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Archive for the 'found on the net' Category

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Heap of Analytic sites

It is interesting how you find things at the least expected place. Today I spend a good deal of time looking at the information on Google Analytics Help Center, Conversion University and case studies.

Following a few links on the Google Analytics Help Discussion Group, I found Avinash’s Top Ranked Web Analytics Blogs listing a number of excellent analytics blogs.

As a good starting point to track what the blogosphere is talking about in the realm of web analytics, I set up a feed aggregator for the analytic conversation.

Looking forward to learn more.

Fun with Google Trends

Still with Matt Cutts as he dissect some fun with Trends.

This is the first time I had taken a closer look at Google Trends. It is an interesting tool graphs the search volume and news volume for certain keywords.

The search volume graph “compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time

The news volume graph “shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories“.

Even more interesting is “when Google Trends detects a spike in the volume of news stories for a particular term, it labels the graph and displays the headline of an automatically selected Google News story written near the time of that spike” (Similar function is also found in Google Finance)

Below the search and news volume graphs, Google Trends displays the top cities, regions, and languages for the first term you entered.

This post is a little late as an introduction to Google Trends as many people had done some interesting trending for blog design, playstation 3 vs xbox360, and many more insights.

I gave it a try with “china business” a term that I have particular interest in.

The chart isn’t that informative but the Top Cities is revealing.

Google trends for china business

I’m from Singapore and in Shanghai.

(text in italics from About Google Trends)

Thoughts on Alexa data

A few quick notes as I hunt around for analytic related insights on the blogosphere. First off, Matt Cutts (of Google search) has some thoughts on Alexa data.

Alexa, if you are not familar, is a service by Amazon that tracks traffic ranking. The fact that the service is provided by such a high profile company as Amazon is often cited as the legitimacy and authoritativeness of the traffic ranking.

Particularly in China. Websites traffic are often presented using Alexa data. A friend that does due diligence for sites acquisation in China often lament at the lack of clarity in web statistics.

Can one trust Alexa data?

Certainly not by people in the know apparently. You can find them in forum and blog. The way to manipulate the data is so simple, it is unimaginable.

Of course investors are not so naive as to just trust Alexa data. But what other independent web traffic ranking alternatives are there?