Proof that IE users are Stupid!

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Proof that IE users are stupid

A recent study by a Consulting  firm AptiQuant has conclusively* proven that IE users have a lower IQ than users of Firefox, Chrome or Safari!

The study conducted on some 100, 000 users took a free online IQ test.

The results showed IE users tended to have an IQ in the low 80′s, whereas Chrome, Firefox and Safari users showed scores of over 100. But if you want to be really clever you should use a browser like Opera or IE with Chrome Frame, those who took the test on these browsers had IQ levels of over 120.

AntiQuant has been threatened with legal action by loyal IE users, but whether anything will come of this is yet to be seen.

*So it may not be conclusive but if you have a lower IQ you’re more likely to use IE

UPDATE: So it turns out this story wasn’t true!

Google Accounts Email Updates – Have you noticed any issues

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The guys at Google have decided there are too many of logins and systems in Google and have merged everything in to one. Of course this created a bit of chaos, but it sounds like a good idea if works.

After few sessions we decided how our internal Google account system should work and we started changing emails unfortunately this come very quickly to stop when we found Google’s changing mechanism simply doesn’t work for us. I submitted this page to a Google forum in order to explain what is wrong.

Some data in pictures below has been erased or censored as they contain sensitive information.

We believe Google apps creates problem with how it treats aliases, groups etc. When we were first requested to update our accounts we first used an account which hasn’t been used and wouldn’t matter if the data was lost.

1) We started following Google’s instructions:

Accounts Needs New Email

 

2) We were pleased to receive a confirmation email about the change of email address

 

3) We then received Google email change verification message (This was also good)

Google Account Email Change Verification

 

then there was a trouble…

4) Google’s instructions say:

1.  Check your email account associated with new address – we did this

2. Open the message from Google that contains subject line “Google Accounts: Email Change Verification.” – we did this

3. Visit the verification link provided - we have done it this part too

Google Email Change Instructions

 

 

5) We did it all as mentioned  but our email didn’t change

Account Email Not Changed

 

6) We visited the only available troubleshooting  it explored subject to it deepest parts ;-). Of course we followed these instructions about 10 times just to make sure we did everything properly

Google online Help not the bet one in this case

 

 

7) At some point we discovered Google thinks our email account has been used for Google Account

Google Account Exists

Of course we did all possible research to try and out find who used this email account to setup Google Account and we found there is no such a person :-). In this case we did attempt another visit to Google Account tools to find out more about this mystery account login and…

8) Google let us know there is no such account in their database so??? Is there or it isn’t?

No Account with Google Exists

Circle started and continues – we can not change email because Google says Google Accounts for this email exists this is not true as it was never setup but we host our email with Google Apps (we only made assumption this could be a problem which Google overlooked). On the other hand Google says no account for this email exists – a bit of contradiction :-(.

We reckon after recent change Google has some  problems with Accounts unless we simply missing something.  Either way there is no serious support for this change online or at least standard troubleshooting is not sending people there. From annoying change our problem started to be an issue at this moment.

We simply looking in to solution from Google for our problem and we will appreciate all comments from people who had had similar problem we just wonder if we are the only ones. If you know any solutions to this will be great to hear from you.

I’ll just add now before anyone suggests it using gmail for logins is not an option for us as it will create management chaos no different from the current one. We had one of our accounts already forced to do it and we would be glad to find out how we can get back to our corporate email on this account but that’s a different story.

 

Cost of “Marauders” in your Web Traffic – Agency Research

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It is well known that B2B services usually generate higher volume items and less traffic than general public main stream goods and services.
It comes as no surprise that Cost-Per-Click in these areas is usually higher when compared to B2C models. Of course this is not definite rule but you can generally expect to see this trend.

We have been conducting ongoing pay per click and display advertising research which is now in its 13 month.

One of the themes in our research is the effects of online marketing for sale of low traffic (niche) high ticket items.

One of the flavours in this “luxury items” theme is a difficult B2B market.

In group of companies from B2B sector where typical order for goods or services is above £1000 we found research and data harvesting was responsible on average for 37% of traffic!

This figure includes corporate research, direct competition, marketing agencies and academic related traffic. None of these visitors have any intention of purchasing the goods and services they are searching for but they are responsible for significant portion of your advertising costs.

Dealing with these visitors is quite important and usually it is key to your increased conversions.

