With the explosion of Twitter and other social media tools, consumers are looking for quicker answers than ever. Within less than an hour, the #t-mobile became a trending topic on Twitter, yet the ‘official’ T-Mobile USA twitter page was only offering promotional material:

Did you get a Motorola CLIQ? How do you like it? Tell us in the T-Mobile Forums! http://ow.ly/yJlI

Reports on Twitter show that this outage seems to be limited to voice and text, yet access to the Internet is still available.

Other reports show that phones are not being recognized on a network while using T-Mobile’s UMA service.

Here are some recent Twitter T-Mobile messages:

rubberduckie219: Nation-wide service failure. T-Mobile FAIL.

MumoFromUmo: T-Mobile has a nationwide outage? What a shame.. I need to make a phone call asap! T-Mobile folks need to get it together …

KaramelKisses83: I’m about 2 go Ham on T-Mobile ass…My phone not allowing me 2 call any mobile 2 mobile people! Anybody else havin problems??

itzDreaFab: RT @Roselyn Feel sorry for all you T-Mobile folks get AT&T or Verizon in your life,you know, the phone companies 4 ppl with good credit! Wow

timmygomez: seriously, t-mobile is just a huge company made up of nothing but FAIL. apparently there’s a nationwide outage going on. cool.

Get in on the conversation here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=T-Mobile

With Gmail down – the only thing a user could do was wait it out and head over to Twitter:

pajaah: Wondering why Gmail is down again.

imthegirl: Apparently I’m awake before Google this morning … No gmail or feedburner … wth?

Of course, the Google Apps Service dashboard, which offers performance information for Google Apps services, which includes Gmail, showed no issues:

Previous outage reported was September 24th when the dashboard showed that Gmail was having service issues

“We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail, but we’ve provided a workaround below. We will provide an update by September 24, 2009 4:29:00 PM UTC+1 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. You can access Gmail via IMAP”

Maintaining near perfect up time for a company like Google is critical – especially if they expect to take business away from Outlook.

But this minor outage early on a Saturday morning makes me wonder — could this temporary outage be the result of the Google Wave?

Outsourcing has proven to be an effective way of getting business processes done at a lower cost. On the other hand, the web offers a great platform for marketing. In the light of growing use of the internet for a variety of purposes by people all over the world, marketing on the web can be seen as a good practice. Even during tough economic times, businesses who have used SEO and other internet marketing practices to sell have gained through it. E-commerce and E-business have also supported online sales. All this has facilitated success of online business representation and sales.

While the merit of online marketing is proven, it may be a costly and time consuming affair. In order to tackle these problems, many companies are outsourcing their SEO and SEM needs to offshore destinations. Now a days search engine optimization companies are also outsourcing their projects to offshore destinations.

The labor charges in offshore service providers are very low. Hence, more labor can be hired to work at a cheaper cost. This way, the business goals through online marketing can be achieved faster. The labor force in overseas service providing companies has proved their caliber in handling software and other projects. Also, there are many professionals offshore who are skilled and experienced in handling internet marketing projects. By outsourcing the search engine optimization requirements, business goals of the company can be achieved faster and at lower price.

One such company is SoftLogic Inc with an SEO blog here: http://softlogicinc.wordpress.com/

From their website:

We offer world class web services and web solution to our client’s world wide. It is our principle to build your site with our best web design and web development services. Staffs at softlogic are an excellent blend of technical expertise and creative skills. We have a team of professional web developers and designers who work to create attractive and functional web solutions for your business. Our SEO team comprises of dedicated professionals who know all the tips and tricks to make a website popular and make it rank well on the search engines.

On Thursday, October 1, Eastern Daylight Time, marketers and advertisers have a unique opportunity to learn more about The American Attribution Index (AAI), the first-ever attribution management index that measures the relative effectiveness of each online advertising source and influence factor on consumer purchases and conversions.

Search Marketing Now will host a webcast “The American Attribution Index: Using Advertising Attribution Management to Improve Media Mix Allocation” at 1 PM EDT on October 1.

This webcast is free; registration and more information are available at Search Marketing Now .

Recently announced by ClearSaleing, Inc., leader in advertising analytics and founder of the Attribution Management Forum, and Vetra Analytics, the AAI will ultimately help advertisers to improve the effectiveness of their media mix allocation.

