Tracking the Ads performance from our own tracking system

Google has introduced a tagging mechanism ValueTrack to track the Ads performance from our own tracking tools. Today we are completely depending on google analytics/google conversion for the AdWords tracking. The new Value Track will help us in traking the Ads from our own logs.

When a user clicks the ad and visits our website, ValueTrack send information like, the search keyword, match type, keyword, creative etc with the logs. We have to add a parameter {adposition} with our destination URL. Google will pass the values with the url and from the details available in the URL we can generate various reports.

In the destination URL add the parameter. Below is the sample destination URL

www.solarwinds.com/?adpos={adposition}

Google will replace the parameter with the relevant ad information like "1t2" (Page 1, Top, Position 3), "2s3"

(Page 2, Side, Position 3) etc.

In the logs it will be seen ad

• www.solarwinds.com/?adpos=1t3
• www.solarwinds.com/?adpos=2s4
• www.solarwinds.com/?adpos=none

For more details refer the below links

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/08/tracking-your-ad-position-with.html

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178482

Saravanan

Steve Quits Apple

Apple CEO Steve Jobs quits Apple CEO. There was a rumor early this year he will quit Apple. But he went on medical leave and joined duty in April. After releasing Ipad in July he now quitting Apple. He will continue to be the Chairman of Apple Inc.

He is one of the successful persons who dropped out of school. Jobs was the man behind the success of Apple. The inventor of the Mac OS X, has introduced three great products IPad, IPhone and IPad. These three products are the bringing most of the revenue to Apple. In addition, the Mac also growing substantially.

Now Tim Cook has replaced Steve as CEO of Apple Inc.

Jobs is the founder of NeXT and Pixar. NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. and Pixar was acquired by Disney in 2006. Jobs is a director in Disney and he is the max. share holder (7%)in Disney. Hours after his resignation, teh Apple stock dropped by 5% and Disney by 1.5%

Saravanan

Google Acquires Motorola Mobility

Today 80% of Google revenue is coming from Google AdWords. There is no big alternate product for them to make money. Even though the Android OS is there, there is no big revenue model for them. In addition, they have stopped its Google Labs (new inventions) completely. But they are acquiring companies that have established products in connection with their products and integrating it and increasing their opportunity to make money.

In the past, they had the top three acquisitions

• DoubleClick an online Advertising company for 3.1 billion
• YouTube a Video sharing product for 1.65 billion
• AOL doing business on Broadband Internet Access for 1 billion

All are used in internet based businesses. Today they have announced the acquisition of Motorola Mobility for 12.5 billion is the record acquisition value for Google. This clearly shows that their investment and the reach of the Android will be effectively monetized. This is going to be the future of Google. Even if Google loses its popularity of AdWords (recent days, the ROI from Google AdWords are going down) this acquisition make Google to move to a greater level.

With this acquisition, the 17,000 exiting patents all over the world and the 7500 pending for approval patents are moved to Google. This will help them in competing with the Apple. Now Microsoft has to be aggressive in getting into the deal with Nokia. They all already moving their cards but Google was aggressive and made the greater move.

They have already acquired mobile ad company AdMob for 750 million. Their expertise in Ads (AdWords) will ensure that they are successful in mobile ads also in future.

Solarwinds also doing similar approach of acquiring companies related to their flag ship product and by integrating it with their existing products, they are increasing the product width.

Normally companies will face culture problem during acquisitions. In the web3.0 world, most of the acquisitions become smooth. The Motorola acquisition is going to be a challenging one for Google and they will ensure that their business approach in mobile market also smooth and successful.

Saravanan

US Stock Market Fluctuation

In the last few weeks, there was a high fluctuation in the US Stock market. It went down to the lowest 10, 800 early last week and picked up in the later part of the week. But it is not going to be steady growth as there is a big challenge ahead for them. There is continuous lay off in private sector and less or no recruitment in government, it is going to fall further.

The European market fluctuations, adds fuel to the US economic problem. This may lead the DOW value go bel0w 10.000 mark or even 9,000 mark.

In the recent past most of the companies stocks gone down by 15-20% even though they have been performing exceptionally good in the last quarter. This is a great indication that the tough times ahead for US.

Saravanan

Experience on revamping an existing website

Our website has become outdated and the UI is now like 0.5 version in the web 3.0 world. We are now working on the new website. 

Our website is highly Search Engine Optimized and so we have to be very careful in our website design. The structure of our website should not be affected at the same time we have to improve the performance. 

There are two approaches in organizing the website. One is by highlighting the major domains that we are having and grouping the products under that category. The other way is providing links like Products, Solutions, Support etc. and listing the products and groups inside. Most of the major solution providers are following the second approach. But one of our main competitors is following the first approach. We are also following the first approach for the past Seven years.

We are categorizing the page into four.

• home page,
• main level pages or solution pages
• product home page
• product inner pages

The home page and the main level pages will come at the top for high level keywords. The product index page and the feature pages will come at the top for the product specific keywords.

We are tracking few hundred key phrases for the past Seven years and most of them are coming in top three positions or on first page. Now we have a big challenge that without affecting the SERP we have to do the new website release. In addition, we have a challenge that the new website should have very good UI as one of our other brands has a well-established user interface (a SaaS service).

We are doing a number of test (A/B testing, Number of click on a page, loading time, etc.) for the new pages.
 

We are using Google website optimizer for the A/B testing. In this we are comparing the old page and new page performance for the primary conversion. Once that is completed, we are using CrazyEgg tool for testing the number clicks we are getting in the old and new pages. Also we are working on the time spent by the user on our website.

