4 Crucial facts Google Analytics can tell about your readers

Here are 4 crucial cues about your readers that you can get by observing your Google Analytics data.

Just like in any project, knowing who you cater to helps you in increasing your work's quality.

Google Analytics help you bridge that gap by answering your most asked questions.

Why Google Analytics?

GA will help you understand where your website or blog visitors come from. Let us think how that information can be helpful to us. An example, you're standing in a garden at night and suddenly you're hit by a ball. You don't know where it came from. After 5-6 hits you have a faint idea where does it come from, at what height and at what speed. After 10 hits you'll be proficient at ducking them and even catching them.

Who are they?

This is exactly how Google Analytics would help you understand visitors at your website. GA would help you find out the following points,

1. What age group do they belong to?

2. Their Gender

3. Their preferences

Using such information you can actually modify your website according to the readers/ visitors and enhance their experience.

For example, What if you write a blog about biking equipment and find out that most of your visitors are of the female gender with ages 15 to 30. Here you have an opportunity which can be capitalized. How? Let’s find out. 

Using the information you received you can write a blog about certain widgets used in bikes for females. You can experiment with your blog colors and use compatible fonts with best practices to please your intended readers. You could also loop-in a guest post from a prominent blogger who belongs in their age group and gender.

Where do they come from and what do they speak

Owning an international blog fills you with pride. What good is it, if you cannot cater to your international viewers properly? Not all visitors will be from your own country (though you’ll have to check if some countries have not blocked your website). They might even be from your neighboring countries or even from far off islands. 

Google analytics will help you determine which country's residents find your website most appealing. When you have that information, you can extrapolate to what language most residents in that country read (Remember there is a huge difference in most countries in the language they speak, write and read). If you find that many users come from countries whose primary language isn't English, you can try for a multilingual website. If that seems unreasonable, at least add a Google translate toolbar to help visitors read your content in the language they're most comfortable with.

Note. Do you know some countries hate your website?

How do they get here?

This is usually found out in the following ways.

Google analytics would tell you which browser the user was using when he/she visited your website. Using such information you can streamline your website to be run smoothly on the particular browser. 

If your website is read by a certain section of society which uses internet explorer, you can either modify the website in such a way that there are no lags or errors when they open your website in IE OR you could try answering the question why do users from Chrome or Firefox, not visit your website often. Is it because there is an inherent error which crops up when your website is viewed at those browsers or is it because the positions of elements get messed up and it looks like a grotesque pixie.

Google analytics would also tell you what device the users use when viewing your website. Certain users might use an iPad, certain might use PC and some mobile devices. It would be a good practice to check if your website works perfectly at these devices.

From where do they get here?

Another way Google analytics can help you is by finding out how did the visitors land at your website. Using GA would help you isolate (Or what I would like to say stalk) your visitor entry methods at your website. You would find out which website led them here. 

For example if you find that majority of viewers come to your website from your facebook page you would think if you could utilize that opportunity to optimize facebook advertising or adjusting your strategy there. You could also think why visitors come from facebook when you have a twitter handle too.

Though there are several Google products which can help your website like Google Adsense or Google Adwords, none of them come close to the quality of data provided by Google Analytics. Top 500 websites on the web are often found using similar tools to get more information about their viewers or find more ways to impress and retain them.

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Tips for Comment Moderation. What Should you keep and what should you delete? Part 2

Comment moderation is one of those important aspects of managing a blog which tells the readers about the integrity and quality of the blog. 

A previous article on Tips for comment moderation talked about protecting a blog's image against comment spammers. This is the part two of the series.

The Link Factory Type

A very ancient breed of comment spammers often use a technique known as comment link flooding. In short, they flood the comment section with one or more links of a particular webpage, hoping that the sheer numbers would lead to an increase in the back links, thereby leading to higher page rank.
As mentioned above, they are an ancient breed because, such methods have already been countered by search engine's algorithms and have little or no effect on both the websites.

Another reason why such comments often do not work on websites is because, the websites have already marked their comments section as no-follow (Which means that any links in the comment section would not affect your image at google or similar search engines). Hence any attempt at garnering back links by spamming comments is foiled.

