Yesterday, I posted about Enquisite adding a Social Tracking function to our reporting suite. I got quite a bit of email expressing interest in knowing more. In re-reading my post, I also felt a little egg on my face for making the beginner mistake of leaving a [LINK] comment in the post, and not making it live – sorry. Stupid mistakes are easy to make; when you mess up, clean it up!
Anyhow, most of the email & DM’s via twitter (@rzwicky) asked for more info, and screenshots. Beginner mistake #2 – always include screenshots whenever possible so readers know what you are describing. I do realize that none of you can look inside my head and see what I do, so why the heck would I assume that you could visualize what I’m writing about without a picture? When I used to do SEO full-time, I always explained to clients that a picture’s worth a thousand words to human visitors, but zero to the search engines. Why would I ignore such a basic tenet of providing meaningful information? Text is great, but a picture seals the deal. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is one lengthy document! :-)
So, this post is about correcting yesterday’s errors, and providing more insights into Enquisite Social Reports.
We created Enquisite Optimizer’s Social reports to help provide online marketers with perspective. Last year I spent a fair bit of time talking to all sorts of online marketers: search marketers, social search marketers, social marketers, video optimization specialists, etc., and also VP’s of marketing and CMO’s.
What struck me about social was everyone talked about social, but no one seemed to understand how it related to any of their other marketing activities, nor what conversions it really drove. We already were collecting all the user referral data, but didn’t display the social information. Looking at the information, I realized that while there are some apps which help you understand how many referrals you get from any one channel, there’s no holistic views. For example, when you do a post using bit.ly’s service, you can track how many click through you’re getting from the U.S., but you do have not context as to real geography. We already were reporting on search referrals down to the zip code, so why not do the same with Social? Why not make it possible to track a social push, show where the traffic spiked geographically, and then look at the search referral traffic to see how it compared? Did it follow a similar pattern? Did conversion rates go up? How does one benefit the other? This information was missing from the discussion.
Social marketing offers a huge potential of opportunities in branding, driving visitors, raising awareness, and delivering valued customers to a business. But it’s not a stand-alone channel; it’s a piece of the puzzle. We’ve added social reporting to offer businesses some perspective, so that you can start to understand how they really fit together. For example, take this series of screenshots from Enquisite Social Reports, and then compare it against our Longtail search analytics report.
First off, we have a Longtail type view into social referrals, using categories as a definition. Instead of just reporting on all the referring sites, we added a category layer, so that you can understand the traffic types at a higher layer. In this screenshot you can see that for the particular website being looked at, shopping and consumer review types of social networks deliver the best conversion rates relative to overall social traffic.
In the upper left corner of the screenshot, you should also be able to see the site-wide bounce rate, page view rate and average time on site for referrals from social marketing. Watch how this number changes, and compares against search referral traffic.
Next up, we segmented out just the shopping and consumer review types of social sites – note the segmentation panel. I’ve also dropped in Twitter, as I wanted to see how it related. Note how the traffic quality improves as shown by the increased time on site / pages viewed, and lowered bounce rate.
Now, in this next step, we’ve segmented out social referrals to just ones that came from within the U.S., and are showing this information on the map. Look at the distribution pattern of visitors from social search, and keep this in mind for the comparison to search referrals to come later.
Drilling in to the map view, we have two important perspectives: 1) where do the referrals come from, city by city, and 2) then the following screenshot shows us where visitors were really located when they purchased a product as a result of a referral from a social network or social marketing initiative.
Now let’s compare this against search referrals in Enquisite Optimizer’s Longtail reports. First off, the bounce rate is much lower from search, and the pages viewed and time on site are much higher. So a more engaged visitor from search.
At the present time, search is sending almost 100x the referral traffic that social is to this site. However, to be fair, the business in question hasn’t really engaged a full-on social campaign. More like dipping their toes so far. But, all of a sudden they are recognizing value where they couldn’t before, in that they can understand the conversion rates better, and also they can compare and understand how the two traffic sites overlap.