There are three versions of the American Attribution Index: the Aggregate Index, representing average attribution indices across all participating companies and all of their respective industries; Vertical Industry Indices, which represent an industry-specific attribution index across all participating companies in that respective industry; and Company-Specific Indices, developed for a specific company.

Using the AAI, advertisers will be able to discover the relative importance of online media sources in influencing purchase decisions and to benchmark against competitors using the vertical attribution indices. The AAI can also be customized, enabling an individual company to improve the allocation of its online advertising investments.

The introduction of these indices will allow marketers to gain further insight into advertising ROI, and help marketers more profitably allocate advertising budgets across available online options.

Following the main webcast presentation, attendees will have the chance to participate in a live question and answer session about the AAI.

It’s been said that words move quickly on the Internet and for some folks who press the button on a press release – too quickly.

Last week, after publishing a release that was making the rounds on the net regarding a company and their new client, we received the following notice:

Hello.
We published a press release to <DELETED> and you pulled the release from this website. We emailed <DELETED> to please remove our press release, but we want to make sure it is also deleted from your website. Please deleted the press release entitled “<DELETED>” ASAP.  Please email me if you have any questions.
Thank you.

And of course, we promptly complied and removed the press release.

But it made us wonder — in the world of RSS and aggregated feeds, how many copies or partial copies of the release are still out there 8 days later?

669

Yes — that is Six Hundred and Sixty-Nine references in Google Search when you put the name of the press release in quotes.

This shows the true power of the press release for SEO and it should also serve as a warning to be certain you are ready for that release to come out.

Just a warning and disclaimer.  This is ‘Do It Yourself’ .. as in ‘DIY’.  This typically means more heavy lifting .. more math (lots more) and always the risk of things not working out at all.

Part 1 involves looking at Google Analytics in a completely different perspective.

Instead of the typical ‘last click’ — first click or first exposure will provide completely different insight.

Direct from Google:
If a visitor clicks on ads from multiple campaigns before converting for a goal, which campaign gets credit for the conversion?
Google Analytics will attribute the most recent campaign information to a conversion. For example, a visitor may initially reach your site through a CPC ad and not make a purchase. Later, this visitor may return to your site via a tagged link in an email to make their purchase. In this case, Google Analytics will attribute the more recent campaign information to the resulting sale – the tagged link in the email.

This behavior can be modified by adding the following to the end of all of your tagged links:

&utm_nooverride=1

When Google Analytics detects this variable, it will retain the first campaign’s information, regardless of which links the user later followed to arrive at the conversion. In the example above, the conversion would be credited to the CPC campaign, if both links were tagged with the nooverride variable.

Of course — this is only where your problems begin.

So now your analytics are going to tell you where people originated from and not last click … and only if you tag them properly.  (Remember what I said about the ‘heavy lifting’)

Depending on your industry — first click vs. last click may be more important to you.  So for some of you .. that’s all you need and you are smiling.

But for most .. you want first click and last click.

And here’s where the REAL math comes in.

Sign up for another Analytics provider — there are tons of free ones (Clicky, Piwik, etc) and they all measure last click.  Most important — just be certain they allow export to a CSV file.

Now you are able to track 1st click and last click.

This is DIY — never said it would be easy!

As marketers, we know the value of ‘generic/upper funnel’ keywords – as that’s where the purchase cycle begins, but since Google and the other PPC companies only provide you insight into the ‘last click’, those keywords alway show very little in terms of conversions and always have the highest CPA.  As a results, those keywords are the first to be dropped by most marketers.

Turns out — big mistake.

According to Goldberg:

“….by using attribution management, the company was able to increase their number of visitors by 222% and, most importantly, increase their net profit by 131% over the course of 24 months.”

Clearsalesing will also be holding a Webinar on October 1st where they will be discussing the Attribution Management Index.  The Index measures the relative effectiveness of each online advertising source and influence factor on consumer purchases and conversions.  In this webcast, speakers Adam Goldberg and Purush Papatla will share more about the AAI and how advertisers can use this new index to improve the effectiveness of their media mix allocation.

There are three versions of the American Attribution Index: the Aggregate Index, representing average attribution indices across all participating companies and all of their respective industries; Vertical Industry Indices, which represent an industry-specific attribution index across all participating companies in that respective industry; and Company-Specific Indices, developed for a specific company. The introduction of these indices will allow marketers to gain further insight into advertising ROI, and help marketers more profitably allocate advertising budgets across available online options. Details are here

For additional research on this subject, C3 Metrics has an impressive White Paper called “The Hushed Hidden Gaps of Online Media Tracking”. Written by industry insiders, it addresses this issue of Attribution Management in PPC and actually goes as far to call it a ‘flaw in Google’s reporting mechanism’.

