Been a ridiculously great morning at the HomeQuest Social Media Summit in Portland.
We had a packed house… Great audience. Wonderful crowd. Engaging speakers. So much fun!
And the speakers were unbeatable. There’s always so much to learn from:
And if you were at the event, we’d love your feedback… What did you think? How could we improve the event/presentations?
[Photo from Dale Chumbley!]
As always, the Real Estate Connect Event put on by Inman this year rocked! The information, the people, the food, the fun… it’s just way too much fun (honestly too much!). And I know I’m a bit biased, but I hang with a really great group of people, even if you’all do stay out a bit too late.
Combine a great New York City trip with being able to team up with Jay Thompson for a session on blogging and you know I’m going to have fun.
Follow that up with a great opportunity to moderate a discussion on the future of mobile technology in real estate with Brad Blumbert of SmarterAgent, Mark Ford of Qwasi, Dawn Doherty of StreetEasy and Jamie Glenn of Trulia and I was feeling pretty darn good! But then give me the opportunity to moderate another panel on web analytics with Gahlord Dewald of Union Street Media, Marty Frame of CyberHomes, Ed Freyfogle of Nestoria and Anita Gandi of Hitwise and I was in online real estate geek heaven!
I learned a ton from so many folks at Inman this year, so thanks again to everyone who connected up over the past few days!
Sadly, I’m going to be missing out on the last day of the event (thanks to the fact that I doubled up my NYC time with a client meeting on Friday), but I did that very reluctantly as I cherish every minute I get to soak up from the great folks in online real estate!
Can’t wait to see you’all in San Francisco!
Dustin, how fun! I am soooo jealous!
You should be jealous Irina! 
Maybe we’ll be able to get you up to SF this summer???
It was amazing huh? Great to meet you IRL and hopefully I’ll be there at San Fran too!
Hey great job moderating! That web analytics panel felt great to be on.
Amazing Poppy! I definitely look forward to seeing you in SF! and maybe a trip to London for me some day!
Thanks so much Gaylord! You guys did a great job on the panel and made my job really easy!
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Matman speaks on 4Realz {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/ODUa8PCSVd_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Matman speaks on 4Realz ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/QSNZ0jLoHk”}}}
…for real estate professionals:
Great idea1 Thanks for the tip. It’s tough enough keeping track of clients and this tip will be great for tracking my ads. Thanks again Mark
A few weeks ago I moved the Rain City Guide servers over to new servers. Starting a few days before I moved the site over, I noticed a drop in the amount of traffic that coming to RCG as measured by Google Analytics:
The fact that it started a few days beforehand didn’t really surprise me since I had been having trouble with the host (hence the move!).
However, the huge drop that Google Analytics shows is almost entirely from a drop in search engine (think: Google) traffic: 
It’s not pretty, but I figured it was a reality and just part of the consequences of moving the site from one server to another and I figured Google would hopefully start sending lots search traffic again over time. But here’s where it gets weird.
The ONLY indication I have that our search traffic has decreased is Google Analytics… All other indications are that the traffic is just about the same.
For example, Quantcast total daily visits from the same time frame (which, just like Google Analytics, uses a bit of javascript I installed in the footer of the site):
Diving deeper into the search terms I can see that for terms we used to rank really well for, like [moving to Seattle], Google Analytics said we dropped to only one person visiting us from that search term yesterday:
But, I simply can’t believe that for two reasons:
For those wondering, I didn’t touch the Google Analytics code when I moved servers. Nor did I install any caching or other plugins that would be related to this in any way that I can think of…
And finally, just to show you that the issue really is only related to search engine traffic, both the direct traffic and referring traffic have remained pretty consistent throughout this time period:
So finally…
My questions for the 4realz community:
UPDATE:
After only 14 hours or so of a fix (thanks to an idea I had inspired by a comment below), the search engine traffic on RCG as measured by GA has had a nice bump: 
(Notice the jump at the right of the chart… That’s today’s traffic from search engines)
At least for one of the WordPress blogs that I run, all evidence points to the fact that the existing tracking code went bust at some point in mid-May! Obviously, if you’re also noticing that GA is measuring a drop in search engine traffic, as some others have mentioned in the comments, then try upgarding to the latest javascript code.
