A step above Google Analytics, the Filter and Segmentation tools will help you take your analysis to the next level. The reason being, the more you can segment your data the more you can understand your customers' behavior and the more positive actions you can take to increase your profits. A company owner who can segment his data to include how a visitor came to view your site, for example via an email marketing campaign, or a well-placed advertisement on a different site, and who can then view the percentage of those visitors who end up buying a product, will know exactly which avenue of advertising is worthwhile to invest his time and money into.

There are two complementary features offered by Google Analytics which allow you to shape your data and gain a deeper understanding of what is occurring on your site, Profile Features and Advanced Segmentation. Google Profile Filters allows you to permanently modify (screen or suppress) the data that flows into your profiles so it will be most useful to you and you won't have unnecessary data overwhelming your reports. The Advanced Segmentation feature gives you the room to define and save reports for your operation based on your own customized criteria. You can choose which factors you would like to monitor on your site like top keywords,top referrers, etc and sit back as the reports flow in. A couple of the basic Profile Filters include: Upper Lower Case Blending- There are some servers that allow the blend of uppercase and lowercase URLs. Implementing a filter for all your URLS that they should be in the same case will make your job of tracking access to different or specialized sites way easier.

Session ID Confusion- A session ID refers to the unique number given by a web server to each visitor. Many times your site URLs may unnecessarily be comprised of long session IDs which will cause faulty reports on your page visits. Profile Filters allows you to strip these IDs out.

IP Address Exclusion Filtering- An IP Exclusion Filter can successfully filter your internal traffic (caused by you and your staff) so only the traffic you care about (visitors) will be recorded.

Many times an overflow of incoming data can be very overwhelming. By putting a handle and controlling what data you receive, your job will be less daunting and much simpler. But beware, that once your filters are established you can't retrieve the lost data. It is recommended to create a couple of profiles of your domain. This allows you multiple views of all your site data. After your filters are set up, the next step will be Advanced Segmentation, which will give you a more detailed and precise report on your customers habits.

Sometimes it may happen that a site owner will create a website, apply the best SEO techniques and yet nothing happens, no ranking. This website may be the recipient of a Google filter, the sandbox, which is a filter created by Google that is applied to new websites looking to rank on the search results page for specific keywords. The reason the filter was created is to prevent spammers and SEOs from monopolizing the search results by fulfilling all Google's criteria. Many times a website will have been created for the main goal of taking the top search spots and in reality the website contains absolutely nothing useful. This would cause the quality of search results to drop.

Another reason for the sandbox effect is to hold back newly developed websites ( even legitimate ones) from immediately taking top placement on search result pages.

If you want to check out whether your website is being sand-boxed or if its being banned for some reason, there are a few ways to check: -If you optimized with your primary intention of showing up in Google search results, you check and you're not ranked, but you test your keywords on Yahoo/live and it ranks well.

-If your website is outranked. Meaning, that you key in the specific name of your site minus the www and the com (for example "bitochon") and its not showing up.

-Your page doesn't rank even for an exact title match.

If you find that your website is being banned ( because when you typed in the full URL a message stated that your search didn't match any documents) you need to contact Google and request to be placed back on. Just be sure to eliminate any factor from your website that may have caused you to be banned in the first place.

Now that you know why you are not being ranked you would like to do something to get yourself ranked. Unfortunately there's almost nothing you can do to help it! You just need to wait until Google decides to release your site. In the interim do what you can to improve and develop your site. Add new content, modify the graphics, research what the customers will look for, etc and make it look its best before it gets sent out into the world (being ranked) Try to avoid over-optimization by refining your titles too much and perfecting the content too much. It won't help you get out faster. Sometimes a site may lengthen their sandbox 'vacation' by attracting links from low quality sites or sites built specifically to fool Google.

Some people have deduced that there is a way expedite a sandbox release by receiving inbound links from reputable domains in a similar industry. Having these quality sites want to link to tours shows Google What type pf site you are or are trying to become. There is a way to avoid the sandbox altogether when launching a website. Try to stay away from popular, competitive keywords. If you create a site marketing a popular item or idea, of course Google will want to do a thorough checking into your site to ensure that you are genuine and not just trying to push your way into top placement with no real content. On the other hand a site targeting keywords that aren't so popular won't need the same researching.

Another idea is to register as a sub domain under a trusted, reputable domain. A new sub-domain will usually avid the sandbox altogether or at least have a significantly shorter stay.

The sandbox effect though a little frustrating for those couple of months is a real benefit in the long run. It helps to protect your website and established reputation from the sites cropping up on a constant basis by doing a thorough research on their credentials. Just keep optimizing the honest way.

Google Analytics is a free website statistics program offered by Google that offers you detailed statistics about visitors to your website and if they're successful at finding what they came for. It allows you to gather and analyze data about your website traffic so you can optimize your marketing campaigns accordingly. Many times the wealth of information available can be overwhelming to the marketer. Below I will focus on a couple of the important advantages and how to make use of them easily.

