njackson.co.uk

So, we had some hyperlinked images on one of our websites, each leading to the same page, but with a different $_GET which identifies which button this was. As far as my knowledge goes, that would have made the page duplicate (in google robot’s eyes), which then would have a minor impact on the organic page rankings.

And because organic page ranking is quite important, I thought I’d do some digging regarding to tracking hyperlinks with Google Analytics. I found lots of information regarding to tracking form buttons, flash files and allsorts but most were crowded with extra information.

The line of code that tracks this event is quite simple, and all you need to do is add it into your <a> or your <input type=’button’>

onClick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(category, action, optional_label, optional_value)”

Category in this case was the general name for the event which happened to be ‘Buttons’.
Action in this case was what they’d done, so I named it ‘Click’.
Optional_Label in this case wa a numerical indicator dependant on which button was clicked.
Optional Value I didn’t acually use, as I didn’t see any point in assigning the button a value, as each was equal as each other.

It should look something like this:
<a onclick="”pageTracker._trackEvent('buttons'," href="/page.htm">Link text here</a>

Sorted! Just log into your Google Analytics account, go to the website report -> Content -> Event Tracking and within a few days you’ll see some numbers

Need a hand? Just post a comment!

So, I’ve just noticed a new Google Favicon… I’m not sure if i like it! Looks too busy :/ What do you people think? At least it doesn’t impact any functionality

Google Favicon as of 9th January 2009

So, I joined twitter around Christmas after hearing bits about it for the past year or so. Basicly its a blogging tool, but the letter limit is 140 charecters long, so its really a ‘microblogging’ tool. You can imagine it as the Facebook ’status’ text, but alot cooler

Basicly, you sign up and then enter your mobile phone number (if you want sms updates), then your ready to tweet to your hearts content! Its a very simple concept, but the best thing about twitter is that you don’t have to make a huge blogpost, you get straight to the point and its very quickly ‘out there’ to those who are following you, this means that theres alot of potential for information thats flying about.

You can do the following things with twitter:

• You can follow other people and receive their ‘tweets’
• People can follow you and receive your ‘tweets’
• Receive SMS updates – Though this service doesn’t seem to be available for UK phone numbers
• Reply to other ‘tweets’ and give your opinions
• Search the tweets for a certain bit of text

Because of twitters simple API, there are alot of different ways to use twitter – whether thats tweeting or just reading other tweets. You can do the following to use twitter:

• Access twitter.com from your PC
• Access m.twitter.com from your mobile phone
• Apps for your Iphone
  • Twitterific
  • Pocket Tweets
• Google Gadgets
• Twhirl – A Desktop application
• Spaz – Another Desktop application
• A Widget for your Opera Browser
• WidSets for your mobile phone
• TweetDeck – An Adobe Air application

Twitter is becoming more popular day by day, so why not sign up and see what all the fuss is about!

So, I was browsing a few feeds on Google Reader today and stumbled upon ‘Super Ubuntu‘. Its basicly the latest version of Ubuntu but instead of wasting hours trying to find codecs and the latest flash player, its all on the install – something that will save a tremendous ammount of time & thinking of what you need.

I’ve had Ubuntu as a dual boot in the past, but I’d have to do quite a bit of setting up…which after a few times gets tedious. The usual problem would be setting up my wireless adapter, as my laptop is rubbish it was a few hour ordeal…

But hopefully ‘Super Ubuntu’ should reduce the time spent finding all these necessary programs and make installing a fresh copy of linux a much nicer experience.

After navigating the ‘Super Ubuntu’ website, I’ve set of my download…When its completed I’ll be see’ng how ‘Super’ it really is!

Be ready for part 2.

At work I find myself trying to find more and more information about SEO and online Marketing. I don’t consider myself to be awesome at SEO, so instead of preaching I’ll direct you to those who can / do There are many websites that aid me in the daily task of this, most of which that I’ve found by using Google Reader.

First off, Google Reader is one of the most useful tools I use in a day, instead of looking around on the various sites (some which may not have updates), I just subscribe to the various news feeds via Google Reader and every time there’s a new post, It picks up on this and give me a title and a short description of the new news story. If i deem the story interesting, i click the link and there I am…onto the page – awaiting the information overload!

Why search through loads of different sites when you can just get given the latest news from the ones you pick? You’d be silly not to.

So, what you should do is to sign up to Google Reader and subscribe to a few of the following sites: (In no paticular order

• Microsoft Adcenter Dev Blog
• Microsoft Adcenter Blog
• Google Adwords API Blog
• Retail Google Adwords Tips
• Chris Baggots Blog
• Google Analytics Blog
• Google Sightseeing
• Google Adsense Blog
• Google Adwords Blog
• Microsoft Research Blog
• Google Blog
• Google Reader Blog
• Google Webmaster Blog
• SearchEngineLand.com
• SearchEngineWatch.com
• ThePPCBook.com
• PPC Hero

If you have anything to add, go ahead and reply in the comments! I look forward to hearing from people.