Read Google Analytics Cookie Script
I’ve taken some time out to write a script that provides a nice API to access Google cookies. If you’ve seen the Google cookies before, they can look pretty cryptic and will require you to memorise the syntax of how the cookies are formed which you don’t necessarily want to do to save brain space.
I won’t really go into the intricate details of Google cookies so this post will assume you know what you’re looking for. I may write up a post to explain more in-depth how Google cookies work later on. In the mean time, you can watch this presentation by Google on cookies (it’s pretty good!) or read the documentation to find out more about Google cookies.
So how is this useful? Well it really depends. You may use it to read GA campaign values and integrate it with your CRM system to track where your leads/sales are coming from or write custom scripts that integrate with GA (i.e. custom variables). It’s really up to you!
Anyway, on to the script.
Continue reading »
Geo Targeting / Localisation on Google Bing Yahoo
When launching a website, it is important to identify where your target audience is located and to ensure that you get found within that region. For example, if you were an e-commerce store in Australia where you only shipped goods locally and not internationally, your target customers would be Australians and hence why it is important for you to localise your website to the local search engines.
The reason for this is whenever a user types in Google.com or Yahoo.com into their browser, these search engines will redirect them to the localised search engines based on IP detection. This means that if you’re browsing from Australia and you type in Google.com, you will be redirected to Google.com.au and for Yahoo.com, au.Yahoo.com. Once you’re at these localised search engines, you have the option of choosing local search results only.
This means that if you are found on these localised search results, the organic traffic that you will be getting highly qualified. This is a win-win for both search engines and website owners as search engines are serving more relevant search results, thus better quality and website owners are receiving relevant localised traffic. It’s all about relevancy!
Now you know the importance of localisation (or geo-targeting), here’s some common factors that search engines look for and factors specific to the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).
Google Geek Night
Hey guys, sorry I haven’t been updating this blog. Been a busy little bee! Thought I’d do a quick update and share with you guys my trip to Google‘s office tonight for an event called ‘Google Geek Night’.
It’s basically a short meeting between Google and their agency partners to give a presentation on the online search demand and insights into user search behaviour, more specifically focused towards online shopping. Oh yeah, after that it’s all about drinks, cannapés and socialising. I was happy that they served Becks beer, one of my favourite beers and didn’t go cheap with local beers.
Each of us also got a Google pack which consists of a Google cap and some Google ‘goo’. Yes, really it’s goo. I’m too lazy to take photos so you’ll just have to use your imagination :)
Above is the First Rate team after a few drinks and posing with our Google pack. Produce placement there, hehe.
We also got a tour around the Google office but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take photos. It’s their brand spanking new office located at Pyrmont, just opposite Starcity Casino. As expected, they had pretty cool decorations all around the office and a beautiful view overlooking the harbour.
Google Gears Webinar Prize – Sneak Peek
If you’ve ever attended a Google webinar and have tried winning the trivia, well I’m letting you know that I won the last one! The webinar was called Diving Deeper into Google Analytics.
It was a pretty straight forward webinar. Didn’t learn much. Would be good for a novice or an intermediate analytics user.
Basically, what the trivia is about is that Google will ask a question and whoever answers first will win a Google Gears pack. The question I got was “How many goals can a profile have?”. Answer is 4. I was first to answer :)
Here’s a sneak peek into what’s inside the Google Gears pack.
I got a “personalised” letter from Google congratulating me and inviting me to join more Adwords webinars.
Feedburner Email Subscription Request Problem
If you’ve ever come across an error saying something like “the feed does not have subscription by email enabled” on your feedburner email subscription form, then you’re in luck because I may have the solution to this problem (thanks to Paulo for pointing out this problem to me).
First of all, something you should know is that Google has migrated their feedburner services to the Google domain now which means you’re able to sign in with your Google account now (which I imagine they will do the same for youtube soon). If you haven’t migrated it over, you will be prompted to the next time you sign in.
Once you’ve signed in, you’ll have to make sure that your feedburner email subscription settings is enabled.