Yogi Land

This is the third video in our recent Rapid Fire series where you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Generally we want to focus on your questions about key metrics and analysis techniques, but this week we get a little technical.

In this episode we discuss:

• How to group referrals from common sources
• How to setup Google Analytics to track multiple web sites and view all the aggregate data in one profile
• Strategies to track websites that support different languages
• The value of using Google Analytics on You Tube partner channels
• Troubleshooting discrepancies in Google Analytics Data
• Best practices for implementing E-commerce tracking for E-commerce sites
• Simplifying customizing the date range in GA
• How to track segments of users who interact with internal referrals/cross sell campaigns
• Tracking Social Media campaigns

Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

• Help Center: What are profile filters
• How to group email referrals using filters
• How to configure roll up reporting in Google Analytics
• Google Analytics for You Tube Brand Channels - Announcement (Ask your you Tube account rep to get this properly configured)
• How to troubleshoot Google Analytics implementations
• How event tracking works
• Video: How to create Advanced Segments with events
• How to track lead gen forms in Google Analytics
• Justin Cutroni's eBook, Google Analytics Short Cut

Tags: analytics, google, internet marketing, search engine, SEO

When and what consumers will be buying this holiday season

It wouldn’t surprise anyone to know that the recession has changed the way consumers think about spending, but the question on your minds right now is likely, “How will it affect my holiday sales in 2009?”

To help answer that question, Yahoo! has worked with Decipher, Inc. to create the “12 Weeks of Christmas” Consumer Survey. The survey, conducted in October, polled 2587 online Americans. They told us when they’re planning to shop, what they plan to purchase across retail categories, where they plan to purchase, and what offers/promotions people are likely to take advantage of this holiday season. We’re broken it down a bit, to bring you the highlights:

Fears affect shopping
The majority of people polled (76%) said they were worried about the rising cost of basics such as gas, food and services. More than half (55%) said they felt the government isn’t doing enough to fix the economy and 52% of people polled said they that they were worried that the US won’t be able to get out of the recession. Almost half of people polled (48%) said they’re worried that something will happen to their income and they won’t be able to support their families.  So clearly the economy is weighs on consumers’ minds.

Read more on the Yahoo! Advertising Blog.

Tags: internet marketing, search engine, SEO, Yahoo!

It’s your last chance to get your ads and campaigns ready for the oncoming holiday onslaught

You know that scene in a horror movie where someone says, “It’s quiet,” and someone else responds, “Yeah, too quiet.” You just know that something unbelievably loud and/or insane is about to happen.

Well that’s where we are now, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, enjoying a brief bit of silence before the holiday madness begins and all hell breaks loose. For some it may feel like we’re just barely past Halloween and still nowhere near the holidays, but nowadays “the holidays” begin the second that Halloween ends, and those who wait until after Thanksgiving to get their search marketing campaigns ready may be left in the dust come Friday.

To that end, we’ve put together a few holiday best practices that could help make your season (and your ads) a whole heck of a lot brighter:

Bejeweled
When it comes to jewelry, we have found that users are looking for personalized items. So if you offer them, be sure to call it out in your ads. We also found that users often respond better to jewelry ads that focus on the offering, rather than the business itself. It’s great if you’ve been around for 25 years, but since ad space is so limited, it’s really better to use that space to explain what you sell and why you’re a great choice for consumers.

‘Tis better to give…
For advertisers that sell food and flowers, we determined that users respond better to ads that put the focus on giving, rather than receiving. An ad suggesting that users treat themselves didn’t go over as well as an ad suggesting that a user could visit that site to find the perfect gift for someone. We’ve also noticed that sites that offer local delivery could be shooting themselves in the foot if they make it appear as if they only serve a very specific local area. If you have a local store but you sell nationally (or internationally), don’t limit yourself by putting your physical location into your ad. Doing so could cause users to assume that your service isn’t available to them.

Blips and bleeps
For ads concerning electronics and toys, consider veering away from listing high price points. Users may shy away from ads that offer items at price points that they consider high, even if the price is actually extremely competitive. It’s better to focus on other things, such as what promotions you offer, or the uniqueness of the item for sale. Your ad is the gateway to your site, and hanging a sign above the gateway that reads “what you want is expensive!” may deter some users.

In the case of price points that are lower, be sure to check the marketplace, to make sure they’re low enough. If your competitor’s ad states that they’re offering the item for $10 less than your ad states, it’s a no-brainer which ad the user will click on. Additionally, if you sell name-brand items, be sure to list them in your ad. While users are concerned with quality and prices, they also want to see the big names in ads, especially when it comes to electronics and other big ticket items.

