Who is tracking your site? And what are they doing with the data? If you are reading this you probably answered “Webtrends, so I can get useful metrics on my site that help my business”. But are you sure that this is the only one? I am not talking about spyware, but tracking placed on your site for (not necessarily your) business purposes.

My job as a TAM (Technical Account Manager) is helping customers tag sites, configure profiles, and create reports. For those unfamiliar with the Webtrends TAM service this is sort of a combined consultant, admin, and analytics expert that you contract for a period of time rather than per project. But what does this have to do with who has your site data?

I got a request from a company who wanted to get more information on their social marketing efforts, starting with a series of Blogs. We were developing a strategy to track a long list of blogs done by their employees. Some were hosted on their company site but many were hosted on various other sites and platforms including personal domains.

What surprised me was the variety of tracking already implemented on the sites. Much of which I doubt the site owners knew about. I am not taking about spyware but actual tracking tags embedded in the page code that send data about their site somewhere else. Tracking included:

• Tracking from the CMS software
• Google tags, some of which seemed to be dropped in with other sections of code
• Hosted blog site tracking (e.g. blogengine.com)
• Site Host tags (You’d think that server hosts would do server side, not page based tracking)
• Tracking implemented by, with data going to, a consulting company who built the site
• Ad tracking tags

In some cases there were already 2 to 3 tracking tags on the site – before the Webtrends tag was added! Are you sure these types of tags aren’t on your site?

Is a site developer/hosting service/IT staff/banner ad/CMS software/etc. tracking your site for “quality control”? Where is this data going? Is your marketing data going to someone outside your company? Are they open about what they are doing with the data? Is it even your data even though it is coming from your site?

Ways to tell if your site is being tracked:

• Use a tool such as HttpWatch or Fiddler. These track requests coming from page loads. Watch for Post and GET requests to domains other than yours. This means data is going somewhere besides your domain.
• It is often easy to copy and paste a convenient function without realizing you are including a tracking code. When implementing outside code watch for calls using 1×1 transparent GIF files. This is a common method of sending tracking methods using an image not visible on your page.
• Check if your host and CMS have built in tracking and if so what information is being tracked and where does it go.
• If you have outside content on your site (e.g. a frame with ads) find out what they are tracking. Is it just ad response or is it including data on your site.

Even for your main site tracking – where does the data go? Can you see it or does it go into an unknown pool that you can pull some reports from. Do you have access to all the data being taken on your site? Who else has access to your data?

Some people worry about Big Brother watching them. While most of the companies that put tags on the sites were probably meaning well (“Let’s see how people are using our CMS product!”). They seemed more like a little brother. Not a benevolent “Watching you for your own protection” big brother. But the kid brother hiding behind the couch when his older sister brings home her new boyfriend – just to see if he can hear anything of interest. Occasionally, check behind the couch.

Webtrends has received a number of really great ideas for Engage 2010 sessions in the short time we’ve had open submissions. In fact, we’re expecting several more promised submissions this week, well beyond today’s submission deadline. So, in the spirit of fairness, we’ve decided to extend the deadline one more week!

The new deadline, November 23, gives you plenty of time to share your modern way around the ancient problem of making enterprise customer intelligence data relevant to digital marketing plans. Submitting your idea is fairly straightforward – just post a short synopsis on the Engage 2010 submission page for review. We’re very interested in hearing about the strategies, case studies, and notable trends related to the following areas:

• Social media
• Site optimization
• Mobile data
• Offline integration of data

Engage 2010 touts several types of presentation delivery formats, so be sure to mention which format you think your session idea is most suited for when you submit your idea:

• Sprints: Ignite-style presentations (5 minute PowerPoint presentations with a total of 20 slides that rotate automatically after 15 seconds)
• Breakout Sessions: Hour-long, timely, relevant, and intriguing presentations
• Workshops: Hands-on and interactive sessions with no PowerPoint and no agenda
• Flex Sessions: Small round-table discussions guided by industry leaders

The Webtrends Engage 2010 conference is three days of interactive sessions that are focused on the collaborative learning and teaching of best practices in using data for marketing insight. The list of dynamic speakers committed to speaking at Engage is already truly impressive, and many more forward-thinking individuals are about to be announced. This conference is not to be missed!

