If you use Google Analytics, monitoring your traffic sources is a great idea. And if you only have one domain, Analytics works fine out of the box.

You start to run into problems however, when you operate multiple domains or subdomains. By default, Google Analytics tracks each of your subdomains as unique, so when a visitor comes in to your site on subdomain1.yourwebsite.com, but then clicks on a link to subdomain2.yourwebsite.com, their campaign information gets overwritten – so the visitor looks like a referral from your first subdomain.
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This post should really be in two parts as I want to discuss two quite different things. They do, however, both relate to Yahoo!

1.      Instant search is becoming the standard.

As we reported in September, Google Instant has made a big splash, and it seems the other search engines are following suit. Today, I did a search on Yahoo! for the first time in about six years. Unlike Google Instant where the results you are displayed
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As I’ve talked about in a previous post, the way Google ranks pages is now changing. Besides all the changes surrounding Google Instant, Google is now by default presenting personalised results based on your previous search history. Because by default different people see different results, traditional ranking software cannot be relied on to give you an accurate indication of how well your sites are performing.

There is a free tool that I do use and recommend though. And, surprise surprise, it’s provided by Google.
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The new Google Instant seems to have made a large splash. For those who haven’t seen it yet, Google Instant is essentially the same as your regular Google results, only your results update as you type extra words into the search box.

The logic behind Instant is that according to Google’s tests, people take ten times as long to type an extra keystroke as they do to glance at a different part of the page. Google is essentially trying to provide you with faster results, and using their knowledge of how different keywords relate to each other to predict more accurately what you’re looking for as you type it.
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I frequently hear to lot of small talk and voodoo about SEO, things like “hyphenated domain are better for high rankings”, or “getting high rankings on Bing is easier than Google”. There may be an element of truth in these statements, but they lead people to forget what’s important. They might have worked for a particular site (or group of sites) at a particular time, but they aren’t universal principles.

At ProspectSoft we think there are only two universal principles – traffic and conversion.
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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is big business, and a whole industry has sprung up around getting your website to the top of the search engine rankings. Today, I want to share an SEO insight that very few people are talking about… one that might turn your current idea of SEO on its head.

The Personalisation of Search

Google has, for a while, provided customised search results for users logged into their Google account. Effectively, if you have been logged into Google Mail or a similar Google program then gone and performed a search, Google stores a list of your previous search history. Customised results are then presented, reflecting what Google thinks you are interested in based on your past searches.
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