Posts Tagged ‘google’


Twitter vs Google for business websites

When it comes to sending traffic to business websites, Google is the 800lb gorilla.

A recent chart post from eMarketer looks at the loyalty of visitors from social media sites: Loyal visitors but small share from social sites. But in the same post, it quotes some information sourced from Chikita about the overall volume of traffic.

Most Referrals are from Search (Source: eMarketer)

Most Referrals are from Search (Source: eMarketer)


The company looked at the top sites sending traffic to the publishers in its network and found that Google alone accounted for 76.13% of referrals.

Taken together, search engines made almost 98% of all referrals, while social networking sites made up just 0.55%.

Running an active marketing campaign using Twitter is time intensive. Think of all that time spent reading tweets, tweeting and participating in conversations.

Can it lead to conversions? I’m sure it can. But marketing involves focussing your scarce resources (mainly time) on the actions that deliver the greatest outcomes. And what this chart shows is that when it comes to traffic, Google is the 800lb gorilla.

So for a small business with limited resources it is going to be hard to get the same results from a Twitter campaign that can be achieved from a search marketing campaign.


Bing off to a good start

I haven’t been paying much attention to Bing, Microsoft’s new entrant in the search engine race. After all, taking on Google in search …

It does go Bing

It does go Bing

But a curious thing has been happening.

I get to see analytics for quite a few different websites. I’ve noticed that for a lot of sites, Bing seemed to have either caught up to Yahoo or overtaken it. A check of about 70 sites revealed Bing equalled or exceeded Yahoo in terms of traffic sent 48% of the time (according to Google Analytics).

When I had a look at Bing’s search results, they were fast and correlated closely to stable rankings I knew from Google.

By co-incidence, Google just started running a regional one box (map with 3 pack of related sites) on a moderately competitive search term that I monitor. Google has got it utterly wrong, and is displaying a map from a totally different place. On exactly the same search term, Bing is displaying accurate, relevant results.

This is a micoscopic sample, of course. But from my perspective, Bing is off to a much better start than anticipated.


Using FeedBurner? Your FeedBurner account must be migrated to Google by 28/2/2009

If you are using FeedBurner, you need to follow the steps below by 28th February 2009.

Why do I need to do this?

In 2007, FeedBurner was acquired by Google. As a result, all FeedBurner accounts must be transferred to a Google Account.

The transfer process is quite simple (see below). Google also has posted a FAQ on the subject.

Not sure if you’re using FeedBurner?

  1. Log into your website’s dashboard (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/).
  2. Navigate to Appearance, then Site Design.
  3. Scroll down to the “Feedburner Feed Address” field.
    If this field is empty, then you’re not using FeedBurner so this post doesn’t apply to you.
    If the field has a http://feeds.feedburner.com address in it, you need to perform the following steps.

Migration Steps

  1. Log into Feedburner by visiting http://www.feedburner.com/. You should see a screen like this:
    FeedBurner Account Transfer
  2. Click “Move my account now”. You should then see a screen like this:
    FeedBurner Transfer Step 2
  3. Select either “Sign in to an existing Google Account” or “Create a new Google Account”.
  4. Either log in to your existing Google account, or create a new Google account. You should then see a screen like this:
    FeedBurnter Transfer Step 3
  5. Review the confirmation page and click “Move feeds”.
  6. Wait for your feed(s) to be moved. For small accounts, this process may only take a minute or so. For larger accounts, this process may take several hours.
    You can close your browser window while the move occurs – you will receive an email when the process is complete.
  7. Once you receive an email from Google confirming that the move is complete, you will notice that your feed URL(s) have changed from http://feeds.feedburner.com/x to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/x.
  8. For each of the URLs listed in your email, log into your website’s dashboard, then go to Appearance -> Site Design, then change your “Feedburner Feed Address” to the new http://feeds2.feedburner.com address.
  9. Click the “Save Settings” button.
  10. Your website will now be using your new FeedBurner feed address.
  11. In future, to access your FeedBurner account, visit http://feedburner.google.com.