We are doing these tests for few top product pages. We went for few designs and we settled with the top performing UI. Now the challenge is to polish the UI so that the look and feel and the usability of the pages are good. We have done three designs and finally we settled with the third one. One of the feedback was “it was just atrocious. I think it's worth just starting again from scratch.”

Here comes the big challenge for us. The new site is working on the conversion perspective but the UI standard is pathetic (from the comments we have received).

We are going to work more on the UI and then we will be rolling it out in the next couple of weeks. We have one more work pending is the page loading time. This can be started only when we finalize the UI. Over and above we have not yet worked on the content. We are doing the UI changes only. But it is supposed to be content as well as UI changes.

In the new design also we are following the same. This introduces a lot of limitations. Any how we have completed the design and make it ready. I hope the next couple of weeks are going to be very challenging as we are going to revamp it for better UI!

Saravanan

Impact on Global Economy due to US Credit Rating Downgrade

Standard and Poor's credit rating for US has been downgraded from AAA to AA+ on Friday. This is a big blow to the US economy. There was a rumor for the past few days that the US rating will be downgraded if US not increasing the debt limit. After a big discussion between the White house officials and the republicans, the debt limit is increased and the default is avoided.

In spite of the increase in the debt limit, S&P downgraded the credit rating of US. This is a historical change for US. Their rating was at AAA from 1917 onwards and for the first time it has been downgraded.

The strongest US economy is downgraded means how is it going to be for the other European countries like Spain, Italy rating. After the World war the global economy is rely on the US economy and due to this downgrade the world economy is going to suffer greatly. The main debtor of US is China which has the maximum investment on US Treasuries nearly 1.15trillion.


What is the impact of this downgrade to US?

Due to this downgrade the credibility on US investments is gone. The investors will start demanding for higher interest rates as the US securities are not reliable. This will have pressure on the interest rates of home loans, educational loans and credit card loans in US. Already US people are facing problem due to inflation and un-employment, this increase in interest rates will make them to reduce their spending. Already Government started reducing their spending. This will cause reduction in money flow that will result in the collapse of US economy.

How this is going to affect the world economy?

Global economy is completely on US economy as the trading currency is USD. All the countries are keeping a lot of USD and US Treasuries. If US economy collapses, the currency value will go down, the countries invested on USD (complete world has invested on US) will lose their investments value. This in-turn will affect their economy. The intensity of impact is based on the amount of USD/equivalent (Treasuries) investments by the countries. The major investors are China and Japan. China is already started giving pressure on US government. Japan has not yet recovered completely from their economic burst they faced in early 1990's and are facing tough time this year (Tsunami and Earth Quake impact).

Already European market is having great impact due to economic burst in Ireland and Greece. Now Spain and Italy is facing financial crisis. The US rating downgrade will add more pressure for them. European Central Bank is trying to support Italy bonds and Spain bonds that are losing its value.

In such a critical economic conditions, countries like Indonesia are improving. US and Europe are getting into the recession, now investors are identifying which risky and non-risky investments. China and Russia are shouting for the new trading currency other than USD for quite some time but there is no big alternate for USD for investments.

There are many other questions that will be raised due to this downgrade and there will not be an immediate solution for most of the questions.

How are they going to face the issues that are going the raise due to this?
What is the impact on the Global economy?
What is going to be Gold price?
Will there any change in the trading currency?
What is going to be the next step for China as they are the major debtor?
Will there be a great recession happen in US?
And so on.....

One thing is very clear that US must reduce their spending and start working on increasing their revenue. Even if they do so, it will take time to recover as this economic situation is reached over a period of time.

Saravanan

Solarwinds Q2 result anlysis

Solarwinds has announced their secon quarter 2011 results. They have grown 29% year on year in Q2. This is a good growth in-spite of the US economy threat. They have done 45.8M in 2. This is more than the Analysts prediction. Their new revenue for Q2 2011 is 21M and their maintenance revenue is 24.75 M. The new revenue growth is 22% and their maintenance growth is 36% year over year. They have grown by 5% compared to Q1 of 2011. Their customer base is also increasing drastically.

Their strategy is on acquiring more companies and increasing their product domains. In the past few years, they have acquired around five companies of different area. Initially they acquired Kiwi a free syslog server company. In Jan 2010, they acquired TekTools a storage company for 42M (had 60 employee company). The expected revenue from those products is around 3M.

In Jan 2011, they acquired Hyper9 a company that has Virtualization product for 23m (32 employees). In July they acquired TriGeo which has event log management product for 35M(65 employees). They are enhancing their product spread on IT management.

They have a spike in their Q3 growth every year (credit to the US Military fund release) and they maintain their new revenue for the other three quarter (How they are maintaining is a big question).

Saravanan

US Debt Limit Increased

On Sunday, President came to an agreement with Republicans to increase the debt limit. This will be put in the Senate and the house today the bill has to be passed. This is a great relief for China and Japan as there were talks that if the debt limit is not increased, US will go for Default which will affect their economy and in fact the global economy.

President is authorized to increase the max. debt limit by 400 billion immediately and an additional increase of 500 billion in debt ceiling has also been authorized to the President. The present debt limit is 14.3 tr. and it will reach 24 tr. over Ten years. US has gone for the increase in debt limit 68 times from 1960.

The increase in debt limit is not the solution for US. This is going to be a temporary relief for them. They have to plan such that they are reducing their spending and they have to control their budget so that there is no budget deficit in future.

Saravanan