links for 2011-04-08

Google Analytics has always had URL Goals (when a visitor reaches a specific page). In 2009, we added Engagement Goals to track success metrics around visit depth and time on site. With the new version of Google Analytics, we’ve added one more: Event Goals.

AdWords recently announced a new feature that enables advertisers to run campaign experiments against AdWords opportunities. This is a really interesting feature combo — both from a pure functionality standpoint and in thinking about where AdWords is heading, so let's unpack it.

AdWords recently introduced a new feature to their Ad Rotation Settings called “Optimize for Conversions”

Social media is becoming increasingly important for SEO. Just in the last week we've seen the launch of Google +1 and early correlation data showing Facebook shares are highly correlated with rankings.

In this post I'm going to walk through a bunch of different ways of tracking your social media strategy. We'll start with the basic/easy stuff and move up to more complicated things (Google Docs! APIs! Mmmmm)

I noticed that as more marketers hear of retargeting there still seems to be quite a bit of confusion around what it actually is, and how it is different from regular display media buys. This post is meant to help with that confusion and hopefully leave everyone with a solid understanding of retargeting basics as well as some actionable ways you can utilize it. 

In early May, we’ll be retiring the position preference bidding feature in AdWords. If you’re using position preference, we recommend that you disable the feature in your campaigns prior to that date to ensure a smooth transition for your bids.

This week, you'll also be able to specify topics to contextually target your ads to pages in the Google Display Network. With this additional contextual targeting option, you'll be able to select from over 1,750 topics and sub-topics to target your ads, helping you quickly reach a broad audience across the web that's actively engaged with content related to your business.