When & how do Seller Rating Extensions appear? The Seller Rating Extension will automatically append a store’s rating from Google Product Search if you meet the minimum requirements of a 4-star rating and 30+ reviews. There is no need to sync your account with Google Product Search, as the ratings are pulled based on the display URL.

If your ad has an extremely high quality score and shows in the top panel (above natural results), the extension will also display the number of qualified reviews next to the rating. Note: New reviews can take up to 10 days to appear in product search.

Currently, the ratings will only show to English speakers in the US. It is our understanding that the ads will NOT show with other extensions (i.e. product extensions or SiteLinks).

Where do the ratings & reviews come from? Google Product Search ratings are compiled from a variety of sources including (but not restricted to) Epinions, Google Checkout, Reseller Ratings, Bizrate & PriceGrabber.

How much do they cost? There is no additional charge if a user clicks on an ad featuring a Seller Rating Extension, and there is no cost if a user clicks through just to read reviews.

How can I take advantage? Assuming you’re already registered for Google Product Search (it’s free!) the most important thing you can do is to keep serving your customers well and encouraging them to rate your store. The ratings will show automatically for all eligible queries unless you explicitly opt out here.

Are seller rating extensions a good thing? That’s for you to decide. There are a number of huge advantages to the new extensions, but you will never know if they are truly helping your business until you test. To help decide if the extensions will help or hurt you, SEER has outlined a few pro’s and con’s/potential pitfalls below.

Pros

• The extensions put a new emphasis on online customer service. We always knew that your reputation can have a huge influence on your store. Seller Rating Extensions only increases the influence by putting the ratings front and center.
• Assuming you have a great customer service rating, you can stand out from competitors who may have had a few issues from time to time.
• Having a 5-star rating show for a challenging non-brand term can enhance your visibility & help you stand out from the competition.

Potential Pitfalls

• While you don’t pay for clicks to the review site (and Google claims the review links receive less clicks), these clicks take the user away from your AdWords landing pages and your planned conversion funnel.
• If you have a new or small business, you may be trumped by a store with more reviews or simply may not be eligible.
• The ratings extensions appear (based on preliminary testing) to be trumped by other extensions. If you have SiteLinks, Location Listings, or Product Listing Extensions, the Seller Ratings Extensions will not be shown.
• The Seller Ratings Extensions could punish those who aren’t registered for Google Product Search (or other Comparison Shopping Engines).
  • While Google Product Search is free, it does require a certain amount of maintenance to make sure your product feed is up to date.
  • Other CSE’s that provide Google with reviews (PriceGrabber, BizRate) aren’t cheap and may not be right for your business.

The Seller Rating Extension is certainly a very compelling new AdWords feature; perhaps even more compelling is that Google rolled it out automatically and with almost no notice. Whether or not you are eligible for ratings extensions they provide an always welcomed reminder as to how important customer service is, especially in the E-Commerce space.

SEER will always recommend that you test, test, test to find out what works for your business; Seller Ratings Extensions are no exception! So what do you think – are Seller Ratings Extensions a 5-star feature??

Per Google’s Help Center, “Search Funnels are a set of new reports describing the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion.” Search Funnels are currently in beta and may not be available for your account (note: you need to have AdWords conversion tracking installed or Analytics linked to your account for Search Funnels to work). If they are enabled, you can find them by hovering over the Reporting tab and clicking on Conversions. On the left side, you should see a link to Search Funnels!

Now, what makes Search Funnels so special?? To this point, all of Google’s conversions were attributed to the last click before the conversion. However, there is a LOT that goes into any sales funnel; why would Google be any different? I’d be willing to bet a good percentage of your conversions don’t occur on the first click. Just like any other sales funnel, there is likely a discovery phase, research/evaluation phase and more before a searcher finally converts. With all buzzwords out of the way, let’s take a deeper dive into the reports that Google so kindly built for us.

I: Path Length report –

The Path Length report is a birds-eye view of the overall length of your Search Funnel in terms of impressions and clicks. Did you expect your customers to find what they want on the first search? The Path Length report will let you how many searches a customer conducts before completing a conversion.