Get into the spirit
Creating holiday themed ads is important to catching user eyes, but if your product or service isn’t particularly holiday-oriented, it’s even more important. Sites that sell something that isn’t completely related to the holidays but not totally unrelated (for example, a candle site) should consider specific, “holiday” themed ads, that will appeal to users searching around the holidays. The more relevant your ads are to the holidays, the better.

Tips for all seasons
Of course, the usual factors that help improve campaign performance still apply:

• Write clear, concise ads that point out exactly what products or services you offer.
• Take advantage of available character space in ads—why just say “We have ornaments” when you have enough room to say “We have ornaments at great prices”?
• Go easy on the jargon, and avoid copy like “lowest prices on the net” and “don’t pay too much!”
• Avoid noise words like “full time” and “online,” since anyone shopping on the Internet probably already knows that they’re online and can buy at any time, etc.
• Keep an eye on potential scope issues in your listings. Remember that broad keywords (i.e., “Christmas gifts”) should bring back broad results; for example, ads that stress the wide variety of potential Christmas gift items you offer. A general keyword (i.e., “iPod Touch”) should bring back highly specific ads offering the iPod Touch and not five other similar products.
• Make sure your holiday ads are all up to date and that they don’t reference the 2008 holidays, or special sales that have already ended, etc.
• Use keyword insertion, so that your keywords appear in your ads, making them instantly more relevant to users. Use alt text to make sure that those keywords appear in the ads correctly, in cases where you’d like to replace a keyword that’s too long for the ad, or for a purposefully misspelled keyword that you’d like have appear in the ad properly spelled.

Now more than ever, shoppers are actively seeking online deals and promotions that can save them money. This is why it’s so important to call out whatever special deals or promotions you may be offering for the holidays. Stuff like free shipping, gift wrapping, coupons, discounts, guaranteed Christmas delivery and any other deals you may offer really go a long way with consumers.

You know that the next six weeks are bound to be completely insane (in a good way), so now’s the time to get ready!

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Tags: internet marketing, search engine, SEO, Yahoo!

Tabs allow news-junkies to get info, photos, video and the latest tweets on popular stories 

News flash! Today Yahoo! News announced enhancements to its Yahoo! News Shortcut. The enhanced shortcut with these new tabs will now display for many breaking or major news searches, and offers related content: News, photos, video and tweets from Twitter.

For example, check out the big story of the week: The national shortage of Eggo Waffles. Here’s what the new shortcut looks like.

For all the details, visit the Yahoo! Search Blog.

Tags: internet marketing, search engine, SEO, Yahoo!

Tags: analytics, google, internet marketing, search engine, SEO

Tags: analytics, google, internet marketing, search engine, SEO

Attend our free display advertising webinar this Thursday to help enhance your search campaigns

Research shows that using display advertising can lift your company’s search activity by 155%. (Source: Specific Media; study leverages 12 months of proprietary Specific Media Ad effectiveness data ending August 2008, backed by comScore.) This coming Thursday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, we invite you to join us for a free one-hour webinar that will demonstrate why adding display ads to your marketing mix can energize your search campaigns, and present an simple and quick way to get started in display.

The webinar will include a live product demo of Yahoo! My Display ads, an innovative display advertising solution that allows you to easily create your own banner ads, with no designer needed, and run them across the Yahoo! network in a matter of days.

In this webinar, you’ll also learn about:

• Yahoo!’s innovative display advertising and targeting solutions
• The benefits of combining search and display advertising
• Best practices for using display advertising
• How other business owners are succeeding with display advertising

You can register for the webinar here.

— The Team

Tags: internet marketing, search engine, SEO, Yahoo!

Defend yourself from scammers looking to steal your account

Though we have previously published articles on “phishing,” we think it never hurts to remind you of ways to protect yourself from these scammers.

You may receive an e-mail that looks like it came from Yahoo!, taking you to something that looks like a Yahoo! Search Marketing log-in page. But in reality it can be a phishing scam from somebody who is trying to duplicate our login page to get your user name and password to hijack your account.

Well, don’t fret. To help combat these phishing scams, we have installed what’s called a “sign-in seal” on our log-in page. Already in use by many financial institutions, a sign-in seal is a cookie-based secret message or image that is displayed on your computer only. (That is, the machine you use to log in to your account.) If you use more than one computer, you’ll need to set up your seal for each. You can create your own custom text message to use as a seal, or upload your own image.

If you do not see your custom seal—and you haven’t cleared your cookies on your browser—when signing into your account, the site you’re on may be a “spoof” site designed to hoodwink you into giving up your valuable personal information. We encourage you to create a customized sign-in seal for your Yahoo! Search Marketing account today, then look for it every time you log in. You can set up your seal from your Yahoo! Search Marketing log-in page (the real one).

