So far most feedback I have seen and heard has been negative, even from people I am following. Comments like “so what do i do with this now” and “o no, another one of these social networking things”. So what is it amounting to?

Of course Google is a powerhouse, so I give credit where credit is due. Yes Google buzz may not have all the bugs worked out yet, but the best thing everyone needs to do is keep giving feedback. Google will continue to modify and tweek until things move in the right direction.

The biggest issue currently under the microscope is how Buzz automatically adds your contacts into the list. This can be very harmful to businesses using GMail. Google Buzz has been updated twice since it was launched just over a week ago. Hang tight, i feel like buzz may shine!

1. Analytics Intelligence with Custom Alerts
Using an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine, Analytics Intelligence monitors data patterns over daily, weekly and monthly periods. Significant changes in data trends and insights you may not have noticed are surfaced directly in your account. You can also create your own Custom Alerts that monitor your selection of dimensions and metrics that can be sent by email or displayed in the Intelligence reports.

2. Expanded Goals and New Engagement Goals
You can now track even more conversions by creating up to 20 goals per profile. Measure user engagement and branding success on your site with Time on Site and Pages per Visit goals. Set up your first Engagement goal in minutes.

3. Expanded Mobile Reporting
Google Analytics has expanded support for mobile websites and tracking for iPhone and Android mobile applications tracking. Adding server side code to your PHP, JSP, PERL, or ASPX mobile websites enables you to track non-Java-Script enabled phones. For mobile application developers, access the SDK and technical implementation details here. You’ll also be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section.

4. Unique Visitors Metric
Include the Unique Visitors metric in your Custom Report or Advanced Segments to see how many actual visitors (unique cookies) visit your website. You can select Unique Visitors as a metric against any dimensions in Google Analytics.

5. Advanced Analysis Features
Dive deeper into your data with Pivoting, Secondary Dimensions, and Advanced Table Filtering. These combined features enable you to perform in-depth, on the fly data analysis within your account.

6. Share Advanced Segments and Custom Report Templates
Share the URL link for an Advanced Segment or Custom Report with anyone who has an Analytics account. Sharing the link will automatically import the pre-formatted template into the person’s account. Also available now is the ability to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports by profile.

7. Multiple Custom Variables
Custom variables provide the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics to collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. Define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (member vs. non-member), session attributes (signed in or signed out), and by page-level attributes (viewed Sports section). Use custom variables to classify any number of interactions and behaviors on your site. Start learning more about them now.

Bing continues to show growing trends. It has been reported that between July and August of this year (2009) Bing increased searches by 7%. In comparison Google only grew by 2%.

In the past few months Bing has continued to push the advertising with various commercials and other approaches. Bing still has a long way to go, but they are pushing and it shows.

I had to post this video!!! The best spoof of alltime! Who ever said that SEO and fitness didn’t belong. Truthfully, I should look into Fitness Made SIMMMPLE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT42XyfyGtE

Recent news has surfaced that Yahoo and Microsoft have struck a deal to try and take down the giant of search, Google. There has been talks about a deal between the two for over a year now.

With the deal Microsoft will now be the power behind Yahoo Search while Yahoo becomes the only provider of paid advertising on Microsofts Bing.

At first glance It seems like a smart deal. With Bing pushing open the door slightly on natural search I can see why Yahoo might want some of that. On the other side Yahoo has always been pretty solid on the advertising side whilst MSN has come up trailing.

There is still a lot to sort out with the deal, but from an SEO standpoint things look about the same, or maybe a little more solid. I for one like how MSN handles rankings and definitely vote that way.

Can’t wait to see what happens from here out.

So who is still developing sites for IE6?

The majority of design firms have left IE6 to the way side and moved on to IE8 and Firefox 3 as the main browsers to support. Many firms even state in the contracts that they do not support IE6 and will not check compatibility.

Looking at some data i find that almost 75% of traffic visiting sites I work with comes from users still using Windows XP. This seems pretty accurate considering I just switched over to Vista and miss my XP for Many reasons. I will get into that later!

So with 75% using XP, we know that by default XP users have IE6 installed. Now digging into the data a little further, a little over 56% of overall traffic is using Internet Explorer. Out of that 56%, 12% are using IE6. So doing the math, about 6.6% of traffic is coming from IE6.

Now to some people 6.6% of traffic is not that much, and they hate IE6 and would like to laugh at the users not willing to move on. Personally, I want to provide that 6.6% of traffic the best site I can and would be willing to have the extra work put in for backwards compatibility.

Until I see an extremely low percent of traffic using that browser I will continue to push for backwards browser compatibility.

What are your thoughts?

Recently I experienced a situation where a long time search engine optimization client had a website re-designed with a PR/traditional marketing agency.

I am not disappointed that we did not do the re-design as we work with many clients specifically for SEO and SEO only. The reason I was dissappointed in this specific situation is because it brought light and confirmed my views on the differences between most traditional marketing firms and an internet marketing firm.

Don’t get me wrong, traditional marketing firms understand a lot about marketing, PR and that Branding that most all companies need. But they tend to lack on the SEO side of the house, especially with website re-design.

Here are a few things that was needed and was not provided:
- content, content and more content!!!
(the as little as possible approach to a website can definitely increase branding but it kills the ranking ability without something extra.)
- very minimal navigation flow
(you know what I mean, one 10 point navigation a-crossed the bottom with beautiful flash rollover effects, OUCH)
- The smalled regard for old url structure. I am pointing more towards: “what are 301 redirects, I can’t even think of what those pagenames were!”

This is to name some of the most important things overlooked. Of course we will do damage control and resolve everything that has been implemented.

The reason behind this post was to inform people, especially internet marketers that no matter what type of communication you can have with another marketing agency you must always monitor the process. Remember that you are the SEO analyst for a reason and most traditional Marketing/PR firms do not understand the ins and outs of SEO and what we do.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I need to find something local (which seems to be at least 3 - 4 times a day) I use Google Local. Yes, some may use YellowPages or Yahoo Local, but the bottom line is you used some form of local directory or search to find what you need.

This coupled with the way search engines are displaying this data tends to make this very important.
- I have caught wind that Google Local is starting to display local results without a city name keyed in. They are basing your search off your physical IP address.
- I also talked to a contact over at superpages. He filled me in on the bid for placement results mixed in with local results.

This landscape has become quite competitive, and for a good reason. Never overlook the small things that can make the local search a very powerful tool!

A few tips that will help increase local listings
1.) claim & complete your business in all the local players (msn, google and yahoo)

2.) your address is important, make it known

3.) If your listing is valued you should have some reviews. Right?

4.) Link building is still important with a local twist. Local business will help validate your value as a local company.

These are a handful of pointers which can help your local listing succeed.

I am definitely seeing changes in the last few weeks with Google’s ranking methods. A lot of fluctuation has occured with some of my stuff and some of our clients. There is also a lot of buzz about this in the forums. There has also been a lot of talk about Google trying to limit spam sites as much as possible.

A few things I have noticed:

- PR has dropped in some form. Not a huge impact but I have noticed some PR 5’s moving down to 4’s and so forth. This could be an adjustment of value throughout.

- I have also noticed that some subpages have gone to gray PR yet rank and display fine in results. Again another adjustment, not quite sure yet.

- Last, I have noticed fluctuation with many sites. Some good, some bad.

Based on everything I have seen so far it looks like Google is trying to re-value links. This could definitely impact the spam sector but also put some kinks into normal site results.

It is time to dig back in :).