We’re quickly approaching the end of October. For businesses, that can only mean one thing. The holiday season is nigh! For online businesses, this means that it’s time to kick-start the tactics you should have been using all year. The clock has already begun to tick for getting people to your site and for you to cash in on online shopping for the holidays.

Google seems to be embracing the Halloween spirit a little early this year.  Its announcement regarding two new Analytics features might be interpreted as a trick, for example, since they’re in private beta without a release date.  Then, for a treat, there’s not one but four new features that should arrive much sooner.

Generally when hippos enter the conversation there are only a few directions the conversation can go; none of these directions tend to lead to well-heeled executives. Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, follows no such arbitrary narrative rules.

At least a couple pieces of evidence and another few rumors have suggested that Google TV Ads is struggling.  Yet with the introduction of Analytics reports on the matter, it seems Google is willing to let people see for themselves.

Human nature being what it is, people often find a way to complain about excellent free products.  Yet following an admission that Google Analytics experienced errors for most of a week and permanently lost some data, users are taking the news rather well.

If you remember correctly, Google bought the Urchin Software Corporation in 2005, and reformed Urchin software to Google Analytics. The one major change in the software was that Google allowed Analytics to be free.

Google has announced that the Urchin Software is now in public beta and can be downloaded at urchin.com.

Google says the software is similar to Google Analytics but you install and manage the software on your own servers. The company says the beta software "should only be used for evaluation purposes," and it is not recommended for production environment.

There are a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness.

That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

CMS Watch today rejected the snowball of hype suggesting that Google Analytics and Omniture are the only remaining solid choices for Web Analytics.

For mid-sized and larger enterprises in particular, and buyers in the UK and Europe, there are many established vendors who can provide advanced analytics functionality.

In an earlier post I chastised Google for giving straight links to partners, However now I’ve found a whole bunch more…

There’s no official announcement from Google, but we’re seeing new features showing-up in Google Analytics.

It appears you’ll be able to compare different data points…

There are a number of free or inexpensive search analytics tools available out there, and this article will outline a few of them that have gotten rave reviews.

Most SEO’s will advise you to buy an existing site/domain (lots of age benefit), but there are times when you need to start from scratch with a fresh domain.

It can sometimes take a couple of weeks to get a new domain indexed by Google (even longer to start ranking!). In order to speed up the process of getting your site indexed quickly, even in 24 hours, follow the steps outlined below:

1) Create 5 pages of content

Skip the “under construction” page and write several pages of real content, at least a few paragraphs.

You can now log-in to your Google Analytics account to start enabling the new Site Search feature for a site of yours.

Have you ever wondered how to adjust analytics to be fully functional without having to sell the farm to get what you need to be able to improve your websites? Google Analytics is the answer, right?

At the Affiliate Summit in Miami today Lee Dodd, President, Zydeca Partners and Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney), President, ShoeMoney Media Group spoke on how to monetize community and social networks during a panel discussion.

I’m constantly looking for a nice, quick and easy blog stats. Google Analytics is a great program, but it’s a bit complex for my daily checks. I’ve tried quite a few and recently Performancing Metrics came back online. It’s not really a new service, but it is a great step forward.

After receiving numerous requests for the same features, Google Analytics has added some new features. They include:

In case you were wondering if your concerns were falling on deaf Mountain View ears, Google, it would seem, does listen to webmaster concerns. The company added a half-dozen new features to its Google Analytics service.