Natural Search &
Online Tourism Consultant

If you are seeing very low bounce rates in your analytics packages especially Google Analytics the chances are there is a technical problem with your installation of the tracking code…usually double tagged pages. This has become an increasingly common issue since the introduction of the new tracking code released by Google over 12 months ago and the subsequent update. If you have the Firebug firefox plugin; click Inspect, Net and then tick all three boxes and you should be looking out for the __utm.gif image which is Google analytics calling home. If you see 2 instances of this you are likely to have double tagged your pages.

Here are some other examples from Webmaster Central which gives an insight in to how Google treats new websites. There is often the discussion (Wallace, 2005) that the sand boxing (a testing/validation environment) of new websites takes place that are entering the index. This is highlighted in the following graphs which show Mumbles.co.uk, an established site and well respected in Google, although varying greatly on a daily basis is reasonably consistent from month to month.
This image shows the number of pages crawled per day by Google Bot on Mumbles.co.uk

Figure 61 shows the number of kilobytes downloaded per day by Google Bot on Mumbles.co.uk
In contrast Tenby.info is a recent launch for the platform, notice the gradual increase in the amount of pages that Google crawls, this is to do with the sand boxing that Google implements with new websites that enter its index. This image shows the number of pages crawled by Google Bot on Tenby.info

Sand boxing
When attempting to be indexed by Google and before any kind of rankings are awarded the search engine will want to know the source of information is a credible one and understand what type of content is being offered. This is known as the sand boxing period and will result in any version of the Citys.info internet franchise being put in to one of hundreds of categories, hopefully all sitting in travel/tourism. This means hopefully competing with like for like websites on competitive terms.

Various sources believe this categorisation is a manual process which can take up to 3 months. It is realistic to think this is the case and would keep the quality of the index high allowing for benchmarking in analytics packages against other websites in a sector.

To help the web property owners to better understand what interaction their website is having with the search engines, Google has developed what they call Webmaster Central. It is a collection of tools and reports that give an insight in to how the Google Bot interacts with a website. This data is often very useful for debugging problems that might be occurring with a website such as indexing issues, problems with a site map or just to tell Google what region to associate a domain with. For country specific TLD’s such as .co.uk this is pre configured.  Think of Webmaster Central as a service centre for websites.

A recent indexing issue on Swansea.info after the re-launch was dramatically highlighted by webmaster central. The problem was first highlighted when the homepage was not being shown for brand related searches and the total indexed page count visible through WMC was reporting lower than normal figures. The total size of the site map is some 1740 URLs of which 1268 have been indexed by Google but at the time of the problem this was showing only 500.

A point to note here is that if a site has been running for a period of time before a site map has been added, the first few weeks after adding a site map will show how many pages are indexed. This initial period might highlight some site structure problems which are causing indexing issues such as Google Bot not being able to crawl drop down menus.

As did another few thousand people I was awake at 6:20am this
morning to get my hands on a shiny new 3G iPhone. Little did I
know that by 14:17 I would have spent a total of 4 hours
queueing for a phone in 2 different locations…one time
actually having my hands on the 3G iPhone and then being
DENIED!

It all started at the North Finchley O2 store this morning at
7:05 when myself a colleague got on the bikes and headed up
there to queue. There were about 30 people in front of us and
shortly after another 35 joined so 65-70ish people. Soon
out came the doughnuts to keep us happy in the slightly chilly
air! 8:02am and the first set of 5 eager punters entered the
store…and that’s all that happened for about an hour after
that. Hearing dribs and drabs of information that the O2
activation systems had gone down we still persisted; and then
came the news that they were out of 16GB phones…all 12 of
them! That was the final straw for about 20 people and they
somberly made their way away from the queue. I wasn;t fussed
whether it was 8GB or 16GB as i mostly use mine for internet
access however the option would have been nice! At 9:30 it was
make or break for me as any later would have meant taking a
day off work or being late, neither of which i fancied much.
So i handed my Number 29 badge (my place in the queue) to the O2 sales staff and gave her my 2 pennies worth about my experience. My colleague waited for another 45 mins to around 10:15ish and still didn’t get a phone!

Lunch Time 12:57, myself and another colleague went to Oxford street Carphone warehouse (ok i know that was a mistake) to see if we could get one…no queue. Brilliant! Anyway after an hour of further waiting and having seen my new phone in front of me, something to do with the fact that a totally random name appeared against my account meant i left with nothing, whilst my colleague wanting a new contract was also left leaving with nothing as their systems failed.

This was Apple’s ideal opportunity to get their product into the main stream. Outside every 3G iPhone selling store this morning were the die hard iPhone fans (80% of the people in my queue already had the phone). To say they annoyed them was an understatement; they would have been flashing their new iphone around office block from here to timbucktoo! But no its negative PR all the way! O2 just helped Bill gates slip into retirement that little bit easier!