Woah, what a title…
What I want to talk about isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Basically, in collecting daily site specific metrics for the purposes of SEO, you sometimes get some bad data from your third-party sources.
These bad data points can skew your graphs and make it almost impossible to visually derive any useful information from them.
For example:
The graph above (click to expand) shows the number of pages for a 6 month date range. In early January the data spikes dramatically upwards. This is clearly an anomaly, as the day after, the data is back in its normal range. The trouble here is that this anomalous point skews the entire graph, making it impossible to derive any real insights from it. The above graph is rendered useless by that one piece of anomalous data.
Here is the same graph WITHOUT that one bad piece of data (click to expand)
It’s amazing how one bad data point can skew your entire graph, isn’t it? Now we have an image that is useful!
Here’s some (hackish & sketchy) code to identify these statistical anomalies and replace them:
Right, quick post today….I’ve got some heinous carpal tunnel going on…the result of marathon hacking sessions, so I’m _supposed_ to be taking it easy….
Google Webmaster Tools has released some new data for all you data-junkies to get your fix on. Specifically, they’re now showing impression numbers and click-through percentages for organic search queries. Rad right? It looks that way on the surface…but the good folks on Dave Naylor’s team have done a bit of research into the numbers and what they’re calling the ‘Google Gap’.
Read on http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-webmaster-tools-2.html, and remember to always question the numbers.
Big thanks Dave’s team for writing this post…if you’re looking for a top notch UK SEO, look no further.
Hey all,
I wanted to post up a quick tip for you all, since I often hear people asking about how they can implement geo-location in their landing pages.
Alot of people recommend MaxMind or some other geoIP database, but really, thats a pain in the ass…there is a much easier way to do it.
On your landing page, just include the following in header.
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.google.com/jsapi”></script>
This script will calculate your visitors location for you….and all you have to do is pull the ClientLocation variable!
For example, if I wanted to display a popup with the users city:
alert(google.loader.ClientLocation['address']['city'])
Seriously, its THAT SIMPLE.
Have fun!
Hey all,
I’ve recently undertaken a personal project that I hope will make my day-to-day activities on a the web a bit more efficient. I’ve always dreamed of having the perfect home page for myself; one that had all my most crucial data at a glance. Unfortunately, all the services I’ve tried have fallen short (*cough* netvibes *cough*). So, I’ve decided that enough is enough; I am going to build my own dashboard.
The dashboard will take quite a few cues from the interface of The STAT Codex, in so far that it will be window/panel based and entirely modular, but it will be customized to my needs.
At the very least, I want the dashboard to pull the following data:
- email module (gmail and others, just reading, sending can open up a new window in the email client.)
- twitter module (multiple accounts…send and receive tweets)
- a twitter favorites module that allows my to follow the favorited tweets of various twitter accounts
- instapaper module for items to be read
- remember the milk module for to-do items
- major site statistics module (only for my most active web properties)
- new incoming backlinks module
- paypal module for showing paypal balance and recent transactions
- google calendar module
- log monitor module (would tail the server logs for most active web properties)
What else would you add to the list? What data would you love to have at a click on your home page?
Hey everyone!
Today is a very big day for me, because today is the day when I get to start telling everyone about our latest creation: STAT – Search Tracking & Analytics Tools.
STAT is a comprehensive suite of search analytics tools geared towards the needs of search marketers. Make no mistake: STAT is not another SEO tool, it’s an analytics tool, and it is truly one-of-a-kind.
STAT is ideal for researching competition, tracking organic rankings in the major three search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), and monitoring incoming backlinks and indexed pages. Further, with the ability to monitor changes to SERPs in real-time, you can identify algorithm changes when and where they happen. STAT archives past SERPs and audits them in the background to determine key search metrics that affect your rankings. Best of all, STAT does all of this in a drag-and-drop window based interface; it is a web application that looks and behaves like any of your run-of-the-mill desktop applications. Because of the intuitive nature of the platform, using STAT is easy and you can hit the ground running.
After a year of being available only to larger search agencies, I’m proud to announce that STAT is now open to the general public on an invite-only basis. If you want to signup, visit STAT – Search Tracking & Analytics Tools and I’ll send you an invite ASAP.
I could talk ad infinitum about how amazing this platform is, but really, it’s best if you experience it for yourselves. To take it for a test drive, visit STAT and click on the link for a demo.
