Posted by Kevin Pike | Posted in Google | Posted on 27-01-2009
If you got an email from Google today with the subject line: “Changes to setVar variable and impact on metrics“, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about.
Summary:
Google Analytics (GA) was not reporting an accurate bounce rate when the _setVar() script was called to track a user defined variable. Here is an obvious example of the reporting error issue:
Bounce Rate Should Be 100% Not 0%
Why was this happening?
The “_setVar” function is a JavaScript call that modifies the _utmv cookie and is used for setting a user defined value in GA.
The problem arises when the _setVar script wants to share all its great data with GA while the _trackPageview() script also wants to share its data with GA. The combined data is accurate to report a single page view, but since GA got more than one “interaction hit” it eliminates the possibility for the page visit to be counted as a bounce.
This is what the email means by “Starting Wednesday, January 27, 2009 a call to the _setVar method will no longer be counted as an interaction hit“.
Posted by Kevin Pike | Posted in Google | Posted on 21-01-2009
I was reading Arnold Zafara’s article on Search Engine Journal today about Print ad displays being removed from Adwords, and I must say it doesn’t come as much of a shock to me.
When I was working at my former agency I had a print buyer compare the rates Google offered to what he could get by picking up the phone and Google’s rates lost. I guess it’s a matter or convenience, but during these economic times people are looking for ways to save.
eMarketer reported this month that “newspaper advertising revenues in the US declined 16.4% in 2008 to $37.9 billion. By 2012, spending will slide to $28.4 billion.”
Google is smart to get out of this dying marketing now before it gets worse.
Posted by Kevin Pike | Posted in MSN, PPC | Posted on 19-01-2009
Chalk up another one for MSN AdCenter – they seem to be on a roll recently.
I have been waiting years for AdCenter to get this functionality up and they finally did. With the ability to now set custom date ranges from the campaign tab I won’t have to create custom reports all the time.
Posted by Kevin Pike | Posted in Adwords, PPC | Posted on 16-01-2009
It’s hard to find fault with many things Google does, but when I see a window pop up that a new Adwords Editor version is available I usually cringe. This last update I was happy to find no bugs and some nice new features.
My favorite is the custom data range added to the statistics drop-down.
Another major change is that the editor does not require Adgroups to have adcopy to be posted. The verdicit is still out for me on this change. Part of me liked having the little orange circles notifying me off any ad copy issues.
I think this happend with the last update – but I got to give more props to Google for allowing stats to be copied and pasted with the rests of the data. It was annoying to be able to view and sort data and not be able to paste it in a spreadsheet and share with anyone else.
Posted by Kevin Pike | Posted in Adwords | Posted on 15-01-2009
It’s hard to find fault with many things Google does, but when I see a window pop up that a new Adwords Editor version is available I usually cringe. This last update I was happy to find no bugs and some nice new features.
My favorite is the custom data range added to the statistics drop-down.
Another major change is that the editor does not require Adgroups to have adcopy to be posted. The verdict is still out for me on this change. Part of me liked having the little orange circles notifying me off any ad copy issues.
I think this happened with the last update – but I got to give more props to Google for allowing stats to be copied and pasted with the rests of the data. It was annoying to be able to view and sort data and not be able to paste it in a spreadsheet and share with anyone else.
Posted by Kevin Pike | Posted in MSN | Posted on 13-01-2009
If you are logging in to several PPC and Analytics accounts on a daily basis your probably like me and use different browsers for their unique login abilities.
Since Yahoo and Microsoft adCenter don’t have My client Center capabilities I typically open up a different browser to avoid logging out of other accounts. This week I decided to use Google Chrome for a MSN AdCenter account and was shocked to find that I couldn’t log in.
I learned a few years ago that you had to use IE to make bulk AdCenter changes with a spreadsheet, but at least FireFox worked with the interface.
I found a forum at WebmaterWorld.com that says Chrome is not a supported browser by Mirosoft adCenter. I can’t believe MSN continues to require their IE browser to get full access to Adcenter. Making bulk changes in IE only is annoying enough, but not even being able to log in with Crhome is a bit silly to me and makes MSN look immature.
