Categories: Cardinal PathTechnology Services

Going anonymous, Pagerank, and Analyzing your Email – The Monday July 18th Roundup

Monday again and we’re back in Vancouver after a week of 8 to 6 thinking, 6 to 8 drinking, and more food than I want to ever see again.

This week I tried really hard not to talk about Google+. Instead, we have stories from across the web on anonymizing internet connections, Google Page Rank, remarketing with PPC, and analyzing your email. To read more… well, you know what to do.

Create

We start the week with some interesting data on alternate platform adoption, looking at the growth in users and various time scales.
An interesting development this weekend, a group of researchers have developed and released a proof-of-concept for Telex, an IPless anonymizing solution for internet traffic. At his blog, J.Alex Halderman discusses how the system works.

Attract

Linkbuilder has a post on the every talked about Panda update, this time testing the results of a single keyword (Buy Espresso) and examining how the results measure up.
Search Engine Round Table says that Google PageRank is losing trust among webmasters. I am surprised it still had much myself. Following up on this conversation, SEO Bullshit posted a rant on why he still cares about [toolbar] PageRank, which in turn lead to a wonderful post from the Google Webmaster Central blog on “graduating to actionable metrics”. Great reads all around.

Analyze

Avinash is talking about a topic close to my heart: using analytics with your email marketing campaigns. Beyond the basics (because Avinash ALWAYS goes beyond the basics) there are some really great medium level metrics presented here, such his more complex version of bounce rate, or profitability measurements.
Search Engine Watch has a post on gaining demographic data from your remarketing campaigns. Not perfectly scientific, but their method does lead to some good data, which should let you develop some insights into your visitors.

Optimize

UXMatters has a post on pairing usability testing with A/B testing, including how to marry user testing and A/B testing at the dev stage.
The ever cool UX Booth has a post on Effective Minimalism in Experience Design, which attempts to explain the balance between usability and minimal design. Better, though, are its numerous examples of fantastic minimalism combined with lot sof examples of confusing minimalism. The latter of which is something you don’t hear people discussing too much.

Kent Clark

Some have compared him to the Dalai Lama, others to Kublai Kahn. When he isn't teaching third world children how to purify water with nothing more than a plastic bottle and a garden hose, he is creating mad waves for surfers off the west coast with little more than a paddle. Some say there is a boat involved, others that he walks on water. Little is known about his background. he appeared from nowhere 15 years ago and claims heritage from a land with neither want not need. He makes little comment, stating only that it was a pretty cool place. Fire does not burn him, cold does not hurt him. Words could... but they don't. When he passes, pedals fall off branches. When he speaks, hair tugs at skin, pulling just slightly in his direction. He does not sleep but he does dream. He has muscled his way into the lives of the famous and whispered his way into their hearts. And in the wee hours he plays oboe softly, as if to sooth the night to sleep.