Weird. Something clearly changed about May 24. But if SERPs didn’t change, it’s hard to believe people’s surfing patterns fundamentally shifted (all on the same day).
My GAs seem fine. Why it would affect just RCG is beyond me. Sounds as if something somewhere is corrupted. What and where is beyond my capability!
I poked through a few accounts to see if I found similar results and I didn’t. So off the top of my head I don’t have a clear answer. But here are some factors, perhaps:
1) The Google updated its algorithm around the time your issue begins.
2) Potential issues with your old server may have caused Google to re-rank your site at various data centers that you don’t see from your location. (Unlikely since you seem to rank well still).
3) Search interest in the keywords and phrases that worked for you in the past suddenly dropped off (again, unlikely but it’s a possibility… maybe no one cares about Seattle real estate blog).
4) GA servers were all screwed up at the end of May making a hash of a lot of data for a week or so, perhaps your issue is related.
Have you tried installing another tool just to double-check the GA results?
I also put a call out on the #WA twitter hashtag, I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
Jay and g.dewald,
Playing around on GA a bit more, I noticed that Google apparently updated their tracking code at some point from “urchan.js” to “ga.js”. I don’t think it *should* make a difference, but I just updated off of the legacy tracking code to find out.
urchin.js and ga.js are two different code sets. The new one has lots of features (event tracking being the most exciting) but it also could use a little more baking.
I currently don’t advise people to switch to the “new ga.js” code yet. But it probably won’t hurt too much. I don’t think it’s related to your issue.
thanks..
I noticed something around the same dates, too, also a traffic drop, though I couldn’t point it to search engine traffic for sure (we’re just starting and we don’t get enough traffic to detect that kind of pattern yet). We do pop up as a first result with relevant terms on Yahoo, though, but not Google. I’ve noticed some traffic coming from google recently, but the formerly usual Yahoo referrals have all but evaporated.
We’ve always been using the newer script and we haven’t made any other changes. I thought it was just a drop due to actual content, but hearing a similar story makes me wonder about the accuracy of the tool itself. I’m only using that and a server-side Webalizer account, but maybe I should install additional trackers in light of this issue…
You got me curious, so I poked around in my Google Analytics stats for a while and was unable to see anything similar.
On the other hand, I poked around in your Quantcast statistics a little bit as well, and found some charts that seem to indicate a fairly similar trend to what Analytics is showing.
They’re showing a decline 5/15-5/31, followed by something of a leveling off since then. I am inclined to think that the issue has something to do with your Google ranking, perhaps on some search terms other than the obvious ones that come to mind?
My $0.02.
Interestingly, the search engine traffic that GA recognizes is WAY up today over the past few weeks. I only started using the new script code at 10am and despite the fact that it’s not yet 8pm, the total search traffic for the day is almost double the usual search engine traffic.
I’ll give it another day to confirm things, but I think the problem has been solved and that the old tracking code was missing lots of search traffic.
I see a similar drop from May 24. Normally 300 visitors daily sice then reduced to 50. Next to GA I also use GetClicky, here business as usual. So it must be something in GA.
I noticed something similar happening on my site and it’s freaking me out.
Organic traffic from Google was about 70% of my total traffic up until late May. Since then it is more like 30% and it is actually DROPPING.
My Page rank has remained unchanged. Was 3/10 and still is 3/10.
Now, I did go on vacation around that time and stopped posting for about 3 weeks, so that could have something to do with it, but I only ever post about once a week anyway so I wouldn’t think a 3 week hiatus would result in a drop like that.
In my case it seemed to fall off the cliff around the last couple days of May.
Consistent across Google Analytics and Sitemeter.
I guess I’ll try upgrading to the latest GA code first and see what happens.
