This immediately took me aback because I was using Firefox version 10.0.1, the latest version.

I completely understand that Google wants people to use their products, especially Chrome. But to falsely warn me about my browser being out-of-date is preposterous.

Firstly, it doesn’t take much to pull the user-agent string (Browser, version and operating system information). A company as smart as Google and as fascinated by collecting data as Google does that kind of data collection naturally. So, if this is truly a bug then to Google, I say: you’ve been advised of a bug. The user-agent string clearly ends with “Firefox/10.0.1″

The same thing also happened with Internet Explorer 8; although not with IE 9 of Google Chrome.

On the support page that lists system requirements for Docs, Google clearly states:

Google Docs supports the two latest versions of the following browsers:

• Google Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Internet Explorer²

The footnote discusses one exception with Internet Explorer 8 and the drawing tool. IE 10 is not an official release yet.  So 8 and 9 are the latest two versions.

However, you can’t help but wonder if this “oops moment” is something larger, in an attempt to get people to start using their Chrome browser.

I’m not sure what to make of this.I think Google’s smart enough to know 10.0.1 is the latest and greatest Firefox. Anyone else call shenanigans?

Too many w’s for you? Web analytics measures metrics of what visitors do when then come to your site and from where they came. However, they do not tell you at which stage of the buyer behavior process your visitors are or why he or she came to your site.

So you know if a visitor comes in from a particular campaign, and you see what pages that visitor views and know that conversion doesn’t happen. Now what. The data can’t tell you why and you surely can’t reach out through that visitor’s screen and ask them.

Or can you?

I suggest to people the best way to figure out what your visitors are thinking is to ask them. This must be done through some sort of survey tool or fill-out Web-based form. Granted, most people shy away from these, unless they really get something out of them. That’s why the survey must be short and unobtrusive. Don’t clutter the screen, but ask 2 or 3 questions with prompts for the user to make it easy. Simple. Measurable. Done.

Less than a week after I return home from SES, I’m visiting BlogWorld’s conference site and see the following pop up on my screen:

Web site survey for trying to determine the visitor’s intent. You can’t know why the visitor came unless you ask. Plain and simple.

Well done, blogworld.  Can I speak now?

Its a dual-core phone with a GB of memory. It’s on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Of course it is fast. The big draw for me, however, was always the intrigue of being able to plug the phone into a laptop dock that was supposed to make it function as a laptop. Surprisingly, I got more than I bargained for. Not only does the Lapdock mirror the phone (in a window!), but it contains a fully functioning FireFox browser. Yes, I can install extensions. Wow.

Essentially, this is a mobile Firefox browser on an 11.6″ screen with full keyboard weighing 2.4 pounds. It’s attached to my phone and I’m grandfathered into VZW’s unlimited data at their 4G LTE speeds, so I’m always connected. It has its own battery that lasts all day and can even charge my phone’s battery, too. Everything now-a-days is web-based anyway, so where’s the downside here?

Is it perfect? No. Keyboard and mouse movement is a bit slow. I actually type too fast for the browser to keep up with me. I’m sure I am an exception, however. Also, the phone runs low on memory quickly when loading sites that rely heavily on JavaScript. One such example, ironically enough, is Gmail. Google Analytics, however, seems to run fine for me.

However, the biggest take-away here is I’m using Firefox, with plugins familiar to me from my desktop, without the need to carry around a full-size (and weight) computer. I was able to sit through three full-length meetings, still text as heavily as I do all day long. I haven’t made any calls today, but I’ve used this phone on the dock for over 4 hours total today and still have 70% battery power at 5:30 PM. Impressive. The dock still has 40% battery power, too.

The Motorola Atrix lapdock failed to sell well. I dare say that AT&T had to shoulder some of that blame. However, analysts claim the Bionic Lapdock won’t sell either. I will agree, the price tag is hefty. There is a $100 rebate, if you buy the Bionic, lapdock and a certain Verizon Wireless data plan all together. But that still means you’re shelling out $300 for a phone and $200 for the dock.