The Hire Me Type

Some Comment spams are often disguised as marketing initiatives from unemployed designers/ developers and SEO professionals. Though it is not hard to decipher what they write, their text is often accompanied by options to hire the writer. Their comment reeks of "Hire Me!" all along. Needless to say, you should remove such comments.

The Following comment was found on a previous article at codemakit talking about the dangers of trading an article with a service.

The Naked URL Type

You will often find that comments like the one below have little or no un-hyperlinked text. One often wonders if it is a ruse, with spammers trying to garner pageranks by adding links as mentioned in the first case.

However, you must be careful. One look at the URL of the link would tell you if it is related to the article or not. If it is related and genuinely adds quality to the article, you can keep it. If not you should remove it as a crushed bug on a car's windshield.

True to Myself Type

Now you might see some comments which are genuinely concerned about the article and the blog.The first method of checking a comment against spam is to find is if the comment contains a hyperlink. The second method of finding if a comment isn't spam is to check the content for relevance to the article itself.

Like the previous article on comment moderation, Here's an example of a genuine comment in which the author is concerned about the content of the article and phrases his/her comment accordingly.

The following article is on the geomatic changes in blog.

The Shakespearean Spammer

Not often you encounter wordy Shakespearean comment spammers. Only one thing differentiates such comment spammers from normal ones, The use of herculean amount of words, often relating to the article as a bee relates to a space ship and nearly every character of the comment has been copied form somewhere.

The following comment was received at codemakit's article about including a favicon to your website.

Guess what? The spammer has commented about international concept of work from home! Who the F comments about work from home at a favicon based article? The comment was so large, that complete screenshot would have increased the length of the post by 30% and would have left you dazed.

Looking London Talking Tokyo Part 2

Some comment spammers do not use hyperlinks in their comments to avoid being filtered by automatic comment spam filters. The following comment is about Business phone lines at the Jetbro Interview article.

In such cases, it is often advisable to skim through the comment to ensure that the comment is in accordance with the article itself.



Though this type of comment spam has been discussed before, I could not stop myself from entering the following comment from entering the wall of fame.

The Brazen Comment Spam

Now there exist a rare breed of brazen super-strong, fearless comment spammers who defies every law of commenting on article.

First, Comments are often advised against adding links in their comments.
Secondly, Comments should be related.
Thirdly, the transition of ideas in the comments should be smooth and not abrupt.
Fourthly, You should not comment spam on an article on "Tips for comment moderation"!

Related Reading,

Liked it? You will obviously like the Part I of article on tips for comment moderation.

If you're not aware, here is the method of removing spam comments from the blog.

Have you read some of our funniest comment  spams here's Part I and here's part II?

Check out a case study about how a single sentence reduced comment spams by half.

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An interview with Vinay at TechPrevue

Here we have an eminent blogger with us today. He isn't like the type you see every day. He helps vernacular blogs. 

What attracted me towards TechPrevue was the desire to understand the challenges faced by a vernacular blogger. My understanding that SEO techniques do not work at blogs containing vernacular language was further cemented by Vinay's admittance. 

Read as Vinay explains how he overcame the most formidable of hurdles in SEO, making Google understand something other than English.

An Introduction

Mohit: Tell us about yourself. Being a NIFT alumnus, how did you stumble towards Website SEO?

Vinay: As a person it’s difficult to identify myself. I am a human who love creative things. I am involved in blogging since 2007. I created first blog to publish my poems. But after sometime I got many requests to reveal the secrets of blog design, widgets and template. So I created my Hindi tech blog तकनीक द्रष्टा(2009) to help bloggers. After that I learned about monetization of blog and tried it on my blog but after few months AdSense made Hindi unsupported language. That was the main reason why I switched to English and renamed my blog to Tech Prevue (2012).

I dint stumbled to website SEO because I never quit blogging after 2009. In May 2010 I joined 2 year program Master of Fashion Technology (Strategic management in Apparel production and Fashion retail) at NIFT, Gandhinagar. After completing MFTech in 2012 I tried to continue blogging because many of blogger friends always want me as blogger to help them. 

Again I started तकनीक द्रष्टा in January 2014 when I met with kind people from Google. We talked about Hindi content promotion on web, Hindi software and Android localization. After a healthy discussion I found Hindi blogging as an opportunity because Google AdSense for Hindi content will be available very soon. So now [I’m] still doing blogging as hobby and extracurricular activity and monetization in my second objective.

