Avinash keynote speech at SES London 2010

Main points of discussion (Divided into 4 Acts):

Act 1 – Break down data

Analytics has many rows/columns of data and it’s crucial to weed out the the most important data. Top ten rows of branded keyword data is not the majority of traffic, need to focus on the bulk of data (which includes the largest volume) and analyze it.  Most volume lies in long tail. Using tag clouds can help understand keyword relations, and determining if your website is generating a good balance of organice trafic (long tail vs. short tail; branded vs. non-branded).

Act 2 – Outcomes!

Creating goals with economic values can help lead your clients in the right direction, focusing them on what’s important and what’s not.  Actions such as downloads, e-mail signups, clicking on ads, viewing more than one page, should all be turned into goals with a monetary value (even if it’s a relative value).

Act 3 – Think Long Tail (“Impression Virgins”)

The great thing about long tail non branded search queries is that they are made by people who have yet to decide on what website they want to visit. They are still exploring, looking for the most relevant result on the SERPS. It is our job, as analysts and as SEOs,  to have our results displayed and pages optimized. These are visitors that have yet to make branded short tail visits, they are in a much more preliminary phase of the buying cycle.  Avinash gave an example of HMV, and search based keyword tool, which I will write a separate post about in the near future. Stay tuned, priceless info.

Act 4 – Attribution of Clicks

One of the million dollar questions asked by companies and analysts  is:
Which medium should get credit for a conversion? For example, a visitor may view an ad multiple times, visit the website a few times, click on an organic result, later click on a ppc result, then finally click on a newsletter received by e-mail , at last making a conversion. In this process (or buying cycle),  all of the above mediums had a helping hand in the conversion. So who should get the credit? How do we know where to allocate our ad spend dollars? These questions are all very valid… Stay tuned for a separate post on this issue, the answer may save you a lot of time and money.

Overall, I really enjoyed the info and the way that it was presented. And who knew that later that day Efrat and I would get a more up close and personal session with Avinash.

PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle

Another session worth mentioning was called “PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle.” This panel was manned by some of the most well know personas in the online marketing arena.
On the SEO side: Ralph Tegtmeier, David Naylor, Rand Fishkin.
On the PPC side: Andrew Goodman, Paul Mead

Ralph Tegtmeier, David Naylor, Rand Fishkin, Paul Mead, Andrew Goodman (sitting from left to right)

The discussion was pretty lively, with Rand heating things up and stressing the growth potential and creativity within the SEO world. Naylor and Tegtimeier shared their fare share of wisdom, with Goodman and Mead firing back with substantial PPC efficiency evidence.

Questions Anyone?

When time was up, the audience had a chance to ask questions. I asked if  SEO will still be a part of first page results in the years to come, as Google has been increasingly pushing PPC results, video/image results, real time search results, product search results, and business local results. Naylor replied that he believes that pretty soon all of Google’s first page results will be paid. Rand said that Google is constantly testing, and it seems to me that he believes SEO has a bright future ahead.

Ohad Marom (me) with Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org

Cherry on Top – Up Close and Personal
with Avinash

At the end of the day, Efrat and I were invited by Alan Wrafter from Google to the Google UK office in order to join the GAAC agencies in a more informal session with Avinash. Avinash disclosed some info about the future of Google Analytics and tools that are being developed to help analysts get a better overview of important data.

Efrat Ner-Gaon, Avinash Kaushik, and Ohad Marom

Local Pub with GAAC Forum and Alan Wrafter

The evening was capped off with beers at a local pub with all the GAAC’s and Alan.

Efrat Ner-Gaon, Alan Wrafter (Google), Ohad Marom

A long and fruitful first day… What’s in store for us tomorrow?

This weekend Compucall was attending Google Analytics for Professionals training at Google HQ in London.

The speaker of this event was Justin Cutroni, Director of Analytics and Testing for EpikOne. Justin has consulted with hundreds of organizations around the globe to optimize their use of Google Analytics.

An analytics industry leader, widely read blogger and author of Google Analytics Shortcuts from O’Reilly, Justin will provide best practices for analyzing and optimizing your implementation and marketing initiatives with Google Analytics.

Following the insightful sessions Justin has kindly agreed to answer a few questions in a quick and spontaneous video interview. Take into account it was shot with a Nokia E71, hence the poor sound and visual quality.

In the interview Justin explained the importance of continuing testing as a key to successful analytics strategy, in addition to his view on where is the industry going to.

