Search Analytics Blog

Welcome to Enquisite!

No Responses since August 1st, 2006

Welcome to the ”almost” final version of the Enquisite Search Metrics reporting tool ! By almost final, I mean that two ways. There are some quick updates coming, and new features still to be added. We doubt it will ever be “finished” That’s not a bad thing. Enquisite is a community driven project - the community will always want new features.

But, please let me tell you a little bit about what Enquisite is today…

In September 2004, I saw something I had never noticed before. I had no idea how we could practically use it, but started bouncing it back and forth with my business partner, Todd Hooge, who saw a way. In the back and forth, we experienced a series of “ah-hah’s” and realized that there was a way we could provide web site operators and marketers with the search engine ranking information they craved, and not contravene the search engine terms of use. It was like a two headed epiphany.

We knew that customers were constantly requesting more information about their search engine rankings, and there was no authoritative, objective way to gather this information. Existing solutions were fraught with inadequacies, and contravened the search engines’ Terms of Service. In discussing the realizations / discoveries / seeds of invention with Todd, we flushed out the core Enquisite Passive Ranking Reports Tool. It was originally nicknamed “LEAVE” internally – I can’t remember how Todd came up with that acronym. It all went from there.

Anyhow, it took many months to fully outline the project. Whilst developing out the various ideas into patents, we sat down and developed the Enquisite Reporting Tool. It’s much more than just a search engine ranking tool, and definitely not “just another web analytics tool.” We weren’t interested in re-building the wheel. Enquisite’s search position reporting tool was developed to help our clients. We realized that everyone in the industry, be they consultants, SEO / SEM firms, or marketing specialists inside companies, needed exactly the same reporting information we did, and our clients did.

There’s a lot of great web analytics tools out there on the market today and we’re not interesting in competing with them. They all do interesting things, but, they are all focused on what the user did when they arrived at your website. They look inside a website only at the activity that is going on within that small box.

Our customers demanded something different. They needed something which looked out, and allowed both of us to start understanding how visitors arrived, where they came from, and why. Traditional web analytics tools simply don’t do that. So we didn’t build a web site analytics tool. We built a search metrics tool! In business, as we all know, it’s those that can look and think outside the box that reaps the big rewards. Now ability is available to you for free!

After significant development and careful testing of algorithms against thousands of search engines, we had a working prototype product which allowed us to provide ranking reports, without querying the search engines to gather the data. That’s when everything went nuts. We realized what else we could do! WHICH IS ?……………… what you’re starting to see today.

I’d like to take a moment of your time, and thank a few of our early prototype testers, among them Jason Dowdell, Andrew Goodman, Rick Segal, Mark Evans and others who all climbed aboard this train in the second half of 2005, provided feedback, and helped drive the development process forward. They provided us with invaluable data to test against, and feedback which helped us improve the service / product. Over the last five months, many many more highly intelligent and thoughtful individuals and colleagues have climbed aboard; among the many, Dr. Jamie Murphy, Sander Raymaker, Seth Godin, Mathew Ingram, Jeff Barr, Barry Schwartz, and just recently Rand Fishkin. I believe that every one of them endured an introductory web presentation, explaining what we had built, and how to use it. Thanks to their comments, questions and suggestions, I always seemed to walk away from the Q&A with another idea for something else we could do, or a different way to use the reports. Needless to say, they have all provided me with some insight and advice into what we’ve done right, and wrong, and ideas for things we’re going to do. They have also all helped shape Enquisite as you see it today. For that I am grateful; Thank-you to each and every one of you!

We have set some ambitious goals for this release; We’ve moved from prototype to BETA, and surprisingly, that’s a big jump. Along the way we’ve hit some roadblocks, and we’ve stumbled a couple of times, but we persevered. Some of the feature requests we’ve been striving for just were not feasible for today’s release. But they are in our development pipeline; we will be adding these, and other new features constantly.

• The most requested, and highest priority one is to segregate PPC from organic results. The tabbed section of your reports will end up with three additional tabs arranged vertically down the left hand side of the box: “ALL” - “PPC” and “Organic” These tabs will allow you to look at just your PPC data, or just your organic search data, or everything. The nice thing about everything we’ve done so far: when we release an upgrade, we ensure that all historical data can be processed. This means even if we don’t offer the feature today, you will be able to access the information for today, and yesterday, when we release it.
• The second most important update which we are working feverishly on is flexible date reporting. It’s coming. But we wanted to provide something different there. When we say “flexible” we mean it. You don’t just want to look at a week, or thirty days. You might want just to look at work weeks, and exclude weekends. Or just Tuesdays during coffee breaks. That’s coming.
• Another is API’s and data feeds. The whole foundation of Enquisite is based on the principle that this is your data; you should be able to use it in any reporting or application you want to. We’re building the tools that make this possible.

One decision we made a long time ago was that we’re not going to be secretive about what’s coming, and just announce it when it’s released. We’ll be posting our development list, and we’ll keep updating it. Why are we doing this? Because, these are your reports. They’re free, and our intention is to keep offering you these reports for free, in perpetuity. We are going to do things like sell advertising space and sponsorships, once the traffic levels warrant it. Please help us get there by telling other web site operators or marketers about Enquisite (as of August 1); it’ll only mean we can add more features, faster.

We want you, our community members, to drive the development schedule. We’re going to add a community board sometime next week. Please participate in the community, and tell us what you want / need to see. Enquisite Reports are your repots, and they should provide you with the data you want. In the not too distant future, we will be opening up the data structure so if you want to build a report for yourself, you can! It’s your data. If you feel the report you’ve created could be useful to others, please send it to us. We’ll figure out how to make it available. These are your reports; they should look, feel, and operate the way you want them to. I know we’re not there yet, but we’re going to keep working to make it possible.

There’s still a lot of graphical changes and report updates to come. Our focus has been on getting our users the information you need. Not on making it as pretty as possible. Could colors be better used or the corners rounded? Yes, and definitely. Should these take precedence over key business information? We didn’t think so. Will we get there? Yes: as long as you tell us what’s really important to you.

The next few months, and years are going to be exciting. Enquisite turned out to be a much bigger project than we originally envisaged. We started off thinking we would build a cool ranking report. It’s turned into a whole lot more. We’re only part way to the real version 1 of the product. Please join with us in making your reports everything you need them to be.Once again, thank-you to all of you who have been using the Enquisite tool, and driving us to make it what it is today.

Richard