Mohit: Tell us something about Tech Prevue and the Blog.

Vinay: Tech Prevue is a platform where we publish articles related to blogging, monetization, web development, Smartphone and technology etc. It is in existence because of people who love it. Our objective is to simplify tech noesis and make it understandable to audience. First we targeted only bloggers but now we are concentrating on all including business persons who want to keep their business alive with the help of technology. Now number of software companies relies on techprevue.com and sponsor article to promote their products and services.

Tech Prevue is not only a blog. We are consultant to bloggers about blog, blogging, design and SEO. We are crafting beautiful blogs and giving cent percent satisfaction to our clients. 

Mohit: What are your upcoming Projects?

Vinay: We are working on two projects Fashion Reveries and Digital Brainiac.

‘Fashion reveries’ [is] in alpha stage but serving fashion aspirants and professionals.  We are planning to build a new name for web consultancy and development job apart from Tech Prevue. 

So Digital Brainiac is different project of early age and yet not fully implemented. We are constantly working on it before providing our services. 

On Social Networks

Mohit: Be it Facebook or Twitter, Social Media was never the strong point for a majority of bloggers, yet, you boast of more than 3000 Fans on facebook and more than 2000 Blog followers? How did you manage it?

Vinay:  We are in existence since 2009 but that time only Hindi bloggers knew us. We are constantly working on quality over quantity. Those have interest in our niche love us and have special care. One of our old gadgets is ‘Google friend connect’. We have 2150+ followers. On Google+ number of followers are 1100+. Yes we opted for Facebook page a year before to give blog updates to our readers who are on Facebook savvy and their count is now 3150+. 

On Revenue

Mohit: How important are web Advertisements to running a good blog?

Vinay:  Monetization is always a tool to run a blog. No one can afford a blog from his pocket for life time. Monetization can be direct or indirect. When you earn a dollar from your blog you earn hundred dollar’s motivation to make a next post on your blog. I have seen many bloggers who invested lots of money in early phase but dint get any revenue from their blog. In Hindi blogging it is happening to every third blogger. 

Thus web advertising is very important to run a blog. When you earn from your blog you can afford more professional resources to promote your blog and content. It is an opportunity to avail professional SEM and SEO. Professionalism definitely brings success in your life whether you blogging or other things. 

On Search Engine Optimization

Mohit: You also host Online Tools at Techprevue.com. So tell me how efficient online tools are in bringing potential clients?

Vinay:  Online tools bring potential clients who have a unique kind of requirement if they found bugs in your tool they need solution for it. A very [few] clients come for additional features in your tools. We host Hindi tools which are used by numerous end users but they don’t ask for additional features because don’t want to pay you. So it seems client is wrong word for users. But for other tools situation might be different. I have no experience other tools so I can’t say anything about it. 

Mohit: Referred to some of your testimonial websites, do you think SEO techniques for a Non-English website (e.g. Hindi) differs from an English website?

Vinay: Yes, I don’t want to take other blog. I will talk about my Hindi blog तकनीक द्रष्टा. It is really difficult to opt same SEO strategy as Tech Prevue, because search engines does not understand Hindi well as they can do English or Spanish. Audience is different for Hindi blogs because most of the blog readers know English and have subscribed English blogs of same niche. If they come to your blog, only come for specific reason. For a Hindi tech blog, second kind of audience [are] newbie in blogging and want to learn everything from scratch. [Since] very few have good command in computer and computing. So you have to calculate for every post and content language. At last, each time you need a different strategy to build new audience for your blog.

Something Personal

Mohit: Now something personal, you’ve used cartoons instead of your real face. Most Bloggers do not mind putting their faces on their creations. Why it that your real face is not visible on the website?

Vinay: Of course, I want to tell you about this. It is part of our research – How do people react when you use cartoon charters of yours rather than using your image. From Google search point of view it is not good to choose cartoon image for face. But if we talk about blog audience it reacts well. In my case I found ten percent audience is appreciating my new avatar and happy with it. I have not any survey report but I got good remarks them about this avatar. Well you can see my real picture on my Facebook account in picture gallery.

Finally

Thank you Vinay; I guess, we’ll all wait eagerly for that research. That was all for today, we wish well and bid adieu to our guest today.