II: Time Lag report -

Similar to the Path Length report, the Time Lag report shows how long it took your customers to convert. Do you have an expensive product that could affect an entire organization? Expect a long lag-time as a searcher is likely evaluating a number of different options. You could shorten up the lag time by offering a softer call to action (for example, a whitepaper download) instead of asking the customer to give away too much information at the outset. Do you offer a low-priced commodity product? Expect the conversion funnel to shorten up as a customer is likely just looking for convenience and a bargain.

The time lag report can be viewed from first impression (time since their first query) first click and last click.

III: Assisted Conversions report –

With the first two reports we’ve established there’s more to a conversion than meets the eye. The Assist Conversion report dives a bit deeper into the conversion funnel and provides us with the extremely important assist metric, helping us find the Steve Nash and Jason Kidd of the conversion funnel. Whenever a keyword is part of a conversion funnel but is not the last click before conversion, it is given an assist conversion (either click or impression based). Let’s say you have a site that sells baseball gear and a customer wants to buy a new bat. The customer proceeds through the following path:

Baseball bats (your ad shows, but they do not click)

Baseball bats (again, your ad shows and no click occurs)

Good baseball bats (click!)

Good baseball bats (another click!)

Louisville bats (your ad shows, but they do not click)

Louisville Slugger (click, purchase, $$$ for you)

The above path would give a click-assisted conversion to “Good Baseball Bats,” impression-assisted conversions to “Baseball Bats” and “Louisville Bats” and finally a last-click conversion to “Louisville Slugger.”

Last click conversions should match what you have in the AdWords interface and represents all conversions that came through your campaign, while assisted conversions will show you who everyone who helped out!. Google also provided us with a calculated field to show us which keywords helped out the most. In the example above, you may want to re-think deleting “baseball bats” because of a low ROI – odds are it has a very high assist-conversion ratio.

IV: Assist Clicks & Impressions report –

The Assist Clicks & Impressions report dives a bit deeper into our newly-beloved assist metric and shows us exactly how many clicks and impression it takes on each keyword to get the job done. It is important to note that in this report, the “assist” metric is not exclusive in this case meaning. In the previous baseball example, there were two clicks on “Good Baseball Bats” and two searches for “Baseball bats” in the conversion funnel – in this report they would receive two Assist Clicks and two Impression Clicks respectively.

V: First Click Analysis report –

This report is a fairly simple high-level view of conversions sorted by the first clicked campaign/ad group/keyword in a conversion funnel. Each time you click on a given element the report navigates to the next level on the hierarchy. If you click on a campaign, Google displays all the ad groups in that campaign. Same goes for a transition from ad groups to keywords. If you click on a specific keyword and get super granular, you’ll be taken to a report that shows a dashboard of all reports available for that particular keyword.

VI: Last Click Analysis –

See section V; replace all instances of “first” with “last.”

VII: Top Paths report –

Think your brand conversions are responsible for all your conversions? The Top Paths report will likely prove otherwise, showing every click or impression along the conversion funnel. Thanks to the other reports, we know all the keywords that had an influence on the report, but we haven’t yet had a chance to see what order they work in.

Our Google reps let us know a few things that may give you a bit of a ‘scare’ this report, so I may as well call them out now…

1: There will only be a few clear cut leading paths, followed by an extremely long tail.

2: There will be a ton of instances of (filtered path data) showing up in the impression-based reports. Just like the ever-frustrating “x other unique queries” label in Search Query reports, the (filtered path data) metric shows when Google simply doesn’t have enough information to populate the report.

As you can see from this novella-length post, there is a TON available in Google Search Funnels. I hope this brief introduction gave you a good starting point to explore! Oh, and sorry for all the sports references…

How do YOU plan on using search funnels to help your campaigns? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

It’s human nature to return to a strategy that has worked in the past.  But consider the caveman enjoying a hearty potato after a long day of club-carrying and grunting.  How many years were ancient cavemen and cavewomen munching down on raw potatoes before they realized that by dropping them in some boiling water or rolling them in some prehistoric tin foil and dropping them in a fire made them infinitely more desirable?  Clearly this is an exaggerated example, but the fact remains that it’s not uncommon to become complacent with a strategy or a process that has worked in the past, and SEO is no exception.  That brings us to the moral of today’s story: ADAPT.

