For the blog-fanatics out there, BlogPulse is an online portal that you absolutely MUST know about.

What gives BlogPulse a bit more street credibility than the average blog utility site, is that is owned and operated by Nielsen Buzzmetrics, one of the internet’s largest and most reliable sources of internet usage data.

So what  exactly does BlogPulse do?

BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs.   BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs. 

And how can BlogPulse help you?
Essentially, BlogPulse.com is a search engine for blogs.  Not only that, BlogPulse provides an data on daily activity within the blogosphere.

BlogPulse.com provides the following helpful tools at a very helpful price (i.e. Free!):

• A Search Engine for blogs
• A set of Buzz-Tracking tools that are applied to blog content daily to track blog activity on key issues, people, news stories, news sources, bloggers and more
• A fun look at real-world Trends as reflected through blogs
• Daily blog stats that measure activity in the world of blogging (number of blogs identified, new blogs created, number of blog posts analyzed)
• A Trend Search that allows you to create trend charts comparing buzz in the blogosphere on up to three specific topics
• A Conversation Tracker that follows and captures the discussion, or conversation, that emanates and spreads from individual blogs or individual blog posts
• Blogger Profiles that identify top-ranked blogs and analyze their blog presence, activity and relative influence in the blogging world

My favourite feature on Blogpulse:

If you use Blogs as an online marketing tool, particularly to target certain ‘buzz words’ or keywords within your industry, you will find the Trend Search invaluable.  Trend Search allows you to investigate certain keywords, to monitor how many blog posts have been written based on a particular keyword or theme.  

Using BlogPulse’s ‘Trend Search’ you might find that, after a little bit of investigation, there are some keywords relevant to your business or industry that are being totally under-utilised, which you can then target in your future blog posts.

No related posts.

Ok, I wouldn’t have picked this one as Google’s latest online offering.

Google Flu Trends is not a revelation in concept, however it certainly does show the power of the collective data of the world’s most dominant web search engine,

Google Flu Trends

Google Flu Trends works by monitoring individual searches made by potentially flu-ridden folk. Google started by identifying a likely set of search terms that were typical of those infected with the influenza. The individual searches are tracked by their physical location, and then aggregated to show which states in the U.S. currently have the highest rates of flu searches on Google, and which states are trending towards or away from epidemics. Of course, it’s not a fail-safe measure of flu infection (I’ve Googled ‘flu’ before just to get an image of a snotty-face little kid for a hapless Powerpoint presentation), but it does offer at the very least, a vague indication of flu out-breaks.

Google Flu Trends is probably a conceptual analytical project Google developed to illustrate the power of Google Trends and geographical web analytics data. But it really does get you thinking doesn’t it – Big Brother Google is always watching.

Related posts:

1. The current Google versus the new Google If you call yourself a digital expert, you should...
2. New ground for Google Maps Google has just launched a new initiative merging offline...
3. Bing goes the internet Microsoft recently held a competition aimed at promoting their...

So you inserted Google Analytics code into your website last night.

You’ve since caught 40 winks, had breakfast, a shower, and now you’re itching to see the fresh stats Google Analytics has churned up for you.

You login to Google Analytics and…. <drumroll please>….

Your web-stats amount to the amazing figure of:

0 visitors!

What? What has happened?  This cannot be true. Can it? Is my website really that bad?

Hold on a second, and don’t despair just yet.

Google Analytics takes up to 24 hours to start producing data. You can read more about it here at the Google Analytics help center.  So wait until dinner time before you log in again. And then, if you still have problems, read this article which outlines potential issues which may be impact the integration Google Analytics on your site.

Related posts:

1. The current Google versus the new Google If you call yourself a digital expert, you should...
2. New ground for Google Maps Google has just launched a new initiative merging offline...

So you’ve just set up a Wordpress blog and you’ve just realised that you’d be mad not to add the super-handy and super-free Google Analytics package, so that you can track how popular your blog is about to become?

You can’t go past the Google Analytics for Wordpress plugin.  I’ve installed it on a few of my sites (tshirtalert.com, and this very blog that you are reading, breadmilkdigital.com) and can vouch that plugin is one of my most important Wordpress tools, as well as being quite addictive and entertaining, as I watch my stats climb and fall according to how much coffee I have consumed (and consequently, the quality of my blog posts!)

If you need a little bit of help with the whole installation process and setting up a Google Analytics account, this article might also assist.

Happy wordpress-google-analytic-ing!

Related posts:

1. New ground for Google Maps Google has just launched a new initiative merging offline...

Adding web analytics software to any new website is imperative! It is vital that any website has analytics installed from the outset, as it allows you to track usage trends of your website once you start to tinker with the site in your quest to boost traffic, conversions, usability or even just enhancing the look & feel.

Google Analytics is my number 1 recommendation as a web analytics package. It’s the right price (i.e. free!), it has a strong and active user base who continue to contribute to its evolution, and thus new features are being added quite frequently.

Not only that, but Google Analytics is really a cinch to set up.  I’ve just added it to an ancient Joomla installation powering one of my testbed websites, shackn.com, and it literally took less than 30 seconds to install.

Adding Google Analytics to a Joomla installation is a piece of cake. This article from GoodWebPractices.com will get you there in 30 seconds flat too.  If you’re running a website on Joomla with analytics or tracking, you owe it yourself right now to take miniscule few moments of your time to install Google Analytics.  You’ll thank yourself later!

Related posts:

1. The current Google versus the new Google If you call yourself a digital expert, you should...