantime the blog [...]
• Social media measurement and an example, this SEO Blog · 7 Nov 2008
  Recently a friend asked me for some pointers on the measurement of social media, such as blogs. I have found that Jeremiah Owyang has a lot of interesting things to say on this topic, as exemplified by has article What should we measure and the document Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A Roundtable Discussion on [...]
• Improve search engine and keyword reporting in Google Analytics, a SEO strategy · 7 Oct 2008
  In three short years 1 Google Analytics has become an important tool for many companies looking to get more out of their presence on the web. Google Analytics’ wide range of website reports, from traffic sources to conversion rates, provide invaluable insight into a site’s business performance for an initial cost which is difficult to [...]
• List of over 550 search engines and sources of traffic attributable to web search · 7 Oct 2008
  The following is a list of search engines and significant sites incorporating a search engine, such as ISP portals, which provide site traffic attributable to web search. The list can be used to verify if your Web Analytics system recognizes all the sources of organic search traffic and keywords important in your market – or [...]
• Search engine detection in Microsoft adCenter Analytics · 7 Oct 2008
  Microsoft is the other main player, after Google Analytics, in the area of free Web Analytics tools for the analysis of browser centric web data. Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics is the successor to the former LiveSTATS thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition of DeepMetrix in April 20061. Why search engines offer Web Analytics Certainly the name Microsoft choose [...]
• Are directories still useful for SEO and in increasing web site traffic? · 23 Sep 2008
  An ongoing question in search engine optimization (SEO) projects regards which directories might be useful for increasing incoming traffic to a web site and as a means in obtaining better search engine visibility. The question arises due to the importance that was once attributed by search engines to some directories and by the desire to [...]
• Enhance your blog or website with Google’s Site Search. Measure the results in Google Analytics. · 15 Sep 2008
  You’ve done it. You’ve created a successful web site with compelling content. A loyal community of readers keeps coming back for more. SEO efforts have paid off too, with lots of traffic from Google, Yahoo!, MSN and minor search engines. Time to sit back with a fine Real Ale or a glass of Monteregio di [...]
• Who’s using Google for their organic and paid search results? · 1 Sep 2008
  An important consideration for Google AdWords advertisers is to understand just where their contextual ads might appear. Google notes that AdWords ads can appear on the: Google search engine Partner search engines (e.g. Aol, Ask.com, Libero / Arianna, Virgilio / Alice) Google owned web content sites (e.g. Gmail, Google Groups) Third party web content sites [...]
• Funny business searching for Milan-Rome flights in Google – AdSense Arbitrage at work. · 25 Aug 2008
  The traditional August break in Italy is a wonderful time to work on projects which linger on the back burner during the rest of the year. Last August led to the release of a free keyword selection guide (in Italian); this year’s focus is a Course on using the AdWords PPC paid search marketing program. [...]
• Web Text Search is Hard. Image indexing is even harder. Just ask Cuil. · 19 Aug 2008
  A new search engine, Cuil, has launched, in an attempt to become the next Google. Cuil was founded by people with experience from Google, AltaVista and IBM – sufficient enough to get the mass media’s attention in the dog days of summer. Rather unfortunately Cuil decided to tout it’s index size as a primary feature. [...]
• Marketing the best of a bad situation: gracefully communicating downtime news on the web · 27 Jul 2008
  The other evening Camillo Di Tullio, a.k.a. Dr Who, asked me via IM if I was having problems accessing highly trafficked social media websites like Facebook or LinkedIn. In that particular moment, I wasn’t, but his question stuck a particular cord. We’ve seen many downtime issues with major Internet sites lately. Website downtime, planned and [...]
• Links and Algorithms behind Blog Statistics: BlogBabel reopens. · 20 Jul 2008
  I couldn’t help but notice the reopening of Italy’s primary blog classification service, BlogBabel. Just over a year ago I wrote about BlogBabel: “While it is worth keeping in mind that BlogBabel’s ranking is just one measure of the importance of a particular blog, Ludo deserves kudos for the transparency in which BlogBabel’s rankings are [...]
• BLVD Status Analytics in free public beta test · 11 Jul 2008
  I found an interesting announcement over at 97thfloor.com of a new Web Analytics tool, BLVD Status. Two significant impediments have historically hindered the uptake of Web Analytics by businesses. The first has been cost. Professional Web Analytics systems have been fairly expensive, both in server and hosted forms. The second issue has been the great [...]