Always Ask “Why”

“Why?” is perhaps the oldest question in our arsenal.  As kids, it was “why do I have to go to bed?!” As adolescents, it was “why does the world hate me?”  But as SEOs, “Why” is probably our most powerful weapon, provided it’s wielded properly.  First off, I must make it clear that there is an important distinction between questioning your strategies and processes, and second guessing yourself or your peers; the latter of which can be very damaging to a team atmosphere.  I’m not calling for everyone to walk up to your co-worker and interrogate his or her linking strategies, keyword selection, or competitive analysis – far from it.  What I’m calling for here is an internal register that determines what the real value is to any strategy.  Think about the last recommendation you made to a client and ask yourself: “Why should they dedicate their precious and finite time and resources to this?”  This sort of forward thinking benefits us in two ways; first, it allows us to better understand our clients, their needs, and their concerns.  If we know what is important to them and can accurately and correctly explain the rationale behind our thought processes, it builds their faith in us while at the same time reinforcing that they made the right investment in us.  On the other hand, by asking “Why” internally, you are able to see what aspects of your strategies can be improved; you must have faith in your processes, but at the same time maintain a healthy understanding that there may be a better way to do things.

Finally, we cannot talk about “Why” without touching on “Why’s” ugly stepsister: “Why Not.”  You should be able to tell a client why not to buy links (and “Because Matt Cutts Said So” is not an appropriate answer).  You should be able to explain why not to include white text on a white background and why a company that sells fax machines should not be targeting “Purple Giraffe on a Pogo Stick” as their primary keyword.  These examples may seem a bit outrageous, but the sentiment rings true; by asking “Why” you do what you do (and “Why Not”), it allows you to a) prepare for client questions and b) provide the most comprehensive consulting possible.

Don’t Rest on Your Laurels

Hooray, we’ve made it to page one!  Now what?  Time to call it a day and go out and celebrate, right?  WRONG!  Complacency has always been the enemy of innovation, and SEO is no exception.  Until you’ve done everything you can to achieve top rankings, capture all relevant local listings, create a robust GoogleBase feed (for eCommerce clients) and leverage relevant Universal results, your work is not fully finished.  Again, I want to be clear here that anything short of top rankings across the board does not necessarily indicate failure; on the contrary, I’m simply cautioning against growing complacent with success when there is room to improve.  Work constantly to improve your strategies, using past accomplishments as a springboard for continued success.  Run an eCommerce website?  Try conducting a brand audit to target specific products that may be underperforming.  Manage a blog?  Try running a contest for your readers.  Stuck with a linkbuilding writer’s block?  Digg up some new ideas.  What separates the good from the great is a constant drive to be the best, so put yourself in a position to be the best by learning not only from your failures, but also your success.

Adjust

Adjusting strategies doesn’t necessarily mean changing how you approach SEO best practices; it could mean something as simple as making sure you’re delivering the most complete portfolio possible.  The recent launch of Open Site Explorer, for example, has forced us to re-evaluate how we look at link data.  The information pulled into this database is not new information, but rather an improved medium through which to view the information.  In any industry, a refusal to adjust to changing times is a surefire way to pigeonhole yourself into a menial desk job with no prospect at advancing.  However, in the world of SEO, a refusal to adjust to advances in the industry won’t even secure that menial desk job.  Consider a telephone company that refuses to sell anything but rotary phones – how long before that business model implodes?  We are in a very unique space where we must constantly adjust to changing times, whether due to updates in the search algorithms, the merger of two search giants, or the introduction of new features such as Personalized Search.  While the social implications are certainly different, Bob Dylan’s words still ring true: As the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fadin’.  And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changin’.

