Google Analytics makes it possible to track links to your site’s content

Recently, Google broadcasted that a new feature has been added to Google Analytics; with the help of which it will be easier to assess which other pages on the web are linked to your own website. Thus, making it easier for you to track which are the sites that are talking about your website and in what context.

Here is an excerpt from the Google’s post, which says:

“Have you ever wondered which other pages on the web link to your own? Wouldn’t it be nice to know which sites are talking about your content, and in which context? Well, a problem no more: now you can see all the backlink URL’s, post titles, and more right within the new Social reports.

The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.”

So, if you need to track the links for your website then all that is required, is to go to Google Analytics, then under Traffic Sources > Social > Pages and then click on a specific page. After that, click on the "Activity Stream" option at the top middle portion. Once you do this, you will get an automated report from Google Analytics, which will make you aware of the referencing links.

There is no doubt that it is a nice stride by Google indeed!

Contributed by:
IDS Logic

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Google: Go As Far Back As Possible To Remove Paid Links

Of late, Google's John Mueller replied in a Google Webmaster Help thread to a webmaster who got one of those unnatural links warnings. Few of the points that he made are:

Do Not Wait Out Penalties
Google has told not to wait out penalties as they can take a long period to be upturned. As an alternative, submit a reconsideration request so as to accelerate it. John said, "- If you're serious about your site's standing in our search results, then I'd strongly advise not to try to wait the penalty out. These are generally not issues that expire after a few days, they can affect your site's standing for quite some time."

Remove All Paid Links Going Back As Far As You Paid Links
It has been said by Google that if you have been reimbursing for links for two years, return to two years and eliminate those paid links. You can go back to any time period and do the same, be it four years, five years, or so. Apparently, Google wishes for a thoughtful effort to do away with all the paid links you assimilated over the years.
John elucidated, "Regarding the age of the unnatural links, I'd work to have them all removed, regardless of the age. For instance, in the general case where a site has been buying links for 2 years, it would be a good idea to go back that far."


Getting A Notification Now Doesn't Mean It Is A New Penalty
Google treaded up their notifications, hence if you receive a notification at present, it doesn't mean it is a new penalty. These notifications are basically for old penalties. John explicated, "while we have just recently started sending out these messages, they may apply to issues that were already known (and affecting your site's standing in our search results) for a while."

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April 2012 Google Webmaster Report

For those of you who are enthusiastically obsessed with Google, a quick insight into all the changes that have occurred in the previous month is here:

• Long Tail Sites Seeing Huge Fluctuations In Google Traffic
• E-Commerce Sites Not Ranking As Well
• Google's Localization Changed (Google Venice)

The most important as well as influential change that Google has come up with, of late, is the rolling of the Panda 3.4 update (http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-34-14926.html)! The recent announcement of Google via Twitter reads out:
“Panda refresh rolling out now. Only ~1.6% of queries noticeably affected.”

An important point to make a note out of this update is that even though only 1.6% of the search queries were affected because of this update, still the extent is large for those hit.

Besides this, the update is precisely a "refresh" and so, apparently, no different signals or algorithm alterations were done to this Panda update.

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A Routine Google Change Turns Search Traffic into Referrer Traffic

Google has changed the way it reports referrer information to users who use the Chrome browser. As a result of this some analytics programs may list search visitors as referrers, implying they came directly from Google without doing a search.

On Monday Night Google posted an update on its Webmaster Blog. It was regarding the Google HTTP Referrer.

It read:

“Starting in April, for browsers with the appropriate support, we will be using the "referrer" meta tag to automatically simplify the referring URL that is sent by the browser when visiting a page linked from an organic search result. This results in a faster time to result and more streamlined experience for the user.”

For those finding it tough to understand, here is a simplified version of it. Referrers are Caller IDs for web browsers that tell websites where someone comes from. If you click on one page to visit the next, the page you were on is passed along as referrer information that can be seen through web analytics tools.

Last year Google blocked referrer information from being leaked by those searching on the engine in case they were signed up and using a secure connection. Google justified the change as necessary to maintain higher levels of privacy. From April this year, Google will begin to use the referrer meta-tag to report a simplified “referrer”. The tag will help override the real referrer.

The change only impacts Chrome and nothing else as only Chrome supports the meta-referrer tag. Users on the Chrome browser will pass along a shorter URL for where they came from.

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Google Shut Down 800,000 Advertisers & 130 Million Ads

Google continues to wage a war fervently on advertisers defying the line and selling their goods not in accordance with the rules laid down by AdWords. The search engine continues to block fraudulent ads displayed on the Google Search Engine and also on millions of websites around the world.

Issuing a statement, the search engines says I-Quote

“Like all other Internet companies, we’re fighting a war against a huge number of bad actors—from websites selling counterfeit goods and fraudulent tickets to underground international operations trying to spread malware and spyware. We must remain vigilant because scammers will always try to find new ways to abuse our systems. Given the number of searches on Google and the number of legitimate businesses who rely on this system to reach users, our work to remove bad ads must be precise and at scale.”

In the previous year alone Google AdWords closed down about 800,000 accounts including 150,000 advertisers trying to advertise bogus goods. 2011 was also the landmark year when the search engine shut down 130 million ads that were either illicit or looked beyond natural.

The search engine uses an automatic filtering method which is a mix of virus detection, scams, non-compliance and counterfeit, followed by a Google Moderator which checks whether the ads are borderline or not.

Contributed by:
IDS Logic

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