Add your interesting idea to the submission page today for your chance to be a part of the Engage 2010 agenda! And, one more thing: if you register to attend Engage 2010 before November 30, you’ll get $100 off the regular conference fee.

Send us your presentation idea and type of format, and present at Engage 2010!

Today marks the official Fall Release of Analytics 9. The biggest story to tell about this release is the real-time engine that now powers Insight. Also exciting is that if you’ve been wanting a native experience for Analytics 9 on the iPhone, now there’s an app for that. There are workflow enhancements from features like Alerts, Notes, and updates to our RSS overlay capability. And, Justin Garrity and the UX team have also poured some more of their design love into this already beautiful interface to make an even tighter user experience. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new from the second release of Analytics 9.

Real Time Analytics

I sat through some of the technical briefing around what went into creating an enterprise class real-time engine for analytics, and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I understood half of it. What I did understand was that I can now see traffic stats up to the minute. Product tells me we’re quoting refreshed data every 5 minutes, but I’ve been seeing sub two minute refreshes during Beta.

The real-time data gave rise to a 24 Hour view. This view is particularly interesting for high traffic sites, such as publishers. Now you can see when traffic is spiking and when it’s not. You’ll know immediately if you have a hot article that you should shift to promoting or if you need to rally the troops to keep trying. The view looks like this:

iPhone App

Insight has been mobile-friendly since it’s initial release because of our adherence to web standards. But, there was strong demand for an optimized iPhone experience. If you’re interested, get notified when the iPhone app for Webtrends Analytics 9 is available. It looks like this:

Alerts

Thanks to the real-time engine, Webtrends Analytics 9 now offers Alerts. Alerts come to you in several ways: As notifications when you login to Insight, as an email, as a text message, a Twitter direct message or as an RSS feed. They are easy to create and edit with a draggable slider bar that alerts you when traffic exceeds or does not exceed your desired threshold.

Because Alerts can be delivered as an RSS feed, there’s a whole world of possibilities that can be done with them. Alerts could trigger a search engine ad buys. Alerts can be added to the RSS overlay view. They could be used to create a feed of the most popular posts on your blog. I’m excited to see the innovative uses people will develop with an RSS feed of alerts.

Notes

When we first released the RSS overlay view, we got a lot of requests from our customers to be able to add their own notes as flags on this view, which is exactly what Notes does. Like Alerts, Notes are available via RSS. So, not only can you view Notes within Insight, but you can share them out with the rest of your team and other stakeholders. Again, excited to see what innovations people come up with for RSS feeds of Notes.

RSS Overlay Enhancements

One thing people wanted to be able to do was to use secure RSS feeds on the Overlay view. People wanted to be able to do things like pull in their offline marketing calendar milestones from Basecamp, which required authentication. It’s pretty cool to be able to correlate offline campaign releases with onsite traffic!

Another nice addition is that Insight now supports multiple RSS overlays. This feature makes it easier to see your blog feed, Twitter feed, offline marketing calendar, and more all at the same time.

Tightening up

In addition to the new features, the Fall Release of Analytics 9 got some visual enhancements as well. Scrubbing across the timeline is easier to track visually because the detailed data is presented in a frame with a fixed location. The dimension column is now locked in the Report View of Insight when you scroll data to the left. Help is now integrated within the app. Tabs gave way to cleaner looking buttons. The date is closer to the report data. The compare checkbox is integrated with the date. It feels even tighter now in the app environment. See it below:

Availability

Analytics 9 Fall Release is already deployed and customers have receiving the goodness! Real time is available now for customers that participated in the Preview/Beta release over the past month. It will be a phased provisioning to the remainder of our customer base over the next few weeks. Current customers are receiving the capability at no charge for the remainder of their current contract. For additional details about pricing and availability, please contact your sales rep.