Finally, let’s look at the map of search referral traffic. First up are referral rates.
Obviously, unlike the social referrals, the search traffic to this business is very broadly dispersed. Looking at conversion rates however, a different trend emerges:
Interesting how the Pacific Northwest is over-represented for conversions, relative to search referrals.
Finally, let’s compare that against conversions that were generated from social marketing, and we can see similar patterns emerge, with certain locations better represented proportionally.
These screenshots were built using the same time range throughout. When tracking specific campaigns, you can get much more granular to understand time lag.
Additionally, for marketers and business operators who want to understand the financial contribution of any channel to the bottom line, we offer Enquisite Campaign, which was designed from the ground up to report on, and provide predictive analysis of opportunities across all online marketing channels, and let online marketers, VP’s, CMO’s and CFO’s understand how the various channels interact, and combine together to contribute to revenue.
Marketing via Social networks is still in the early days, and the impact is usually difficult to understand. But a combined perspective on Search and Social will continue to become ever more important to any online marketer. We recognize that marketers are having a hard time measuring the impact of both channels, independently and together, so we’re bringing some perspective to the marketplace.
Businesses need perspective to properly invest in worthwhile initiatives. We provide insights to act.
Posted under Analytics, Enquisite Search Metrics, Market Share, Search Analytics
This evening, we’re adding a new set of reports to Enquisite’s Optimizer product.
Optimizer has been Enquisite’s core search analytics service since launch. Late last year we added a links tracking module to the reports, as search marketers needed to be able to monitor which links when live when, and more importantly which links pointing in to a web site stopped sending traffic, or had huge spikes in referrals. These additions were designed to help the search marketer monitor more of their traffic sources that affected their search campaigns. We’re taking that logic further with tonight’s release.
Tonight, Enquisite is adding a layer of Social Marketing tracking functionality to our reporting. The search marketing industry has grown considerably over the last year and a half, and so have we. Social networks were still nascent, and their impact was hard to understand. But a combined perspective on Search and Social (not just the firm Search and Social) has become very important to any online marketer. We recognize that marketers are having a hard time measuring the impact of both channels, independently and together, so we’re bring perspective to the marketplace.
Enquisite Campaign was designed from the ground up to report on, and provide predictive analysis of opportunities across channels, and let online marketers, VP’s, CMO’s and CFO’s understand how the various channels interact, and combine together to contribute to revenue. Businesses need that perspective to invest.
Today’s addition to Enquisite Optimizer adds a “Social” tab to the reporting suite. Now, you can understand all your social campaign referrals from within one interface, and also view that traffic geographically via our mapping interface. Plus, you can compare that against your paid and organic search campaigns.
Do you really know how your social campaigns are affecting your search campaigns? Now, you can see where social referrals are coming from, and map that against your search referrals. Do the geographies overlap? What’s the lag time? How does it affect referral quality and conversion rates? These are all questions that for the first time you can now answer.
Log in, take a look, and provide us feedback of what else you would like to see added in Optimizer’s Social reports.
In March we’ll be making a significant addition to Enquisite’s suite of products in the area of linking. Linking continues to present a myriad of challenges for search marketers, and the amount of spam generated in this area is massive. We’re going to help you cut through the noise and implement more effective linking campaigns. We’ll be contacting all Enquisite account holders with an early participation offer shortly, keep your eyes peeled, you won’t want to miss it.
Posted under Analytics
Many, many years ago when I was a youngster growing up, I read lots of books about people like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. I marveled at how many things they had invented, and the effects just the things they patented still had on our lives.
At the time, I never expected to be in a position where I would have my name associated with a published patent.
Yesterday, a patent I wrote was issued. It’s patent number 7,657,626, and refers to an original method of detecting click fraud. It’s a dry read, so I’m not sure if you want to rush out and read it, but if you’re having a hard time sleeping, you can find the patent here, at the USPTO office.
