Archive for November, 2006
Update - Data Export and more
We’ve completed the data export feature, and made it live last Wednesday.
Along with PPC tracking, this was one of the very first requests we received, and an extremely high priority. We’re pleased to have completed this feature request, and to be able to make it available to you. Once you log into your Enquisite reporting interface, you’ll see a link below the Search Engine Summary Report; that will lead you to the data export area.
We’ve also move the search interface to this area of the reporting. It was right at the bottom of the reports previously, which was not the most logical or natural placement. That’s been fixed. As you know, there are 2 search options: exact match and loose match. For example, type in “analytics” with exact match selected, and you’ll get a report on just the term “analytics,” do the same with loose match enabled, and you’ll get a report with “search analytics”; “web analytics”; etc… very useful for search engine optimization when working on Long Tail issues.
Data exports are prepared on the first of the month for the previous month. We’ve gone back and prepared all your historical data for export as well. The files are zipped, and are tab separated value text files, with all the information we’re collecting for you ready for you to use!
A number of people have been very anxiously awaiting this feature - they do a lot of data modeling in Excel, and this data should save them a lot of time. We hope you’ll like it! We’ve had lots of requests for all sorts of interesting reports. Of course, we want to build it all, but can’t do so at the speed we’re getting requests. We realized that data exports would allow us to provide you, Enquisite users, a tool so you could build your own. It’s your data!
By making the processed data downloadable, we’re empowering users to create customized reports, as you need / want them. We’ll continue to create features and reports that users ask for, but some things that users want today, we just can’t do. For example, one user wants to be able to extract specific information on traffic week over week, and graph just that one piece of information as a trend over time chart. We’ll get there, but now he doesn’t have to wait — we’ve given him the raw data which he can import into Excel, and process to look exactly how he wants it. Another user wants to track groups of keywords from specific engines, and graph their trends over time. Again, we’ll get there, but can’t do it today. Now, she can get that one additional report she wants, today, and doesn’t need to wait for us. That’s powerful!
As always, please let us know if you like it, if you don’t, if there’s something you would like added to it, etc…
Next up is some housekeeping; password management, multiple accounts per organization, etc… Surprisingly, (and happily), having multiple accounts per organization has been a very common user request! As has been the request to have multiple accounts accessible under one log-in.
Keep the requests coming!
Thanks again,
Richard
Richard Zwicky
Enquisite Analytics Update
A minor change to coding, which resulted in a very major speed increase Enquisite reports occurred yesterday. The result is a quantum leap in reporting speeds. For our largest clients, this will be incredibly noticeable. A couple of other major changes are due shortly, which will further increase speeds. Logging speed has never been an issue; But reporting on tens of millions of live transactions within seconds is challenging, especially where new entries are constantly being added. We’ve done it though. For one or our larger clients, I saw their detailed, live report, with a massive dataset load within 3 seconds. Looking at their data, I wondered what an “EMO Hairstyle” is… Boy, am I out of it !
I used the term Enquisite Analytics in the title. We’re a search metrics company. People often ask us how we’re different from a web analytics provider. Simple: we don’t provide web analytics reports. We’re a complimentary product to WebSideStory, Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends, ClickTracks, Index Tools, and the like. We’re focused on search engine referrals, and helping our clients see , and understand the trends. We call it search metrics, but search analytics could also work. We don’t mind what you call it; We just hope you like it, and that you let us know what you like, what you don’t like, and what you would like to see. After all, we’re adding features based on your requests.
On that note, we’re likely to offer some “traditional” web 1.0 analytics in the not to distant future; for users who don’t have any analytics yet. We would also like to partner with any of the traditional providers to offer our reports in conjunction with their own; either through private label distribution, or direct. Of course, as I’ve already written, we’re also soon to release a “data export” feature which will mean it’s possible for you to use all the Enquisite reporting data from your site in Excel, or likely in any other reporting tool.
Click Fraud - Patents filed
Two years ago, September 2004, to be exact we started work on our first patent filings. There ended up being four of them. As you may already know, Enquisite reports only represents at most 10% of what’s actually covered in the original filings. There’s a lot more which we’ve not yet tackled. Enquisite’s patents revolve around search engine algorithms and advertising network algorithms, user intent; how to discern it, and how to account for it. A while ago, someone asked me the famous question “how big are your patents,” to which, my response was “about the size of a phone book.” Not the answer this individual was looking for (of course). In fact, I was quite wrong, they’re 2x the size of a phone book!
Anyhow - this Labor Day weekend, I literally woke up in the middle of the night while at our cabin at the lake with a series of ideas which coupled together would effectively combat Click Fraud. The click fraud detection tool works on an individual site basis, but can be plugged in directly to an advertising network for fighting fraud net wide. What’s cool is that it’s completely different from other solutions out there. It even takes into account situations both where individual systems are perpetuating click fraud, and where networks are using game theory strategy to organize / use subterfuge to perpetuate the fraudulent behavior.
After filing, I spoke at length with Andrew Goodman about the concepts, and bounced some ideas off him. In passing I also mentioned the idea that we’ll likely be adding a general analytics tool to the Enquisite offering.
We’ve started working out ways to implement areas of the patent filing for Enquisite users. It will be an ancillary product added on to the present Enquisite offering in the New Year. There’s an advantage for you to get going on Enquisite now for this feature: we’ll be able to help you spot historical problems for you. In other words, start using Enquisite today, and as we roll out the Click Fraud tool, you’ll not only be able to benefit from that day forward, but also be able to look back historically. That’s powerful, and not traditional.
Anyhow, now that the initial documents have been written and filed, I’ve identified a few independent patents claims within the larger concept, it looks to be big. This brings me to the second part of the post. Looking at the picture of the stack of papers that comprises filing #1, I happened to have the initial outline of filing #2 on my desk earlier. So far, it’s much smaller than a telephone book! but that won’t last.
I’ll let you know what it really looks like in a few months, once I get the rest of the official filings.
In case you missed it, there was a minor Enquisite update ten days ago. Among other things we added in drill down capability for various Google Syndication outlets, such as Universities using Google as their search tool. We already reported this data previously, just now we broke it out.
More updates on the way, but I just wanted to keep everyone abreast.