The number of impressive names on the speaker list for the Engage 2010 enterprise customer intelligence conference continues to grow! Webtrends is proud to announce four new inspiring individuals who’ve signed on to share their wealth of experiences with conference attendees. Register now for Engage 2010 to listen to great ideas from the great minds of people from the following well-respected organizations:

Join us at Engage in New Orleans

The three-day Engage 2010 conference is designed to encourage the exploration of ways to gain new understanding of the data gleaned from enterprise customer intelligence sources. It will be held in New Orleans, LA, a vibrant city with a history of reinventing itself, and an appropriate location for the convergence of old media and new media.

Don’t miss the exciting conversations and ideas these dynamic speakers will share at Engage 2010. And, if you register before November 30, you’ll get $100 off the regular conference fee!

We are also still accepting talks until Monday, November 16th. If you would like to submit a talk, either post your talk to our submission page.

Engage New Orleans is really shaping up to be something special. The speakers we have lined up and the surrounding events are arguably some of the best we’ve had the honor to host. Today we are pleased to share our first round of speakers.

Panel Discussion – Can Real-Time Measurement and content visualization Help Today’s Troubled Publishing World?

Media empires were never built on yearly subscription models or by individual readers plunking down fifty cents for the daily news. These empires were built on superior content, trusted branding and above all else highly profitable advertising sales. Webtrends will host an elite group of individuals that currently work in traditional and new media publishing models to discuss the massive changes that have affected this industry over the past decade. The conversation will tackle how all publishers can better understand why content measurement through the real-time web can help keep their work relevant.

The publishing panel will be a fascinating look into an over 100 year-old industry that has hemorrhaged profitability and good, talented people, and been forced to re-evaluate its entire business model. The Internet as a whole has started to progress beyond the two-way Web and into a real-time Web, and content producers no matter how big or small, must be ready to deploy measurement models to help make relevant content publishing decisions and in turn drive ad revenue.

Those who will participate in the publishing panel are:

Join us at Engage in New Orleans

The three-day Engage 2010 conference is designed to encourage the exploration of ways to gain new understanding of the data gleaned from enterprise customer intelligence sources. It will be held in New Orleans, LA, a vibrant city with a history of reinventing itself, and an appropriate location for the convergence of old media and new media.

Don’t miss the exciting conversations and ideas these dynamic speakers will share at Engage 2010. And, if you register before November 30, you’ll get $100 off the regular conference fee!

We are also still accepting talks until Monday, November 16th. If you would like to submit a talk, either post your talk to our submission page.

Get connected, get networking, get contacts

The free and popular social network for the next Webtrends Engage 2010 enterprise customer intelligence conference has set sail, and it’s powered by CrowdVine!

CrowdVine is an easy-to-use social network for conferences, and simply the best way get a jump start on networking with the folks who will be learning and teaching alongside you next February in New Orleans. It’s kind of like a virtual pre-mingling event! And, if you register for Engage 2010 before November 30, you’ll save $100 off the regular conference fee. What a great incentive to start connecting with other attendees prior to arrival!

Creating an account on the network takes just a couple of minutes. After registering for Engage 2010 and creating a profile on the conference social network , you’ll upload a “real you” photo to help your fellow Engage attendees put a face to your name when they meet you in person. The network’s uncomplicated interface makes it very easy to integrate your social web streams and data feeds into your profile – such as Twitter, RSS, Facebook, and Flickr – so other conference-bound folks can learn more about you.

Once you’ve got an account set up, browse the profiles and start networking. You  can “friend” your colleagues, add notes to your profile, respond to other people’s notes, and send anyone in the Engage 2010 network a message. Even presenters will have profiles! You can also click the link “want to meet” for anyone you’d like to introduce yourself to at the conference. There’s no need to wait until February start meeting the people who will attend the conference with you!