How to recognize a scam email
Phishing emails usually try to hook you with some official-sounding message about your account. A common subject line is “Please Verify Your…”. Once you open the email, you’ll often see familiar corporate colors, branding, logos and language. Sometimes they will tell you that your account has been disabled for a bogus reason. At other times, they’ll offer a “free upgrade” to a new (and often non-existent) service.

Don’t give out account or personal info to anyone
The biggest clue in the fake email is that it asks for your username and password. We will never send you an email asking for your password.

Another way to help tell the faux from the friendly is by looking at the sender’s email address. Most of the official communications we send you will come from an address that looks like this: solutions (at) ysm.yahoo-email.com. If you get an email from a yahoo.com address asking you for info, it’s a good bet that it’s a fake.

If you think you’ve been “phished” for info, please let us know by emailing phishing (at) cc.yahoo-inc.com, or forward the email in question to that address.

To learn more about how you can keep from getting reeled in by “phishermen,” and how to guard against other Internet-based scams, visit these resources:

• Common Abuse Issues
• Yahoo! Security Center

— The Team

Tags: internet marketing, search engine, SEO, Yahoo!

How would you like to have 24-hour a day access to a dedicated assistant who is focused exclusively on your site's analytics? Your assistant would be so diligent and detailed that they wouldn't miss a thing. Sound too good to be true? We're giving you one. Say "Hello" to Analytics Intelligence.

Your new hardworking assistant, Analytics Intelligence, can't replace you or a professional analyst. But, it can find key information for you and your professional analysts -- so that your team can focus on making strategic decisions, instead of sifting through an endless sea of data.

Analytics Intelligence constantly monitors your website's traffic. Anytime something significant happens, it adds an automatic alert in your Intelligence reports. If your bounce rate suddenly jumps on one of your referrals, Analytics Intelligence creates an alert. Of course, it's up to you to go find out that the bounce rate jumped because someone inadvertently changed the landing page. But you might not have noticed that there was a problem that needed fixing if your trusty assistant hadn't alerted you.


Behind Analytics Intelligence is a sophisticated algorithmic intelligence engine that detects any anomalies in your traffic patterns. That means it's smart enough to know the difference between a change that's actually part of a larger trend versus a change that you might need to look into. But, from a user perspective, Analytics Intelligence couldn't be simpler.

Navigate to the Intelligence reports and you'll see three reports -- Daily Alerts, Weekly Alerts, Monthly Alerts. Daily Alerts contains all the alerts that are based on daily data. Weekly Alerts contains alerts based on weekly data. Monthly Alerts contains, you guessed it, alerts based on monthly data.

When you look at your alerts, you'll notice that your trusty assistant has already gone through your historical data and posted alerts. This highlights a key feature of Analytics Intelligence: you don't have to do anything -- alerts automatically get posted to your account.

The best way to come up to speed on Analytics Intelligence is to take a look at the alerts that are being created for your data. You can learn everything you need to know about how to interpret your alerts in this 2-minute video.

You can also instruct your assistant to be on the lookout for specific things that you want to monitor. Let's say you are running a billboard campaign in New York's Times Square. You want to be proactively informed regarding how the campaign is impacting traffic from New York. To do this, go the Manage Intelligence Alerts page,


and set up a custom alert (see the example, below).


You might even want to set up a second alert that checks for decreasing New York traffic, so you can see if the campaign is starting to wind down.

You'll then receive a custom alert, posted in your Daily Alerts, whenever one of these things happens. You can be notified by email as well, so you'll know what's going on even if you're not checking your reports.

If you're ever unsure about how to set up an alert, try starting with one of the templates on the Manage Intelligence Alerts page. Just click Copy, and then modify and rename the alert to fit your needs.



As with automatic alerts, the best way to learn about custom alerts is to try them out on your own data. You can also refer to the articles on Analytics Intelligence in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Sign in to your account to try it out. It's time to meet your new assistant!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Tags: analytics, google, internet marketing, search engine, SEO

Norton hits a three-pointer with college basketball tournament campaign on Yahoo! Mobile

According to sports pundits, “defense wins championships.” This maxim is often true for the annual championship tournament of college basketball, commonly known as “March Madness.” The security software leader Symantec plays a different type of defense, but one that is no less vital to its legions of fans and customers. Over the years, the company’s Norton products have built a legacy similar to those of college basketball powerhouses like UCLA and North Carolina.

During the 2009 tournament, Norton promoted a free trial of its new product, Norton Internet Security 2009, targeting Yahoo!’s highly engaged mobile audience. The goal of the campaign was to generate awareness of Norton’s performance improvements, and to capture email addresses to build its opt-in database. Like a Final Four “Cinderella” team, Norton’s mobile campaign far exceeded expectations, and provided important learnings for future promotions.

For more details, please visit the Yahoo! Advertising Blog.

Tags: internet marketing, search engine, SEO, Yahoo!