Now that SOPA and PIPA are tabled – at least for the time being, lawmakers are looking to a new bill for answers to the pervasive problem of Internet piracy. OPEN – or Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act – may be that answer: “I think that OPEN is a good start,” explains Solar VPS Founder and COO Ross Brouse. “It shows that the democratic process works. When a proposed bill is flawed, we can go back to the drawing board and make things better.”
Brouse is referring to the public outcry against the SOPA/PIPA bills, which forced Congressional supporters into retreat. Despite thousands, if not millions, of dollars spent by media conglomerates to lobby Congress in favor of the bills – non-profit research organization Media Matters for America reports that an estimated 28 different lobbying firms were hired by the likes of Comcast, Disney, et al., organizations such as the Save Hosting Coalition were able to rally support amongst the IT community and others who benefit from an open Internet (that’s EVERYONE!). “The outcry was massive,” Brouse says. “Shelving SOPA and PIPA has been a great success. We (the protestors) created awareness and people’s awareness enabled them to speak up about how SOPA and PIPA are toxic for our economy – especially when it comes to jobs – and for the basic freedoms we, as Americans, hold dear.” Read more
America was built on the right to free speech. Right now that freedom is in danger, because of a bill currently before the US House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261). While the Bill is intended to protect copyright holders and content creators from copyright violators outside of US jurisdiction, it is written ambiguously and effectively creates a government firewall. The Bill would allow the US Government to block Americans from visiting websites via DNS blocking – similar methods are used by Iran, China and Syria. Using DNS blocking, operators of websites that contain content that is in violation of copyright (or even linking to such content) could have their US web traffic, search traffic and ad-revenue blocked. Read more
Google announced the public release of Search Queries from Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics yesterday. Why is this important? You can now drill down deeper into your traffic sources to filter by the following metrics:
Queries: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily queries
Landing Pages: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily landing pages
Geographical Summary: impressions, clicks, and CTR by country
As a kid, I was fascinated with science. Sure, at first it was the cool beakers and safety goggles I got to wear, but as I learned more I gained an appreciation for the process of the scientific method. The scientific method (observation, hypothesis, testing, observation of results and the subsequent theory) is just as at home in marketing as it is in the laboratory and it needs to be the backbone of your marketing strategy if you want consistent results. Measuring your campaigns can be done with a web analytics tool like Google Analytics, Web Trends, Piwik, Coremetrics or the many others that are available online.
Ultimately conversion to sale is the metric that matters most, however measuring your other data (i.e. bounce rate, time on page, etc) will help you improve your conversion to sale and in the end, your ROI and profitability. You should be measuring data in the following areas on your site: user interaction, traffic sources, and site metrics.