For my money, the lapdock accessory has truly made the Bionic a production device as much as a consumption device. A tablet (iPad, Android or otherwise) is still a limited device and most Web sites serve mobile pages to them. The lapdock gives me a full-blown Firefox browser. That means I now have full-version Google Docs, Gmail, Evernote and a variety of other Web-based services and sties available to me. Of course, I have the mobile app versions on my phone. In a pinch, that option still works. I’m used to carrying a 15″ laptop that weights 5.6 pounds along with my phone. I typically use it for Web-based applications and nothing more. The lapdock is smaller and gives me that same ability. Really, why not?

I’ll entertain questions in the comments.

Visitor sessions are not all that Google Analytics changed. The following week, Google Analytics added five new reports that focus on showing when multiple channels that contribute to goal conversions. My Search Engine Watch article recaps all of Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnel Reports and how they all come together.

Why Multi-Channel Funnel Reports Are Cool

Plain and simple, these reports go a long way to hinting in which stage of the buyer behavior process a site visitor may be. If you’ve heard me speak about analytics before, you heard me say this:

Web metrics can tell you the what, when, where and how, but they can’t tell you why.

Visitors come to your site for many reasons. Some want to buy, some just want information. That information could be about your product or service or your value-added services. Or it may be the visitor already is a customer and wants to the decision to buy. The point is, unless you ask your visitor, you simply don’t know why they came.

By showing the all of the ways visitors arrived at your site through each individual visit, you can a feel for which referrals bring more conversions. Under previous reporting methods, the last referring medium got all the credit for the goal conversion.  Now, you can visualize just how many touch points there were with a site visitor before conversion.

Your campaigns are like players on a sports team. One referring source may bring in more traffic, another may bring get all the credit for conversions, but they all play a role. In soccer (or futbol, if you prefer), a striker who finishes is just as important as the midfielder whose tricky footwork got the ball to that perfect point so the striker could put it away. Both celebrate the goal. Both record statistics that eventually get lumped together as “points” on the stat sheet.

Your campaigns should be treated similarly. You may see a lot of direct visits getting the “last touch” to convert a site visitor. But was it unassisted? For a new customer, it is highly unlikely. However, without these new reports, and GA’s change in counting visitor sessions, knowing this would not be possible.

But My Data Are Different! Now What?

Granted, this will change your aggregate numbers. Brandt Dainow noted recently that the number of visits will now go up even though your traffic stays the same. He also quotes many responses that he’s seen complaining about this change. His blog quotes people who seem to be complaining that time on site has gone down, new visits are down and repeat visits are up. Of course, there are several who complain that their old data is now useless.

All of these statements are essentially true. The old data was useless because it was inaccurately reporting visitor behavior before. The art of Web analytics is to better understand what your visitors are doing so that you can properly measure if your business objectives are being met. If you read inaccurate data, you can’t measure properly. I’ll quote Brandt’s post:

Bob searches in Google for “buy books online.”  He then clicks an AdWord to Amazon.  After 10 minutes he leaves Amazon and runs another search, this time for “buy reference books online.” He then follows a different AdWord back to Amazon and makes a purchase.

Under the old system this would be treated as one visit. The sale would be attributed to the first keyword and the first AdWord.  The second AdWord and search term would be reported as producing zero visits.

Under the new system this is now treated as two visits. The sale is attributed to the second search and the second AdWord.

First off, I agree completely that there is a significant difference in how these are counted. Apart from that, I think the change is wonderful. There’s always been discrepancies between AdWords data and Analytics data. This new way of measuring visits (sessions) is more precise. I can now see there have been multiple costs attributed to this sale. If I’m tracking customer acquisition cost along with my goal amount, I now have a much better set of metrics.

Affiliates Can Be Tracked More Accurately, Too

After my Introduction to Analytics session at SES San Francisco, I spoke with three individuals from an affiliate marketing company who were wondering why their stats went all awry. We discussed the new change to the visits and how multiple affiliates would now be tracked differently. The response between the three was mixed. One got it instantly, while the other two were irked. They merely gave the first affiliate the link. Why? That’s all Google Analytics told them. Now, they would see multiple visits from multiple affiliates. By the time we were done talking, they knew they had some changes to make, but seemed to welcome them. Why? Because the data are now more accurate.

