Missing Analytics Data? It’s (Maybe) Not Your Fault

With a recent, subtle Chrome update, Google has significantly curtailed the tracking of keyword data within its own Analytics. It’s been over a year since tracking of keyword data has been disabled for logged in Google users, who were taken to the secure version of the page for any searches. Keyword data from https://www.google.com/ searches (versus http://www.google.com/ searches) shows up in Analytics reports as “(not provided),” reportedly to protect the privacy of Google’s users.

With the recent Google Chrome update, searches from Chrome’s “omnibox” (its term for “address bar”) now all go through the SSL version of Google search, and thus, keyword data for these searches will not be tracked in Analytics. This is worth noticing, since Google Chrome is clearly dominating the desktop web browser arena at present. In short, this policy could be causing webmasters to miss out on between one-third and half of their data.

5 For Friday – Links, Stories, & Posts For Your Weekend

• Understanding & Defending Your Site from Negative SEO — THE RKGBLOG

I’ll admit it: working in Internet marketing at times feels akin to how popular media has convinced me life in the Wild West was. Here, we navigate a largely unexplored frontier filled with vaguely known dangers, striving for the prospect of lucrative gain. Though there are a considerable amount fewer literal snakes and deaths by dysentery to deal with in SEO or online marketing, the analogy still kind of works.

One Link To Rule Them All: The Canonical URL and You

“I will take the Link,” [Frodo] said, “though I do not know the way.”

When the Internet was a wild frontier in the ’90s, URLs appeared to me magical glyphs that television advertisers and producers revealed only to the worthy. What secrets would be revealed if I, a ten year-old, borrowed my aunt’s computer to type in “http://www.trojancondoms.com/” as the commercial on MTV requested? What hidden jokes would I learn if that same “net surf sesh” eventually took me to “http://comcentral.com/“, the URL appearing in the end credits of Dr. Katz?

Crossed Over Into... The Nofollow Zone: Livejournal SEO And What Nofollows Mean For You

It’s been a bit over three years since I’ve used the once-titanic blogging site LiveJournal for anything. LiveJournal’s still got an active community, but it’s true that asking “What’s your LJ name?” of a new acquaintance is a little bit more embarrassing today than it was in 2003. My account’s dead (nah, it’s not on DeadJournal), but every few months, some brave archaeologists attempt to set up some horrible advertisements within the internals of this hibernating brute.

Here’s one of the emails I got:

Google Places' Hotel Booking Feature

It’s been nearly four years since I’ve left New Orleans on any kind of leisure trip, but this weekend, I’ll be out on the road to Austin for my first “I’m an adult” vacation. Leading, for the most part, a frugal and boring existence, the task of planning a vacation is one that’s both foreign and daunting for me. This trip marks the first time I’ve ever booked a hotel on my own, and how did I go about booking?

New Google website block feature: end-user advantage or an assault on SEO?

Yesterday, Google (ever heard of ‘em?) announced that they’ll allow users to start blocking whole websites that they don’t want to see in their search results. The internet’s long been a place where the individual user can define a personalized geography of websites and online communities where irrelevant content effectively does not exist unless brought in by some outsider. Google’s implementation of individualized domain blocking is in line with the largely tailored nature of the internet.