Proactively Seek Information

I was an avid procrastinator for the vast majority of my life up through and including college, and I got along fairly well.  However, the SEO industry is not one where you can sit back and wait for someone to clue you in.  “Wait, Yahoo! and MSN are doing what?!?” is not a statement that’s going to instill a lot of faith in your clients when they ask what the implications the impending merger has on their SEO and PPC efforts.  And the strategy of proactively seeking information is not one that requires much preparation on your part, just a thirst to learn.  Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and heck, just talking to friends and colleagues are some very simple ways to stay on top of trends and changes in the industry.  The trick, however, is knowing how to parse this information, how to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Read multiple opinions on the same topic to put yourself in a position to form an educated opinion.  The value of the nofollow tag, for example, is one that has caused the best of friends to glare menacingly at one another across the proverbial battlefield.  If there was a black-and-white handbook for SEO, we’d all be out of the job.  Our true value lies in our inherent need to proactively seek out information and, furthermore, to take this information and…

Test, Test, Test!

You can spend 4 hours of day reading the latest blog posts from SEO gurus across the country, but there has never been (nor ever will be, in my opinion) an adequate substitute for testing.  In fact, the experts in our field gained their well-deserved renown from constantly questioning, testing, and re-testing theories until they found what works.  Anyone holding out for that miraculous day when Google just tells us how to achieve page one rankings will be blue in the face for a very long time.  Successful SEOs know how to take their questions, their successes, and their failures and transform them into something that can truly be revolutionary in our field.  And remember what Thomas Edison said when attempting to invent the lightbulb: I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

So there you have it: Always Ask Why, Don’t Rest on your Laurels, Adjust, Proactively Seek Information, and Test, Test, Test!  Five relatively simple strategies that allow SEOs young and old to ADAPT for success in the constantly changing world of SEO.

Being a good SEO I had to try this myself this time I used the question “what is a short sale” which showed the following:

Looking at the description source it is coming from a Princeton University language project. If you actually click on the result it doesn’t take you to that site, instead it takes you to to a Google page that has over 14 definitions.

Here’s a shot:

I would imagine that the sites Google pulls in are for the most part “quality sites” that have passed some kind of algorithmic sniff test. This lends value to creating glossaries for even the most niche content. Not only are there HIGH Quality sites to submit glossaries to but they are also starting to show up all over Google properties. Take the example below of buying guides showing up in Google Product Search.

Implications in E-commerce SEO

E-commerce SEO’s check this out, we all know all about Google adding images into paid search (as shown below), but have you seen the buying guides that Google is showing in product search (scroll to the bottom).

Or see for yourself:

Take notice to the “view more buying guides link” on this page when clicked it showed a pretty average looking review page that fell into the “more results” (see thumb below) instead of the top 3. Google is definitely seeming to in this example reward sites with good images (buying guides with images likely attract more links, versus snowboard buying guides like this, over time I’ll be doing more research on this to see how links and other things could be impacting rankings.

Either way guys and girls, at the end of the day, creating guides, glossaries, etc (yes, just good useful content) seems to be a content development strategy that Google is rewarding, so get on your horse. Don’t allow yourself to be lazy and say “there’s already several how to buying guides or glossaries in my space”, which is likely true, just get more deep, hit a niche of a niche, but start writing. Your rankings & traffic may depend on it.

To see Google Real Time Search results, go to http://www.google.com/trends and select one of the Hot Topics. The image below is for the search “winter storm.”

The second result on the page incorporates blog posts, news bulletins, and Twitter updates. All are shown based on relevancy to the search term. Interestingly, it looks like the full URL is displayed in the search results for Twitter posts, rather than the shortened URL. The real time results can be paused.

The link at the top of the live search results points to this page. From here, you can swap out the search term to see what the real time search results would be for nearly any term. Try seo:

One question we’ve already heard today is, “How can I make sure I show up in these search results?” So far, it seems to be a combination of relevancy and authority. There’s still so much to learn about these new developments. For the time being, if you put up a blog post or tweet about a topic, why not make sure you include good keywords?

