Google Analytics was once the core tracking system of any website, but was always at risk of being blocked on the viewers side by third party software. This was helped by the new controversial cookie law which means EU websites have to actively ask visitors if they would LIKE to be tracked with cookies and would be breaking the law if they didn’t. This perhaps will lead onto supermarket loyalty cards being banned because they do pretty much the same thing… but I highly doubt it.

Anyway, with all this new attention on cookies, many standard anti-virus and internet security programs are blocking cookies on your behalf making you invisible to website owners, if you own a website, this is terrible news! AVG (my defence of choice) is one of those perpetrators, and so no website using Google Analytics or similar javascript based tracking can see me.

Does this mean I can no longer track my visitors?

Thankfully no, you can still track, but certain Google-specific features like goal conversion etc will no longer be effective. It will help to show general patterns but if you want numbers, it will quickly become useless.

So what are your options to track without cookies?

Server Stats

Most servers log every page called and links it to an IP address. Using software which collates this information you can start to build a pretty accurate journey through your site for each user. (Interestingly enough companies can also share this information with other ad servers rendering the EU cookie law a complete and utter waste of time!) Most hosting packages come with one or both of the following (Zako Media naturally offer a choice of both!):

AWstats - http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
(http://awstats NULL.sourceforge NULL.net/)Webalizer - http://www.webalizer.org/ (http://www NULL.webalizer NULL.org/)

PHP/Coding stats

These are much more powerful, instead of asking the user’s browser to load a javascript cookie, they use your actual website to record who is doing what. They are a little less novice friendly because as well as installing the software, you need to add PHP code to the right pages. If using WordPress, it will go into your template’s footer file, flat html files will be more awkward. Again Zako Media offers a choice of both.

Open Web Analytics - http://www.openwebanalytics.com/
(http://www NULL.openwebanalytics NULL.com/)Tracewatch - http://www.tracewatch.com/ (http://www NULL.tracewatch NULL.com/)  (http://www NULL.openwebanalytics NULL.com/)

The best thing of course is you can use more than one to compare how the different systems perform and which give you the most useful information about your visitors, clients and prospects.

Happy tracking without cookies!

Getting to the top of Google is every business’s dream, but often not enough is understood about Google to appreciate what this goal actually means. Get to the top of Google for a particular search term is great, but how many people search for it, and more importantly, how is Google adapting?

Lets bring this into real terms; Today I was looking to replace my office chair. Controversial as it is, I use a kneeling chair. Despite conflicting reports and dodgy marketing, I use it because it’s the only chair style to date which doesn’t result in back pain for me with long term use. The chair I have has worn at the knees and the gas lifting strut has leaked to uselessness. I picked the one I wanted and ordered.

I mention this story because while I’m a business, I’m also a consumer and rely heavily on Google in my day to day life. As such minor changes in Google’s algorithm and structure do not go unnoticed.

Many hours later, I was looking to replace the gas lifting struts for the boot of my car. I searched Google for ‘Gas lifter’ and saw this:

The search results I believe are organic, gas struts have a variety of uses from office chairs, cars, to heavy machinery. The Google shopping results though are noteworthy. Google has obviously taken my search terms and used information about my previous searches to determine my need.

Google has given my search context based on what little it knows about me, and even though I wasn’t searching for chairs, knows that I’m interested in them nonetheless.

When it comes to using Google to advertise therefore, simply ‘getting to the top’ isn’t enough because ‘the top’ is becoming very personal to the searcher.

So here are your new goals:

• If you sell stuff, make sure Google Shopping knows you’re there.
• Make sure you have ample content showing that you are THE go-to company based on your expertise.
• Consider the people searching for you, what are they looking for? Maybe they’re not looking for ‘Web Designer Swansea’, perhaps they’re actually saying “How to get my business online”. Do your research.
• Organic is best; If you don’t have the budget for seo experts, keep your content fluid and natural and try to avoid over using sales cliches. Google is there to give people the information they’re looking for and will only offer ‘BUY NOW HERE’ to people who search ‘WHERE CAN I BUY NOW’.

Google have been approaching the social market for some time, rumours have spread about the potential to buy Twitter, at one point Facebook were also eyeing up this microblogging platform before taking their own steps and adapting their news feed into a media rich frenzy of status updates, chipmunk videos and people finding strange objects in their farms.

Today Google have launched Google Buzz, it does everything the ‘better’ facebook version does but has the portability of Twitter, it also allows you to integrate all your existing social networking activities into one including Google’s own profile pages. Finally with Gmail integration, it’s easy to keep up to date without an extra window. It works on iphone and android mobile devices out of the box. so head down to http://buzz.google.com and watch the official Google Buzz video below.

So far I’m following just a couple of people, none of whom have actually made their first update, it’s a little quiet but as Google have a huge number of subscribers already to it’s other services, who knows where this will end up.

Will it replace Twitter? Not yet, Facebook tried and haven’t but there is potential for it to grow quickly with it’s subscriber base so watch this space.

Google talk hasn’t replaced Live Messenger, Google voice hasn’t replaced Skype, Google Docs hasn’t replaced MS Office and Google’s Chrome hasn’t replaced Firefox. However Google Mail, Youtube, Google Reader, Google News, Google Maps, Google Skymaps and Google Search have all rocked the world. Perhaps I’m sceptical about Google Buzz, but only time will tell.