ClearSaleing has teamed up with Vetra Analytics to launch an attribution management index which they are calling American Attribution Index (AAI).  The goal of the AAI measures the relative effectiveness (purchase attribution) of each media source and influence factor on online consumer conversion.

In addition to the aggregate AAI that represents an overall average index for all companies and industries, ClearSaleing and Vetra are also releasing industry-specific versions of the AAI for target verticals. The vertical industry versions of the American Attribution Index serve as important industry-specific benchmarks for CMO’s and other marketing executives. The vertical AAI indices help executives make informed media selection and budget allocation decisions by pinpointing, on a relative basis, which media sources are working and which sources should be avoided. In essence, online advertising budgets should be allocated in proportion to each media source’s AAI for the respective vertical industry. The media selection and allocation process for large-spending advertisers should be repeated over regular intervals to keep budget allocation decisions synchronized with changes in the indices.

The ability to generate vertical industry attribution indices is the newest development from ClearSaleing’s leading advertising analytics and attribution management platform. The delivery of the indices is made possible through their partnership with Vetra Analytics, who has built the sophisticated attribution models that are the foundation of the indices. “We are incredibly pleased to be partnered with Vetra to fill this huge void that exists in the marketing intelligence and web analytics world. By delivering actionable, industry-specific versions of the American Attribution Index, we will help CMOs make better media selection and allocation decisions that will positively impact both their top and bottom lines,” says Randy Smith, ClearSaleing’s co-founder and President.

“ClearSaleing and Vetra Analytics will use the data generated by the ClearSaleing platform to measure how different advertising channels influence sales in a particular vertical industry,” says Dr. Purush Papatla, President of Vetra Analytics. “This report of attribution indices by vertical sector will be of great value to advertisers and agencies in determining what marketing channels are working within their particular industry, and what relative value each marketing element contributes to a conversion or sale,” Papatla adds.

“Industry benchmarking of the relative influence of each media source on a customer purchase fits neatly with ClearSaleing’s main objective, which is to help marketers more accurately determine which marketing investments are delivering a profitable return. Vertical industry benchmarking will provide more insight into ROI and help marketers more profitably allocate media budgets across available online options,” says Smith.

ClearSaleing and Vetra will publish the general American Attribution Index (AAI) on a quarterly basis using a widget application. They will also publish relevant attribution management news and items of interest along with the Indices. Subscriptions will be available beginning in the 4th quarter to select industry versions of the AAI, where the subscription will provide an initial set of indices and quarterly updates thereafter. Having regular, ongoing access to the AAI is critical as the indices are dynamic due to several key factors: (1) the continual addition of more and more data from the new companies who join the AAI membership, (2) changes that occur in macroeconomic environmental factors, and (3) changes that occur in media options and measurement technology.

ClearSaleing and Vetra would like to encourage advertisers to become members of the AAI group and are offering special charter member subscription rates through October 31, 2009. The more advertisers that participate in the AAI from select verticals, the more accurate and beneficial the AAI becomes over time.

• Topics covered in the whitepaper include:Thorough discussion of the study’s methodology.
• Quantification of the degree to which cookie deletion leads to an overstatement in site-servers’ estimates of the number of unique site visitors.
• Comparison of first-party vs. third-party cookie deletion rates and the resulting overstatement in servers’ estimates of the size of site audiences and the reach of online advertising campaigns.
• Examination of consumers’ awareness of, and attitudes towards, cookies.
• Analysis of other factors leading to potentially inflated audience reports from site server data such as failure to remove international traffic from calculation of the domestic audience and the impact of cookie blocking.

Download here

Written by By Mark Hughes, Author, Consultant & Marketing expert & Jeff Greenfield, COO & Co-Founder of C3 Metrics™ , addressing these three issues:

1. Does the online media industry have a flaw in its reporting?
2. Is there over counting and double paying for conversions?
3. How do we properly attribute a sale with multiple media sources?

As someone who led online customer acquisition for a subsidiary of the #1 auction site getting 8 million customers in three years, I thought I knew everything. As someone who helped an online property grow from 1 million to 15 million unique visits a month with 18 million annual downloads, I thought I knew everything. That was until a client asked three questions…..

Download here