Neven explained how this technology will be used: “Imagine you’re a tourist and you arrive at this place and you would like to know more about it, all you will have to do is take a shot of the Santa Monica pier sign and you see we recognized this as the Santa Monica pier.” From this point, Google could provide information about the Santa Monica pier’s history and attractions.

At this point, Google Visual Search has not passed Google’s testing and a release date was not shared. I’m curious about how this will work if and when Google Visual Search does go live. Will it work by searching for pages with similar images? If so, will information like content around the image, file titles, and image alt text make a difference? Will results be ordered by the value of the sites that have the images? I look forward to being able to speculate on these answers once Google Visual Search is launched, but think this is a further indication that sites should be cognizant of the images they offer and whether or not they are providing significant information about these images to the search engines.

In addition to showing this new product, “Inside the Mind of Google” showed the inside of the Googleplex, interviews with multiple Googlers, and a very basic overview of AdWords. The story also said that 95% of Google’s revenue is generated by AdWords.

There was no mention of SEO, but a significant amount of time was dedicated to the amount of information Google has available about users and the possible privacy implications. Watching this section, I remembered a short story from several years ago that I’m still a big fan of, Scroogled, and wanted to share it. Between our search history, Gmail, YouTube uploads and views, Reader, Docs, and many other products, Google does have access to a lot of information about its users, and we are all counting on Google to not be evil.

For anyone interested in watching “Inside the Mind of Google,” CNBC is running it again at the following times:
Saturday, December 5th 7p ET
Sunday, December 6th 10p ET
Thursday, December 10th 8p and 1a ET
Thursday, December 24th 4p and 8p ET
Friday, December 25th Midnight ET

Google Trends says that Google Chrome is “on fire.”

Looking at the top 100 terms being searched for today, Google Chrome takes up two of the spots, including #3 for the day.

In the few minutes since I searched for Chrome on Summize (to see how many people are talking about it on Twitter), another 2600 Tweets went out about Chrome.

So that’s a little sample of the online hype. Now I’ve finally been able to download Chrome and I’m looking forward to seeing how it lives up to the hype, as well as how Google launching its own browser will affect SEO.

If you said site B you’d be wrong. Even though the stats KILL site A it is just not the case that the best content always wins out.

How can Suite 101’s page on red wine (Page A), that is a general site with no theme, outrank Winelibrary’s Video on California Pinot Noir (Page B) on a search for California pinot noir??

Because content is NOT king, maybe someday it will be, but right now, that is NOT the case!

What kind of sparked this research was simple, I was following Jason Calacanis’ twitter feed (yes I am addicted to twitter now, see me here) when he praised this video of Gary Vaynerchuk.

Right off the bat, I like Gary. I met him briefly at Affiliate Summit in Vegas but really got a dose of his personality in this video (I have NEVER heard of Winelibrary TV but now I am hooked).

If you watch the video, I LOVE everything he is saying but then… I hear this at 2 minutes 15 seconds: “don’t worry about your SEO rank or how to title your blog posts”, What!!!!!!!!! (Disclaimer: this comment is about 2% of the whole video, I know I am focusing on a small part. The other 98% is awesome.)

Don’t obsess, yes, but don’t worry at all?! I think that is bad advice.

A search for “content is king” on Google showed me this:

In this video where Matt Cutts himself recommends that webmasters think about what users are going to type to find their content. He even recommends getting those keywords into the site. Optimization is NOT bad.

But the search engines are just not smart enough “yet” to make sure that the best content always wins out, and we’re not talking about #1. There can always be more than just 1 site with great content on a topic and there can only be one #1!. I get that.

What I’m talking about top 10, top 20 where so often lower quality sites can creep in. Often times replacing great content sites who have chosen not to optimize and stick to a “content is king” philosophy, where basic best practices are not followed.

Not following best practices as it relates to SEO leads to:

• Poorer results for users all over the web
• Allows lower quality sites to outrank you and pollute the web

Lets give an example of how far the search engines still have to go to determine relevancy:

Have you ever searched for a plural versus a singular and saw the difference in the SERPS? Here’s an example, check out a search for nursing college and nursing colleges.

