SEO/SEM News

Web statistics, web analytics, whatever you call it, what ever you use, Webalizer, AWStats, Analog Stats, SiteMeter, Google Analytics, Webtrends, WebsiteStory, Enquisite, Omniture and all these other visitor tracking number software may sometimes present different results. Maybe with small differences, could be neglible, but sometimes these could give significant differences that are large enough to doubt the validity of these generated data.

A common difference among these softwares can be based on how they acquire data. These are usually done in two ways:

• Reading Raw Session Logs generated on the server
• Javascript tagging and use of cookies by adding a small peice of code on every page you wish to monitor.

These two methods could give you two different results.

• On IP Addresses: Unique visits using raw session logs read IP addresses, Javascript tagging with cookies read browser cookies.
  A corporate ISP account can have many hits from many people, but in session logs, only 1 unique hit is recorded since the corporate account could be all on one IP, while tagging and using cookies will treat each browser hit on a different computer as separate unique hit.
• On Cookies: People that do not accept cookies and/or clear cookies will treat two separate visits from the same person on the same computer as two unique hits. Although most Javascript tagging softwares, if cookies are cleared, will move back to IP addresses. In some cases, if cookies are cleared, referer logs may not be detected well and considered to be direct hits.
• Proxy Servers: ISPs with proxy servers will not fetch websites from the servers source. This a hit will no be counted on raw server logs. Although Javascript tags are in the website’s source code and will run everytime the page is loaded.
• Partial page loads: On an uncompelted page, raw server logs are already recorded, but not exactly true with Javascript tagging where most of the time it is recommeded that the Javascript tag should be placed just before the closing </body> tag. In that way, we are sure that the visit to the page loaded a complete page before it is recorded as a valid hit.

So when looking at the numbers, note that there may be even more issues for differences in results and no single web analytics software will get it 100% correct.

I personally do not know Jason Calcanis and I have heard from various podcast, read from various blogs and forums talking about what he said that SEO is bullshit, and you should just come up with good content. And I have heard and read the post of WebGuerrilla, Oilman and Graywolf on David Pasternack, pretty much delivering the same message and comparing SEO over PPC. And I’ve heard other people talking about SEO is not really rocket science. Well for me, after hearing it all, I just feel to lazy to even react. But I tell you, I am all for SEO. But then again, comparing this with PPC and other forms for marketing, every part has a piece of the pie. Sometimes some websites might have a bigger pie slice for SEO, sometimes a bigger slice for PPC.

Now I came across this website of MRPwebmedia with all these videos imitating the “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” videos by Apple. instead it’s their version doing “I’m a multimedia website and I’m an SEO website.” Pretty funny videos. Although they are making these videos sound like SEO websites sucks and multimedia websites rule, of course again, totally not true as both parts are part of the pie as well. But still the videos are funny. Their videos are so viral in a way, I will not be surprised if their sites will do good in SEO as well since they might get links from several places.

One of the interesting discussions on the previous podcast of The Pulse hosted by Barry Schwartz with Chris Boggs, and Ben Pfeiffer were talking about the Google Personalized search results. So as you are logged into any of Google’s services, like the very common Gmail, and you do a search on Google, you may be seeing different search results than as you were logged in. Barry, Chris and Ben share their views on it, and based on Barry’s opinion, the SERPs are based on whatever behavior Google has gathered from your account but your behavior does not affect the ranking in general to the point that it will be an additional point in the general ranking algorithm. This is not a direct quote and this is just how I remember it while listening to the podcast while driving to work. Anyway, they have a complete story on it on the SERountable blog, that includes a screenshot as well of the difference in search results for the keyword: “seo” when logged in and logged out of Google.

Now assuming 2 websites having everything else equal and are both on the same page on the SERPs on page 1 and are right next to each other, when a certain person clicks always on the same one, over time will this mean when logged into a Google account, the site that he clicks on all the time will soon rank higher? I know there are a lot of factors that could be involved, but if this was the case and assuming everything else was equal, then what strategy do you need to get someone more hooked up to your page than the other? Perhaps better titles and meta descriptions that make the link more ideal to click? And maybe a better looking page and well written content so once people go to it, they are not hitting the back button and stays on your page. If this is the case, then I guess it is not really something to worry about since making good title, descriptions and having a better looking page and content is basic Internet marketing stuff anyway.