Readers can contact him here and connect with him here. For any question that you would like to ask Vinay, drop it in the comment box below and I’ll make sure, you’ll be replied to.

Further

An interview with an Indian individual is really interesting, but if you need to find something about an Indian web design firm you can read an Interview with JetBro design firm. On a totally non related matter, they actually wrote about codemakit too!

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Why some countries hate your website

Its 2:00 AM and you're sitting in front of your computer with chips in one hand and a beverage in another. You are reviewing the analytics data. Where do the visitors come from? Where do they go?  Which pages they visit and for what time etc. 

You start thinking, "Hey! Why are my visitors more from US than UK. Why are there minimal visitors in China and why are hordes of them in Australia?"

The answer though mind boggling, is quite simple indeed. Before getting into the details of the visitor demographics Let us get rid of some irrelevant factors.

Is it Blocked?

There is a lot of speculation regarding website metrics in China. Some report large number of visitors some report a fraction of its fraction. With the government exercising excessive control over what can be published or what can be viewed, one thing can be concluded with surety, it is not your fault if your website does not receive thundering applause from china or any other country.

Chances are your website has been blocked there. (However, there is a way to find if your website is blocked). Same might be the case with some Middle East countries too. Though you can still move around it, but that’s not the point.

New Google Algorithm?

"Change must always be embraced", the supposed motto of the people working at Google Search, The Guys sitting there are responsible for any modification in the search algorithm used by Google.

With a simple change from their side, cause great repercussions in the visitor inflow in our websites. So that cannot be ruled out. You can actually see through a case study, how Google's algorithm change lead to the change in visitors geographically.

The Actual Reason

Now that we've removed them from our scope, we can focus on much more pressing issues on hand. Why do some countries love your articles and some do not? Do you offend the countries? Or is there some problem with your language? (As an accent cannot be a problem in written content). The answer is really simple. "Spelling".

Color or Colour or Couleur?

It is the way you spell your words that makes the difference. let us look at some examples from Wikipedia. Like for the simplest of example. A word used extensively in almost all websites, "Colour" or "Color". 

It is fascinating to note that the word is spelt "color" in United States but is spelt as "Colour" in almost all English speaking countries. (French however introduce another twist and spell it as "Couleur").

Organisation or Organization?

Another example can be "Organisation" or "Organization". This one however is a tricky one. UK, New Zealand, South Africa are known to use it interchangeably. US on the other hand prefer "Organization".

The Story

My friend used to wonder why his blog receives more visitors from US and not from India, his target audience. His was a commercial website and he started a blog to help in sales. But the website received more visitors from outside the country and his sales started to drop. 

Simple psychology says, “you would obviously buy from the nearby shop than order from abroad”. His puzzlement increased when the blog started to increase visitors, actually started hurting his income as most readers were from United States. His competitors got the better of him and he was going to shut down for good.

The answer to the problem is simple enough. The man used Microsoft Word to spell check his blog posts or Item descriptions. His plan to avoid spelling errors actually backfired. What he didn't know was the spell check in Microsoft word in his system was preset at English (US). So, confusing words were automatically corrected to those spelled in US. He used to post the spell checked article at his blog. 

How do Spellings Affect your Website?

Let us suppose he had an article named the "Colors of Flowers". When a needy slash curious person from India/UK types in the search string, "Flower Colours", she/he would not be presented with my friend's article. 

But when another needy slash curious guy from US types in the string "Flower Colors", he will be presented with my friend's article. This is how your spellings could change who you cater to.

Now increasing the usability of this concept by a notch, we can safely say that if you want your visitors from a specific country, set your spell check in that language. The steps are outlined here,

How to change the preset Language in Microsoft Office

1. First click on Review Tab in Microsoft Word 2007.
2. In the proofing option, select "Set Language".
3. Now you'll be presented with a window containing all languages. Select the one you find suitable and click OK. You’re good to go.

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Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 2)

This article is the complete study conducted by codemakit Website Research. If you feel that the contents are too technical for you, you may want to read the simplified summary presented at part I of the article first. Based on the data obtained from 190 Web Pages and their page views, the following observations were found.

