Nodar Kumaritashvili dies after crash which you can read about here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympic_games/vancouver_2010/luge/8513595.stm

Google has still got the graphic of the luge on the home page…

I’m not sure if it was linking to “vancouver 2010 luge” before but only links to “vancouver 2010″ for now..

Its very sad and google should change the graphic imho…

I don’t promote this blog and never sold a link on it but did put a few links to some test sites I was playing with at the time.. I still have social shop link see bottom right..

Most of my links come from SERT and I’m a mod and don’t do much blogging here so don’t promote in anyway..

Looking at this blog again, I forgot I’d started in 2006 omg I’m getting old LOL..

Anyway my rant over about PR and how and slap can come and go…

This is post is nothing to do with conversions as I’d need pages and pages to explian my thought process with examples of what has and hasn’t worked and what has changed over the years of being a seo/webmaster thingy.

These examples also have social media elements removed so we can look into search engine traffic trends.

This is just a simple look at a few verticals of the effect of traffic during December 2009.

Why December?

Well as mentioned I work on mainly UK sites with UK traffic so the below stats show what the UK public traffic trends are.

Why is it interesting?

Most of the UK population celebrate xmas in one way or another, many buy online which is expanding at a massive rate in the UK. Most businesses shut over xmas (most people surf the web at work) so for many sites the 25th Dec should be a pretty dead time for traffic. I know from non UK site stats that the effect is a lot smaller  but this post has a focus on the UK and Decemebr 2009.

Example 1

Let have a look at my first example:

[click image to expand]

Vertical: Arts

Weekends

Your be able to spot each and every weekend on this graph with a drop on Sundays each week and a peck on Mondays when every gets back to work. This Sunday/Monday trends on this site is consistent throughtout the year with only anomalies effecting this.

25th December

This site has xmas themed sections and but you will be able to spot the trend starting from the 11th December which is the friday before the 2nd weekend in December which was a massive shopping day for xmas in the UK (I went shopping and is was so busy). The trend continue right up until the 25th with well over 2/3 of the traffic dropping.

Traffic sources

80.5% Search Organic
11% Direct / Bookmarks
8% Referrals
0.5% PPC

As you can see this site has almost all it traffic from natural ranking thus the trends effecting this site are a mix of the theme and organic.

Example 2

[click image to expand]

Vertical: Home

Weekends

Again your be able to spot each and every weekend on this graph with a drop on Sundays each week and a peck on Mondays when every gets back to work. This Sunday/Monday trends on this site is consistent throughtout the year with only anomalies effecting this.

25th December

This site has no xmas themed sections starting from the 7th December which is the Monday just before the 2nd weekend in December which as already mentioned was a massive shopping day for xmas in the UK the trend continue right up until the 25th with yet again well over 2/3 of the traffic dropping.

After the 25th of December the traffic recovery on this site is pretty fast with with traffic increasing well over any amount before the 25th.

Traffic sources

64% Search Organic
10% Direct / Bookmarks
7% Referrals
19% PPC

As you can see this site has almost all it traffic from natural orangic and PCC thus the trends effecting this site are a mix of the theme and search engine traffic. I feel the theme of the site has effected the recovery.

Example 3

[click image to expand]

Vertical: Fashion

Weekends

One again your be able to spot each and every weekend on this graph with a drop on Sundays each week and a peck on Mondays when every gets back to work.

25th December

Same as the previous site:

Again this site has no xmas themed sections starting from the 7th December which is the Monday just before the 2nd weekend in December which as already mentioned was a massive shopping day for xmas in the UK the trend continue right up until the 25th with yet again well over 2/3 of the traffic dropping.

Pecks

21st December this site saw a per xmas peck with last minute online shopping creating this peck.

Traffic sources

57% Search Organic
8% Direct / Bookmarks
9% Referrals
27% PPC

As you can see this site has almost all it traffic from natural orangic and PCC thus the trends effecting this site are a mix of the theme and search engine traffic.

This site has the most PPC of all the above examples but yet again is effected in the same way.

Conclusion

From the above 3 example we can see if you have a UK site its likely you will see a trend of dropping traffic from around the 7th December until the 26th December.

When looking at the keywords for the first example which had a xmas section which brought in a ton of traffic wasn’t enough to offset the downwood trends.

I feel unless over 2/3 of your site is xmas themed your going to feel this effect.

Of course socail media is not included in any of the above info and site I have/work on have very different stats and trends.

As always barry at SER has blog a front end example here: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021070.html

So how to add them… Well I’ve just check my adwords accounts and only found it on half of them.

Anyway…

• Login to adwords >>
• click on a  Campaign >>
• Click the “Setting” tab.
• Scroll down to find (or not) the Networks, devices and extensions.