When you log into your Google Analytics account you will notice the Dashboard. Here is where the amount if visitors to your site and the overall bounce rate is recorded. Customize the Dashboard with all the information you need and you even have the option of emailing it to others.

One main reason for tracking your website data is to be informed of any significant occurrences , so you can respond appropriately. For example if the number of visitors to your site drops drastically, you will know and be able to figure out what the problem is. If its a faulty message or a hard-to-read promotion that causes people to lose interest, you will be a able to rectify it before too much damage has been done. There is a new feature, not released yet, that is called Analytics Intelligence that will be able to alert you to key changes in your analytics data. These alerts can be emailed directly to you, to inform you of the latest happenings.

It is best to choose a few primary goals to start with. Checking your site's overall trends and sources of visitor traffic should be done on a regular basis. Google Analytics can even tell you whether a certain time of day or specific days of the week is peak time for visitors . It's also important to monitor conversions from your advertising sources to determine which ads are performing like you want to ensure that you're money is being spent wisely.

There is another option of having your data be sent to you via Google Analytics email report capability. Simply click on the email icon in Google Analytics and customize the options to suit your needs. This way even if you occasionally forget to go check how your site is doing, you will get the notifications delivered right to you.

If you are in the paid advertising business, like Pay Per Click, email marketing, etc. you can use campaign tracking. Just by adding in a bit of informaions to the URLs setup in your marketing campaigns, Google Analytics will send you a detailed report of your campaign activity. It's easy to add a request for your campaign report to be emailed weekly via the Dashboard.

Other useful features that Google Analytics offers include:

With the Flexible Customization feature you can get the data you need, organized in a clear easy to read way, with the customizations you choose. Google Analytics Data Export Api allows you to collect data, create integrations, and develop client applications with. Custom variables gives you the power and flexibility to customize GA to collect the data that best suit your business.

These tips should help you understand and use Google Analytics to better your website in an easy, not overwhelming fashion. You will be more prepared to write better-targeted ads and strengthen your marketing initiatives. Try it, you'll only see the benefits.

Google's PageRank bar, more commonly referred to as The Green Bar, is used to measure the popularity of a website. PageRank can be described as Google's popularity contest. These horizontal bars show people at a glance whether this page is considered a high-quality page and if it's worth checking out. The rating is based in accordance with how other web-users view the page; whether they deemed it important enough to link their page to it! PageRank shows how many inbound links a website has. The green bar's rating is based on totally objective criteria.

The green bar is visible on the Google Toolbar. The Google Toolbar is found just above the browser's tab bar and provides a box to type in search words to carry out web searches. The Google Toolbar is equipped with numerous helpful tools to help the web user. Included are such tools as spell-checker, translation, AutoLink, and AutoFill to name a few.

The Google Directory PageRank is in the form of an 8 unit measurement. This small graphic of page ranking can be found to the left of a site's listing. The Google directory doesn't show the PageRank as a numeric value like the Google toolbar does; it only shows it as a green bar. It appears that Google updates its directory rating more frequently than its toolbar. If you want the most accurate ratings it will probably be most beneficial to you to check the directory ratings.

There are millions of web pages today, all with different PageRanks. Increasing PageRank is a constant job, though not too difficult. Through various techniques Internet marketers explore the different venues available to help increase their PageRank. Many try searching the Web for the commonly keyed in words that are relevant to their site, in order to add the popular keywords to their web page. Some employ the various SEO methods to help the search engines better understand what their page is about. Others invest in a better web design to gain popularity.

So does the green bar really make a difference? If you want to know what the world thinks of your website than it definitely does.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a process of indexing and retrieving that is based on the idea that words used in the same or similar context tend to have similar meanings. LSI uses a mathematical technique to determine if there are any patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in a body of text. Then, LSI is able to form a concept of the paragraph or body of text by creating comparisons between the terms that occur in similar contexts.

Latent semantic indexing adds in an important part to the process of document indexing. LSI records which keywords are found in a specific document and in addition it appraises the entire document collection to see if there are any words in common with other pages. Semantically close and semantically distant are terms used with LSI to describe documents with shared words. Semantically close would describe a document that has many words in common while semantically distant would describe one that has few shared words. The LSI algorithm doesn't understand the meaning of the word though the way it tracks a pattern makes it appear extremely intelligent.

A great advantage of LSI is that it has no idea what the document or word that it is analyzing means; it is a strictly mathematical approach. Therefore it has the capabilities to be used in any document collection, in any language. LSI can be used together with a regular keyword search, or instead of one, with positive results.

It is a useful tool to use when you are conducting a search and want to gather background or research information, because LSI can bring up information that is not necessarily restricted to the typed in keywords. For example, if one were to conduct a search for a said American president, information about occurrences during his presidency, or during the same time period are sure to come up, as well as principles he might have stood for regardless if his name was mentioned in any of the resulting documents. LSI 'knows' that there is a connection between the two due to close semantic ties.

