Track Yahoo! Search Marketing Campaigns and More with Urchin 6.6

On Monday June 8, we released Urchin 6.6, a significant upgrade to our "run-it-yourself" web analytics package. This release brings some serious enterprise-level heft to the table, and also advances Urchin's marketing-analysis capabilities in a big way.

New Search Marketing Reports and Tools

Chief among Urchin's new report-side features is the Performance Comparison report. Finally you can compare the performance of your Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) campaigns side-by-side... Yes, this means you can tap into the Yahoo! API and import your YSM campaigns automatically!

With Urchin 6.6, you can easily compare campaigns, keywords, etc., from different search engines.

There's more. Here's a breakdown of the new CPC-management tools and reports in Urchin 6.6:

• YSM integration: Download your YSM campaign data via the Yahoo API.
• Deep links into AdWords: Provide your login credentials and Urchin lets you jump directly from CPC reports to related management screens in your AdWords account.
  
• Budget Alerts: If your AdWords campaigns are in danger of exhausting available funds, Urchin will tell you.
• Keyword Generation Tool: Add keywords to your AdWords campaigns directly from Urchin.
• Copy Campaign Tool: Duplicate existing CPC campaigns (for example, YSM campaigns) as new AdWords campaigns.
• Tag Manager: Automates your keyword destination-URL building, a big timesaver.
• New reports: Time on Site, Performance Comparison, CPC Structure, and more!

Urchin's new Keyword Generator Tool helps you identify promising keywords and add them to your AdWords campaign, all within Urchin!

It doesn't stop here. We've also taken a close look at how Urchin plays with other other systems in your organization. Which brings us to...

New Enterprise/IT Capabilities

Urchin has long been appreciated by web-hosting companies and enterprises for robust performance and integration flexibility. Urchin 6.6 adds key features that make it even better.

• LDAP integration: Use your existing corporate authentication with Urchin, including LDAP, MSAD, etc.
• Data API: Pull your Urchin report data into a CRM tool or any other system. (See the Urchin Data API documentation.)
• Rollup Report: A new Urchin "home" page shows each user a list of all profiles to which they have access, with summary metrics for each profile.
  
• Process Control: Kill a running Urchin log-processing job gracefully, without corrupting the database.
• Urchin 5 to Urchin 6 Migration Utility: Haven't upgraded from Urchin 5 yet? Our new data-migration utility is much faster and less prone to errors.

Urchin's new process control functions allow you to cancel jobs without worry.

Urchin 6.6 is available now as a full-featured 30-day demo from our download servers and licenses can be purchased from any of our Authorized Consultants for US$2995. Check it out!

Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Team

Seminars for Success updated for the new interface

Starting today, all AdWords Seminars for Success will be taught using the new AdWords interface. So, if you've been wanting some in-person instruction on how to best use the new AdWords interface or how to generally grow your campaigns, check out the seminars we're hosting in the next couple months:

AdWords 101: Beginner and AdWords 201: Intermediate

• June 15-16: San Diego, CA

AdWords 301: Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization

• June 24-25: Boston, MA
• July 16-17: Minneapolis, MN
• August 4-5: Denver, CO
  

Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced

• June 17-18: Dallas, TX
• June 25-26: Washington D.C.
  
• July 7-8: Edmonton, Canada
• July 7-8: Sao Paulo, Brazil

Website Optimizer

• June 19: Dallas, TX
• February 11: San Jose, CA
• July 9: Sao Paulo, Brazil
  

If you sign up for seminars at least seven days in advance, you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit (view the terms and conditions).

For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit http://www.google.com/awseminars.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords system maintenance on June 13th

On Saturday, June 13th, 2009, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Online Competition

If your institution provides small business loans, have you heard of Kiva yet?  If not, it's worth a look at kiva.org.  

This non-profit organization, founded in 2005 to help entrepreneurs over seas, launched today to help lend money to needy US small businesses.  To date, Kiva has half a million lenders from more than 185 countries who have lent more than $75 billion with a 98.35% rate of repayment - according to the company.

Any average Joe can lend the small business of their choosing as little as $25.

It's truly "people helping people" - sound familiar credit unions?

Sure, these are loans that the Wachovias, Wells Fargos and Bank of Americas won't touch.  But to community banks and credit unions who rely on local mom-and-pops, we should keep an eye on this.

Take care,

Eric

Share your Web Analytics Story

How do you use web analytics? Do you share data as part of a regular planning meeting? Do you log in once in awhile just to see how things are going?

We want to know! We're gathering information to help prioritize new features and improve Google Analytics and we need your help. If you've used web analytics data to make decisions inside your business or organization, get in touch and tell us how. Email us at gacasestudies@google.com.

We'll republish the most interesting stories here on the blog and we'll even send you a free Google Analytics tee-shirt if your story gets published. We're ready and waiting, so drop us a line!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Team

Back to Basics: Filtering out your own IP address

If you have a team of people on your marketing team constantly checking the website you're tracking with Google Analytics, filtering out specific IP addresses is one of the ways you can make sure you're not tracking irrelevant visits to your site. Excluding these IPs may help you get more accurate numbers for metrics like average time on site (since your marketing team probably spends the most time on your site every day), your visitors' geographic locations, etc.

To start filtering out IPs, follow the steps below:

1. Collect IPs from anyone in your office (including yourself) that you don't want to track. If they don't know what their IP addresses are, an easy way to figure it out is to go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/.
2. Then, sign in to your Analytics account at http://www.google.com/analytics.
3. If you have more than one account, select the account that has the profile you want to apply the IP exclusion filter to.
4. Once you're on the Profile Overview page, click 'Edit' from underneath the Actions column.
5. From under the 'Filters Applied to Profile' section, select 'Add Filter.'
6. Select 'Add new Filter for Profile.'
   
   
   
7. Enter an easily identifiable Filter name (i.e. 'My IP address,' or 'CMO's IP address).
8. Select the filter type labeled 'Exclude all traffic from an IP address.' The IP address field will auto-populate with an example IP address. Enter the correct value. Remember to use regular expressions when entering any IP address. For example, if the IP address to filter is:
   
   176.168.1.1
   then the IP address value will be:
   176\.168\.1\.1
   
   
   
9. You may also enter a range of IP addresses. For example:
   Range: 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14
   IP address value : ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$
10. Click ‘Save changes’ to finish.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Bing to be Integrated into Search Engine Reports

Recently Microsoft released a new search engine called Bing, which has begun sending traffic to websites with Google Analytics installed. Bing currently shows up as a referring site in the Traffic Sources reports. We are actively working on an update that will include Bing under the default list of search engines in Google Analytics.

If you absolutely can't wait for the upgrade, you can add the following line to your Google Analytics tracking code as a temporary solution. Note, this workaround is recommended for advanced users only. For more information on adding custom configurations to the Google Analytics tracking code, read this article.

pageTracker._addOrganic("bing", "q");

Stay tuned for updates.

Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team