Here what is says:

Show additional links to my site within my ad

You can enter up to 10 additional links that may be shown with your ad. Additional links will only be shown for the single top-ranked ad for a given user search. Additional links are more likely to appear the higher the quality of the ad, and may not always be shown for every top-ranked ad.

And links to this help FAQ https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=164778&hl=en_GB

I’m looking forward to the ones that say “Don’t buy from them  >>”

hehehee.

PPC just got really creative!!!

Enjoy!

I’ve not seen dots before.

hmmm Maybe a test ?

I’ve just ran a load of searches and can only find this one example.

Anyway here is a screen shot. Notice the … after “Search Engine Optimisation”

This search returns the dot: click here

I went to google shopping (base) to have a looky…

So what was wrong?

I was on google.co.uk and the prices all came up in GBP £ fine…

I then clicked option to set and price range for what I was willing to send and so what’s on offer. The options  menu only give me prices ranges in USD $ ?

Odd.. Any I clicked on one to see if it would work and maybe some sort of cache. Google then pull in the USD range but output the GBP £ range..

Here is the iphone screen shot showing URL .co.uk/m with both USD $ and GBP £ showing on the results page.

Each time you watch a music video on youtube in the uk the artist will now get some £ from youtube.

In march 2009 youtube in the uk took off the music video’s which you can read about here: click here

Today PRS and youtube are at last happy with the amount of money to be paid to each artist for each video view in the UK.

rickrolling should make rick astley some $$$$

I have yet to find out what google/youtube will be paying per video but it sounds like it a small amount.

Blog post from youtube with full detail here

The story goes along the lines of the lady was an avid facebook user. A complete addict to conectting with people online and one can assume her local friends and partners friends.

To then announce to not just the online friends networked but to assumed local friends is the theory behind why the man “could” of murdered her.

This is at trial now so non of this can be confirmed…

Read more and see quote from the bbc here: click here

A wave of people taking lead from roofs of many churches and other buildings have be hitting the uk over the last 2-3years due to is ease of removing it and the access to building like churches that are covered in it.

Walley’s comments follow 70 thefts from Lichfield diocese churches last year alone. Criminals have even used aerial photographs on Google Earth to locate the most lucrative hauls.

Quote from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6806469.ece

St Leonards church Colchester has been hit and just using google maps you can see the lead here: click here

Many people worried about the security issues of home and businesses with google earth, google maps and street view but it seems the mass criminal activities is focused on lead.

Some times I think running adwords can hurt more than help but I stick with it

Anyway.. I’m not here to name and shame a company that called but to try and make sense of what is being sold and hope it my help others.

Lets start with some figures that are just examples but are similar to the ones i’ve been given many times before.

Lets call it gabs-portal.

Gabs-portal get 1million unique visitors per month…

Great, sounds like a busy site..

So what’s on offer.. Well I was offered a company listing.. so its similar to any directory.. yes but you can put your logo up too.. fine (whatever)…

My first question is what sort of traffic does this section get.  I was told just over 10%.. So 1 in 10 click on this section, sales person said yes..  OK great that could happen…

Q: So my ad would show up on this first main page of the section?
A: No the 3rd page.

So 3 pages is to far back… I’ll have a think…

Here comes the fun bit.. And the trick to the sales pitch.

1mil >> 10% >> 100,000 visitor per month hit this section per month..

So lots of studies have been done on google serps CTR e.g. #1 get 40%+ vs #10 getting 3% (I just picking random figures out of so many reports and heat maps on the web..

So if the 1mil and 100k was correct (which its not, your see in a min) then being #1 on this page should = 40,000 visitors a month…

(yes this is all assuming that CTR is similar to serps)

So lets assume page 2 gets 2% of the traffic, that would be 2,000 per month..

Lets assume again 2% of page 2’s traffic hits page 3, that would be 20 visitors per month.

OK so i’m at the top of page 3… great… So close to 1mil visitors per month wow.. SADLY no… top spot lets say 40% thus I would get 8 visitor a month OR 96 a year…

As I mentioned above this assumes 10% of a million = 100,000 but this is a lie… .

If a site has 1mil and 10% of its “traffic” visits section x it makes you the potential customer assume ZERO bounce rate.. WHICH IS CRAZY..

Lets be really really nice and give a 25% bounce rate..

1,000,000 * 0.75 * 0.1 * 0.02 * 0.02 *0.4 = 12 visitor per month

Lets be more real.. Lets assume a 70% bounce rate…

1,000,000 * 0.3 * 0.1 * 0.02 * 0.02 *0.4 = 4.8 visitor per month

That’s 57.6 visitor per year..

If you had to pay £1,000 for this then it would be costing you £17.36 per visitor.. WOW..

I hope this may help some people…