• Search engine Ask.com no longer crawling the web. Weakly powered by Google? · 9 Jul 2008
  Many search engine optimization professionals have long hoped that Ask.com, the scrappy search engine underdog, would give the big three (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft) a run for their money. In July 2006, we saluted Ask.com by documenting their little known Ask.com API data interface. Unfortunately, Ask shut off external access to this interface in March [...]
• Are Italian publishers still diffident when it comes to Internet Book Search? · 3 Jul 2008
  Review of Google Book Search presentation by Santiago de la Mora, Head of Google Books Europe, at Editech 2008 in Milan Italy. Includes discussion of Microsoft's Book Search.
• Flash is still a problem for SEO (and the web) despite Google announcement · 2 Jul 2008
  I just discovered that someone on a Web Analytics discussion group misconstrued the recent Google announcement of better Flash search engine crawling support to mean it is now good to use Flash when developing web sites. Nothing could be further from the truth. While Google’s move is welcome support for all the legacy Flash websites [...]
• People, Internet and Enterprise Business, all without mentioning Google. · 26 Jun 2008
  Last Wednesday I had the fortune to attend a world class conference on social behavior and technology applied to medium and large sized businesses. Not in San Francisco. Not in Boston, where I worked for 4 years. Not in Milan, even. In Varese. Right, Varese, once known more for shoe production. The conference, the International [...]
• Psst: Your Competition is ignoring Internet Search Marketing, are you? · 15 Jun 2008
  The inside scoop on how you can get a competitive advantage by including organic search engine visibility in your marketing mix. One of the primary goals of traditional advertising is to create demand for a product or service. An advertisement awakens latent demand by bringing attention to the product or service, or strives to create [...]
• Search marketing is different: how to gain a competitive advantage by insuring a successful SEO project · 15 Jun 2008
  In a related article, I consider how Internet search marketing remains a niche focus for a few early adopters despite laser-like targeting and measurement abilities. As a relatively new media, search engine mechanics and user interaction with search engines remains a bit of a black box for many marketing professionals. In the following discussion, I [...]
• Are you an accomplished woman vying for a place in President Obama’s Cabinet? · 8 Jun 2008
  As Barack Obama prepares his challenge against John McBush, one of his many challenges is to engage and motivate the many constituencies which supported the Hillary Clinton candidacy. It is unlikely that the white racist contingent will rally around Obama’s message of hope any time soon; American is not yet Dante’s paradiso on earth, despite [...]
• 9 SEO Security Tips for WordPress · 13 May 2008
  In theory, this is a marketing blog, focusing on search engine optimization, web analytics and other web marketing topics. So what does WordPress security have to do with Google and SEO? Well one downside of the extended web ecosystem is that the same idiots who jump the queue in the supermarket will try to exploit [...]
• Remove WordPress version information from your blog and feeds · 13 May 2008
  By announcing to the world the version of WordPress you are running, you greatly simplify the work of a hacker. Peter Westwood’s post documents how to suppress output of the WordPress version number in feeds and blog posts. I’ve packaged his code in a very rudimentary WordPress plugin which will hide the version number in [...]
• Astra2Connect and Tooway close the Internet digital divide with satellite to home service, maybe. · 2 May 2008
  Regular readers of this blog be warned – this article is about the internet infrastructure needed to insure Internet users are online in the first place. We can perform all of the search engine optimization (SEO) we want, but if our target audience isn’t online due to lack of access, our results are going to [...]
• Search engine optimization for websites in multiple languages · 15 Apr 2008
  A common issue facing companies and organizations with an international presence is how to deploy multilingual sites across one or more Internet domain(s). In other words, should one put all the sites on a .com or .org domain, perhaps taking advantage of directories on the web server to separate each language? Is this the best [...]
• Top level domains, subdomains or directories for Search Engine Optimization of multilingual websites? · 14 Apr 2008
  Companies targeting multiple linguistic markets on the web have a lot to think about when planning their Internet strategy and execution. Ideally, search engine optimization should be part of their strategy considerations. In this article, we look at a technical marketing issue of website localization: how should a company distribute content targeted at different markets [...]
• Google Analytics’ Web Statistics Benchmarking Service · 6 Mar 2008
  Last summer I looked at the different web statistics available for benchmarking the competition. From a marketing point of view, the result wasn’t very good. Poor methodology and a lack of transparency mean that most publicly available web statistics are worse than useless: by providing a false sense of confidence, they can lead to bad [...]
• State of the Net, Udine 2008 · 11 Feb 2008
  So what is the state of the Internet in Italy in the year 2008? Armed with an ambitious, varied agenda spanning two days, speakers from Italy and abroad tried to answer this question during the conference STATEoftheNET, held February 8 and 9 in Udine. We didn’t need to wait long for an answer. Stefano Quintarelli, [...]
