Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Check Out The New Yahoo! Clues Search Data Insights Service
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Secret To Winning With Web Analytics? Starting Right!
http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/11/secret-to-winning-with-web-analytics-starting-right/
Thursday, October 21, 2010
New Yahoo! Web Analytics Enhancement: Campaign Assists
The assist* metric reveals which campaigns (of any type) most often indirectly contribute to the conversions you value in order to better evaluate marketing opportunities.
The metric is calculated based on the number of times a campaign drives a visitor to your website prior to the source credited with a conversion.
Assists are a campaign-based metric available in the Custom Report Wizard and are treated as any other campaign-based metric. They can be aggregated at higher level categories or viewed for each individual campaign being tracked.
All assists occurring within 45 days of the conversion event will be recorded. Note that a single marketing activity can assist multiple conversions.
Please also note that individual keywords or other organic traffic sources are not tracked as assists.
As you can probably tell by reading the above description, the Assist metric is very valuable for helping you understand whether or not your camapigns (display, search, email, etc) contributed to the conversion of another campaign.
For example, you'll now be able to see that while your display ad did not convert very well on its own (directly) it may have contributed (assisted) in driving conversions for other campaigns (such as search). Over time, of course, you'd be able to make smarter budgeting decisions for your display campaigns. The same goes for other campaigns as well.
*Note: Currently the assist metric only provides data on clicked campaigns. It does not provide impression assists.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Yahoo! Web Analytics Releases Version 9.6
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/documentation/prod_updates/3615784.html
I'm especially excited about the Assist feature. :)
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Speaking at the Sept. 29th Web Analytics Wednesday Event In Santa Monica
You are also invited to a happy hour at the Daily Grill (http://www.dailygrill.com/) after the presentation.
This free event will be held at the Grand Conference room at RPA and will start at 6:30PM. Please note that RPA is located in the east wing of Yahoo Center. Also, RPA will not be able to validate parking.
More information can be found here: http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/list.asp?event_id=3142
Looking forward to meeting you!
Friday, September 03, 2010
Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking Your Embedded YouTube Videos Within Your Website
http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/?p=396
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Yahoo! Web Analytics: Segmentation Made Easy
Part of understanding your visiting audience comes down to figuring out which segments of your audience perform the best. Once you figure that out, life gets much easier because now you know who you should be developing and targeting your web site content for.
In Yahoo! Web Analytics, it's easy to figure out who your audience is with its demographic, geographic, and interest group data. For example, by visiting the 'Age and Gender' report you'll quickly see what age range and gender group visits your web site the most. By visiting the 'Interest Group' report you'll understand which category your visitors are interested in the most (entertainment, sports, finance, news, etc). In less than two minutes, you can begin to build a picture of your audience. But Yahoo! Web Analytics also does so much more to help you understand your audience.
Let's say you run an e-commerce site and you've just pinpointed (using the Age and Gender report) that the majority of visitors to your web site are males between the ages of 18-34. That's a great start but you want to learn more about how that segment (by itself) has performed. What can you do to learn more about that segment's performance?
If you log into Yahoo! Web Analytics and select the 'Settings' link at the top of the page, you'll find a section called 'Segmentation' and a link called 'Create Visitor Segments'
Here you can create nearly any kind of segment you want and then have the ability to follow that segment across many of the reports that Yahoo! Web Analytics provides.
Let's create a segment for "males between the ages of 18-34" and I'll show you what you can do with that segment within the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting structure....
Step 1: Select the 'Create Visitor Segments' link and then select the 'Open the Segmentation Wizard' button at the bottom of the page.
Step 2: Once inside the Segmentation Wizard...
a. Under 'Group Selection' click on the 'Segmentation' link and you'll get a drop down
b. Drag the 'Age' box and drop it into the 'Drag Groups Here' box
- Select the age ranges '18-24', and '25-34' and move them to the left (using the arrows)
c. Drag the 'Gender' box and drop it into the 'Drag Groups Here' box
- Select the 'Male' option
d. Give the Segment a name at the top of the wizard and select the 'Save Segment' box
Step 3: Go back into your reports
- Select the Reports link at the top of the page
Step 4: Select any report such as Search Engines
- Select Marketing --> Search Engines & Referrers --> Search Engines
Step 5: Once inside the Search Engines Referrals report...
a. Click on the 'Segmentation Selector' icon at the top of the page
b. Find the segment you just created under 'Available Segments'
c. Drag the segment to the 'Drag Segments Here' box
d. Select the 'Show Report' button
When the Search Engines report generates, you'll see that data provided is broken out just for your segment of males between the ages of 18-34. Now you can explore all of your other reports and the data will be broken out for just that segment alone.