LSI also allows the user to compile a list of results of his search and then will search further for results that will closely correlate with the first ones. This allows the user to guide the search engine to the most accurate and useful result.

In addition, it has the ability to act as a customized spam filter. By training a latent semantic algorithm on your inbox and common spam messages, you may be able to tag potentially harmful spam and unnecessary junk mail.

There are many other advantageous uses for LSI, the forerunner of search engine optimization today. It is a worthwhile investment to optimize your website to focus on LSI. As always a quality and updated website will always be the best choice for long-term Internet success.

PageRank is a numeric value representing a page's importance. PageRank is essential as one of the items factored into deciding where a page comes up in search results. Though it's not the only factor, it is definitely an important one. A PageRank results from a 'ballot' cast among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. It is used by Google to determine a page's importance and relevance. Google interprets a hyperlink as a vote of support for the page that was linked to. But, it also analyze the page rank of the page that so to speak , voted, or in our case, that linked itself to the first page. Being linked by a page with a high PageRank, gives a page higher rank and importance than a link done by a page with a low PageRank. Understandably, if there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page. Google assigns a page rank based on a probability value on a logarithmic scale, similar to the Richter scale. Other factors that influence a site's page rank include the relevance of search words on the page and amount of viewers who visit the pages. Adding more inbound links is another way to increase PageRank.

Additionally, as the number of pages in a site increases, so does the maximum amount of PageRank in a site. Although adding new pages does increase the total PageRank within the site, some of the site's pages themselves, will lose PageRank as a result . The solution is to link the new pages in such a way within the site that the important pages don't lose out, or to acquire some more inbound links. Beware though, of adding similar or identical pages to a site, just to increase the page number, because it can alert Google to penalize those pages or even the whole site.

To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.

In simple terms, a page's PageRank = .15+ .85*. . .85* is the value of your own page. Then a page can 'vote' an amount of PageRank onto each page it links itself to. It can vote any amount up until its own rank. This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to. We see too that the amount of links on a page is taken into account in such that the more links there are on a page, the less PageRank your page gets from it.

Outbound links may leak out PageRank. When linking to other site, try to make sure that there is enough inbound linking occurring to make up for it.

In addition, it is wise not to link out to sites that may be penalized sites. For example a site that has PageRank O is usually a penalty and it's better to stay away.

Whichever scale Google is using to, one thing is for sure, links from other sites increase our site's PageRank, as long as they aren't from link farms. In addition, voting on another's PageRank doesn't in any way take away from our own.

I saw this week that Google will be trying to get into the operating system space and compete against Microsoft. I think this is awesome news. I am really getting tried of Microsoft and the issues that constantly arise from holes in their software products. I am really hoping that the new Google chrome operating system will pan out and hopefully replace Microsoft. The basis as I hear it is it will be a small footprint and everything else will be web based. It's funny how history repeats itself. We started out with dumb terminals hooked up to main frames. Then we jumped into the client server arena and applications running on desktops only to go back to dumb terminals again.

Ever Wonder Where Google Stands Financially?

Well the results for the first quarter are in. Considering we are embroiled in a recession, they had a decent quarter. This shows us the potential growth of web users continues, even though the revenues were down a little, in the long term their future looks good.

Even though the sales of shares are down, investors are not worried and are certain Google shares will again be up and out of the slump again. Google realizes that online advertising is not up to par due to today's economic situation. Possibly the other search engines are also finding themselves in a lower financial position due to current business pressures.

PPC (pay per click), online advertising where clients only pay for clicks when a visitor clicks to go to the website seems to generate revenue for google as it grew from last year. To go away from google for just a second, pay per click is a great way for business to advertise on the Internet. The combination of a good web design and relevant ads equals to a successful ad campaign.

Back to Google, analysts are closely watching the quarter-to-quarter growth or decline in revenues and be rest assured, investors are also watching the results. Relax, Google is not going anywhere!

In March, Google acquired "Performics", a part of double click and now had divested this to Publicis Groupe, a good friend of google. Is this a conflict of interest you ask? Of course it is because Performics as a part of their work advises clients of ways to maximize themselves and be more visible on google. WOW!

In terms of revenue, Performics is the 5th largest search agency, but is still wants to have a stronger hold on all of its digital offerings. This is move is meant to help its media-buying agencies the ability to offer more clients a wider scale for digital ad placements. The company has begin to work on ad-exchange strategies, and train its staff better in digital technologies to keep them more up to date, has it helped? Does their staff have training in the need for a viable web design. One with a good ranking that is constantly worked on by an experienced computer-consulting firm.

They would like to develop a simple means of how companies can purchase Web and mobile ads. Again keep in mind these ads are of no value if the landing page is not a part of a well designed website with easy navigation. Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft are all a part of this.

Owning Performics had put Google in a very uncomfortable position because providing search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) services is like a conflict of interest. SEO and SEM firms, have the main goal of improving Web sites' search-engine rankings and running effective search-engine ad campaigns. Google had no comment on this happening.