Erno and Andrew: The upgraded code solved the problem for me! My traffic according to GA has been back to normal levels ever since the change!
Upgraded GA code has not changed anything for me in the 24 hours since. still not getting ANY google traffic and my page rank of 3 is just puzzling me. how can i still be a 3 and not be getting ANY google traffic. is google punishing me for something?
I found your blog when searching “google analytics shows a drop in keyword search” because I’ve been trying to figure out what has happened to my site that totally freake me out this past week. I have been raking pretty steady and in Google’s top 10 for over 2 years for a few select money making keywords. One day I did a check and I had fallen to page 6 for two of them, and even further down for a few more. I had been updating my site with a new logo so for a couple of weeks I had been working steady on it. My first thought was I must had messed something up and didn’t realize it. In looking at my G-analytics account I could see that for certain keywords the search for all of them happened around June 19-21. This was about the time I started uploading changed pages on my site. However I didn’t see the big bottoming out until July7th. All the top keywords in G-analytics showed the same thing a big decline (and I dont’ mean just a swoop down I’m talking about a straight line to the bottom and then flat line…like I had died for two weeks).
I’ve been frantically trying to retrace my steps ..and tonight in looking at my GA account I couldn’t help but think it has something specific that happened during those 3 days.
Tonight I just happen to compare my home page (which has been updated) to an internal page that has not been updated and is ranking very high. After reading the above post in you blog..and checking to see which code I’m using ..the old or new… I realized my updated pages don’t have ANY analytics code in them. But my older pages do! And, my older pages are still ranking ok.
I think I must have accidentally removed the GA tracking code completely…so I’m fixing to go put it back right now and I’ll come back and update here to let you know if it had an impact.
Donna: Accidentally removing the GA tracking code would definitely cause such a problem! 
NOTE: You can listen to the podcast and read a brief summary of the show at the bottom of the post!
As I mentioned last week, I’m putting together a list of resources for agents for a presentation at RE Connect… and at the end of the process, I’ll end up with a list of the top 50 marketing tools for agents. However, over the next month or so, I’m hoping to really dive into some specific areas and so I thought I’d start with tracking and analytical tools for agents by bringing the conversation to the 4realz Roundtable.
Today’s Roundtable will be at 4PM PST! And, as always, we’d love to have you take part!
If you’re an agent who’s eye’s glace over at this subject, I’m hoping you’ll try to stick with it a bit because I think there is no better way to find value in your internet marketing then measuring, tracking and adjusting your online marketing and I hope to get into some strategies with the participants of the roundtable today!
With that in mind, here’s a great list of tools from an email that was sent to me last week by Gahlord Dewald of Union Street Media last week (and reprinted with his permission!):
Are you an analytically-minded agent or someone who wants to get more technical in your online marketing? Join us at 4pm to let us know what tools you’re using and get some feedback from others from the roundtable on what you could do better in the future!
Note about the Roundtable
I’ve had more than a few questions about what it takes to get involved… Essentially, the answer is not much. If you want to listen into the conversation, then you need only log in from the talk shoe site. If you want to ask questions live (as oppose to the chat), then you’ll need to call in using any phone. ALL the information needed to get involved is on the TalkShoe site!
UPDATE:
What an awesome show!
There was a great group of people on the call including Andy Kaufman, Kevin Tomlinson, Mark Eckenrode, Grant Freer, Jeff Turner, Todd Carpenter, Gabe Hoggarth, and Jim Marks.
If you’re an agent interested in understanding what you need to know about SEO, tracking and analytics in order to improve your business, I can only imagine that you’ll find this roundtable discussion very enlightening:
[audio http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20339/TS-124625.mp3
Dustin,
I hope everyone implements Google Analytics. My brother and I are constantly recommending it because it is free and you really can’t beat the price for what it gives you.
Crazy egg is fantastic and a serious tool for those who want to see what is really happening on one’s website and another great mention.
It is truly amazing how many great tools are available for free.