If you want to go back to your normal reports.....
a. Click the 'Segmentation Selector' icon at the top of the page again
b. Click the trash can icon next to your segment
c. Click the 'Show Report' button
Once you really get a handle on who your audience is, you can start to add content or advertising (such as banner ads) that is targeted around that audience. By doing this, you'll be able to drive deeper engagment for your visitors, drive more click throughs from your visitors, and drive your visitors to more conversions because you're providing them with the content they are seeking.
Now go explore Yahoo! Web Analytics some more!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Check Out Your Mobile Traffic In Yahoo! Web Analytics
Quick little video for those of you Yahoo! Small Business clients who want to check what kind of traffic you get from mobile phones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il9bSfy3iGY
Track Your Twitter Branding Effectiveness In Real-Time With Yahoo! Web Analytics
Check out my latest post to the Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog:
http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/08/ywa-twitter-tracking/
Monday, August 02, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
New Yahoo! Web Analytics Quick Start Guides Available!
The Yahoo! Web Analytics team has just released two great Quick Guides to help get you up and running with Yahoo! Web Analytics.
The first guide is the Quick Install Guide:
Our Quick Install Guide contains some basic information for the newer Yahoo! Web Analytics user so that you can get up and running as soon as possible. Questions answered include:
•Where do I actually get my tracking code?
•Where do I put the tracking code?
•How do I check the tracking code?
The second guide is the Custom Fields Guide (a very valuable guide for those who want to get more out of Y!WA):
Our Custom Fields Guide will give you lots of great information on YWA custom fields and how you can use them from set-up to reporting. We cover what they are, provide some use cases and illustrate the scopes and carry-over options.
For more information and links to the guides, head on over to our Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog: http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/07/ywa_quick_guides/
Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance Video
Here's a very cool animated video explaining the alliance:
http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2010/07/15/new-video-from-the-yahoo-and-microsoft-search-alliance-what-does-it-mean-for-you.aspx#comments
With regards how the alliance will affect web analytics (especially Yahoo's 'Full Analytics' and 'Conversion Only' products), I'll be following up with a post in the near future!
Friday, July 09, 2010
I've Been Googed!
Alerts has also been a great way to send referral traffic to this Yahoo! Analytics blog. In years past, each time I've written a new post, it's been picked up by Alerts and it's been shown in their Blogs update section. Lately however, I haven't seen any of my latest blog posts show up in Alerts. Therefore, I'm seeing a direct decrease in referral traffic of late.
Strangely enough, I always see Avinash Kaushik (Google Analytics evangelist) related blog posts show up. Hmmmmmm....must have been a change to their "relevance" algorithm......
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Re: v.4 Tracking Code Migration Deadline is Approaching
In 2009 we moved all of our legacy IndexTools accounts to a new data center, additionally we introduced our new v.5 tracking code and updated the v.4 tracking code. At that time we announced that v.4 would remain fully supported until July 30th, 2010. Well that migration deadline is fast approaching and we would like to again remind our customers to check their site(s) to ensure that they won’t be impacted.
Please note that when v.4 support ends YWA will continue to track sites utilizing this code but going forward there will be no updates, bug fixes or technical support for that version.
You can still access the original migration guides for Partners/Consultants and end users should you need to switch and our v.5 installation guide is another invaluable resource. Also, one of our YWACN members, Sally Knows, has put together a free tool called No Tags, No Glory which can scan your site and alert you to any pages that contain legacy tracking code. You can also contact us if you have any questions or are having issues with the migration.
Please note that this will not affect any users who became customers after May 2009.
Posted by The YWA Team
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Track Your Twitter Campaigns In Real Time With Yahoo! Web Analytics: Part 2
Apologies for the delay on Part 2 of this post (busy times lately with Yahoo! Web Analytics).
