@Google: How is this a good search result for business phone system?

UPDATE 01/24/13 - Cisco finally fixed their CMS. The formatting is still broken on the content but at least it is back on the page. For Google, it does not seem to matter either way because they rank #2 as if nothing ever happened.

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UPDATE 01/22/13 - The Google cache has been updated to show the blank page and it still ranks #2. Amazing. Talk about giving Cisco the benefit of the doubt.

Where's the beef?

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UPDATE 01/21/13 - Cisco still in position #2 and they still have an empty page! At least a week with absolutely no real content in the page, which is clearly broken. You'd think that even if Google doesn't notice the problem, Cisco would at least notice by now. Does anyone actually manage this part of their website?

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UPDATE 01/17/13 - Cisco has moved up to position #2 and they still have an empty page!  Both Google and Cisco are asleep at the switch on this one. It's been more than 3 days since their content has been MIA (I doubt I happened to find the page right when their CMS broke).
I wonder which will happen first:

• Google will recrawl the page and update its rankings correctly
• Cisco will realize that their CMS is serving up a bunch of donut pages and they'll fix it

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I am getting familiar with the telecom industry in search as part of my job.  Each industry has its own nuances, players, and idiosyncrasies.  One thing that is common is that from time to time you will find head-scratching results in the SERPs (search engine results pages).  Often it is because someone is having a bad day (site is down, CMS error, hosting provider makes a DNS mistake, etc....).  Other times, it is because Google just has not yet gotten around to updating their index for a particular term.  They may get to it eventually, but sometimes they are a bit slow to update the results even though the underlying content and/or competition has changed for a given topic. It is impossible for Google to stay on top of each result and each page for every term at every second of every day.  But then again, when you listen to Eric Schmidt, he thinks that the whole concept of showing a list of search results is a failure.

Today, I found a good example of someone having a bad day leading to a poor search result.  If you search for "business phone system" you will see Cisco listed with the #3 position in the organic results:

Nice position, there should be good content behind that link, right?

You can' always get what you want....

You would think that after clicking on that highlighted result you would be presented with some sort of wizard/set of questions to help me find the perfect phone system for my small business. You would think that wouldn't you? Well, let's see what we get instead:

This is thin content

Now, that is what I call a generous use of white space on a page layout.

My guess is that the CMS is broken or someone at Cisco has inserted some code (perhaps to trigger the chat window) which prevents the main content from displaying.

After navigating a few different pages, it looks like the problem may be pretty serious because I found multiple "empty" pages today on their site.  I'm curious though at what point does  Google take this into consideration into changing rankings/indexed status of such a page.

The last cached copy from Google is January 3rd, which at least did have real content in the page (not great, but at least something).  So we know that it worked correctly 11 days ago, but not sure when the page stopped working correctly.

Even when working correctly, the page content did not satisfy the promise made by the headline.  It listed off some features/functionality that users should consider but it did nothing to actually educate visitors on what those features mean, not the tradeoffs or factors are to consider with regard to the list of features. It also makes sure to mention that you should talk to a trusted adviser (translation - Cisco reseller).  Why can't Cisco just clearly educate the visitor right on this page?  Furthermore, it lists the next step as a link to learn more about Cisco's solutions, but when you get to that page it is just a list of their products without any guidance to what you should be looking to learn or how it fits together.  Obviously, I am biased, but I think the content we provide is better. You be the judge.

We all have bad days

Sometimes our sites don't behave as they are supposed to. Let's just hope that if these problems persist, Google will get around to taking that into consideration in the rankings, even if the site is famous.  Otherwise, that is an unfair advantage for "big" sites.  Google should not protect the 1% sites any better than the 99% when mistakes are made.

You can get the Gringo out of Spain, but...

I have been totally radio silent on this blog for a long time.  A lot has happened since I last wrote about the Barça game:

• We've left Spain and moved to the happiest place in America.  Even Oprah agrees.
• I've started working for ShoreTel Sky, a cloud based business VoIP service in their Marketing department.  First time working from home.  Required some adjustment, but so far going well.
• Getting the boys settled and adapted to new schools, new house, and new language (well, at least new for them to speak outside of the house)
• Surfing much more....the Pacific as a few more waves than the Mediterranean sea.
• No more weekly basketball games. Switched over to futbol (soccer) instead.
• Trying to pickup my tennis game when I can.

Overall, it has been a very good transition. We miss our family and friends back in España but we´re now with other family here and starting to make some new friends (as well as see some great old ones too).

Now that I have rediscovered the blog, I hope to get back to writing some more.  

Need to find some time to keep improving GA Evolution. I have received some great feedback on good features.  In progress, but no ETA on the next rev. Hope in the next few weeks to get the top items completed.

2013 is looking great so far and excited to see where it leads.

A Barça Game Full of Firsts & Lasts

I had always said to Dante that he'd go to see a football match once he was 4 years old. We were lucky enough to get a free ticket to last week's Barça match. As luck would have it, the game would be a series of "firsts" and "lasts" for us and the team:

• Last time Guardiola would coach in el Campo Nou
• Last home game of the season
• Last time I can probably take Diego to see a game and have him get in for free
• First game ever for Dante
• First game ever for all three of us together
• First time for someone to break the single season scoring record in all competitions (Messi) since the 1920s
• First time for someone (Messi) get to 50 league goals in a single season

90 minutes can be long for young kids, even if it is watching great football.  Nevertheless, being there was special and something that I'll never forget. Thank you Eva and Xavi for getting the ticket for us.