• Become my friend, at least on Facebook · 31 Oct 2007
  For a long time I’ve resisted the tempation to create a profile in Facebook – one can’t be everywhere, no? (Andrey Golub being the exception!) Certainly there aren’t a lack of places online to find business partners. However, I recently received an e-mail from an American woman I met at a meet-up of SEO (search [...]
• Social media to solar power: RomagnaCamp offered it all · 9 Sep 2007
  Fresh back from this weekend’s RomagnaCamp, I’m taking a brief break from a “posting hiatus” to report on the event. After a quick touristic visit to Ravenna on Friday, I caught the bus for Marina Romea. This turned out to be auspicious as I was able to met Giuseppe Lamuraglia of e-net, a company which [...]
• Now there are 6 ways to keep website content out of search engines · 28 Jul 2007
  Several months ago a client inspired me to write a comprehensive guide to keeping website content out of search engines. Usually website owners are focused on the opposite side of search engine optimization, insuring web content is well indexed. Yet, as many can attest, search engines can be all too efficient at finding documents they [...]
• Are we still lying with statistics in the internet age? · 2 Jul 2007
  In the course of a search engine optimization project, I’m often asked during the competitor analysis phase why one website ranks highly in Alexa, while another ranks highly in an other statistics supplier’s top websites survey. As our two part article Web statistics for internet market research: pick a number, any number illustrates, there are [...]
• Web statistics for internet market research: pick a number, any number · 2 Jul 2007
  Overview of Web Statistics suppliers, from Alexa to Nielsen and comScore. Considers valdity of their underlying methologies.
• Google ever present in Desktop Search with release for Linux · 29 Jun 2007
  More than two years after Google launched its Google Desktop Search for Windows application, limited initial support for the Linux platform is available. Of the top three major search engines which offer desktop search software (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft), Google is the first to try to win the hearts and minds of both Macintosh and [...]
• Brand Confusion with Trenitalia’s Website · 21 Jun 2007
  Marketing professionals know that brands are worth big money. A brand name and logo serve as an instant shorthand to convey a mental image of a product or service. Companies invest extensively when developing and launching a new brand name. Once launched, brand names are fiercely protected. Looking for Trenitalia? It was thus with surprise [...]
• Web Analytics Optimism in Italy · 24 May 2007
  Last November Luca Meyer organized the first Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) in Milan, in conjunction with the IAB Forum interactive marketing event. All of six people were present to represent the Internet’s accountability side in Italy. A pitiful number when you consider the thousands of visitors at the IAB Forum. Since the Milan WAW, Giovanni [...]
• Getting the most out of business oriented social networking services LinkedIn, Xing, Viadeo and Neurona · 20 May 2007
  In just a few years, businesses oriented social networking websites have taken off. The industry leader, LinkedIn, counts more than 10 million members despite only being available in English. To take advantage of a professional social networking web service, a user completes a professional profile and invites professional contacts to connect to the profile. Most [...]
• Searching the World’s Information in Google’s Universal Search · 17 May 2007
  Over its short life span, Google has been diligently carrying out its stated mission of organizing the world’s information including web pages and documents, blogs, images, news, finance, videos, books, products & catalogs and local places. Each of these data types has had its own distinct search interface. Internet users could access any of the [...]
• Google rolling out much improved Google Analytics V2 · 11 May 2007
  Google is in the process of releasing a significant update to the free web analytics tool it launched to wide acclaim in November 2005. Although we’ve appreciated the professional feature set in Google Analytics, especially given the cost, the user interface was cumbersome at best. As time went on, Google Adwords features were continually patched [...]
• How do search engines, such as Google, handle JavaScript and CSS? · 10 May 2007
  A frequent Search Engine Optimization question is “how do search engines such as Google handle JavaScript and CSS?“ Historically, search engines processed web pages much like an old text video browser such as lynx. A search engine only “saw” what the simplest browser could display – simple html. Much for this reason, search engine optimization [...]
• Harnessing the knowledge of the masses with Google · 8 May 2007
  One of the common problems of writing in a foreign language is that of using the right expressions in the right context. As an example, is the English expression child’s play, a simple task or act, gioco di ragazzi or gioco da ragazzi in Italian? While linguistic websites will undoubtedly provide the answer, sometimes the [...]

• Keep out: an often overlooked part of Search Engine Optimization · 6 May 2007
  Rare is the web professional who doesn’t know that building a great website isn’t usually enough to guarantee its success. Sites have to be visible in search engines for the keywords and phrases web navigators are most likely to associate with the site’s content. An entire industry has grown up around SEO, search engine optimization. [...]
