Disqus - Latest Comments for carsonsmith

Re: Intuition & Sensing: SEO for the Right-Brain Analyst

carsonsmith — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 17:01:14 -0000

Warren, great topic! It seems like a key aim of the new Adobe Digital Marketing Suite is to bring together analyst and marketer personality types--which can differ significantly--into a more coherent whole that works together.

I think it's important to point out that Sensing/Intuition orientations are found in both left and right brained individuals (Myers-Briggs). Intuitive types can be quantitative if combined with a Thinking orientation. Likewise, Sensing types may be less quantitative if they are more oriented toward Feelings.

I find most analysts are Intuitive/Thinking, unless they are focused more on process/reporting in which case they tend to be Sensing/Thinking. The commonality is a lack of Feeling.

Direct-response oriented marketers are similar to analysts, while brand marketers tend to be either Intuitive/Feeling or in rarer cases Intuitive/Thinking. And there are lots of process-oriented marketing roles in the mix that are more Sensing focused, either on the Thinking or Feeling side. I find the SEO world tends to have more process-oriented Sensing/Thinking marketers given the nature of some of the work.

Hopefully as the industry evolves companies will become more intelligent about hiring a mix of different personality types on teams that make these decisions. It may start to happen as digital becomes more fully integrated into a corporate structure that is often more holistic in nature.

Re: Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong

carsonsmith — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:30:46 -0000

Alexis, nice post. Another factor worth noting:

The new iOS6 browser uses secure search as default. On mobile devices, no referrer information is passed under this setting. It's all counted as direct. This has caused our direct traffic to increase by 20-50% depending on mobile traffic/search volume in different sections. More details: http://searchengineland.com....

Given this, and other weird traffic attribution issues I've noticed over time, I think "dark" is a very appropriate term. But the more we can do delve deeper the better, so bravo to ChartBeat for taking a stab at it. Another idea: Create a survey targeted to "direct" traffic only, and just ask users how they arrive.

Re: Facebook, the Hacker Way, and Microsoft - Eric Kennedy

carsonsmith — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:51:56 -0000

I think the toughest question is what to do once a business matures. It may benefit shareholders/investors to become more corporate and streamlined, at least in the shorter term. But this could result in inability to attract good talent long term. Do you do what the Washington Post did and create a "labs" division? Or try to maintain the hacker way throughout the company? At my company, we folded a more hacker-style startup division into the older traditional business. Was not easy but ended up working out well. Also have to consider that there are many personality types that don't function well in a hacker environment, but still offer value. Larger companies should be able to accommodate a bit of both.

Re: Drudge influence may remain, but numbers show his audience waxes and wanes

carsonsmith — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:16:01 -0000

That's a good point, loyalty is really the key differentiator. Would be interesting to compare Drudge to just the homepages of other major news sites. I think the data discrepancy may actually have something to do with the high repeat visits on Drudge. It's very difficult to count true unique users. Quantcast's direct measurement method (or any tag-based analytics solution) counts unique computers, not a unique people. Because Drudge's users visit so often, and probably on multiple computers, they may get counted multiple times. By contrast, comScore has a panel of actual people so there should be no duplication. But that has its own issues. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Because Drudge's users visit so often, and probably on multiple computers, they may get counted multiple times. By contrast, comScore has a panel of actual people so there should be no duplication. But that has its own issues. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Re: Drudge influence may remain, but numbers show his audience waxes and wanes

carsonsmith — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:15:43 -0000

According to Quantcast, TheBlaze.com (2.9 M monthly uniques, 68 M page views) is much smaller than Drudge (15 M monthly uniques, 800 M page views). https://www.quantcast.com/d... vs. https://www.quantcast.com/T.... Both comScore's panel and Quantcast's direct tagging have respective limitations in methodology, but I am more likely to buy the Quantcast #s in this case since both sites are directly measured with their analytics code.. Both comScore's panel and Quantcast's direct tagging have respective limitations in methodology, but I am more likely to buy the Quantcast #s in this case since both sites are directly measured with their analytics code.

Re: Gawker's Traffic Numbers Are Much Worse Than Anyone Anticipated - Nicholas Jackson - Technology - The Atlantic

carsonsmith — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:33:33 -0000

The Ajax excuse does not make any sense. According to Quantcast, average pages viewed per visit across Gawker's network have increased about 20% after the redesign. The new site is more effective at generating page views from each visitor. This is why page views are not down as much as unique visitors. It's also possible there's a technical issue with their analytics code that's miscounting cookies. It's often hard to know what the real problem is without full access to the deeper analytics data. Here's a more fool-proof way to tell if people are really leaving the site: Look at Google search volume for "gawker" in Google Insights for Search. This isolates the brand loyalists from whatever other factors may be at play. http://www.google.com/insig...