Chris Abraham says, “Looking for an alternative to Google Analytics? Want to understand your traffic, get a deeper view? Open source contender Piwik Analytics may be your answer. Piwik is the leading open source web analytics software, used by almost half a million websites (est. 460,000). It gives interesting reports on your website visitors, your popular pages, the search engines keywords they used, the languages they speak and so much more. Piwik is an open source alternative to Google Analytics“. Take Charge Of Your Stats: Piwik Analytics Vs. Google Analytics Business2Community.com  [...]

Allison Howen says, “Self-service analytics tool DataHero has unveiled a Google Analytics integration, which aims to help users make quicker data-driven decisions for their business. “The Google Analytics integration is one of the most requested by customers,” said DataHero co-founder and CEO Chris Neumann. “Every marketer uses Google Analytics to track traffic and we’re making the data visualization aspect easier to drive business decisions forward.” Through the integration, DataHero will create suggested charts based on the Google Analytics data. That said,... [...]

Christopher Ratcliff says, “More than ever, customers are using a variety of ways to interact with your business offline or online. This multichannel connectivity means it’s difficult to measure the impact of one particular marketing effort on a conversion, particularly if that conversion happens offline. Just because someone sees an online ad, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll click through immediately to your ecommerce site. They might just make a phone call to your helpline later in the day, or walk into your high street shop the following week”. Google AdWords new metric helps... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “Inbound marketers are constantly on alert for changes in Google’s ever-evolving algorithm … but that doesn’t mean we don’t miss one every now and then. The combination of frequent algorithm updates and a busy workload means that sometimes a critical update gets lost in the sauce. To make sure you’re fully up to date on the latest major changes in SEO, we’ve compiled a full list of the most important Google algorithm updates from 2014. This year, we saw changes from pirates and penguins and pandas and pigeons; the removal... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Earlier this year, Google introduced app promotion ads on search, display and YouTube. In an AdWords livestream event today, the company announced the app engagement ads in search are now rolling out of beta. Engagement ads launched on display last month. App install ads are already available on search as well. A Google study with Ipsos CT found that 25 percent of smartphone app users use search to find new apps. The company said today that app-install ads have already generated hundreds of thousands of app downloads. That Ipss study also showed that, on average, users... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google’s newly responsive Lightbox ads units that the company introduced back in September as part of a larger mobile display ad push, are now available to all advertisers through AdWords. Google revamped the interactive ad format ads to run on mobile devices as well as desktop. The ads incorporate advertiser assets from an advertiser’s YouTube channel, uploaded images or Google Maps. When a user hovers over the banner unit, the assets dynamically fill the publisher site, mobile app, screen, or device — desktop and mobile — in full-screen. “By launching this... [...]

Karissa Bell says, “Google’s Hangouts app just got smarter. The search giant updated Hangouts on Wednesday with a new feature that allows you to share your location within conversations. It also added stickers, video filters, timestamps and better integration with your phone’s contacts. Typing “Where are you?” (or other variations) into Hangouts triggers a prompt to share your location with Google Maps. “Hangouts can now understand what you need and offer to help,” the company wrote in a post on Google+“. Google adds location sharing to Hangouts app Mashable  [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Last week, Google released new research on factors that impact ad viewability, whichwe covered here. There was one particular data point that raised eyebrows: 56.1 percent of impressions served across Google’s display advertising platforms, including the DoubleClick, aren’t viewable. Wow, Google, the company that dominates the display advertising market, just admitted that over half the served through its platforms are never seen by the people advertisers are paying to reach. Zing! Right? There are several reasons why this isn’t the huge bomb it looks like at first... [...]

Matt Asay says, “It’s about time Google remembered its roots. For years Google has largely ignored the mobile Web, preferring to focus on native Android app experiences, even as Apple (yes, Apple) has invested heavily in improving HTML5 performance on iOS. So much so, in fact, that with Apple’s inclusion of WKWebView (a Web browser engine) in iOS 8, app developers will discover dramatic performance improvements in their mobile Web apps. So long as they’re running on Apple, not Android”. What Google Has In Store For The Mobile Web ReadWrite  [...]

MOZ team says, “Josh Bachynski takes you inside Panda 4.1 with a tour of some of the top dos and don’ts for your website. And it’s about so much more than the standard “good content” refrain. Watch the video to learn more“. Panda 4.1 Google Leaked Dos and Don’ts – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]