Step 2: Select the 'Manage Campaigns' link under the 'Campaigns & PPC Tracking' header:
Step 3: Select the 'Add New Campaign' button at the bottom of the page (and choose 'Other Campaign' from the drop down menu):
Step 4: Add your Campaign Properties:
Tracking campaigns in Yahoo! Web Analytics is as easy as telling Y!WA what to look for in either a URL parameter, a Landing Page URL, or a Referring URL. Once Y!WA sees it, it will appropriately bucket it under the Campiagn Name you created. So even if you've already set up your campaigns with Google parameters or Omniture parameters or Double Click parameters, for example, you can simply tell Y!WA to look for those parameters.
By setting up your Twitter campaigns in Y!WA, you'll be able to get real time traffic results from a real time social network!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Track Your Twitter Campaigns In Real Time With Yahoo! Web Analytics: Part 1
One of the bonuses of using Yahoo! Web Analytics is that it reports back data in real time.
Q: Are all reports in Y!WA real-time?
A: Yes, Yahoo! Web Analytics maintains detailed records of every visit to your website in its database. When you request a report, Yahoo! Web Analytics mines this database to produce real time reports. All you have to do is to select a target period in your calendar.
Some advertisers have told me that they don't see a need for real-time reporting, but I would disagree. To those advertisers I say, have you heard of Twitter?
Yes, Twitter. That HUGE real-time social networking platform that is teaching some of the world's largest companies a thing or two about the value of social branding on the web. It's also teaching the the world's largest companies a thing or two about customer relations. Thanks to real-time social networking these days, brands are either being praised or flushed down the toilet in a very short amount of time (remember the Oprah/Twitter/KFC disaster last year).
The point is, since advertising has started to move viral in real-time, shouldn't you start tracking those advertising efforts in real-time to help you better understand your customers?
I recently came across a nicely written blog titled, "Tracking Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns with Google Analytics" The writer did a great job of walking you through a step by step process of using Google Analytics to track your email, banner/display, Twitter, paid search, and offline campaigns. The writer then followed up the implementation steps by providing a summary of how to view the reports in Google Analytics once the campaign data was captured. A fantastic example of how to measure your advertising efforts under one roof so you can make smarter budgeting decisions.
The only issue I had with the Twitter example is that Google Analytics does not provide real-time data. So for those advertisers that are launching branded campaigns on Twitter, they are going to have to wait from a few hours to 24 hours before they can start to evaluate the effectiveness of their Twitter campaign. Sure, you could wait so that you can make decisions with a larger sample of data, but then what's the point of launching a campaign on a real-time social platform if you can't measure the results in real-time and make real-time decisions? Do you follow me?
As an advertiser, wouldn't you rather know in real-time how many times that "bit" or "tiny" URL (that you created for your campaign) was being clicked on as it was being sent all over Twitter on a massive scale? I would! With the speed at which information travels across Twitter these days, you could take action in real-time if that campaign wasn't performing well. When have you EVER been able to take that kind of immediate action on a campaign?
And remember, just because your campaign is receiving lots of clicks, it doesn't mean your campaign is performing well. You may receive lots of clicks because somebody made a negative tweet about your product or service and everybody wants to see what your product or service is all about. Being able to compare your click data in real-time along with what tweeters are saying about your campaign could save you a big headache in the long run by allowing you to tweak your campaign messaging on the fly.
In Part 2, I'll explain how you can use Yahoo! Web Analytics to track your Twitter campaigns in real-time.....even if you're already using other analytics platforms (such as Google Analytics) to track those campaigns. It's easier than you think.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo and Top Questions Answered
How Do I Get A Yahoo! Web Analytics Account?
A lot of people over the past several months have asked me how they can get a Yahoo! Web Analytics account. Here is your answer:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/introduction/intro-2.html;_ylt=ApmUYEFUUL8CWAKmAYsVh13KInlG
Is There A Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo?
You bet. A pretty good one in fact that highlights some of the best features of what Yahoo! Web Analytics has to offer:
http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/ayc/flash/ywa-dennis-5-min-75p.swf
Are There Training Videos Available?
Yes, we now have multiple sessions of free Yahoo! Web Analytics training videos available:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/documentation/training/;_ylt=ArBJcSfzlFVLaR2NyMPpktVteHdG
Why Would I Want Yahoo! Web Analytics When I Already Use Google Analytics or Site Catalyst or Coremetrics or WebTrends?