For sites that only paid the first click or the last click, there is a greater opportunity here. The “assists” are out there. And now they’re in plain view.

As many have said before me, this changes everything. Reading metrics about the whole of your site just doesn’t make sense. You don’t know at what point the visitors are at in being ready to buy. Maybe a site visitor was looking for your a job and your HR department. Who knows. One thing is certain: looking at multiple visits helps you know how long a customer truly takes to convert and what sources they use to make that happen.

I was fortunate enough to not only carry on my Introduction to Analytics session, but extend it four times over in a classroom setting. Departing from the usual collection and available metrics information, I covered a broad spectrum on key performance indicators – from selecting to analyzing. For the first time, I also participated in an SEW Labs session with other Search Engine Watch authors. We talked tips and tools and gave some tough love to a bunch of audience members.

Networking is key at any conference. While social networks are a big part of search and online marketing, you still can’t beat the face-to-face connections made with new contacts and old friends alike. This time around, we set a new bar (I wont’ say high or low) at a post-conference dinner. Sitting in Buca Di Beppo’s “Pope room,”  many of the SEW contributors discussed Black Hat and White hat tactics, which included the +1 button, social media use and the centerpiece bust at the center of the table. While humorous and fun, it spawned an interesting case study for what influences Klout.

More lessons learned will be forthcoming, I’m sure. For now, memories will spark discussions, which will in turn spark links and other social signals.

If these questions sound familiar to you, keep reading for some great insight to how to get social media off the ground for your organization.

Back to the 90s

In the mid-to-late 90s, “the Web” was this mystical thing. People would take the approach of “oh! We should probably dump some stuff to this Web thing, too.”  This ended up causing a bunch of print publications converted to HTML or PDF and dumped onto the Web site. Next came the inevitable set of meetings and committees and coordination as to what the policy should be for this new thing called Web.

Fast forward to today and this concept should seem unfathomable. We’ve learned the errors of our ways. If your Web presence is moving forward properly, then content is king and your site should be more than a mere print repository online.

Or have we? Social media is repeating this pattern. This new technology has evolved and gone mainstream too quickly and now everyone wants to form committees to establish policies and this is scaring the people who truly understand social media.

Focus on Goals Not Tools

It’s been said numerous times in the first two hours. I can’t help to think how much this sounds like SEO strategy. You can’t set policies based on the concept of social. You must set goals. Use social to accomplish those goals together. Social should not be a separate entity and treated like the black sheep of the family. Social is here. Deal with it. Embrace it. Incorporate it into your overall communication strategy; don’t treat it differently.

What, Another Committee?

You need to get people involved, plain and simple. How do you do that? Go back to grass roots ideas and actually reach out and educate them. Invite them to meetings. Institutions of higher learning don’t want to be on another committee and that’s understandable. Fine. Call it a team.

Don’t be afraid to take the lead. Get people involved. If you don’t have buy-in, invite them. Assure people they don’t have to be a social media rock star. They simply need come to table and be willing to learn. Don’t let down the people who already get it.  Reach out to them, ask them to be involved. They’re probably the ones who got the ball rolling. Remind them your team needs their guidance. Re-assure them you won’t be taking away their space. You want to see this succeed; so do they. The ones that don’t get it want the ends social media provides. They merely don’t fully understand the means (yet).

Stay with it – ven if you’re alone in a room by your fourth meeting. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

I’m not sure I understand. I already use Google Alerts to track myself with Alerts. (And you should, too!) So why do I need it in a different place.  I mean it’s not like the Google Alerts section of the Dashboard is more than two sections down from Me on the Web; less than 100 pixels away. That is, of course, if I forget the difficult URL of google.com/alerts. So what’s the real deal?

The rest of Me on the Web section is only a few links to how to manage your identity online.  So how do you manage your identity online? According to Google, search for yourself. Then create a Google profile. What? Seriously?

