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

While this post is not analytics related, I thought it was worth posting due to the importance of the Yahoo!/Microsoft Search Alliance.

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!

For years (yes, prior to me joining Yahoo!) I've been using Google Alerts to send me topic updates into my Yahoo! mail inbox. If anybody hasn't used Alerts, it's a great way to keep you up to speed on topics such as "web analytics" or "online advertising" or "attribution"...or ANY topic for that matter.

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

For those of you Yahoo! Web Analytics users (formally known as IndexTools) currently running on the v4 tracking code, please read this message from the Y!AnalyticsBlog:


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).

When we left off on Part 1, we talked about why you'd want to track your Twitter campaigns in real time. Here's how you do it using Yahoo! Web Analytics (all images below can be clicked on for a larger view):

Step 1: Log Into Your Y!WA account and choose the Settings tab/link at the top of the page.















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:

- Campaign Name
- Description
- Cost Type
- Campaign Start Date
- Campaign End Date
- Show campaign In Reports
- Vendor
- Landing page URL Contains (if you've already set up a campaign in Google Analytics like the Twitter example in this article, then simply use Landing Page URL Contains: utm_source=twitter)

























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!