Clicky vs Google Analytics

Although Google Analytics is pretty good compared to many of the old school web stats tools, there are new kids on the block well worth taking a look at, especially if you want real time stats.
Clicky Web Statistics definitely offers more in the way of functionality than Google Analytics, and is of particular interest to those who are hyperactive on the Web, and want to see how actions influence vistors in real time. For bloggers, people posting to forums (for various reasons such as brand awareness raising, or to promote a particular product or during a campaign, the real time stats are awesome.

And there is huge detail about what each visitor is doing on your site, as well as new additions such as adding your Twitter followers, which seems hugely popular with all.

I am particularly taken with their Pro plans and the opportunity to get a white label version of the product at a pretty reasonable cost ie just over £20 for 20 sites per month, which for an extra £1+/month to your clients has got to be worth investigating if you are doing SEO or Web PR for a few sites. And there's an API for your devs to get their teeth into to integrate it all with other funky stuff as well.

I'm going to play more with this over the coming days on a couple of other sites and probably post some more, but if you think Google Analytics was good, then you really, really need to try Clicky!

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Quintura and visual search

I like Quintura - it generates keywords and results into a cloud that other methods fail to so I have installed an example cloud at the bottom of this blog to play with.

Just scroll down to the end of the page to see Quintura's search clouds in action.

Many SEOs have been blogging about using Quintura for keyword searches and it does seem pretty useful for that. I also like the kids version though it is heavily Americanised.

Additionally, in the visual search space, I have fallen over Kartoo, Ujiko, Grokker, and Clusty.

Well worth a play for both clients and your own internet marketing.....

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SEO Tools

I'm not normally one for buying suites of tools that claim to do all your SEO work for you, but I do spend an awful lot of time testing the freebies and trials to judge for myself whether anyone is close yet to what I would define as the ultimate toolkit.


This week's trial is for Web CEO which I have seen around for a while


First impressions are that this is a fairly impressive toolkit for those who don't have in-house tools already, and would seem to suit a small business who is looking to do internet marketing and seo but hasn't necessarily the technical expertise to develop the required software and tools.

I would never use automated submission software anyway, so that part isn't necessarily of interest to me, but I am interested in testing the validity of the potential link sites it has thrown up, as well as some of the more in-depth features this suite appears to have.

Even on first glance, the features list is pretty impressive, and once you start playing around, it seems to get better rather than worse!

This is just day 2 of playing with it for one of my clients, so I will report more later on in the trial, but it's free, so what have you got to lose? Download it and try it yourself and let's compare notes!

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Lombard Rally book - Tales of the Lombardiers

The "Lombard Rally Book - Tales of the Lombardiers" is now published and available to buy online....the ideal Christmas present for rally enthusiasts. Buy it today! Wrriten by Lindsey Annison, with a foreword by Tony Mason - Lombard Rally navigator and commentator.



145 pages, full colour photos by Andy Manston of M & H Photography, stories from many of the crews, a timeline of the introduction of Endurance Rallying by Philip Young, 2004 - 2007 Lombard Revival results.....and more! Check it out right now.

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Get a clear brief from your client

One of those days where you read a client brief and think, "What? Whaaaaaaat? And what they need is, um,......what exactly? Why would they want to do that?" So, you re-approach them for clarification and the conversation goes from bad to worse.....

But then I found this and realised my clients are not that bad.....

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