The data available were the number of views, and the date of publication of page. Since the pages were linearly published (i.e. one page after another), the difference of the number of days were found and Cumulative number of days were found. Cumulative number of days helped in determining the number of days a webpage was present on the website as published. As a page's page views and the number of published days are directly proportional. 

The Data Set

The complete Data Set containing information in pdf for all the blog posts is available for perusal here. To probe this even further, Consider Page A has 200 page views and Page B has 20. This cannot be called as the complete indicator of the actual worth of the page, As Page A might have been published a year ago and Page B just a week ago. Hence a balanced base is needed to determine whether a webpage is performing well or not.

V/D ratio was found out. The V/D ratio is the ratio of the number of page views per unit cumulative day. The ratio is a perfect indicator of the number of how well did the page do in terms of garnering visitors. Using V/D ratio the index for page A would be (200 page views/365 days) and for page B as (20 page views /7 days). The ratio for Page A comes to be 0.548 and for Page B comes to be 2.85. The page A which at first looked better in comparison to Page B, now doesn't look worthy at all. Hence a normalized base would help in determining the true worth of a page.

Types of Webpages

The complete analysis was done using V/D ratio. Graphically, V/D = 0.2 was obtained as the value to be used for determining if a webpage performed well or not. Complete Data was divided into three parts 

1. The lesser ones,

Now all Web Pages which had a V/D ratio less than 0.2 can be safely said to perform worse than its counterparts. Hence all Web Pages with a V/D ratio less than 0.2 come under its purview. There were 53 lesser ones.

2. The Greater Ones

Just like the name suggests, all the Web Pages with a V/D ratio more than 0.2 were called as the greater ones or the ones that performed better. There were 123 Greater ones.

3. The questions

Each webpage which contains a question in its title text is a question type webpage. There existed 63 question type Web Pages on the said website.

How did we arrive at V/D=0.2 ?

Note. It must first be understood how the value of 0.2 was obtained. The complete analysis being a really simple one, It was thought that the sample could be plotted on the graph based on its frequency. The graph was then created taking V/D ratio on the abscissa and the frequency at ordinate. 

The resultant graph was a sharp bell shaped curve. The sharpness was due to excessive variations among the sample group with different number of Web Pages having inordinate differences in their V/D ratios. Hence, The Graph was then magnified at its peak in the hopes of arriving at the dividing value. This graphically came near 0.2.

The Observations

Summarily, It was found that, The Webpages with questions as their title text that performed poorly was 21.21%. However, The Webpages/Articles/Blog Post with questions as their title text which performed poorly was just 21.21%. In Short, if you put your title text as a question for any webpage, you have 50% more chances of making it more famous. 

			Greater Ones	Lesser Ones
		Total Number of WebPages	123	66
		Number of Webpages with Questions	39	14
		Percentage of Webpages with questions	31.71	21.21

Disclaimer for the study, 

It is however pertinent to note that, the study took 197 webpages and had to exclude some to maintain the sample's integrity. The study was conducted on a single type of website with a single Page Rank and hence same results cannot be expected for any other.

The study could be extended to cover other types of websites too. These could be analysed and results displayed. Also, one must understand that the criterion for determining if a webpage performed good or poor, was created based on the overall performance of the website itself. Hence, there exists a need for determining independent criteria for websites of different types, page ranks and visitor interaction.

Also, you can bring people to your webpage, but making them stay there is wholly dependent on how you present the content. Bounce rate isn't too irrelevant you know.

Is the Study too technical for you?

For a much simpler version of this study you can visit the part I of the series. 

If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

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Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 1)

There exists a very contended view that, If you write an article with a question as its headline or title, it will receive more clicks and the webpage as a whole would be more successful. 

codemakit in the past has published material on improving the readership of any blog like, using specific publishing schedule, controlling Spam, creating apps, organising your blog content etc.

Though some are of the opinion that it plays no part in determining the popularity of an article. However, Online marketing experts disagree, Several studies claim an increase of 100% (Though there are several more probable methods of doubling your website traffic) traffic to the website, i.e. "Double Your Traffic!", some claim a modest 10% increase.

