I have a doubt regarding the use of Google News RSS Feed. Google News help states this:
Why Google might block an RSS feed In some cases, Google News might
block a feed. That could happen if you are:
Using Google News feeds for profit or to increase traffic to your site
Reformatting news results so they look like your own content
Changing, editing, or creating works based on content from Google News
I am looking to clarify these points:
Can't I customize the look of the feed? I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the second rule if I customize the look of it? For example, I'll display a slideshow on the top along with a listing in the bottom much like FeedWind or Feedgrabber widgets.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays Google News on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news RSS feed on their website?
Can't I customize the look of the feed?
Create an app or script to grab the feed, parse it, decorate it the way you like. Now, you have successfully customized the look.
I want to have a separate page for news related to content on my website. Will then I violate the 2nd rule if I customize the look of it?
A bit critical question. Let me provide you a simple answer: mention at certain corner that it was from google news feed. When google shows you ads, it puts a little AdChoice at a cozy corner by clicking on which you can confirm that that was an ad from google - follow their strategy, give them proper credit.
I am surely not violating the third one. But everyone displays google news on their website to sustain traffic right? Isn't the first rule broken by everyone who uses Google news rss feed on their website?
When you are providing value to others, then people like to act blind and pretend that what they see is not a promotion. For example, free medical camps are not actually done for helping others if they cannot promote them to get prospective patients (clients/customers) or cannot get free media promotion (again free flow of lot of customers) - forget those doctors who are lonely or have no responsibility or for whatever reason serving for free.
Related
I want to track particular links on my site to see where they come from. For example, I want to know which links on my navigation are being clicked, so if something is not being clicked I could potentially remove it.
I have been using UTM's, super easy, but results in skewed analytics data.
I looked into Google Tag Manager, but I don't want to slow down my website. I can change the site easily, so not sure if this is the best solution.
I found an article dated 2008 that says I can do this:
https://www.example.com/?from=topnav
Is that still valid? Is there a better way. I can't seem to find any information on this and assume somebody wants to acquire this information.
Thank you.
I have been using UTM's, super easy, but results in skewed analytics
data.
UTM codes are meant to track inbound traffic. Don't use them to track internal/outbound navigation, as it will seriously mess up your reporting.
I looked into Google Tag Manager, but I don't want to slow down my
website.
GTM is loading async, just like GA, so performance-wise they are equivalent.
I found an article dated 2008 that says I can do this:
https://www.example.com/?from=topnav
By default GA will not track link clicks. You can indeed add parameters to URLs and then use those to build custom reports and see which links are being clicked.
Since what you're trying to do is custom implementation, you won't find a single best answer, it's up to you to implement something that fits your needs. These are some examples:
https://analytical42.com/2017/track-internal-links-google-analytics-gtm/
https://www.gravitatedesign.com/blog/can-google-analytics-track-link-clicks/
On my Wordpress site which is affiliating with Amazon associate, i have many native shopping ads for products, that normally displays the products pictures with their names and the prices.
Lately, i activated ublock origin on my browser, then i realized there is only a white space in place of the products, at first i thought it was only due to slow internet, then i said maybe it is the cache so i deleted the cache, but nothing changes .... it took me a while to realize that ublock is killing all my native shopping ads.
which means this was going on for a while and i never noticed. maybe that is why the low click through, even that i have a good number of visits!
without adblock, my site look like this:
enter image description here
after adblock, it looks like this:
enter image description here
how can i fix this? is there any workaround it?
I searched in google and i found about asking visitors to disable adblock. that won't do, because it makes them suspicious of the site and usually just leave it.
I know i can put a picture of the products then write information on it with affiliate text link, but that won't give me the same design and usability as amazon's native shopping ads.
So, is there any way that i can make my amazon native shopping ads visible even with adblocking activated? some WordPress plugin or something?
Your help is highly appreciated, I really need this.
Thank you.
No, there isn't an easy way to do this. Those are ads and users with adblockers want ads blocked.
You can try building your own system that delivers the ads and hope that adblockers do not adjust their filters, but that'll probably mean playing whack-a-mole: you change things, they adapt, you change them again, they adapt again.
I'm not a really advanced Analytics user, so I've been trying to Google this, but haven't come up with a great answer. My analytics says 95% of my site visits to my blog today have come from site38.social-buttons.com and yesterday it was another subdomain of the same site. I visited social-buttons.com, but am unfamiliar with it, and have never deliberately put that code into my Wordpress site. I do have some plug-ins installed, which are "Subscribe / Connect / Follow Widget", which displays my social media links, and also "Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons", which puts the like links on my posts.
My questions are, how are people finding my site through social-buttons.com? And are these quality hits?
Thanks, I appreciate any info!
