My wife travels often for work, and by default, I usually act as her own personal car service. As such, I am found using search for a flight status for whatever airline she may be flying that week.
Somewhere between April’s Delta flight from Monterey and November’s American Airlines flight from Indianapolis, Google has become fantastic at showing me the information I’m looking right on the SERP (search engine results page), above the organic listings without ever having to leave the search engine. Every bit of information I’m looking for is right there.
Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to have a Google enabled phone, you just push the Google Voice Search button, say the airline and flight number and, voila, the information you need is at your fingertips – making it very user-friendly to search while driving as well.
Continue Reading Please Don’t Leave Me – Search Trends for 2010 →
Over the weekend, I learned that I was accepted into the Microsoft Pivot technical preview program. It was totally unexpected given that this is a super secret and coveted preview program, but I guess they found my application worthy.
Microsoft also allowed me to share my license with 9 of my closest friends, so if you are interested, you should download Pivot too! (Note, that since this is a Microsoft product, it only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7 – so many of you might be out of luck). Here are the download/license instructions:
Continue Reading Data Visualization: We Are Giving Away 9 Microsoft Pivot Licenses! →
We are Google’s favorite place! You read it correctly! After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that Three Deep Marketing is Google’s favorite place in the United States, and presumably the world.
I would like to thank my family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers and people who I might meet in the future; we couldn’t have done it without you!
In the mail today, Three Deep received a package from Google containing a large window sticker with a bar code, like the image shown to the right. I have been anticipating this package for the past 10 days; ever since reading this announcement from Google. I knew it was only a matter of time before Google would send us an affirmation of how much they truly like our organization.
What does it take to be Google’s favorite place? A strong presence for your local business listing. Those fortunate enough to receive this designation and a package in the mail (about 100,000 exclusivebusinesses) have worked hard to optimize their local business listing on Google so that they often show up in local business oriented search results.
Continue Reading Three Deep is Google’s Favorite Place →
Before reading too much into the title, please make note that this article pertains to the paid search engine marketing practices of Amazon and Zappos.
While getting dressed this past Monday, I found that through general laziness toward laundry and a hectic travel schedule, I was left with one pair of dress socks. These socks were getting old, and had sprouted a few holes in them through everyday wear and tear.
For most normal people, there is a clear solution; go to the store and buy new socks. I wish it were that easy for me. The truth is that I live in the frigid state of Minnesota, and the cold weather conditions have lead me to despise shopping in “brick and mortar” anytime during our cold season, which generally runs from October to May.
Continue Reading Why Amazon is More Relevant than Zappos →
As marketers we have gotten very good at setting measurable goals for projects, moving away from work that attempts to influence intangible business objectives. In my experience with most agencies, we usually take a look at our KPIs at the end of the campaign, and then try to do a post-mortem on what worked or why we missed the target (thankfully, I have found that this is not the case at Three Deep, where measurement often drives the campaign).
There is another way, but it requires commitment to flexibility – that is to reserve funds and plan resources to adjust as you go. We should be reviewing results regularly and having a “plan B” to step up traffic generators, or adjust content or functionality to improve results if we aren’t on track to reach our initial goals.
Let’s take a minute to review the criteria for a focused goal. It must be:
Last week I came across a great slide deck put together by InsightR consulting that compares two free web analytics tools: Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools). While we haven’t had much experience working with Yahoo! Web Analytics, the results from this study are quite intriguing, and favorable for Yahoo! in many areas.
As a GAAC consultant, this really does not change anything when it comes to our preferred choice of tools, but I do think that it proves Yahoo Web Analytics to be a true competitor in this space. Competition is good!
Continue Reading Yahoo! Web Analytics vs. Google Analytics →
The Mad Analyst is happy. Why you ask? Because I’m now using some of the latest Google Analytics features and it makes my life easier, particularly the Advanced Table & Report Filtering function. The release couldn’t have been more timely, considering a recent client request.
I was asked to look at the content of their site to determine “choke” points within the navigation. Now the site doesn’t have a lot of page depth to begin with so I wondered how I might look at where people are falling off. Previously, you could look at page data and only sort by the headers – so if I sort by Exit% or Bounce Rate, I either get the pages that are performing well or I get the pages that have super high bounce rates (100% !) but only 2 visits. What do you do? Export all 2,346 rows and then apply a filter in Excel? Not anymore.
Instead I utilized 2 semi-recent functions and the very recent report filtering to easily export a nice little analysis identifying the pages that need attention because they’re losing visitors.
First, I created a custom report that showed me the key metrics I wanted by page:
It’s funny how in a country with hundreds of millions of people, the world can seem really small through Social Media. This past Thursday, two members of Three Deep – Brandon Smith (aka @bg3dppc on Twitter) and Jeff Sauer (@jeffsauer) attended a gathering of Twitter users in the Twin Cities at an event called the Minneapolis Tweetup.
The event was held at the Bulldog in NE Minneapolis, which is one of the better restaurant/bars in the Twin Cities, and the promise of free food and cocktails made it an event not to be missed.
We met some great people at the event (@kareemy, @ddn, @swineheart, @paulmalenke to name a few) and called a successful event after about 2 hours – and decided to leave the happy hour around 8 PM. After driving home, I logged on to check my Twitter account and noticed some interesting news about the event:
Continue Reading Three Deep Attends Minneapolis Tweetup, Meets Mark Cuban →
As marketers, we all know that there is a fair amount of turnover throughout the dynamics of the client/agency relationship. This post series covers solutions to many common problems that may arise while inheriting a Google Analytics account.
One of the key objectives in value added Web Analytics is answering the question “what is the point of this website” and “what do we want visitors to do when they visit.” The metric we use to determine success is a conversion occurring during a site visit.
This is a pretty elementary aspect of web analytics, and a fundamental foundation for a solid analytics install… or is it? From my experience, this is often overlooked. The fact is that most web analytics installations do not have even the most basic fundamental configuration elements in place.
Continue Reading Google Analytics: Inferring Conversions with No Goals →
A few weeks ago, a small group of “Three Deepers” attended Google’s annual Authorized Partner Summit at their headquarters in Mountain View, California. This four-day event provided excellent coverage of their industry-leading marketing products, including Google Website Optimizer (GWO), Google Analytics (GA), and Urchin.
The information presented was an excellent blend of product training, use cases, deep-dives into new capabilities, and breakout sessions with the product managers and engineers themselves. The following is a brief overview of the event and the knowledge that returned to Minnesota with us.
Day One – Google Website Optimizer
Continue Reading 2009 Google Analytics Partner Summit Recap →
We are Google’s favorite place! You read it correctly! After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that 
Before reading too much into the title, please make note that this article pertains to the paid search engine marketing practices of Amazon and Zappos.
As marketers, we all know that there is a fair amount of turnover throughout the dynamics of the client/agency relationship. This post series covers solutions to many common problems that may arise while inheriting a Google Analytics account.
