Search & Analytics provides readers with tips and techniques for utilizing web search analytics and measurement tools to define and manage success metrics from (organic and paid) search driven traffic. Columnists write about the basics of implementing analytics software, covering tagging and tracking search traffic to more advanced issues and topics such as ROI and conversion tracking, as well as how to gain greater insight and develop actionable strategies from your search analytics data.

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5 Common Tracking Problems: How To Troubleshoot & Fix Them

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with some clients’ analytics installs. Unlike types or broken code, or misspelled words – issues with tracking scripts don’t always raise their hands and scream, “Hey dummy, you deleted the </script> tag!” I thought it would be handy for the beginners out there to have a few tips for finding issues with your tracking and some tricks to resolving those issues without tearing your hair out. I’m Referring To Myself… This is probably the most common error I find, your own domain is showing as a referrer to yo [...]


Report Affirms Strong Q4 Search Growth In 2011, Offers Additional Insights

Marketers have had a couple weeks to digest their fourth quarter numbers and assess their successes and failures from a period that can be a whirlwind, particularly in the retail sector. Now, with Google's Q4 earnings report and Yahoo's out, we're getting a chance to compare our own performance to data put out by some of the major agencies and technology platforms. Earlier this month, we released the RKG Digital Marketing Report with this in mind. Our goal is that it serves as a credible benchmark for advertisers who don't enjoy the luxury of viewing results across multiple sites with multi [...]


How America’s Search Trends From 2011 Makes Google+ Stand Out

More than 300 Billion searches were made in the US in 2011, according to ComScore. In December each year, the Big Three search engines publish the most popular searches of the year. In 2011, the top ten searches from the three search engines added up to more than 250 million searches alone. We thought it would be fun to take a look at what America sees in the search results for the most popular searches of the year. First, the top ten US Searches in 2011 by search engine: Google Yahoo Bing Rebecca Black iPhone Person: Justin Bieber Google + Casey Anthon [...]


Justified – Beginning Steps To Proving Your Internet Marketing Point

If you’re working in online marketing in some function, you’ve battled this – the need to justify your marketing budget to the bean counters in the office 10 floors up, or even next door. Those not “in the know” about the truly trackable benefits of online marketing are generally skeptical at best when told “I can show you where every penny went, and what we got back in return.” The inability to track return on radio, tv or even print ad buys without extensive (and frankly pretty difficult) work and integration between multiple departments makes these less than desireable m [...]


How Much Is A Click Really Worth?

All forms of paid advertising use the max bid - it’s the most basic concept yet calculating the theoretical maximum value to pay for a click is surprisingly difficult. It’s not that the math is tough; it just takes stepping back from the granularity of channel specific optimization to get a more holistic look at how marketing channels interact with each other. Looking at one marketing channel at a time provides incomplete insight into performance yet, ironically, many businesses split management of channels across multiple teams and incentivize marketing mangers on performance leading t [...]


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