This kind of visits are called Ghost Referrer Spam since they never reach your site. They use a GA weakness to make a fake visit and get a record in your data.
They do it to get traffic, people get curious to see who is visiting them and click on the link.
This specific Referrer Spam is nasty because it make multiple visits at the same time, is related to the number of the subdomain so if it says site38... it hits with 38 visits, I've also have many of these, here is a screenshot I took:
In my case is a different simple-share-buttons.com but is the same thing.
The easiest way to stop it is by making a filter for each spammer in your GA. Check this article to find more detailed information http://www.ohow.co/block-social-buttons-simple-share-buttons-referral/
As an alternative, you can make a more general filter to take care once and for all of all the Spammers by making a list of Valid Hostnames, this is more advanced and you have to be more careful. You can find more information about this solution here https://stackoverflow.com/a/28354319/3197362
It's actually referral spam. Take a look at this https://www.mooresoftwareservices.com/Web-Commerce/social-buttons-com-referrer-spam
So unfortunately they are not good quality hits.
I am not a developer, and I have been doing my best to get a response from SoundCloud, but it's taking a very long time (despite being a "pro" member) and I need to make a decision.
I am one of the beta SoundCloud podcasters. SoundCloud recommends that we use Feedburner to generate the RSS we submit to iTunes. However, my FeedBurner RSS has an issue (involving graphics) and I can't figure out how to edit the feed without killing it and starting anew there and with Apple.
In trying to figure out how to deal with Feedburner, I found the myriad of complaints and rumors suggesting Feednurner will soon be on the outs. I then tried going with a third party service (RapidFeeds) -- importing the (valid) SoundCloud RSS wasn't working there though, and customer support has not responded in 4 days of waiting. SoundCloud tech support says they have been having trouble with many of these 3rd party vendors.
So ... I'm back to either Feedburner -- which, unless I can figure out how to edit the feed -- means I'll kill it, redo it, and resubmit to Apple ... and face the uncertainty of whether it'll be around (with my subscribers) in a few months ...
OR
I could use the naked SoundCloud RSS -- which will definitely work with Apple -- but I will not be able to TAG the feed in any way, nor will I have any idea of subscriber stats. SoundCloud SAYS they plan to add tagging/other RSS functionality "in the next couple of months" ... but will they?
I could use your opinions on what to do. I need to make a decision quickly as I'm holding up a website launch for this. Thanks.
You didn't describe the actual problem you're having, or give your source and FeedBurner feed URLs, so my advice will be a little blind.
Login to FeedBurner, click on your feed, and go to the "Optimize" tab. Your podcast settings are under "SmartCast." If you're having trouble with your podcast cover art, then the "Image" field is what you need to change.
If this isn't your exact issue, please let us know more details.
Despite the potential doom of FeedBurner (I predict its retirement will be announced in 2013), you are right to use FeedBurner if you're using SoundCloud to host your podcast.
SoundCloud is not a podcasting service and it seems that they don't give you full freedom over your RSS feed. This is the lifeblood of your podcast. So using FeedBurner gives you a lot more control than SoundCloud's feed, but you're still sacrificing the control you would have of running your own website.
I'd like to be able to collect RSS feeds online as an alternative to collecting them on a desktop machine using a regularly running process.
Ideally, it would either collect all feeds and simply email them to a single address as soon as it finds a new one (or even without checking for new feeds) or aggregates all the smaller feeds and sends them out as a bulk larger feed less periodically.
It would have to run on a web server continually, but would be a nice to be able to collect all feeds, not just the ones I happen to pick up when a feed reader is running on my machine. Is something like this available?
Just use Google Reader. :)
Google Reader.
Maybe Yahoo's Pipes could help you. It is an interesting way of combining and manipulating feeds.
I'm not sure if you have ever used it but iGoogle allows you to customise the google homepage to display information from around the web. You can add tabs to the page to allow you to split the information up. It's extremely useful and as you can log into it from any computer / browser you can access your feeds anywhere.
If you have a lot of feeds of one type or feeds that update infrequently then iGoogle can also be combined with google reader.
It's also great for adding other plugins like gmail, games, Dilbert :) and more.
To create an iGoogle page go to the google home page and click the iGoogle link in the top right corner. iGoogle will then provide you with a starter page and some suggested content which you can add or ignore. If you click the "Add Stuff" link then "Add feed or gadget" you can manually add all your RSS feeds. However, you can also configure Firefox to automatically select google as your RSS reader when ever you click on an RSS feed icon in the navigation bar. You can select / change this under Tools -> Options -> Applications -> Web Feed.
In order to use your iGoogle on multiple browsers / computers you will need a gmail / google account however it's free and easy to create.
T
simplepie is great if you have PHP installed.
Universal Feed Parser if you're programming in python might be of help