Here are my favorites.....
1. Un-aggregated DataYou can dig deep into the data to help you get the answers that lead to making smarter web site optimization and online budgeting decisions.
With the raw data you can customize your reporting and filter out segments to help you get the type of actionable info that you simply cannot get from a default/non-customizable report.
For example, with Yahoo! Web Analytics you can customize a basic Visits report and make it into an actionable report (such as the one below). A basic default Search Engines report might show you that most Visits come from Google. But does that mean you should spend more on Google advertising? No, you need more actionable information to help you make smarter budgeting decisions.
With Yahoo! Web Analytics you can open up the 'Customize Report' function and pull in some of that additional raw data you have access to such as Conversion Rates, Revenue, Average Order Value, etc. In the image below, we see that while Google drove the most Visits and Revenue it didn't drive the highest Conversion Rate or provide the best Average Order Value.
Looking at how AOL compared in this example, it actually drove a higher Avg. Order Value than Google did. Looking more closely, we notice that AOL drove about half the amount of Revenue that Google did on only 1/10th of Google's traffic. So you can imagine that if you worked to drive more traffic to your e-commerce site from AOL (with the Avg. Order Value it's running at) you could see some positive results!! Now THAT is actionable information!
(click on image for larger snapshot)
2. Interest Group Data
Anybody with a web site wants to better understand what their visitors are interested in so that they can better target them. Yahoo! Web Analytics offers a newer report call Interest Groups.
With Yahoo's HUGE audience scale (600 million monthly unique visitors) and massive amount of users that have signed up for Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Finance, etc., Yahoo! can provide a pretty awesome sample set of data and can help you understand the types of visitors that are coming to your site and what they are interested in.
(click on image for larger snapshot)
Combine Yahoo's massive audience with the science of housing raw un-aggregated data and the ability to filter on that data (such as breaking down the Interest Group data by gender or city as shown in the image above) and you have some amazing targeting data that no other company currently provides.
3. FREE
Where else are you going to find an enterprise analytics solution combined with Yahoo! audience data for free? Nowhere. Even when Yahoo! adds new functionality in future upgrades....still free.
I had a client ask me if they could test our Yahoo! Web Analytics for 30 days. I laughed and said, "You can test it for as long as you want because it's free!" Here at Yahoo!, we like to call it FREE99.
No more paying for page views!! If Yahoo! Web Analytics helps you grow your web site traffic (which it is designed to do with its web site optimization and campaign tracking reports) are you going to have to pay more for that additional traffic? NO! NO! NO!
You shouldn't have to pay more for analytics because your web site is improving...that's what the web analytics tool is supposed to help you do in the first place! Your costs should not have to run side by side with your improved performance!
Remember folks......Yahoo! Web Analytics is not a reporting tool, it's an analysis tool. What do you have to lose? It's free.Saturday, April 03, 2010
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Latest Yahoo! Web Analytics Training Video Launched: Reporting & Interface Features
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/training/training_session5.html;_ylt=AnOMQm1xE45RrI8EC2foDqJYDHlG
For all other trainings, please visit the Yahoo! Web Analytics Resources site: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/training/
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Yahoo! Web Analytics Training Webinars Launched
Via Dennis Mortensen's Visual Revenue blog:
The following is a post by Charlie Holbech
We have spent the last 18 months integrating Y!WA (IndexTools) into the Yahoo! Network and whilst our Account Management team has worked tirelessly to ensure that our client base (both Y!WACN members and Direct Customers) are well supported, we have also managed to find time to run some projects in the background!
Our onus has been on serving our customer base more effectively, tackling this in a variety of ways: Dedicated Account Management for Y!WACN members, an expansive list of FAQs available to all on help.yahoo.com as well as the recently announced Y!WA Status Blog keeping our customers informed in real-time (RSS, Email, Phone and Messenger Alerts).
I’m pleased to announce that today we add a considerable resource to our existing support and self-serve channels!
Yahoo! Web Analytics Product Training on-Demand
We have spent the last few months converting our original on-site product training that we use to deliver to clients and partners at IndexTools, into short, easily digestible, on-demand webinars. These webinars are accessible by all and aim to give new and existing users a complete overview of the product allowing them to concentrate on what’s important: analysis. The webinars are collated using a combination of PowerPoint Slides and in Product Demo’s.