The truth isn't inaccessible, its just hidden. Gregory Ciotti, who oversees marketing at Help Scout and is the founder at Sparring Mind, believes, there exists an information Gap Theory based on a paper by George Loewenstein, on "The psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation" 

The Online marketing geniuses often claim that once a person glances on the headline, She/he frames their question as per the one displayed. For example, You need to know how to plant a eucalyptus tree in your backyard. You put the search term as "Plant a big eucalyptus tree". Suppose you stumble upon the headline, "How do you plant a large tree", though the queries are different enough, you must understand that the person finds it irresistible not to merge the two and experience that Aha! moment where you feel "That is just the damn thing I was searching for! How cool is that, I must check this out!"

Codemakit Website Research performed a study and analyzed Web Pages to answer this question. Since the study can prove to be too technical for some, It has been included in the second part of the article.

In the study, We took 197 Web Pages and collected just two information from them, Their number of Page views and the number of days they had been public on the web. We divided the complete set into three parts. 

1. One was the Greater ones or the ones that performed really great. 
2. Second was the lesser ones, i.e. those that did not perform up to the mark. 
3. Third set consisted of those which contained questions as their headlines. 

You can take a look at part II of the article if you want to know how did we divide the articles/blog posts into good and bad (complete Data Set containing information in pdf format for is available for perusal here). Once that was achieved, We analyzed and are now presenting our findings. 

Read carefully, The Web Pages which performed really good had 31% of them as questions. However, The ones that performed really bad had 21% as questions. In short your webpage has 50% more chances of performing good if it has a question as its title/ headline. 

For more information on the study you can visit the part II of the series. If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

But, Don't you wanna know how did we arrive at this conclusion?

Check out the second part of the series. 

Also, tell us how much better did your website perform?

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Why are bounce-rates never a perfect Indicator for your website's health

Bounce rate comes under the purview of gateway metrics. Also your bounce rate may not be the perfect indication of the health of your website. 

Traditionally it is incurred that, a visitor who leaves your website has done nothing or learnt nothing from the page and hence your troubles were worth nothing.

"Modern theory dictates that it is possible that the user/visitor got what he/she wanted from the search and happily closed the tab." 

Like for example, you as a visitor visited the page on codemakit.com to know more about bounce rate. Your curiosity or question was fulfilled properly and you will happily move on to another topic like bounce rate calculation or Is your bounce rate normal? and 4 sureshot ways of improving them.

The Reasons

One possibility which cannot be ignored is that the website converted the user’s action but it was not registered by the analytics. 

Another reason why bounce rate does not truly measure your site’s performance is because it fails to address the situation of unloaded page. Suppose your website came up in Google search results for a particular keyword. The visitor clicked on the link and landed on your page, but as luck would have it, the page didn't load (due to n number of conditions including your bandwidth) now the user waits and waits until he/she finally gives up (Find out how to find your page load time and reduce it) so the tab is cancelled (or back is pressed in the browser) and the user goes back to the search engine to find out another alternative. Now in this situation your bounce rate is calculated as the server request which was given but data was not sent in the required time so it will be counted as a bounce. Search engine watch came up with some 20 odd points to reduce bounces .

Similarly another reason is that bounce rate is domain dependent, if your user goes from your domain to another, even if it’s yours, it will be counted as a bounce. For example, you created a spending article and a user lands on it. The visitor reads it with avid interest and finds two more articles of his interest. In enthusiasm he/she decides that your Facebook page is worth liking, so he clicks on the small Facebook logo displayed your site and leaves your page to land on your Facebook page. Theoretically it was a converted action which will be of an advantage to you. But technically it is a bounce and would be calculated as such.

Just in conjunction to the above point one must know that there are several types of codes which if executed would be counted as a bounce. Examples are watching an embedded video from YouTube, or clicking the Facebook page through the activity widget. If you find your bounce rate is exceptionally low and you think it is a mistake, then you must understand that bounce rate might also be low due to the type of your website. Read all about the different bounce rates for different websites like ecommerce, retail, blog, news, podcasts and many more.

One of the mails that I received during last summer asked me a question that left me thoroughly puzzled. The dude had a website to sell Flower Vases. Which had beautiful pictures of flower vases, If the user liked it, he can buy online. The website went public just 3 months ago and he reported that he was now getting about 50 to 60 page views per day and 2-3 sales in a week, but had some serious problems with Google analytics. Now he reported that average page view time neared to less than a second and bounce rate was nearing 97%. Obviously the figures show the really bad shape of his website. But what surprised me even more was that the website was perfectly fine. The design was awesome and functionally also it looked great. So what was the problem? Both of us were perplexed until I found out the article by Kevin Spence. Kevin argues that there are two possible explanations, either the viewer has the reflexes of a cheetah or it is something related to bounce rate.