• Blog statistics with BlogBabel at ZenaCamp in Genoa, Italy · 1 May 2007
  Expats in Italy need to stay on top of professional and daily happenings locally while still engaging in the wider world. This task is made difficult by the vast quantity and quality of resources available in English (my native language), as exemplified by the BBC. Unfortunately, their Italian equivalents, such as the ad-infested public broadcaster [...]
• Internationalization of Web Sites at ZenaCamp, Genoa (Genova) · 29 Apr 2007
  At yesterday’s ZenaCamp in Genova, I gave a presentation on the main issues that are frequently encountered when creating sites for an international audience: Language Accented Characters and Symbols Language Variants Culture A particular focus was made on user issues, such as providing a page in the right language to a site visitor while allowing [...]
• 8 Ways to Optimize Video for Search Engine Visibility · 12 Apr 2007
  If you had not already noticed, there has been an explosion of video on the web. Greater availability of broadband connections, coupled with the rise of video hosting and sharing sites, such as YouTube, has made online video accessible to the masses. In addition to classic search engine optimization, marketing professionals now need to consider [...]
• Audio & Video Multimedia Search Engine Optimization · 12 Apr 2007
  As broadband usage is increasing, many websites are increasing the audiovisual content available to attract and retain Internet navigators. Unfortunately multimedia, such as images, mp3 podcasts and video, presents a plethora of visibility problems for traditional search engines. Search engine indexing and retrieval technology is tuned for text-based content, such as html files, not multimedia [...]
• 8 reasons to avoid Flash (or Silverlight) like the plague when designing a website · 9 Mar 2007
  At a recent Legal Marketing Italia seminar, the question arose as to why a company’s web site doesn’t rank well, even for the company’s name. In Italy, the most common problem encountered with websites is the use of Macromedia / Adobe Flash to develop most or all of a company’s website. This case was no [...]
• Keep sections of web pages out of Yahoo! with class=”robots-nocontent” · 6 Mar 2007
  There are occasions when some content on a web page just shouldn’t appear in search engines. The most frequent example is repeating header and footer details, such as site copyright information. This site uses the hcard format to provide contact information site visitors can save in a vcard for use with a PIM such as [...]
• 6 methods to control what and how your content appears in search engines · 17 Feb 2007
  While it may seem paradoxical, there are many occasions where you may want to exclude a website or portion of a site from search engine crawling and indexing. One typical need is to keep duplicate content, such as printer friendly versions, out of a search engine’s index. The same is true for pages available both [...]
• Google Sitemap Standard Adopted by Leading International Search Engines · 16 Nov 2006
  Discussion of sitemap xml standard, new sitemap.org site and sitemap adoption by the major international search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing / Microsoft Live and Ask.com). Includes ping information.
• Accented Characters, Symbols and Special Characters in HTML Documents: Considerations for Search Engine Optimization, Usability and XML Feeds. · 6 Sep 2006
  One issue many international Webmasters face is how to properly manage documents written in languages containing accented and other special, non-English, characters. Does it matter how the special characters are written? Do HTML documents need to contain both accented and non-accented words to be found in search engines? Continuing our series on website internationalization for [...]
• How to Specify an HTML Web Document Language for good SEO · 17 Aug 2006
  So you just wrote a stunning essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses – in Irish Gaelic. Will Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Ask recognize it as Gaelic, hosted as it is on your co.uk domain? Maybe. But you can given them a hint! The trick is to use all of the HTTP and HTML language code settings [...]
• Unofficial documentation of Ask’s Web Search API · 26 Jul 2006
  In part one of this article, we set out to document the little known Ask web search API by providing background information. In this continuation, we’ll look at the actual API details. Update: Ask disabled access to their API on 6 March 2007. We are working on obtaining additional information. Write us if you would [...]
• Decrypting Ask’s Web Search API · 26 Jul 2006
  In this article, we set out to document the little known Ask web search API available at xml.teoma.com. One of the many aspects of successful search engine optimization (SEO) is the periodic measurement of how well a site is performing in a particular search engine. Dimensions to measure include the number of pages in the [...]
• Tracking Search Engine Cache Page Views with Web Analytics · 24 Jun 2006
  A small percentage of search engine users may view a web site using a search engine’s saved copy of site pages, their cached version. The cached copy the search engine serves to the user usually contains links to embedded objects present in the original site: images, CSS stylesheets, javascript, etc. Organizations focusing on web marketing [...]