Now, in no way do I consider that this one issued patent in any way puts me, or any of my ideas in the league of these great inventors or innovators, but I am thrilled nonetheless. To have an idea recognized as truly original in this process is special, and I truly feel honored, and am indebted to everyone who helped guide me through the process.
Of all the things I’ve done, this one really was like a light bulb going on. The idea came to me over a holiday weekend a few years ago. My son and I were enjoying a boy’s weekend getaway at our cabin at a lake near Victoria. I’d been deep in data looking at random server activity data all week, so playing around in the water, cooking meals over the fire, and staring at the night sky was a welcome change. The second night I went to bed around 11, and was out solid until 2:30 a.m. I woke up with a start and an idea in my head. Normally, like most people I’d just roll over and go back to sleep, telling myself that I’d deal with it in the morning, by which time I’d forget about it. But this time, I grabbed a pen and paper and started writing. Two hours later I was stuck; I’d written many pages of notes, and long-form formulae / processes, but something was missing. I put the notes away and went back to sleep.
The next day I spent being very busy doing nothing! I didn’t even read my notes from the night before, figuring that I could get back to it after the weekend. That night, I woke up at 3:00 a.m., with an idea how to break through the last barrier in the process. I started writing, and that night completed what turned out to be the first draft of the provisional patent application.
The following week I sat down with our Mathematican, Rafael Parra Hernandez, and he helped me take my long-form formulae and convert them to more conventional mathematics. He also explained to me the various types of math I had incorporated in the processes. If my high-school math teachers could see it now, they’d never believe it!
And, that’s how a patent came to be.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics
To end 2009 we’ve updated and added to Enquisite’s Suite of search marketing tools and products. In fact, there are three major enhancements available to you today, plus a new product in pre-release:
- The Enquisite Performance Dashboard
- A Fresh New Look for a New Year
- Feature Enhancement: Transferring Segment Data from Optimizer to Campaign
- A really cool new product in pre-release
The Enquisite Performance Dashboard
We’ve added a new Enquisite Performance Dashboard to provide you with an at-a-glance overview of all your website’s critical search activity metrics as well as a summary of the performance data for each of your campaigns.
Marketers keep saying that 2010 is the year of the Dashboard, and if the prognosticators are correct, we’re kicking it off right with the first phase of a vital new report to help you understand what facets of your online marketing campaigns are driving your success.
By starting your day with a quick glance at your dashboard, you’ll be able to see trends in your search activity on a site-by-site basis, and know which campaigns you need to focus on for improvement and which ones you can refine to further enhance the performance of your business.
We recognize that everyone always wants slightly different information on their own dashboard, or to be able to pull information from one application into something else. We’ve got API’s for you!
A Fresh New Look for a New Year
When you next log into the Enquisite Performance Suite, you’ll immediately notice a dramatic improvement in the load speed, and look and feel of the platform. We are constantly listenening to your feedback on how to make the application easier to use, and have incorporated these suggestions into the new user interface. Among the many improvements of the new design, the new taskbar will greatly simplify the process of building and managing your campaigns. The overall navigation of the application has been streamlined to make the application easier to use and to improve your overall experience with it. Of course, none of that matters if the application doesn’t get faster too.
Enquisite is the fastest real-time analytics application on the market. Search marketers want to spend most of their time improving SEO and PPC campaigns, not analyzing and reporting. You need insights to act quickly. Enquisite is the only real-time search intelligence and decision support application on the market. With Enquisite, you don’t need to spend 80% of your time figuring out what to do, you can spend that time making a difference to the bottom line of your business!
Transferring Segment Data from Optimizer to Campaign
In our last release, Enquisite provided you with the ability to export segments created in Enquisite Optimizer to Enquisite Campaign. In the current release we enhanced this feature, giving you more options to where you export segment data from Optimizer to Enquisite Campaign.
