What is Happening at Google?

Google is really starting to lose my loyalty and I don’t think I’m the only one. There are several things that have been bugging me lately, and many of them have to do with the breaking of their products.

I recently migrated my feeds from Feedburner’s servers to Google’s servers. All feeds are being migrated at the end of February, so I thought I’d get a jump on it. Google owns Feedburner so you think there would be no problems. That was wrong. The move broke the API so stats weren’t working for several days. The API is still broken on a lot of third party applications because not everyone has switched over yet so app manufacturers have not updated apps to pull from the right API. You may say that it’s Google’s product and they can do what they want, but the internet is becoming an more and more open and social place where data can be mixed and with other data, and Google has traditionally tried to be a part of that. Now they are breaking thing preventing that from happening.

One of the bigger problems I’ve run into the past couple days is Google has changed the way their search works. They are using Ajax in the search queries now. It appears it’s still in testing phase, as not everyone is getting the new search. The new ajax enabled search is breaking all stats packages search engine referral tracking. When you perform a search for shep in Google you would usually see the query in the url in your browser, something similar to this: search?q=shep. With the new ajax the search string has changed to #q=shep. The problem with this is that browsers stop sending anything after # in the referral string. So all referrals look like they are coming from google.com and not google.com/search?q=shep. That means my stats can’t tell me how people are finding my site. Another thing Google has broken without any official word from the company. Some people think this will be their way to get more people to use Analytics and that Google is abandoning their “Don’t be evil” motto. While this is just speculation, it wouldn’t be surprising if they changed their services to break competitors in order to gain more customers, even if their product is inferior (in my eyes).

The last issue, which is quickly becoming moot as I’ve been moving away from Gmail, is every single day I get some kind of error in Gmail. It either logs me out right after logging in or I get the popular “Error 500, there was an error processing your request. Trying again in 5s…” error.

Seems Google is messing up a lot these days. Maybe, instead of buying up other companies and releasing useless features on products that are out there, they should do something to stabilize their current products, without breaking everything.

Clicky – Great Looking Real-Time Stats

clickyI recently signed up for Clicky Web Statistics, a great looking real time stats package. I’m nuts about statistics on my website but found Google Analytics to be lacking. I want data in real time, not a day later. I also use Mint but decided to start looking for something not self-hosted. I used the free trial of Clicky for a few days before I was sold and purchased a plan.

The stats that are provided are the type of stats you’d find in most statistics software. Clicky presents it in a very appealing way. No more getting lost in the different menus and submenus of Google Analytics. Clicky is simple and intuitive, providing numerical and graphical stats.  It displays everything I want it to.  It tells me what search engines visitors are using, the terms they are searching for, their entry and exit pages, the time they are on the site, the browser, OS, and screen resolution.  If I want to see where they are going once on my site, I can see all the pages they go to.   I can even see a Google map of where they are located in the world.

The best thing about the stats package is that it’s all real time.  I’m not running a mission-critical business that needs stats right away.  I just enjoy seeing what is going on at my site(s) and any given moment.  Clicky makes it easy to do that and presents it in a way that is superior to other stats packages that I’ve tried. If you’re looking for a great affordable real-time stats package, I suggest signing up and giving Clicky a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. There are a lot more features not posted in these screenshots. These are just the ones I like/use the most.

Graph of daily visitors (Numbers have been erased)
The details of a visitor (click to enlarge)
Actions users take while on my site
Outgoing Links
Recent Visitors

The Super Bowl

I didn’t do anything exciting for this Super Bowl, and nothing exciting happened to me, unlike previous years. I’ve been sick for the last few days so I just wanted to chill at home and try to get better. The game was an exciting game. I wanted to see the Cardinals win because Warner is a former Ram and because the Steelers have seen their fair share of Super Bowl victories. Sadly, it didn’t happen. The Cardinals had plenty of chances to win, but they just couldn’t do it.

The commercials during the game were pretty boring. Nothing great. In fact, only two stick out in my head. The first Bud Light commercial in the office meeting was decent and so was the Hulu advertisement with Alec Baldwin. Other than that, the commercials sucked. AB went traditional with the clydesdales in an attempt to make people forget they are now owned by a foreign company. Too many horse commercials guys. One is enough. And did anyone actually see anything 3D in the 3D commercials? I know I didn’t. Maybe my eyes don’t work with the glasses. I’ll try them out again with tonight’s episode of Chuck. Also, did Hollywood forget that original ideas in movies are better than remakes? Transformers 2, The Land of the Lost, G.I. Joe… Yep, it seems so.

The halftime show I didn’t even watch. Why? I’ve never been a fan of Bruce Springsteen. I’m not Courtney Cox and this isn’t the 1980’s. I will admit, the short clips I did see were better than Paul McCartney’s half-time show, but that’s not saying much.

Overall it was a decent game, and while I didn’t have to hear Warner praise Jesus for his win (I guess he didn’t pray hard enough), I did have to hear Santonio Holmes explain how great he is and he wanted the ball for the last play because great players always want the ball so they can step up to make great plays. If his head was any bigger he might have floated out of Raymond James Stadium.