There is a wide disparity, and I can’t image that Google really believes that Ohio-state.edu should be the second most relevant result for “nursing college” and not worth being in the top 100 for the word “nursing colleges” (as of my search) what if we complicate things by searching for “nursing university”?

With that said, search engines definitely still have a ways to go, and while they are not perfect they NEED a boost now, they need a little help, and honestly I think that that is what good SEO does.

Here’s a step by step example of WHY people with great content who are NOT doing SEO basics, like how to title your blog posts are hurting and not helping! I’ll use Winelibrary.com as an example:

When I type in “red wine” I get this:

• A relevant about.com page (they do SEO basics)
• 2 sites about health
• A Wikipedia page (of course)
• And redwine audio’s site

No wine library in the Top 100! I think they deserve to be somewhere in the top 100, don’t you?!!!

I can’t tell you the countless times I have used search engines to help me find a good bottle of cheap wine while out at the wine store or before I head out for dinner and I NEVER saw Gary’s site. Why are you holding out on me bro?

OK, MAYBE this is not a term that winelibrary should rank well for. So, I did a search for “wine reviews” – This seems to be LOCK STEP with the idea of the show. I love Gary for not being a freaking wine snob, I hate those guys too!

Do a search for “wine reviews” or “wine reviews online” on Google or Yahoo, and they will not show Winelibrary.com and I think that is a BAD thing for wine enthusiasts and people who want to learn about wines. I honestly feel that if Winelibrary.com were to rank well for these terms that it would help wine enthusiasts all over the world.

At this point, forget the business equation of:
higher rank = more traffic & more traffic = more business for winelibrary.com (which is not part of the 80/20 principle Gary mentions)
And forget the ego boost:
higher rank = more visibility & more visibility = more notoriety (also not 80/20)

I kind of imagined a Gary & Matt (Cutts) Conversation going something like this:

I could see the conversation between Gary & Matt Cutts right now:
Matt: I love wine man, your site is great!
Gary: Thanks man, its all about just being real about the wine and the Jets bro, glad I could help, You a wine guy?
Matt: A bit
Gary: What kind of wines you like?
Matt: Well I love pinot noir, but the other day I wanted a great California pinot noir and did a search and found this site:
Some pretty BLAH content, I noticed that you had this video & this video, good stuff.
Do me a favor man, please put the title of the video in your title tag and post a transcript so me and millions of others find your stuff instead of suite 101 and a stale about.com page.
Gary: We don’t need no stinking titles, just good content man! Content is KING, didn’t you see my gigaOM video?
Matt: Well man, you know I do have to take some time out of my schedule to chill with my wife and play with the cat! We’re working on it but for now, just a few best practices will make sure I get better wines after a long day fighting spammers, not to mention you’d actually push the crap further down by helping your stuff move up.
Gary: Content is King man, I don’t need to optimize, that’s SEO stuff!
Matt: Darn, oh well, let me go talk to these 400 spammers who are going to tell me they did nothing wrong, but in the meantime, make my job a bit easier and optimize just a little bit, k?
Gary: Yeah, Go J-E-T-S Jets, Jets, Jets!

Comedic Interlude Over:

Seriously, by not optimizing your site with just basic best practices you are allowing:
Thin affiliate’s, scrapers, and low authority sites to get information (possibly poor information) out to wine lovers & possibly giving them a bad experience with wine.

To his defense Gary didn’t crap on SEO but in passing he briefly mentioned not to worry about putting the right keywords in and let content win out.

So I quickly wanted to respond by saying, I think this new approach to saying hey I am not going to optimize my site and you shouldn’t either can lead to a bad user experience when searching for things on the web.

I also look at the best buys section of wine library (cause I am always looking for a good cheap wine) and notice some good stuff there too, yet because the site isn’t following basic best practices it is not ranking well.