Further to this we have also added an Interactive Q&A section (Adobe Captivate) for each of the training sections. This will enable users to check their knowledge at each stage of the training, or go back and check it further down the line. N.B. We don’t capture any personal data or results :)
So where do YOU go to get access to these?
We have created a section within help.yahoo.com and you can access the individual sessions here. We’ve created a page for each session and you’ll currently have access to the following sessions and sections:
- Session 1: Deploying and Customizing the Tracking Code
- Session 2: Sales and Merchandising – Deployment and Reporting
- Session 3: Basic Reporting: Traffic, Demographics, Techno-graphics, Content, Navigation, and Path Analysis
- Session 4: Conversion Analysis, Scenario Analysis
Still to come over the next month or so are the remaining sessions these include:
Session 5: Reporting Interface Features
Session 6: Manual Campaign Setup
Session 7: Automated Campaign Setup
Session 8: Campaign Reporting
Session 9: Dashboards
Session 10: Settings
We hope you find these informative and useful! Stay tuned for the remaining 6 Sessions. If you’ve not had a chance to view the product yet checkout Dennis’ 30 min Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo.
My thanks to Miha Popa who worked so hard to get these recorded and to the rest of my team for drawing up all the questions and answers!
Cheers,
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Yahoo! Analytics Word Cloud
Monday, January 04, 2010
Matt Lillig Blog: Year In Review
Don't ask me how, but I let four months slip by without receiving any data (with regards to Google Analytics). Something happened where the Google tracking tag was mistakenly removed (probably as I was toying around with adding Blogger gadgets to my layout).
Yes, even I use Google Analytics (mainly because that's what I was using before I joined Yahoo!). I'll be adding a Yahoo Web Analytics account in the next couple days. :)
With regards to my blog, 2009 was a great year. Unfortunately, due to my 4 month tracking error, I came out with a fewer number of visits compared to 2008 (of course). Oh well, I still came out with some interesting user trends!
My top 10 keyword searches were as follows:
1. yahoo assists
2. matt lillig
3. green analytics
4. yahoo full analytics
5. matt lillig blog
6. yahoo web analytics
7. matt lillig yahoo
8. tracking display ads
9. where are assists in yahoo?
10. last click attribution
Anybody see a trend here? It appears that the topic of attribution was very high on the mind of my visitors in 2009 (as Yahoo's search attribution metric called 'Assists' came in at #1 and #9 and 'last click attribution' came in at #10). This is a good thing because I spent a lot of time covering the topic discussing how Assists can help advertisers save online ad budget dollars and lower their CPA for keywords.
With regards to my Top 10 blog posts of 2009, here is the breakout:
1. Home Page (of course): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/
2. Web Analytics Resources: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/02/yahoo-web-analytics-resources.html
3. Yahoo! Assists: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2007/06/yahoo-assists-in-helping-their.html
4. Yahoo! Assists (Saving Money): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/12/yahoo-assistsput-money-back-into-your.html
5. Yahoo! Web Analytics (Geo Targeting): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/12/use-yahoo-web-analytics-to-geotargeted.html
6. Tracking Search and Display: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/08/hi-im-search-hi-im-display.html
7. Comscore: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-comscore-paid-click-reports-arent.html
8. Tracking Display Ads: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/10/tracking-display-ads-is-easy-with.html
9. Green Analytics (this one was off topic with regards to Yahoo! but interesting that it received this much traffic): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/02/green-analytics.html
10. Yahoo! Search Marketing Analytics Description: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/02/green-analytics.html
Note the Assist posts came in at #2 and #3. Attribution love!
For 2010, expect more posts from me on the Yahoo! Web Analytics platform (note that my Y!WA post on geo-targeting made the #5 most visited post in 2009 even though I just posted it in early December) . It's clear that consumers out there are interested in learning more about Yahoo! Web Analytics and its capabilities. And why shouldn't they? It's free, it's fast, and it's powerful!
Thanks to all of the people who visited my blog 2009. Happy new year!
Adios to 2009 (thank goodness!) and here's to a great year for analytics in 2010!
Matt Lillig