This feature is found within the “Longtail” section of Enquisite Optimizer, which allows you to segment actual search referral traffic in real-time. Within the Longtail, you can partition actual search referral data on the fly by a variety of dimensions, including geographic location, referring search engine, actions, and conversions. Once you have created a segment of search referral traffic, Optimizer allows you to find the specific keyword phrases of searches from users of that segment that led them to your website. The feature now allows you to take these keywords that you discover and directly import them into either a new campaign or an existing campaign within Enquisite Campaign.
With this new feature, you can now quickly and easily take your analysis of past search referral data in Enquisite Optimizer and use it to better craft your future organic search-based campaigns within Enquisite Campaign.
A really cool new product in pre-release
As you are aware, Enquisite is a company founded on innovation. The very first beta product iteration back in 2005 included our patent-pending technology to extract, and report on keyword referral data based on the position the keyword was listed to browsers in the search engine results. That reporting was a break-through for search marketers hoping to report value more accurately to their clients, and also making it possible to be more sophisticated in optimization strategies. Now, with Google’s Personalized Search updates, that technology is more valuable than ever to search marketers.
That was our very first beta version. We’ve now got many very distinct patents-pending, some of which are incorporated into our Auditor, Optimizer and Campaign products. We’ve never sat still, and have continued to innovate to drive value for our clients.
This brings us to our latest product which we plan to release in Q1 of 2010. In the short term, this initial phase of the product will be available to partners as we ramp up. It’s a very cool, simple to use application which addresses the links pillar of SEO in a novel and fundamental manner. This product doesn’t compete with analysis apps like SEOmoz’s Linkscape. In fact, we’ll be incorporating some of SEOmoz’s data into ours to help your analysis: it offers search marketers something completely different, and incredibly valuable.
If links, and link-building are important to you, (yes they’re important for everybody), then you’ll need this product, or you’ll quickly be left in the dust by your competitors.
We’ll be announcing more around this new product as it approaches release in the New Year. If you want to be part of the pre-release as we move forward, let me know, and we’ll add you to the list as soon as possible.
Posted under Enquisite Search Metrics, Ranking Reports, Search Analytics, search analytics
This week I had the pleasure of moderating and speaking at SES Chicago. It was probably my favorite Chicago show yet. What a change from last year when everyone was nervous about how deep the economy would slide into chaos.
One subject that did create some buzz - no surprise - was Google’s announcement of an always-on personalized search. There’s been lots written about it, and the change truly is spectacular. Unfortunately, spectacular doesn’t always equate good.
Rather than dwell on all the questionable issues that the always-on personalized search system raises, I’m going to comment about something that’s actually good in this update: The death of the ranking report. Finally! Finally, rankings are totally meaningless as a reporting metric. Ranking reports which scrape results to identify a position in the search results have been deceptive for years, but now they are unquestionably and completely useless. Anyone providing a ranking report as authoritative is deceiving their clients.
In a way, I am thrilled with Google’s personalization changes, as they make the performance reporting used in Enquisite Optimizer even more valuable. It now is definitely the only real way to measure true page and rank positioning. Optimizer shows where people located anywhere in the world are finding your site in the results, based on actual click-through activity, not some bogus ranking report. This is only analytical platform which report back to you on what your customers are actually seeing in the search results.
People who use traditional ranking reports as a reporting metric are no longer able to report any meaningful data. First off, the data collected are unique to that computer. Second, other activity from that computer affects the results. Run just one site’s reports from a system? Do anything else with it? Anything you search for with that computer can now affect the results you’re seeing. Wait until Caffeine rolls out, and anything you do with that computer will cause variations. Use Google Docs, Gmail, or any other Google products? Your results will vary.
So how can any ranking report based on what one, or even 100 computers which repeatedly run ranking analysis reports be accurate? They can’t. The ranking report you used to use as a metric is dead.
If, as a user, you’re not comfortable with the new personalized search “benefit” just wait for caffeine to roll-out in full next year. Me? I’ve already changed my default search engine in Firefox to Bing. Strange, I’m not concerned about how responsibly Microsoft will handle my information.
Posted under Analytics, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, Ranking Reports, Search Analytics, Search Engines, Search Metrics, bing, search analytics