How it Works?

He explains that time on site measurements work in two phases, 

First is when the visitor enters the site and is logged. Then the visitor moves through the pages to find something he/she likes (This is also logged). 

According to Kevin, the time spent by the user on a website is calculated as the difference of current time during current page view and the time stamp from the previous page view. Now one thing is for sure, when you do this for the first page user lands on, the time calculated would be zero.

In simple words, when you have not visited a previous page of a website and are leaving the page just a after viewing the first page of the website, the time spent on the website would be calculated as zero. In my flower vase friend mentioned above, had a serious flaw which is present in every online sale website. There is a list of products right on the first page itself. If the user wants to know more, he just has to scroll down and the items would load accordingly, In this case if the user does not like the contents during few scrolls, she would just leave. This would be counted as a bounce even if she spent an hour of her life watching the beautiful vases trying to make up her mind for a purchase. It is here that we found that bounce rate is a figure not to be relied upon. Just as Kevin says, "accept bounce rate as a fact of life."

Inspite of these, bounce rate is gaining popularity worldwide because of the ability to correlate the bounce rate with other metrics like conversion rate. But codemakit’s verdict, bounce rate to be used singularly without correlation is a great waste of time because the technology for measuring it is still in an infant stage.

But still if you’re hell bent on finding out your website’s true bounce rate, have a look at search engine watch’s lengthy article on true bounce rate

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What are Disavow Links and How do I use them?

It is a well-known fact that the quality of a site is judged by the content and the links. Content is controlled by the website owner, but what would you do when you find out that your website is getting visitors from questionable which cause aspersions on the web owners and the website itself. 

How does that happen, you ask? The story goes like this. An anonymous friend of mine used to run a civil engineering blog of his. The blog had everything from structural to transportation to geological engineering articles. All of them were painfully collected by him over the years. 

True Story

As any popular growing website, he too had a number of competitors. But, this one was different. Once during a hot summer day, he witnessed a substantial increase in the number of visitors to his website; on closer inspection he found his average bounce rate increase from 45 to 94 in just three days. Baffled, he tried to find the source of this traffic. He found that the traffic came from a very popular adult video community. When out of curiosity he visited the website, he found that links to his website was displayed in a misleading way. Some erotic photos were linked, pointing towards his website.

Obviously people looking for photos like that, landed on his website but left immediately when they found that it was another one of those dirty tricks that webmasters play to lure traffic towards their website. As a result people stayed on the website for a second or two and left, thereby increasing the bounce rate to such epic proportions. In short, this was an evil scheme hatched by his competitor who had started a similar web blog a few years back. It was speculated that the owner of the adult video/photo community was owned by a friend of his. The events happened 3 years ago and at that time it was difficult to force anyone to take down some content. Had Disavow been there at that time, things would have been much easier. 

The Solution

The page simply states, that if you believe your page is deliberately linked to websites that you do not want to be associated with, you can use this utility by Google. Finally it also goes on to summarize that simply disavowing is not enough, you should take every measure possible to prevent such links.

Had disavow been there for my friend at that time, He would have added the misleading domain in his disavow list and even though users would still come to his website searching for some sensual content, His rank would be protected and he would not be penalized by search engines for getting a back-link from a website containing irrelevant content than his (Read More about Google’s Quality content Guidelines and Blogger's Content Policy)

Google’s Support page clearly states, that it works very hard to ensure that other websites do not affect your website. If you really need to disavow such links, Remember two steps.

First: Try to remove or have it removed all the Spam comments and irrelevant or inappropriate links which can harm your website (See also Tips on comment Moderation). Of-course Google is here to help you, Use its specialized search techniques (Discussed Previously) to your advantage. For Google You should know about its quality guidelines. This can be done by asking the website owner to remove the link through an email, or by filing a complaint with the owner.

Second: Now you should start disavowing links. But mind you! Google’s word of caution says it crystal clear. 

“If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results.”

Disavow backlinks

This is a two-step process. First, you’ll need to download a list of links to your site. Next, you’ll create a file containing only the links you want to disavow, and upload this to Google.