Just me and the boys with great seats...

Distilled bookmarklet modified to support GA Custom URLs

Tom Critchlow from Distilled released a bookmarklet this week that lets you instantly access the traffic stats in GA for whatever page on which you are navigating (assuming you have permission in GA of course).  It works perfectly on any site with GA so long as it does not use custom URL in the _trackPageview command (well over 90% of sites).

However, for sites like ours, we were out of luck because we always use custom URLs to give us finer tuned reporting and allows us to leave URLs optimized (or at least semi-optimized with what our CMS will allow) while having detailed and optimized data for reporting and analysis.

I have modified the script to work with sites that use custom URLs for tracking in GA as well as for standard implementations.

javascript:location.href="https://www.google.com/analytics/web/#report/content-pages/INSERT-CODE-HERE/%3F_r.drilldown%3Danalytics.pagePath"+encodeURIComponent(":"+ (typeof _gat.N[0].F == "undefined" ? location.pathname : _gat.N[0].F))+"%26explorer-table.secSegmentId%3Danalytics.source/";

The key change is to substitute location.pathname from the original script and replace it with a block that checks for any custom URLs stored in GA for that page

(typeof _gat.N[0].F == "undefined" ? location.pathname : _gat.N[0].F)

The only caveat is that you are still out of luck if your use inbound filters to transform your URLs inside GA. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution other then creating a regex yourself to apply the same transformation to the URL.

Instructions for making this work on your site:
1) Go to Tom's post
2) Enter your code from GA as he mentions it in his post
3) Drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar
4) Right click the bookmarklet and edit the script by changing:
location.pathname
to
(typeof _gat.N[0].F == "undefined" ? location.pathname : _gat.N[0].F)

Change the part that says location.pathname to (typeof _gat.N[0].F == "undefined" ? location.pathname : _gat.N[0].F)

5) Click OK and you are good to go

GA is a bit confused this morning...

GA this morning forgot its cup of coffee

I am really enjoying the new GA v5, especially as they start porting some of the remaining functionality that has been missing these last months such as PDF and email support.  They even have improved the contrast in the latest iteration so I don't feel compelled to try to make GA higher contrast

One area, however, that I prefer from before was the main graph area.  It used to show the comparison information from previous periods as well as percentage differences. I suppose to save CPU they decided to remove that info and only post the standard aggregate data. The scaling also really needs some improvement because they play with the labels and scale with every change of a report.

Some things though you can just chalk up to being "beta".  This morning GA seems a bit confused on how to display its labels for time.  Look at the screenshot below. Hours are days and days are hours....feels a bit philosophical.

Not quite up to swiss watchmaker standards...

Hope they fix this later today.

PLUS: GA Evolution is Evolving

Also, I just wanted to give a quick heads up that I am completely rewriting Google Analytics Evolution.  The new version will be a responsive design in HTML5, based on Bootstrap, jQuery (of course), and the alpha (please don't break) version of the Google API Javascript Client Library.  I have all of the data pieces working and now I am just finishing the presentation of the returned data.

After that I will put Flot back into the mix and I'll relaunch.  This new verison will also include an option to sum/aggregate data from separate queries on the page.  Nothing very sophisticated and you'll need to be careful about aggregating averages, but for people who manage multiple sites but do not have "global" profiles setup in GA this can be a time saver.

Hope to have this released in the next week or two.

Pimp My gReader Script Updated for new Google Bar

Google does not seem to stop changing their lame  new Google Bar.  At least this time it was for the better by bringing back the top black bar for quick links.

Anyway, this update broke the PimpMygReader script.  Well, it is now updated and all I think are fixed.  The difficulty this time is that Google has decided to implement multiple css schemes depending on screen size AND browser type, so I had to make adjustments for small and larger screens for both Firefox and Google.... So much for working towards standards.

For more info, download the script and background, see the original post to improve Google Reader

Fines for surfing in the Med - what's next...You can ski, but only when it is hot in the summer?

From the absurd desk comes this news....

The city of Barcelona will fine surfers for being out in the waves. This is because the surfers are considered "bathers" and all bathers must follow the posted instructions and respect the flags. Well, for the average tourist who has no idea about surfing, perhaps they should not go in the water when a red flag is posted. What City Hall (Ajuntament in catalan) does not seem to understand is that surfers need "surfable waves" in order to surf.

It is like giving fines to dancers for dancing at a dance hall because it is not safe for the people who are walking to the bar for a drink. Or fining skiers for being on the ski slopes because it is cold outside... you know less than 60ºF (15.5ºC).

The fines range from 700-1500€ per instance.  This is so pathetic.



What's worse is that we are talking about the Mediterranean!  This is not Hawaii, Mavericks or even Portugal.... this is the home of the "mediometrismo" (1.5 ft. sets).  Although I have to say that living here has been pleasantly surprising with the amount of "surfable" days there are per year, we are still only talking 2 to 4 days a year of true overhead surf.  Even then you will be hard pressed to find many DOH+ sessions near Barcelona.

I understand if they want to fine/charge people who need to be rescued, but in no way does it make sense to fine someone for being in the water exactly at the moment when they need to be in the water.  Going back to the mountain example.  If search and rescue need to go save you because you ignored all the signs and you get lost, OK... let them make you pay for the public services.  But if you are going down the bunny hill, no one should be racing to make you pay the government.

OK, pop quiz... 1 of these surfers could be fined... guess which one:

You guessed it, the poor fella in the lower right better be reaching for his wallet...

May the wave gods help us all.