I’ve always considered my data to be fairly safe with Google, but it seems as though Google has lost some Analytics data last week. If you’ve logged on to Analytics yesterday you might have noticed a little message from Google:

Looking at one of our client’s transaction data, we noticed that the dates with low transactions coincide with the dates mentioned in the notice.

Most accounts were affected by the processing error, though Google promises that the correct data will be restored by today. Data from Adwords is still accurate, but some of the data from our direct and organic transactions which were tracked by Analytics may be lost, according to Google.

“E-commerce transactions were affected more heavily than other metrics, and a small percentage of e-commerce data from those dates may not be recoverable.”

For those of you without e-commerce tracking, Google says a small percentage of data may still be lost. A small percentage isn’t much to you or me, but if we’re talking about Google scale data – a small percentage is a lot.

As a side note, this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed screwy numbers with Analytics. I’ve been wondering if Google’s math is off in their calculations of Total Absolute Unique Visitors:

If you pull out a calculator and add the individual numbers up, you’ll see that the individual numbers add up to 27,938. I still haven’t been able to figure out where Google gets 26,703 from. I’ve seen this in every account I’ve come across. If someone knows why this is happening, please enlighten me.

Recently Google has increased their already robust Change History Reporting. Previously, the feature let you look back a maximum of 3 months to see what changes had been done and by whom. Now the feature shows changes up to 2 years back, starting January 1, 2006.

What does this mean to advertisers?

1. You can retrace your steps and compare analytical data with the changes you have made in order to determine which were good and bad decisions.
2. If you have an agency, you can easily check what they have been doing over the past 2 years.

Here’s how:

1. Go to the campaign management tab
2. Click on the tools sub tab and find the “my change history” link
3. Select the desired date range to start with
4. Select how far back you would like to look
5. Select which types of changes you would like to view
6. View all the changes that have been made

There are many options to play with here. You can filter the changes to see more specific changes:

1. The changes made by certain people
2. Changes made to a certain area of your account

It’s a great way to learn about your past and keep whoever is handling your account honest.

Steven recently posted about map plus boxes showing in organic Google results from addresses off third-party websites. It shouldn’t be surprising that Google has found yet another place to add the little plus boxes, they’ve been tweaking local business listings since its introduction in 2006.

Paid search local business ads got a little plus box lovin’ (officially) just last year. If you’re running a paid search campaign, you know that real estate on Google is a precious (and valuable!) commodity. So when Google offers to add an extra line (and option to expand a map underneath your ad) for free, why not jump on it?

Local Business Ads in the Search Network

Don’t get local business ads confused with free listings in Google’s Local Business Center. Local business ads are essentially enhanced paid text ads, with keywords lists, ad groups, bids, and the whole schebang. They’re eligible to appear in Google’s Search Network and Google Map local business searches, among other places. We’re just going to focus on what happens in the Search Network, however.

Unlike in Google Maps, where local business ads get precedence over regular text ads, local business ads in the Search Network must compete with regular text ads based on Ad Rank.

When local business ads are triggered in the search network, the business address appears below the text ad. If your local business ad shows up in one of the top paid positions, that’s when the little expander plus box appears.

You don’t get charged for people clicking to expand the box, clicking on the actual map, or clicking to get directions to the business location, which is nice.

The extra attention you put into making local business ad campaigns can pay off if location is important to your business, like a hotel or a restaurant. If you’re in these sorts of industries, you might consider making at least an ad group with location terms, branded terms and a local business ad or two to help searchers easily find you.

When working with national and international Fortune 1000 clients, I often observe that their brand is so strong that it provides 80% of the conversions at 20% of the total budget spent (the Pereto principal at its finest). This is where the Internet marketer enjoys the fruits of the traditional marketer’s labor. No, all of those overpriced archaic billboards on the side of the freeway were not a total waste. Those expensive advertising agencies who charge like a battalion of lawyers to come up with a tag line of three simple God-like words (Just Do It) will help your Pay Per Click efforts immensely. First we must see what all the fuss is about, and then we can see when one should abstain from branded terms.

Paid Search for the household name is all about synergy. Headlines in your text ad like “As Seen on TV” and “Found at Your Local Mall” are usually great indicators that your branded terms will successfully carry the weight of the paid search efforts. These branded terms give you an ROI buffer to go after those terms with higher volume and lower return of investment.

Just because your brand logo isn’t more recognizable than the Son of God doesn’t mean you should not be bidding on your own name. Just expect a much lower search volume. Your brand name is arguably still the most qualified bucket of keywords to bid on. It indicates that someone has already heard of you or even done business with you in the past. Even if you are ranked number one in the natural listings, it is a good idea to have a paid search listing. It gives you the chance to say exactly what you want to say to the searcher at a moment’s notice. You could run a special promotion in an instant instead of having to wait for the spiders to re-crawl your site with no guarantee that your Meta description will turn out the way you have planned.

