Google has begun to notify merchants using Google Checkout that Google Checkout pixel tracking was temporarily disabled from July 10 to July 18 due to an issue associated with system maintenance earlier in the month. Pixel tracking allows internet retailers to send Google Checkout conversion data to third parties. While disabled, the feature was unable to report conversions. Many online merchants have worked hard to integrate Google Checkout data with comparison shopping engines, affiliate networks, analytics vendors, third party bid management firms and others. Google has been contacting affected merchants via email and leaving the notification of third parties in the hands of those merchants. The notification to merchants states “To help you account for traffic generated by your affiliate and SEM partners during this time, we’ve generated and attached a report for you that identifies the total sales volume and number of transactions associated with each of your online marketing partners.”
Merchants who have yet to implement Google Checkout pixel tracking are obviously not affected. The report provided by Google is helpful, however, internet retailers who depend on real time accurate conversion data to perform functions like calculating affiliate commissions, measuring CSE and PPC ROI and automating bid management in paid search campaigns are likely to have done so without accurate data. The notification well after-the-fact is likely troubling to many retailers and third parties who depend on timely conversion data to make decisions and work with one another. Moreover, merchants deciding between alternative payment systems such as Google Checkout, PayPal Express and BillMeLater would be wise to research the dependability of each system, along with other factors, before making a decision.
A list of conversion tracking vendors can be found in the Google Checkout Merchant Help Center.
Ryan Douglas manages Paid Search and Comparison Shopping Engines for PlumberSurplus.com, an online retailer of home improvement products including Kitchen
Faucet, Access Door, and Sump Pump categories.
Original photo by webmacster87 under CC license
September 7th, 2007
Posted by
Ryan Douglas |
Checkout, Services |
one comment
Google Maps added a nice feature to My Maps, letting you draw lines on the maps (which you already could do) and see how long those lines are. That opens up lots of possibilities, like bike routes, hiking trails, or drawing a line from Shea Stadium to your house and seeing if the route you take to a Mets game is shorted than just taking the streets or walking along the highway.
The answer, after drawing all three routes on the map? The complicated, winding route I take through Flushing Meadow Park is 3.09 miles long. Walking along the highway, a much more direct route, is 3.29 miles long. Walking with the streets is 3.2 miles long. Looks like when I decided on that route, at 15 years old, I was right about it being shorter and faster, plus its more scenic and safer than the highway or the neighborhood I’d have to walk through.
So, try out this new feature, and see if you’ve been taking the fastest route somewhere. Maybe there’s something you hadn’t considered that could save you some time getting to work, or the game, or a more scenic route that doesn’t take that much longer. With this new feature, it’s easy.
Also: Since this is a MyMaps feature, you can share it with others, showing them the fastest route somewhere, multiple routes, the distance around a neighborhood, the length of a building, anything. Have fun with it!
As Zoli points out, this is another case where Google Maps has put a bunch of mashups out of business by bringing their feature into Google Maps.
September 7th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Maps, Services |
2 comments
Google announced a new feature for Book Search today, a My Library feature that lets you select books in Book Search and add them to a saved library. You can share that library with others, who can view it as a simple list, or in the nice book cover view shown in the screenshot above. Another new feature shows popular quotes for a book when you look at a book’s page.
Two popular quotes from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club:
I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can.
The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.
I know this isn’t a typical Google thing, but Google should make a way for people to link their Amazon Associates ID to their book lists. No matter how nice Google’s Library looks, there’s a disincentive to use it as long as you can use Amazon’s system to earn a little money. It would be a simple add, and would remove that little roadblock.
According to The New York Times, Google will start charging this fall for full access to certain books, due to agreements made with certain publishers. For these in-copyright books, Google has worked with publishers to bring their full contents to Book Search, letting everyone search them and pay to read the entire book. Users will not be able to save their books or take them with them as e-books.
Google also added another new feature to Book Search: clip embedding. You can go to anywhere in any book they have scanned, select a section, and embed it in your blog (or post it straight to Blogger or Google Notebook). Sadly, this feature is only available for public domain books (and it doesn’t work in Opera). The embed comes as an image:
Or you can just ask for the raw text, if Google can recognize it. In the book above (so chosen because it was the #1 result for “betwixt”, Google can’t recognize jack. Still, it’s a cool feature that will hopefully get better, especially if they add it for all books they have an agreement for. I’d really love to be able to embed from Google Patent Search as well, and real embeds (not hotlinking images) from Google Trends.
I gotta ask: Are the ads in Google Book Search new? I don’t remember those before.
September 7th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Book, Search |
4 comments
