How MSN and Yahoo Sells Your Traffic

Written by Nicholas Dixon


By Nicholas Dixon The Island Marketer

Yes, it really happens. Now you might find it hard to believe but you will understand after I explain.

Prior to late 2004, Google undisputedly ruledrepparttar search engine world. Duringrepparttar 137856 second half ofrepparttar 137857 year things took a dramatic turn when Yahoo and MSN decided to challengerepparttar 137858 Big G for some of their lucrative market share.

Search engines are a big source of revenue especially when it comes to advertising and for many this is their bread and butter. Withrepparttar 137859 emerging prominence of both Yahoo and MSN, advertisers have more channels through which to advertise their goods and services.

What marks Google apart from it’s two big rivals in this area isrepparttar 137860 way they display their ads. They deliver their ads through a system called Adwords which is unobtrusive to viewers. The ads are placed torepparttar 137861 right to clearly distinguish them fromrepparttar 137862 search results. Occasionally they will place ads aboverepparttar 137863 SERPS.

Overture isrepparttar 137864 company which handlesrepparttar 137865 placement of ads for both Yahoo and MSN. Now if you should search for a popular keyword in either of them, you will notice thatrepparttar 137866 ads are aboverepparttar 137867 results, to your right and atrepparttar 137868 bottom ofrepparttar 137869 page just aboverepparttar 137870 Next button. This is where it gets interesting.

Havingrepparttar 137871 privilege of working in a public computer lab, I decided to run some experiments. When customers came in and requested information on various topics I instructed them to use Yahoo or MSN for their search enquiries. The first one looked for “bridal gowns” and another looked for “tourism in Jamaica”. In both cases they click onrepparttar 137872 first available information which of course isrepparttar 137873 relevant ads displayed.

Analyzing Web Traffic

Written by Larry Strawson


=================================================== Analyzing Website Traffic ===================================================

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpretrepparttar data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However,repparttar 137824 data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examiningrepparttar 137825 most basic data -repparttar 137826 average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures arerepparttar 137827 most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear onrepparttar 137828 surface thatrepparttar 137829 more traffic you see recorded,repparttar 137830 better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look atrepparttar 137831 behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gaugerepparttar 137832 effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply meansrepparttar 137833 number of information requests received byrepparttar 137834 server. If you think aboutrepparttar 137835 fact that a hit can simply equate torepparttar 137836 number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblownrepparttar 137837 concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it,repparttar 137838 server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website,repparttar 137839 more accurate your interpretation will become. The greaterrepparttar 137840 traffic is to your website,repparttar 137841 more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smallerrepparttar 137842 number of visitors,repparttar 137843 more a few anomalous visitors can distortrepparttar 137844 analysis.

The aim is to userepparttar 137845 web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. Ifrepparttar 137846 time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Thenrepparttar 137847 challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directingrepparttar 137848 wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causingrepparttar 137849 visitor to exit rapidly. Userepparttar 137850 knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

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