Yesterday, you brightened my morning by telling me that my Adsense was well above my daily average. My co-workers noticed a bounce in my step and sly grin from ear-to-ear. The traffic and click revenue of my article directory soared as the morning went on. By noon, your statistics told me I had exceeded my best day for Adsense income.

I felt like I was out of your fabled sandbox, and that there was no duplicate content penalties. I believed that you we noticing the little article directory that could. The traffic still kept growing. Analytics was showing my keywords I had never seen before. I was ranking on the first page of terms like these:
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Are you a junkie for the latest facts and figures on your web sites? I’m on a downward spiral of addiction the more I get into managing my own sites. Whenever I turn on my computer, I need to check my sites and see how they are doing. It sets the my mood for the rest of the day, as well as a plan of action, if needed.

My first stop is Google Analytics. All my sites are tracked there. I know it’s not the best application for analytical statistics, but you can’t beat the price for the amount of features. One gripe with GA is that they are so slow in updating their stat information. My sites are usually 4 hours behind, at least. If there is a way to default to the current day when selecting a site profile, please let me know. It would be a nice convenience. I am constantly checking the referring sources. Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > Referring Source, if you are following along. Usually, if I see a new referrer, I’ll visit the site to see where I’m linked. StumbleUpon always beats out Google in volume for all my sites.

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Did you know that if you have a [tag]Google[/tag] account, you might be getting served personalized search results? Search Engine Round Table posted today with a comparison of the different results you recieve if you are logged in versus logged out of your Google account. The results are displayed side-by-side and are sorted differently.

I would prefer to get the same results as they come from Google without an influence based on what I have search previously. If my niche is payday loans, and I check the SERPs daily, I’d prefer to see the natural sorting to see what everyone else sees.

Granted, most people logged into their Google accounts don’t know they are receiving altered results. Most would probably prefer to get results more targeted to their search history. As a search marketer, I want to see the results my potential visitors do.

Fortunately, you can turn this feature off. Once you are logged into you Google account, click Search History, then click Pause. I turned off this feature immediately.