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Google Insights Forecasts the Future Posted by Thomas Claburn, Aug 17, 2009 05:46 PM Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has enhanced Google Insights for Search, its search term data analysis tool, to help users see into the future. Now available in 39 languages, Google Insights for Search includes a new forecasting feature that can extrapolate a search term's future popularity based on its past performance. For search terms with a lot of historical data, Google Insights for Search can project a likely trend. It's not a perfect prediction of what's to come, but it may be useful in certain circumstances. Google has also added an animated map that allows users to see how search query volume changes over time in specific geographic regions. Graphs generated using Google Insights for Search can be presented on any Web page or iGoogle page using an embeddable gadget. This is particularly use for tracking the ebb and flow of online discussion about a particular topic.

Google is also adding some features to Insight for Search. There's a new forecasting feature that makes predictions based on historical data and search patterns.

Enquisite Search Marketing Shares: Google Sends Most Traffic Dec 19, 2006 at 10:58am ET by Danny Sullivan Enquisite is a search ranking tool that works in part by gathering in your traffic details. That means they take in data from a variety of web sites and so can see general traffic patterns. They’ve just posted search referral data for November and part of December, putting Google far above anyone else in terms of sending search related traffic (about 78 percent). Yahoo follows in the 6-7 percent range, then MSN in the 3-4 percent range. Data is based on 10 million referrals in the period. Number of sites involved isn’t said.

The "Status" column will contain either a green checkmark graphic or a red "x" graphic. This tells you whether your file is valid (green checkmark) or invalid or missing (red "x"). Remember that a green checkmark does not necessarily mean that all your URLs are correct or indexed. It means only that the site map file you submitted contains valid XML.

Next, you’ll want to see which pages of your site are bringing keyword traffic and whether they are the specific ones for which you optimized. To view this, click on the “content overview” section and then on the right hand side of the page, under “landing page optimization” click on “entrance keywords.”  This allows you to view specific stats for each page of your site. The first screen is the entrance keywords for the page that receives the most pageviews (typically your home page), but you can click to other pages via the drop down box that says “content.” If you don’t immediately see a page for which you are interested in viewing entrance keywords, you can type a word that you know is in the URL of that page in the search box that’s contained in the content dropdown. So if you’re looking for a page that has a file name of /green-widgets.php you can type just “green” or “widgets” into the search box and you’ll see all pages that have that word in the file name. Now you should be able to see all the entrance keywords for that page. Are they ones (or variations of) those for which you optimized?  If so, then your SEO is taking hold! If not, you’ll want to determine why. Perhaps it’s just too soon after your SEO work was completed. Perhaps they’re highly competitive phrases which will need more anchor text links pointing in.

Tracking conversion value as expected customer value For many AdWords advertisers, simply tracking conversions is an “advanced” tactic. High-performing marketers go a step further and also use AdWords conversion tracker to dynamically track the value associated with each conversion. With a simple modification to the conversion tracking script (and a tiny bit of custom programming), you can track the monetary value associated with each conversion. If one conversion brings in $30 while another brings in $50, both values will be recorded with their respective keyword in the AdWords reports (Google doesn’t currently allow you to see conversion value in the normal interface. The “total value” and “value / cost” stats are only available through reports in your AdWords Report Center.).

TEXT SIZE Advertisement <SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N5621.websitemagazine.com/B3286961.2;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;ord=[unique-string]?"> </SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <a target='_blank' HREF="http://ads.websiteservices.com/adclick.php?bannerid=244&zoneid=14&source=&dest=http%3A%2F%2Fad.doubleclick.net%2Fjump%2FN5621.websitemagazine.com%2FB3286961.2%3Babr%3D%21ie4%3Babr%3D%21ie5%3Bsz%3D300x250%3Bord%3D%5Bunique-string%5D%3F&ismap="> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N5621.websitemagazine.com/B3286961.2;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=[unique-string]?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A> </NOSCRIPT> Advertisement Paid Search Beats SEO Conversion Rates? ShareThis In a statement that will surely have SEO's up in virtual arms, WebSideStory, a provider of digital marketing and analytics solutions, today announced the results of a  study that shows paid search has a nine percent edge in conversion rates over organic search. I can hear the furious typing of a million outraged SEO bloggers at this very minute. Via the news release, "In a study of leading business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites during the first eight months of this year, paid search -- keywords bought on a pay-per-click basis at search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN -- had a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at business-to-consumer e-commerce sites using the company's award-winning HBX Analytics technology. This compared to a conversion rate of 3.13 percent for organic search results, defined as non-paid or natural search engine listings, during the same January-to-August timeframe, according to the WebSideStory Index, a compilation of e-commerce, site search and global Internet user trends. The study analyzed more than 57 million search engine visits. Order conversions occurred during the same session. "For both paid and organic search, you have highly qualified traffic that converts far above the overall conversion rate of about 2 percent for most e-commerce sites," said Ali Behnam, Senior Digital Marketing Consultant for WebSideStory. "In the case of paid search, marketers have better control over the environment, including the message, the landing page and the ability to eliminate low-converting keywords."

Paid (PPC) Search versus SEO August 9, 2007 ::: Increasingly I read and hear about people in the Internet marketing business arguing over whether paid search (pay per click ads) is more valuable than organic SEO, and vice versa. While there are some fascinating and relevant arguments on either side, research shows that marketers are quite satisfied with both.   A report from the SEMPO State of the Market Survey from about 18 months ago shows that 83% of respondents were using PPC compared to only 11% using SEO. Other reports show that the value of SEO is rising as user sophistication increases (according to Chris Boggs in the Spring 2007 edition of Search Marketing Standard). Marketing Sherpa's 2005 report showed SEO conversion rates overtook PPC rates at 4.2% versus 3.6%. That's quite the opposite of what had been found the year before.   The Direct Marketing Association reported in 2005 on a list of "online marketing strategies that produce the best ROI that PPC and SEO were rated equally according to US retailers, behind only "having a website" and "using email marketing". A more recent study by Marketing Sherpa, though, showed SEO ahead of email marketing, with PPC a close third.   One thing seems to be true: if a given web site shows up in both the organic search engine listings and the PPC ads, that seems to super-validate it as a good choice, which increases the likelihood of a searcher clicking on one of those listings.

This query: site:yourdomain.com -inurl:www will show you the subset of indexed pages on your site that don't have "www" in their URLs. If you have multiple subdomains on your site, this becomes slightly trickier to diagnose. For example, if you have subdomains called "www," "blog," and "clients," you'll need to add those subdomains to the preceding query to find canonical issues: site:yourdomain.com -inurl:www -inurl:blog -inurl:clients.