One site that wasn’t mentioned is StatCounter – I’ve been using it for years and its simplicity is brilliant. In near real-time I can see what keywords are bringing visitors and what sites are referring to my site. It’s not robust, but it does what I want – for the deep stats, I use Google Analytics.
Joseph: No doubt the abundance of free tools is amazing… and somewhat shocking…
And Jim: I remember using StatCounter at some point, but they pretty much fell off my radar. Thanks!
Thanks for the shoutout, Dustin. So sorry I couldn’t make the call!
Good catches on the minty goodness and woopra (I declined to add Woopra to my original list because it’s addictive to watch stats in real time and getting to action can take sometimes take second seat to voyeurism).
Another good keyword reporting tool is Google Webmaster Tools’ keyword stats. It only reports on Google though so that’s a limitation.
Also, a correction on WAW. Brainshortout, my fault: WAW is once a month, not once a week.
I’ve kept StatCounter for its basic-ness. I have Woopra, but it is much too addictive. And Googley Analytics are sooooo deep as to be overwhelming unless I’m looking to do some serious analysis.
Hey Jim,
Try setting up the GA Dashboard to just have the four or so reports you use and then have it email you every week. Then you don’t get tempted by the depth but you still get info on which you can act.
Great call… I listened to it and learned a lot of additional sites I was unaware of… Interesting how the subject swung back to SEO… That’s of course what everyone is ultimately trying to figure out when they use Analytics.
Glenn
Interesting read!!!
I read about Woopra on TechCrunch yesterday and signed up. I’m on the “wait list”. If anyone out there has an invite code, I’ll be your friend
I’m not a fan *at all* of initiating a chat with a blog / site visitor. But I’ve got no problem with visitor initiated chat (which Woopra seems to support)
I too am on the wait list.
On the waitlist with all of y’all
the problem with this little chat feature that if you push a chat window to me while i am on your site I will leave in a new york minute.
BUT…. if i chat with you when i am ready i will stay.
Woopra looks fun
Loren
I think I’ve recovered enough now to actually post about it!
Despite our best efforts to be prepared, the day started off a bit rough with a nearby mudslide taking out power in our building in the morning (meaning no hot coffee and no projector) and a 9-car pileup on a nearby freeway slowed me down tremendously. AHHH
So, to say it started rough would be an understatement… But once it started, things seem to get on a roll quickly.
I started with an overview of consumers expectations in a web2.0 world to set expectations for the day… Jim followed up with presentation on optimal features and design for a real estate website. Then it turned back to me for a presentation on social networking… lunch… then another presentation by me on creating value through blogging about communities. And we returned for the day’s finally with Jim giving a engaging presentation on measuring and tracking marketing results to ensure a positive ROI.
All around, it was a wonderful day! And, maybe they were just being nice, but the attendees who talked with me said only good things about the education.
Because I promised attendees I would give them a list of all the sites I mentioned in my presentations (so that they wouldn’t have to ask me to spell out each URL), here is the list for everyone’s benefit.
Consumer Expectations in a Web2.0 World:
Engaging in Social Networking to Earn Clients
Using Blogs to Build Communities
I wasn’t tracking the sites that Jim mentioned, but there were not nearly as many of them in his presentations…
And thanks again to all the bloggers who have helped spread the word about the event, the sponsors who helped us keep the price low and all the attendees who made the day possible!
I received some incredible feedback from all three groups, which is going to lead me to make some changes to the upcoming events (I’ll announce those early next week!). Great stuff all around. Thanks again to everyone!
Congrats Dustin! Mudslides and pile-ups aside, I’m sure it was well worth it for the attendees. Sounds like a great program.
But next time, you should slip some Phoenix real estate blog in there somewhere…
So very true!
At one point I list “reasons blogs work”, and I use different examples from RCG posts… During the presentation I came to the conclusion that I had too many RCG screenshots, so my plan is to redo that section to bring in some other great real estate blogs… and I can only imagine there will be at least one Phoenix blog included!