You can’t actually use Me on the Web unless you have a Google profile. Convenient, no? (But you certainly can use Google Alerts!)

You know what other Google feature you can’t use without a profile? Google’s +1 button. And it makes sense; think about it. A +1 is, essentially, a “like.” Who likes it? Well, no one if there is no profile to go along with it.

The +1 button was a hot topic at SES Toronto recently. It was brought up in the SEO is Dead, Long Live SEO panel and in the Panda-pocalypse panel. In each, it was argued that the +1 button means nothing if there’s no buy-in from Google’s user base. I further conjecture it means nothing without actual human information, too. So what, then? Now Google needs you to get a profile. You’ve seen the commercials. They’re all about building a desire in you to “go Google” in hopes you’ll get a profile.

You can try to have social, but you can’t have a “network” without people. Whether or not Google Circles (or whatever it may be called) actually comes to fruition as a full-fledged social network, they need user acceptance. Google isn’t just coming out and saying they’re building a competing product and you should join. It truly appears they are trying to find other ways to make you join under a different guise. Once critical mass is obtained, then they can release the service that will bind all their existing social features together. Sneaky, no?

Check out selected sessions today and tomorrow.

Cue Search Engine Strategies: Toronto.  Join the discussion in an open forum about the Google Panda update and how it affects small business. Moderated by Jonathan Allen, director of Search Engine Watch, the panel will feature a handful of SEW experts, of which I’m proud to included.

Have you lost traffic to your site since late-February? Among the plethora of other reasons why you shouldn’t miss it, SES Toronto is the place to be to get your questions answered.

The session in New York was full of good questions and even some good answers. Now that the update has hit internationally, this forum promises to pack the house. I can’t wait.

Google has always had a sense of humor. Previously, their blue screen error message looked like this:

Is this something we should be watching? Will Google be changing this every few versions?

Thoughts?

Here’s how it works:

When you search for something on Google, click a link and immediately hit your back button, Google will modify the result listing and give you an option to block the site. Google’s thinking is that if you go to a site and leave that quickly, it must not have been what you wanted. Here’s what it looks like:

Of course once you block the site, Google will allow you to take it back with a link in its confirmation area. If you change your mind further down the road, you can manage your blocked sites with a new feature added to the Google search preferences.

Naturally, you need to be logged in with a Google account to use this feature. If you are not logged in, Google will block the result for your session, but it will not remember on your future visits.

For now, Google claims they will not use the data they collect from people clicking the block tool in their algorithm. However, they say they may consider it in the future. Really? It’s Google. They’ve hidden their use of clickstream data before. How will Google use these data in the future. More importantly: how will they prevent it from being abused?

More info and commentary on the Google site blocking feature can be found at Search Engine Watch.

According to the Rumor mill and a recent Engadget post, Research In Motion (RIM) – creators of the BlackBerry – are close to releasing its infamous BlackBerry Messenger service on other platforms and devices.

Why?!

The BlackBerry Messenger service is really the biggest differentiator RIM has to offer. It allows device-to-device messaging, presumably without leaving a fingerprint on RIM’s servers. According to other reports, it’s really BlackBerry’s only better feature. Their browser is lacking and their corporate email services are equal (if not slightly behind) other smart phones. No, the new Torch was really not a good response to iOS and Android devices.

In marketing, your company’s differentiator is the your users’ barrier to switching to another service. If RIM is knocking down this barrier – essentially allowing other devices to have one of RIM’s only unique features – then what’s stopping the rest of BlackBerry owners from jumping ship to Android devices or iPhones?

RIM’s user base continues to decline, down to only 31.6% of smart phone users, according to the latest comscore data. Android users are up to almost 29% and iPhones account  for 25%. However, those numbers were before Verizon announced their iPhone – which in a month topped 1 million units sold.

So, let’s recap:

• BlackBerry is hemorrhaging market share to Android and iOS
• BlackBerry has one main differentiator
• BlackBerry is giving that differentiator away

Anyone see a problem here?