When we analysed budgets, quality of traffic and different types of conversions on these websites we found out few interesting results:

  • On average increasing online marketing budgets by 100% decreased costs per conversion by 33% (research conducted up to saturation point in particular niche category based on initial campaign optimisation and setup without additional adjustments).
  • Services or goods price introduction in advertising decreased traffic by 20% on average with increase or no impact on level of the most vital enquiries (sales, service requests, booking enquiries etc). Interestingly among all websites these which were selling B2B services reacted more spontaneously to this exercise with all receiving higher than 20% traffic decrease respectively goods sales websites were less responsive to the same changes.

In this case two dimensional impact was registered immediately. Directly by clicking on your advertising “Marauders” use your budget and stop your potential customers from seeing your ads. This decreases your budget abilities by over one third at this same time inflating costs of your advertising. You loose potential leads and money – serious marauders :-(

Of course analysis of all figures gave us an immediate reply to some of our long term headaches and it was quite surprising to find out how quickly some improvements could be made.

This particular research is conducted based on campaigns optimised for conversions with little emphasis on brand which we thought is a key to receive sensible results.
It looks like flooding market with high level budgets is giving you much better presence to your real audience but at this same time campaign optimisation is vital for better results.

For example setting up relevant caps on ad viewings and spreading your budget evenly is perhaps one of the most important tasks to avoid increased cost per conversion.

You can’t get rid of marauders but you can definitely make their impact less significant in your overall online marketing.

We plan some publication of this data later this year let us know if you are interested in receiving copy of our research findings.

Facebook, Twitter and +1 Tracking on Webmaster Tools & Google Analytics

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Google announced on their Webmaster Tools Blog that they are now tracking social media interactions with your site.

Webmaster Tools Plus1 TrackingIn Webmaster Tools you may have noticed a new menu section appear in the side bar.

Search Impact Report shows you how the click through rate of your organic traffic has been affected by +1′s (Click the image for Search Impact Report Screenshot).

Activity Report shows you how many times your pages have been +1′d both on your site and in the SERP.

Audience Report show how many individual users have +1′d your site, as wells as some demographic and geographic information (this information only shows up after a significant number of users have +1′d your site).

Check out our post on adding the Plus1 button to your site if you don’t already have it.

Google Analytics Social TrackingIf you use the new version of Google Analytics you will have seen a new Social menu item is now available with three reports:

Social Engagement Report shows you metrics of visits when users had some sort of interaction with your site. (Click the images for a screenshot of the Social Engagement Report).

Social Actions Report displays the number of each of the social interactions you are tracking on your site.

Social Pages lets you compare social interactions that occur on pages on your site to see which pages have the most interactions.

 

This tracking allows you to track social interactions from Facebook, Twitter, +1, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn and probably many more.

The Google+ Project (Googlebook?)

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Google began testing their new product Google+ today. Only a small number of people were invited for testing… I wasn’t one of them :(

I did however take the interactive tour of Google+ and I’m pretty excited about some of the features it has to offer.

Google+ Circles:

Similar to Facebook friend groups you can add your friends to different “circles” so you don’t share stuff with your parents (or boss) that you don’t want them to know!

Google+ Friend Circles Feature

Just drag and drop!

Google+ Sparks:

Sparks sounds like the ultimate boredom killer (unless you have no interests). You add topics, categories or any other interests and Google+ sparks will find videos and articles it thinks you might like… Cool, but a bit stalker -ish.

Google+ Hangouts:

This is probably the coolest feature of Google+! It allows yo to have video conversations with your friends. You can limit it to particular friends or have an open “hangout” where anyone you know can join.

Each participant has a small video at the bottom and the person who is talking (or talking the loudest) has the main video at the top.

Google+ Hangouts Video Feature

 

There are also some mobile specific features Google+ has.

Mobile Google+ Instant Upload:

Take a photo and it can be instantly uploaded to Google+ into a private photo folder, then you can put it into whatever folder you want later. This is convenient but a bit worrying if you take photos you don’t want to appear on the internet EVER!

Mobile Google+ Huddle:

This is very similar to Facebook chat however, it allows whole Google+ Circles to participate in the chat rather than just single participants. This sounds like a pretty good feature if it works well… I can never get Facebook chat to work on my phone :(

All in all I’m pretty excited about Google+ when I’m finally able to use it :P

What do you think? Were you one of the lucky few signed up to use it? Let us know in the comments!

New Google Black Layout for 2011 – Google turns to the dark side!

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Google has been testing a new black naviagtion bar with a grey search bar background.

As per any change that occurs on the internet users are complaining. They claim that the new black navigation bar ruins their custom Google homepage.

New Google layout 2011
Click for larger image

Google is always testing new positioning, colours and many other slight changes to all their services, this one is just one of the most noticeable visual changes this year.

If you’ve seen it let us know what you think of the new Google layout. Did it ruin your custom Google homepage?