Congrats Dustin. I saw your twitter yesterday morning and had to laugh. Great that it all came together.
Wow, that’s some heady list to be included in with. I appreciate it!
Congratulations!
Congratulations on surviving your first event. You’re off to a great start! (except for the little mudslide and traffic thing).
I was one of the attendees yesterday. Jim and Dustin provided a wonderful presentation and experience. If you are thinking of blogging, you must go. Seeing Dustin is like, well, “having Moses personally escort you on the arc”.
Thanks to everyone!
And a special thanks to Doug! I’m planning to send all the attendees an email with a link to this post, but I hadn’t made it that far yet, so it is awesome that you followed up already! I just played on your site a bit and noticed that your site looks pretty darn good and includes a great cast of contributors. You’re already ahead of the game!
Hi Dustin,
Glad to see you’re getting out there and enlightening the world about the new social networking. Things are moving at such a fast pace in this arena and we appreciate folks like you who are keeping us in the loop. 2008 is certainly going to be the year of the niche social network, as we’ve already been seeing with our own site for real estate investors.
Keep up the good work!
Richard
Chief Deal Weaver
http://www.BlackWidowNetwork.com
Athol,
I used one of your Bad MLS photos posts to talk about the benefits of using humor… and the slide alone was effective. Everyone had a good chuckle! So credit goes to you for creating a fun resource for us all!
Dustin, this class was everything I hoped for and more. As always, you did a tremendous job making sense of Web2.0. Jim’s presentation on what a website should have and the ROI gave me a lot to think of. I have a slew of next steps to incorporate. Keep up the great work and I look forward to more classes. THANKS to you both!
Dustin,
You are superman… Good job getting this post and all the links up… It is Saturday morning and I am just getting my feet back under me… with a weekend in Vail… I thought I would check your blog to get the news!
I gotta admit that the Mudslide was the first time I have ever seen you sweat! but we worked it out!
Sounds like it all worked out in the end. I wish I could have been there to see you guys in action.
Dustin – What an awesome day of mind expansion. You and Jim were fully prepared. You gave us so much information in the morning that I was on the edge of my seat taking notes as quickly as I could. When it was time to break for lunch I was shocked that so much time had passed. Then after lunch you guys packed in even more.
Dustin, you demystified, clarified, and confirmed things I knew, things I thought I knew, and things I’d wondered about. In today’s market, we simply don’t have money to burn. I absolutely thought my money for the day was well-spent. You valued our time and there was no “dead air”. You and Jim did such an incredible job. BTW – I drove three hours to get to there (enjoyed the scenery on the 405 and saw things I usually sail by-the mudslide affected the freeway, too) and I’d do it again in a heartbeat to hear what you have to say.
Thanks also to the great sponsors. Events like this one simply can’t happen without sponsors. Thank you for carefully choosing relevent sponsors for this event. I can’t wait to get my Altos Research up and running on all my websites!
Looking forward to the next 90 days of learning and to future events like this one to build up my Web 2.0 muscles.
Irina, Monika and Marlene: Thank you so much for the kind words about the presentation! Everyone at the event was wonderful, inquisitive, attentive and understanding. A perfect audience!
Dustin and Jim: As an attendee who showed up a few minutes late (15-30?), I can tell you that by the time I showed up, you were handling it all well, and I had no sense of crisis.
To all future attendees: The workshop was well worth it! Balanced and useful across a variety of speakers: Dustin, Jim, and the 5 minute presentations by the three sponsors.
Dustin and Jim, I was thinking that you were served well by your experience at tracking communication across communities. I think it made your planning for this event strong because the parts of the live event LINKED together well—even while each participant was able to keep their identity and provide their own expertise. That’s a hard thing to do well in live events, and you succeeded.
Naia
Oh, yes. …btw, count me in for the 90day expansion of your training.
You’re on Naia! And thanks so much.
Sounds like fun, mudslides, car pile ups and all, but no coffee, I draw the line there.
Congrats Dustin. Sounds like a great event.