So we have explored when branded terms do a great job; let’s dive into when they may not be your best bet. There is a very specific behavior that is the scourge of paid search marketers. If one of your clients has a service that warrants daily revisiting of your site (once the client is acquired), then branded terms might turn out to be a big waste of money. What the heck am I talking about? To clarify we will start with an example:

A company offers a free email service. Terms like “free email” work very well for this client. They have a high conversion rate because that is exactly what they offer. But their brand name does not lead to a high conversion rate because these people who are visiting the site are actually members, and are just looking to sign into their email account. They happen to click on a paid search ad because they don’t know the difference between the organic listing and the one you just paid for. Yes, there are some people looking for email services with this particular client by name, but this is a case where branded terms do not yield the rewards expected.

It’s rare to come across exceptions to the rules, but I always like to share them with the community who might find them interesting.

After reading Rebecca’s post this morning (which rocked by the way so go check it out), I felt the need to rant at 6:30 in the morning! Thanks again, Rebecca!

A majority of people do not get social bookmarking; they just don’t. Their first glimpse of a new way to market their business gets them all excited like a kid chasing an ice cream truck drooling, but at the same time like the ice cream man with dollar signs in his eyes ready to charge them $5 for a push-up . So what do they do? They submit crap! Or, they submit half-way decent content the wrong way. At the end of the day, it just looks poorly on their business (especially to the parents of those poor kids).

Here are some great examples:

What the hell are these titles about? I laughed so hard at this that I took the time to print the screen (which is more time than people will spend clicking the link to their actual site)! Don’t ever put your damn domain name or URL in your title!

Along with the crappy title, look at the domain! Wow, that looks spammy. Let’s – see – how – many – hyphens - we – can — use – when – purchasing – a – domain! The digg community is very critical on where submitted content comes from. You can always set up a micro site with an attractive domain and 301 it later, smart guy; if it takes off.

SEO? Pshaaa! Good luck. The digg community hates everything and anything related to “SEO.”

Title is a bit bland, but this submission would have a better chance if there was a thumbnail.

This description is not compelling and is in multiple languages. Try to be short and concise with your descriptions.

ALL CAPS LOCKS SUCKS! Do not capitalize every letter in your title. I get it… you are TRYING TO GET MY ATTENTION. But doing it like this will only get you so far with me. I know what I am looking for, and it isn’t YOU (It’s especially not OK to think that JT is an exception)!

This is sooo bad! Wow. Do I have to tell what is wrong with this?! Only submit content that people might find compelling. Not sure if someone is looking for a new corner to venture to, or if they just got dumped; about 6 million people in China just don’t care, and neither do I.

Moral of the story. When submitting your content to digg or any other social bookmarking site, please, PLEASE (see the caps? Only use it to exaggerate) remember the following:

• Write rich and compelling titles.
• Do not put your domain name or URL in your title
• Beware of the domain name you are submitting your content from. If needed, build a micro site and 301 it later.
• Do not submit “SEO” stories. Use sphinn for that!
• Get an eye grabbing thumbnail for all submissions.
• Make your descriptions short and to the point (preferably in one language).
• Do not capitalize every letter in your title.
• Most importantly– only submit content that people might find compelling and useful!

Ahhh. I feel better now!

While drinking my coffee this morning I noticed Google doing something new in their SERPS. I noticed that Google is putting plus map boxes on search engine result listing that have address information on that page.

Take a look when your search “eVisibility“. Notice the third listing down. It is our SEMPO profile with a map plus box.

Click on the plus sign and you get:

Also, take look at “Wynn Hotel” 9th result. It also has a map plus box and it looks like it is pulling from their profile www.i4vegas.com.

To me this looks very similar to what Yahoo is doing with their “Search Monkey” project.

All in all, I like this feature, but business owners be aware that the information is being pulled directly off third-party websites. So, if your information is outdated on these websites Google may still display it!

It would be nice if Google would reference the business owners Google local business center account address before displaying it.

Have fun chasing down and updating all your third party business listings! Let us know if you are seeing the same results by dropping a comment here, and let us know what sites you are getting the plus box from. If we get enough people to list the sites they get the plus box it could make it a bit easier to edit these third-party sites if need be.

UPDATE:

It is important to note that not everyone that has a listing on any of these sites will get you a plus box. We are not sure what is triggering these results in Google yet. I am also noticing that it is very random and that some of the more obscure sites are showing the plus box.

OK, I’ll get the list going here. So we are seeing the Google Map plus boxes from the following sites.
SEMPO
Alexa
TopSEOs
AboutUs.org
WilsonWeb.com
my3cents.com
investorwords.com
sectorpages.com
etc…