Have a Google Analytics question? Please comment below…

Barry Schwartz, Ophir Cohen and Olivier Amar (L2R)

Today Compucall had the pleasure of hosting a nice SEO get together. With the arrival of Barry Schwartz to Israel, we got a chance to meet and also host some of brighter SEO minds and agencies in Israel for a few hours. In attendance was, of course, Barry of Rustybrick.com, Itai Levitan of Easynet.co.il, Mayer Reich of Rankabove.com, Gilad Sasson of Nekuda.co.il and the Compucall Staff including Ophir Cohen and myself, Olivier Amar, amongst others. There was also a great presentation by the founders of articlesbase.com and bukisa.com.

Barry Schwartz, Meyer Reich and Gilad Sasson

Itai Levitan of Easynet

Firstly, I need to thank Barry for taking some precious time out of his 7 day trip. As part of a very organized Blogger Delegation to Israel with lots of stops along the way, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

Simon Gelfand and Eyal Halimi ArticlesBase and Bukisa Founders

The meeting started with two short presentations by Simon Gelfand. One on Articlesbase.com and the other on Bukisa.com. He explained to us his huge rise in growth, from zero to one of the main sites in each of their markets, in little to no time. He went over the business models and solid SEO infrastructures of either site. It’s nice to see such a huge website spawn from just an idea with the efforts of just a couple of people and no venture captial whatsoever.

Paid Search in Israel

Barry Schwartz then asked some interesting questions that veered towards paid search in Israel. The general consensus seemed to be that although some of the quality on certain verticals might sometimes be better in Microsoft and Yahoo, the combination of terrible platforms on both Yahoo and MSN and the lack of local offices for either of them, made their offerings here less than ideal. With the Israeli paid search market so much bigger than its population as a result of the number of Israeli companies dealing with foreign markets, both Yahoo and MSN would probably be in a much better position with local offices (as long as they ditched their present platforms and did something that more or less mimicked Googles, I mean why reinvent the wheel right?).

Google Analytics – The Future is Now!

We also touched upon how important Analytics had become in today’s companies and how no matter how far companies had managed to take their in-house analytics, then they never had the resources to go deep enough and get it right. Since both Easynet and Compucall are Google Analtyics Authorized Consultants (GAAC) we both felt that we had not yet come upon a company that had managed to get there alone. As a result it has represented a very viable avenue for both our companies to explore.

The meeting ended with some great smiles and some good catching up. Again, thank you Barry. We’ll get together again soon

Google has recently opened its GAAC program in order to create standardization of web analytics online. Only companies or people who pass a special analytics test can present in their website the GAAC logo and authorized to call themselves GAAC. Therefore, clients will be able to get professional service and know exactly what to look for when giving the access to their precious database to others.

Compucall is presently one of only two companies that received the GAAC authorization in Israel and one of 62 worldwide.

Read more details regarding our web analytics services.

Compucall is GAAC!

The upcoming change will include, among others:

*Advanced Segmentation
*Custom Reports
*Motion Charts
*Advanced Account Dashboard
*Data Export API
*Integration with AdSense

Below is a detailed review of some of these new upcoming features:

Advanced Segmentation – Visitor Segmentation Magic

In the past, real audience segmentation was only available in a handful of web analytics tools. My personal favorite has always been ClickTracks, a tool I’m actively using since 2004 (I wrote a post on its segmentation engine on my blog).

Ever since Google Analytics launched, its major weakness vs. ClickTracks has been its inability to custom segment, on the fly as well as to run analysis on historical data.
Well, something happened today folks. Google’s new segmentation engine is an amazing segmentation wizard, fast, easy to use, deep and able to go back into data from the past – simply beautiful!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Custom Reports – Google Analytics A La Cart

OMG. Simply select you’re desired KPI’s, drag them on to the page whiteboard and save – you’ve got yourself a report! I cannot imagine how much time this is going to save!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Motion Charts – Web Analytics Diamond Mining

In first look, this feature seems out of some crazy geeky labs, but come to look deeper into the philosophy – What web analytics is really about – it’s about getting the dirt off the raw data and finding the uncut diamond at its origin – how can I compare multidimensional KPI’s, get rid of irrelevant data and find my gold? simply click “visualize” and you’re on the way!

Click here to view the embedded video.

AdSense Integration – BI for the rest of us!

I saved this one for last, as opposed to the previous features, this one is not pure web analytics, but IS very much business intelligence, a tool which for many web properties may very well help open their eyes and improve both their top lines, bottom lines and user experience.

Wouldn’t you like to know which country generates users with highest eCPM for your web site? Wouldn’t you like to visualize how users click ads on your popular pages? Wouldn’t you like to see all the data in one place so you can see the holistic view of your online business? Well, you’re going to be able to do it real soon!

As mentioned, there a few other changes to the system, some visual, some practical – all will help us get more of our analytics experience -

P.S For more info on web analtics and google analytics professional services..