Archive for December 2011

Using Google-API-PHP-Client with Google Analytics Core Reporting

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
No Gravatar

Google’s PHP client library for their GData API hasn’t received as much love as their client libraries for other languages. Despite the lack of high level service classes for Google Analytics’ Core Reporting API it is possible to work with it using google-api-php-client.

The below is a quick and dirty self contained example based on a Google+ example to get a report. Before you get started go to the API Console and enable access to the Analytics API and generate a client id, client secret, and to register your redirect uri.

Third Party On-Site Search Tools

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
No Gravatar

Here at the Web Shop, we like to take advantage of existing tools, whether they’re free or reasonably priced. One tool that we opted to not roll on our own is a site search. From time to time clients require them and the first third party search tool so used was Google Custom Search. It’s pretty expensive considering how much traffic site searches tend to get and it behaves oddly, especially with sites that aren’t well indexed.

QDF ( Query Deserves Freshness ) Update

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
No Gravatar

A few months ago I wrote about Google’s QDF algorithm. QDF is an acronym for Query Deserves Freshness and it’s a method used by Google to provide fresh content in response to queries. When I first wrote about QDF around 17.5% of queries were affected, the latest update double that figure to 35%.

At this time the exact details of how Google determines freshness is unknown, however they have stated that one of the factors used to determine freshness is the date a page was first indexed. So if you publish page and then update it a few months later that is NOT considered fresh, even if you have completely rewritten the page.

The New Democracy of Online Business: Social Votes and SEO

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
No Gravatar

What is a democracy? It’s a system by which people (regular, normal, everyday people) determine who or what is best for fulfilling their wants and needs. It essentially boils down to a popularity contest. This is basically how online search engines (namely Google) work as well.

For a long time now, it has been common knowledge that the biggest factor in determining a website’s position in Google’s search pages is backlinks. A back link is a hypertext link that is found anywhere on the web that points directly to your website. The more links you have, the more popular and relevant your website is considered to be. And therefore the higher (in theory) it should rank in search engines.

Why People Should Care About Responsive Design

Monday, December 5th, 2011
No Gravatar

If you’ve been keeping up with the latest and greatest in web design, you’ll probably have heard of the Responsive Design (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/) trend that’s been picking up steam the last couple of years. Personally I think it’s a great concept, and I’ve been looking forward to the day it becomes standard practice in web design for quite awhile now. However, each time I express my enthusiasm to fellow web designers, I am greeted with blank stares and total apathy.

SEO and the Google “Freshness” Update – Why it’s a Good Thing

Thursday, December 1st, 2011
No Gravatar

If you’re into Search Engine Optimization, you are probably already aware of all the uproar surrounding Google’s algorithm initiatives in 2011. This year has been a nightmare for certain website that were, let’s say, not the greatest in terms of unique, quality content. (For those unsure, content is essentially the stuff that visitors of your website can consume online – articles, videos, images, etc.) The latest algorithm updates, dubbed “Panda,” heavily penalized websites that had thin content, engaged in web spam and generally did not provide visitors with a good user experience.