Gary, while I don’t like the Jets, (Go EAGLES) here are some tips to help you sell more wine to help you buy the Jets maybe a day or two earlier:
I would take the best buys section and first do some keyword research to see how people search for lower cost wines, starting with Google Suggest:

Then a little Yahoo Search Assist:

This exercise took me about 3 minutes
Winelibrary.com already has a page that has great wines called “best buys”
When looking at the admittedly quick research it seems that people search for wines under $10, $15 and $20 dollars. Winelibrary already has a page that has wines under $20, could you also develop one for $10 and $15? Because the research shows that there are people out there searching for wines at these prices and you have credibility in helping people select wines, you would be HELPING them.
Heck, maybe you could do a video on wines under these price points. Given the way the economy is, we don’t want to stop drinking great wines, but we may have less money, and I’d listen to your opinions.

If not for growing your business, how about for actually helping people on the Internet find good wines under these price points from a GREAT source, which you are. Remember your 80/20 rule, help me, and many others find great wines, you guys are a credible source, with yes, GREAT CONTENT, even if it needs a little boost to make it findable.

If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for us, the wine loving public!

I should be sleeping right now, but I read something that I had to briefly write about. I was just in Vegas last week, presenting on how to future-proof your SEO strategy and I mentioned keeping an eye on Google / Yahoo etc using data on your site in helping them determine relevancy for SERPS.

At the time I didn’t have any examples of this happening for Google Analytics and I still don’t.

But The Google Blogoscoped post I linked to above & this one here from Marketingpilgrim discuss how now you can “choose” to share your Google Analytics content with Google so they can use the data for other products. I would think it is a no brainer for them to use this data to improve SERPS someday (i.e. spam sites aren’t sticky, so sites with low time on site could see a negative tick mark in rankings – Oh I can’t wait for the day when real data is one factor used in helping determine who ranks where.)
By choosing to share your data with Google (yes this is an opt-in program, read the FAQs) you will also get data from Google on how you compare in your industry to other sites (who are using Google analytics AND opt in). By the looks of things the data points you’ll be able to compare your site against others include:

• Visits
• Bounce rates
• Time on site
• Pageviews
• Pages per visit
• New visitor percentage

For those of you seeking competitive information back in November of 2006 Laura wrote about using some tools to spy on the competition. I have used the fireclick index in the past when clients ask about trends and benchmarks. It will be interesting to see how this compares, if you look really closely at the firclick data, you kind of say,
“OK so what am I going to actually do with this information?” Will this go the same way? I hope not, I hope the verticals are more finite, the fireclick verticals in my opinion are too broad.

Well anyway, If the data points above are any indication, where I think this data makes great strides over what is out there are in the following 3 areas:

1. You finally get real numbers, Quantcast, Compete, Alexa, etc are all questionable in the accuracy of the data. Quantcast data is much better when publishers use their quantified program.
2. “New visitor percentage” will allow you to tell the velocity by which your competitors are ramping up efforts to attract new visitors, right now Quantcast, Alexa, Compete, etc are not equipped to give you an idea on if your competitors site is just getting more visits from the same people or from a totally new set.
3. “Bounce Rates” will be huge, if you can see that you are on the bottom of your industry group for bounce rates, you could look at your top competitors, check their pages to see if they have Google Analytics page tags installed, and if they do, you could then review their sites to see what they are doing different / better.

The issues I can see already are:

1. Could I set up Google Analytics on an old domain, that is in my industry, but I don’t use anymore to get access to industry benchmark data, but not actually opt in my real site, allowing me to get access to data while not contributing to giving good data to the system.
2. The above issue immediately leads to another issue, garbage in, garbage out. If people try to use alternative domains to get access to the competitive data benchmarks then they are polluting the industry benchmark with poor data, thus decreasing the value for themselves and others. I hate people who do stuff like this, bit there is money to be made on the web and people will find opportunities to exploit a great opportunity like this, where in theory everyone that shares their data gets something out of sharing.

But the Google teams are known to be pretty sharp people, I’m looking forward to seeing this rolled out.

GO GOOGLE ANALYTICS – Even TECHCRUNCH’s Michael Arrington wants your data shared.

UPDATE: Googleblogoscoped has updated their post with screencaps.