Note: When looking at the links to your site in Webmaster Tools, you may want to verify both the www and the non-vww version of your domain in your Webmaster Tools account. To Google, these are entirely different sites. Take a look at the data for both sites. 

More information can be found at 

Answers to questions which might be common to yours at, Google's Support Pages

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog where it discusses the launch of disavow.
Matt Cutts also Discusses Disavow in the Video Below.

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Tips for Comment moderation, what should you keep and what should you delete?

Any proven website would always feel the wrath of comment spams.

The secret would always be a powerful comment moderator which blogger does provide, thankfully. How would you protect your Blog's image from comment spammers.

Tips for Comment moderation, what should you keep and what should you delete?

Meaningless comments

One of the most easily found and the most easily structured comments, such comments have their own way of saying ‘I know your blog is all about burgers but, I will talk about home loans, bed sheets and laptops (that too, within the same line without grammar). You ask why? Because I’m drunk..’

Nevertheless, they do not have any meaning whatsoever and does not add to the content on the page. It is always better to remove them as they would distract your readers and speak lowly about your comment moderation practices.

The following comment was in Things before cc license

Replying to a ghost type

The spammer writes up a comment which is in reply to a previous comment. But there is just one problem; there was no previous comment in conjunction. The spammer just replies to a so called ghost with its usual trickery. People indulge in this type of comments because they’re of the opinion that replies to comments are overlooked during moderation or they’re treated with leniency because they are replies. Such comments must be removed and even the original one if they do not make sense.

The following comment was found in the article answering "What happens when I do not post for a week"

Good Job! Type

It is not difficult to differentiate the ‘Good Job’ comments from a spammer and an actual loyal visitor. A legitimate Good Job comment will be sans any link in the name and in the text. Such comments though are hard to find but prove to be a real support and motivation to the author. Finally, that is what counts.

 

The Harry Potter Cloak type comment

The spam or link is hidden under what looks like helpful text. Let us take an example, You’ve just written an article on a burger recipe and you receive a comment which reads like this. 

‘Oh! Loved this post, couldn’t have made is any better. I personally like the inclusion of cumin powder but I still find ‘Fisher’s cumin’ which tastes even better than that of ‘Fisher’s rye’’

The comment looks harmless at first but when you delve deep enough you find it is a spam to promote the ‘Fisher’s’ brand. Such comments can be removed if you like but it does not come under high priority as it still give meaning to your page and presents new ideas and materials. Until and unless the link provided in the comment is not of a defaulter, you’re good to go.

 

The ultra-serious comment

To promote a brand the spammer must remember to attract the readers towards his comment. So what do they do to lure the readers? They use some really serious words in it. The ultra-serious words may include, ‘death’, ‘gore’, ‘funeral’, ‘blood’ etc. Which means anything which will make the readers read the comment? (Note. It was because of these four words which forced you to read this particular paragraph).

The ultra-serious isn’t limited to such scary words, negative words would give the same impact (like the word ‘disgrace’ in this particular example). Neuro-Science Marketing website previously mentioned the dark side of Reader Comments, you should try and have a look at it.

 

I found you comment

These are the newbies in spams, their comments start with ‘I've been looking all over for this type of article’ and end with ‘I will share this everywhere’. Some even go to the extent of saying they missed reading such informative articles. They only thing they attach with the last line is a train of hyperlink words corresponding to their business.

Since you can very well determine this is a spam, you wouldn't even receive them anymore because of your blogging platform’s comment policies which will filter them before the’re published.

 

My name is my brand type

Some spammers often find that their comments will not be moderated if they do not include a link in the body of the comment. So they include the link in their own name. So you would often find comments like, 

BuyBestpendrive.com says: I like your article, it’s so informative!!

The comment author’s link is not that harmful as a link in the body. If you’re a strict blogger you can moderate such comments as they do no good and would gradually use your own link juice. Otherwise you can use NoFollow in your comments and leave them be.

 

Related Reading

For reading many other hilariously Funny comments you can read the articles here at part I and here at part II

You can learn to remove spam comments at codemakit.com

You can add a noFollow to your comment space also.

Read the second part of the article on comment moderation and get some awesome tips against comment spammers!

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