Wow! It seems like the event was a huge success. What is the 90-day expansion training? Is it only available to people who attended this first event?
Cheers to new adventures!
Laura,
The event was definitely a lot of fun.
In terms of the 90-day course, it is an idea that I shared with the first attendees and it involves me walking them through social networking and blogging over a 90-day time period. And, yes, I did offer it free to all attendees…
Once I get the system down, the plan is to open the course up to anyone who is interested (most probably for a fee).
… 11am today where you can quiz them on their latest quarterly report.
I don’t think it will surprise many readers, but their data on homeowner equity paints a pretty bleak picture from the Central Valley of California down to Riverside (as well as the Las Vegas area).
…in detail, so no need for me to repeat things. But what stuck out for me the first time I read the press release was that they are now giving consumers the ability to export all of their saved listings to a spreadsheet for better off-line analysis.
That’s a beautiful idea. And it pains me a bit that the site is still “under maintenance”, because I can’t wait to to see how this feature comes together in practice.
Adobe has a similar system that allows websites to build and deploy data-feeds to the desktop.
Kyle,
That’s really interesting… It looks to require an additional download for the users, which could probably turn off some users, but the idea is actually quite compelling.
…that WP.com is automatically doing of my posts the other day, but didn’t play with the new feature right away. My loss. This is great stuff.
For any posts, I can now see how many times the article is read in a feed reader in addition to how many times is is read on this site. Interestingly, it appears that any given blog post on 4realz gets between 100 and 200 views from feed readers.
What does this mean for 4realz traffic?
On a recent article about Altos Research, you can see that almost all the traffic came from “syndicated views” or feed readers.
Whereas on my recent post about Zillow’s auction patent, most of the traffic came from links from other blogs, so this chart looks very different:
This is good stuff and I’ll be fascinated to see how the syndicated views change over time.
Over time you can probably see a trend in Feed vs. Link views and gauge the type of reader the articles attract, i.e. techie = feed vs. traditional agent = links.
I was wondering about that except I think that most of the people who use a feed reader will likely just view every feed post. (at least I do using Google Reader) and if they don’t view ever feed post, then it is just random which ones they will see. I’m thinking this is really only useful to gauge active feed readers, but it is a fun tool nonetheless!
I wonder if it also takes into account how I just read this article.
My Google Feed Reader sows up also in my iGoogle home page as a widget. So I read the full article but never entered my feed Reader – just the iGoogle balloon.
Just thinkin…
Mike: I just looked at the source of the feed and it is pretty clear that the WP.com team has added an invisible tracking pixel at the bottom of each post in the feed. This means that if the iGoogle balloon displays images, then the tool would track that “view”… Otherwise no.
Ricardo Bueno 8:28 pm on February 17, 2010 Permalink |
Great audience!
Dustin 8:29 pm on February 17, 2010 Permalink |
yeah… it really was. Not only a full house, but good questions and great feedback.
Ron Ares 1:00 pm on February 18, 2010 Permalink |
I thought the event really picked up steam as presenters rolled out the complete vision. Your example of ‘blog posting is like sending webmail was a great analogy’.
I wondered though, if the majority of attendees had an understanding of what Wordpress is, how it is administered, how to set it up, etc.. I know the talk wasn’t meant to be techy, but I was approached by a few attendees who didn’t know what it was or thought it was a product.
Dustin 12:26 pm on February 20, 2010 Permalink |
Interesting point about wordpress… and you’re right that we weren’t trying to go too indepth in the technology. If anything, I hope they walked away thinking the technology just isn’t all that hard and the tools are just that: tools. The tools are interesting and fun, and we spend a lot of talk blogging about them, but they’ll change over time. Nonetheless, we could definitely have put a section in the presentation that was a little more hands-on here’s how you use the tool, but I find that stuff gets so dry so fast that I’m not exactly sure how we would have fit it in there cleanly. Nonetheless, we should figure out a way to get a bit more about the tools in the presentations…