The Engage 2010 conference calendar also helps you plan which sessions you want to attend, all of which are jam-packed with ideas on getting the most out of your customer intelligence information. Use the network to keep track of which sessions you’re most interested in, learn more about who is presenting it, and see who else is planning on attending, too.

At last year’s Engage conference almost 800 connections were created on the social networking site. This is an average of four connections for every person. Whoa!

Don’t miss out on the chance to spend time getting to know your fellow attendees, plan your session schedule, and interact with presenters in the weeks before the conference. And remember, register for Engage 2010 before November 30 and you’ll save $100 off the regular conference fee. Go, on! Do it now!

Learn How the Webtrends and Teradata Integration Solution Paints the Whole Picture

There is little doubt of how highly critical the importance of integrating online and enterprise data is. It is necessary to analyze both types of data in order to get the whole picture in a customer’s buying habits and satisfaction, and to improve conversion rates. Knowing when a customer connects with sales staff, knowing which direct mailings and catalogs the customer received, and knowing if the customer is chatting in social networks about the company or its products – all of these are tiny pieces to the whole picture. Unifying this information helps a company fine-tune their marketing strategies, reduce their marketing costs, and helps gives the customer a more personalized shopping experience and an incentive to purchase again.

This is a marvelous idea in theory, but very challenging to achieve in practice. Unless, that is, a company is using Webtrends’ enriched online data and Teradata’s Integrated Web Intelligence (IWI) solution, a partnership that is part of Webtrends’ Open Exchange program.

On December 2, 2009, in a live, interactive webinar, guest speaker John Lovett, a Senior Analyst for Forrester Research, Inc., will discuss why bringing online and enterprise data together is crucial. Next, Webtrends and Teradata will demonstrate their collaborated efforts solution of integrating online and enterprise data, and then will facilitate a question and answer session at the end.

Sign up today for the Integrating Online and Enterprise Data webinar and learn more about Webtrends’ enriched online data and Teradata’s Integrated Web Intelligence (IWI) solution for painting the whole picture to your customer’s purchasing experience.

Integrating Online and Enterprise Data Webinar
December 2, 2009
10am PDT / 1pm EDT

Rives – Webtrends’ Engaged MC with an Edge

Imagine this: It’s February in the year 2010, and you’re at Webtrends’ Engage 2010 conference in beautiful New Orleans. You’re in The Big Easy, a place known for its ability to inspire and captivate with its vibrant, historic scene. You’ve just heard a presentation that’s chock-full of ideas on getting more out of your enterprise customer intelligence data. Your brain is racing with new methodologies, is searching for the true impact of these new ideas on your data marketing plans, is trying to focus on the strongest, underlying points to implement.

Your conference Master of Ceremonies, Rives, takes the stage.

The house hushes. All eyes are on the pacing Rives, who suddenly pauses and faces the audience. He then unleashes a spontaneous, lyrical prose that magically encapsulates the core meaning of what you’ve just heard in the presentation. Rives leaves you speechless. With simple, funny, poignant analogies, the man with the one-word, one-syllable name blows you away with his effortless ability to nail that bottom-line sentiment. In this moment, which is followed by many more moments, you are so happy you decided to register for Engage 2010.

Unique, intelligent and creative, the MC for Webtrends’ Engage 2010 conference stands out as the best man for the job. Why? Because Rives, a frequent TED contributor and former co-host of the Bravo channel’s Ironic Iconic America, has the truly dynamic ability to absorb any information swirling around him and instantly concoct a brilliant, improvised reiteration of the meaning to it all.

But don’t take our word for it…watch Rives earn his three-minute-long standing ovation after delivering the talk Rives Controls the Internet:

If you are attending Engage 2010, Webtrends’ unique customer intelligence conference, you’re in for a wonderful treat. If you’ve not signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Register for Engage 2010 now and be a part of the collective hive of industry leaders and groundbreaking thinkers working to find the newest, best case solutions to utilizing enterprise customer intelligence.