• Search Engine Crawlers: Who’s visiting my site and why? · 17 Jun 2006
  Organizations implementing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies will sooner or later consider monitoring search engine crawling activity. Before a web page can appear in search results, the content has to be discovered through a crawling or spidering process. This is done through software which automatically navigates the web, finding and downloading web content for the [...]
• Google Zeitgeist has a Sibling, Google Trends · 17 May 2006
  Google Labs has launched a new search tool, Google Trends. It displays relative search volumes over time (from 2004 onward) for a set of user defined keywords and keyword phrases. Google Trends joins Google Zeitgeist, a static snapshot of top search trends. In some cases, news events are presented with the search volume, providing insight [...]
• Top Keyword Search Trends in Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask · 12 May 2006
  An Introduction to Real World Search Engine User Behavior You were just assigned the task to update your website’s keywords. Not yet in the mood to pull out a thesaurus or check out the competition’s keyword meta tags? Then start with a bit of educational fun, reviewing how users really query search engines. Each of [...]
• Google Maps, formerly Google Local, preparing for Italian Launch? · 25 Apr 2006
  It appears that Google will be rolling out Google Maps coverage for major European countries, including Italy, shortly. A preview with Italian data is available by using the Google Maps UK URL i.e. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=it. Google Maps is three applications in one: Local business search (primarily yellow pages based data) integrated with a display map Navigation [...]
• The Google Webmaster Dashboard, a.k.a. Google Sitemaps · 15 Mar 2006
  In order to index and display web content in their search results, search engines need to be able to find the content. The first generation of Internet search engines relied on webmasters to submit a site’s primary URL, the site’s “home page”, to the search engine’s crawler database. The crawler would then follow each link [...]
• Web Analytics: Embedded JavaScript Page Tracking Code vs. Web Server Log Files · 11 Mar 2006
  Web Analytics tracking choices with advantages and disadvantages Basic Web Analytics tools usually fall into one of two categories: Web server log file based JavaScript embedded page tags Both have advantages and disadvantages. By default, server logs contain much richer data than that usually tracked by JavaScript page tracking. For organizations focused on search engine [...]
• Creating Search Engine Friendly Drop-down menus using CSS · 6 Mar 2006
  JavaScript drop-down menus are employed by many medium to large size web sites as primary navigation tool for site visitors. Drop-down menus offer many advantages. They are already familiar to computer uses who encounter them in almost all mainstream software. By collapsing when not needed, the menus take up little screen space – yet offer [...]
• Web Analytics Embedded JavaScript Page Tracking Code: Place at the top or bottom of the page? · 26 Jan 2006
  Hosted web analytics reporting systems commonly use JavaScript code embedded in site pages to track user viewings of each website page (alternatively the systems download and report on data contained in web server log files). Web Analytics system vendors provide instructions specifying where to place the JavaScript code in a site’s html pages. Usually the [...]
• UK and US English Dialect Considerations for Site Internationalization · 16 Jan 2006
  Search Engines and Site Localization While there are few differences between the UK and US English dialects which might lead to miscomprehension, Noah Webster‘s spelling reform does lead to interesting issues which need to be considered when designing sites for international audiences. Update: This document was written in 2006 and no longer represents the current [...]
• Google Labs has re-released the much-maligned Google Web Accelerator · 24 Nov 2005
  The Google Web Accelerator made a brief appearance in May 2005 before downloads were cut off due to a „maximum capacity of users” being reached. The Accelerator was criticized by many, with privacy and security concerns frequently expressed. Google Labs has made a reworked Accelerator available for download. Aimed at broadband Internet users in Europe [...]
• Google launches Google Base, a searchable on line database repository. And classified ad server? · 23 Nov 2005
  Already master in the acquisition and management of mostly unstructured data¹, whether it be web pages or word processing documents, Google is now taking on structured data as well. Google Base, currently only available in English, allows users to insert data items which become searchable through a form at base.google.com. 16 types of data to [...]
• Former Urchin Web Analytics Reporting Service now free as Google Analytics · 13 Nov 2005
  Google has made its on line web analytics reporting service, Google Analytics, available free of charge to website owners. The service, bought several months ago from Urchin, previously cost a minimum of $2400 / year. The service uses small snippets of code embedded in each page of a website. When the page is requested by [...]
• Howto – AWStats Enhancements and Extensions · 23 Oct 2005
  This area focuses on resources to enhance the functionality of the web analytics tool AWStats. These resources have been developed based on our client needs. As a contribution, we offer them here. Some may even make it into a future version AWStats! The information here is provided on a „worked for us” as-is basis for [...]

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