Yahoo! Web Analytics to get Faster (and better)
I have unfortunately been getting emails over the last half year, stating that Yahoo! Web Analytic is getting SLOW! That of course hurts, as we have been pretty proud of the speed of which we could actually provide real-time data back to you, while operating as IndexTools. There is no excuse in this and the emails, tweets and comments around the web are all pretty much true; it is slow, sometimes slow to the extent of being impracticable!
What most people don’t know, is that all new customer accounts, especially the thousands and thousands of Yahoo! Store Customers, were setup within Yahoo! data centers and provisioned accordingly (so they are experiencing a much faster system). BUT all legacy IndexTools partners and clients were left in our Budapest data centers and we have not really increased capacity since the acquisition in May 2008. However; partners and direct clients have kept adding accounts every single day since then, which of course isn’t really fair to anybody, as the system only gets slower and slower.
I am therefore really happy to say that we are finally ready to migrate all legacy clients and partners to Yahoo! Data Centers and thus making the final step away from our previous infrastructure.
This is a process that starts over the next few weeks and will be executed during the coming months. You will not only be moved to faster data centers, but even more exciting, you will soon get the opportunity to use the updated version 5 of the tracking code. A tracking code which all NEW accounts use. IndexTools legacy clients are on Version 4.
A shameless self promotion, and only because I spent 5 months on it; is a note of me actually describing both Version 4 and Version 5 in my upcoming (April 2009) Yahoo! Web Analytics book. Making the transition from one to the other for our lovable IndexTools clients a whole lot easier.
Here’s an example that explains the constraints as well as the freedom of the PENDING_SALE action value and shows the difference between version 4 and version 5 of the code:
Version 4
var ACTION=’PENDING_SALE’;
var _S_SKU=’DM112899; DM113834’;
var _S_UNITS=’2;1’;
var _S_AMOUNTS=’100.00;50.00’;
var ORDERID=’10099803’;
var AMOUNT=‘USD150.00‘
Version 5
YWATracker.setAction(“PENDING_SALE“);
YWATracker.setSKU(“DM112899; DM113834“);
YWATracker.setUnits(“2;1“);
YWATracker.setAmounts(“100.00;50.00“);
YWATracker.setOrderId(“10099803“);
YWATracker.setAmount(“USD150.00“);
So all good NEWS! And before you comment on WHEN this will be opening up. :-) I promise to post a bit more about what our strategy is, who we will be opening this up to soon, what we plan to do about consultancies and finally the upcoming version 9.5 upgrade (which is SUPER sexy from a data point of view).
Stay tuned… and my apologies for the fact that this and the next coming posts will be focused on Yahoo! Web Analytics. I promise to state this in the title so you can easily skip it, if this is not for you.
Find the original message which we sent out yesterday below.
Cheers
dennis
Dear,
We hope this e-mail finds you well. In our effort to keep you informed we wanted to touch base with you as we get ready to take the last big step in our successful integration with Yahoo!
As we informed you towards the end of last year, we will be bringing our new European (located in Switzerland) data center online in Q1/Q2 2009. We plan to move all existing Y! Web Analytics clients (formerly IndexTools clients) from the Budapest located data center and this process will be taking place over the next few months.
This move will involve a number of significant changes and will require some action on your side.
The following points are a high level overview of what you can expect to occur in the coming months:
- The migration process will commence at the beginning of March and will involve two phases. In the first phase we will be migrating all customer accounts to the new data center – this process is expected to be completed by the middle of April, 2009 at which point you’ll be able to access your migrated account (located in the new data center). During phase two, you will be required to make some changes on your site/client’s sites to take full advantage of the new system – this phase is scheduled to be completed by the middle of June, 2009.
- During the migration process support will continue to be provided as normal and our primary support channel will remain as support(@)indextools.com. Business critical issues will be addressed as a matter of priority and all other issues will be responded to within 72 hours. However, bug fixes will be released to the new data center only and these will become available to existing customers when the new data center is up and running and migration of all accounts has been completed.
- It should be noted that we will have to suspend the provisioning of new accounts and projects to ensure that synchronization of the two data centers can be performed correctly. Once the synchronization has been completed we will provide further information on account & project provisioning.
We appreciate you will have further questions regarding this. Please can we ask for your patience while we complete a comprehensive guide which will provide you with detailed information on what will be happening, when it will happen and what action you will need to take. This communication will be sent to you towards the middle of March when the migration process gets under way.
There is no action for you to take at this time. We will ensure that you have all required information within the coming weeks and that you have ample time to take the necessary course of action.
We would like to thank you again for your cooperation and look forward to continuing to serve your web analytics requirements through our new and improved data centers!
Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo! Web Analytics
March 5th, 2009 at 11:52
Hi,
does this also mean that Yahoo Analytics will be made available more generally as well in the future?
Thanks, Bjoern
March 5th, 2009 at 11:53
[...] Dennis Mortensen soeben in seinem Blog veröffentlicht, werden die “alten Indextools” Kunden, die derzeit noch im Data Center [...]
March 5th, 2009 at 12:24
Hey Bjoern
>>does this also mean that Yahoo Analytics will be made available more generally as well in the future?
You will see some messaging about who we would like to serve with YWA shortly. So stay tuned my friend.
Cheers
d. :-)
March 5th, 2009 at 12:36
[...] in den letzten Monaten beschwert, dass das Tool ständig langsamer wird. Nun wissen wir auch warum. Dennis beschreibt in seinem Blog, dass neue Kunden bereits im Yahoo Datacenter eingerichtet wurden, die alten jedoch in Budapest [...]
March 5th, 2009 at 15:48
Hi Dennis:
As you previously stated response time is being a real issue in our clients, and the migration process only increase our concerns with regards Yahoo! Indextools miss-function.
By the way yesterday I’m doing a training for one of our customers and showing them the Ad-Hoc Scenario functionality when I ran the report after create the scenario for registration process the report show only pageviews on the top of the funnel and zeros in all the other steps.
This kind of bugs will be fixed or we have to wait for the whole migration process?
March 5th, 2009 at 16:06
Hey,
>>migration process only increase our concerns
I know, I know, but it is the right thing to do! Sometimes it simply have to hurt a bit, before it gets better. You know – like exercise :-)
>>This kind of bugs will be fixed or we have to wait for the whole migration
If there are any bugs in the system, you should certainly report it at support@, (I used ad-hoc scenarios for a DEMO yesterday as well, and everything was cool though) – However; being honest, focus will be on migration.
Cheers
d.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:27
Hi Dennis
It looks like more work for us proffs… How long time will it be able to use the version 4 code?
I really look forward to read your book, and to the moment where YWA is available for everyone. It is a really great tracking tool :-) When you start rolling it out i will make a number of comparisons with other tools, especially GA on my blog http://www.webanalytiker.dk/blog. A lot of people have a lot of prejudices thats not true…
Regards,
Jacob
March 6th, 2009 at 8:22
Slow would be better than no YWA at all. Make with the public access already! :)
March 6th, 2009 at 9:13
Hey Daniel
>>Make with the public access already!
I know. More information on this shortly. You or Dave Coming to SES NY?
Cheers
d.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:18
Hej Jacob,
I believe a comparison is fair no matter how many clients a vendor serve. So do let me know if you are doing a grander survey. I would be more than happy to participate..
Cheers
d.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:23
@ Jacob
>It looks like more work for us proffs… How long time will it be able to use the version 4 code?
Version 4 of the tracking code will be supported by us until June 2010. Support meaning we will bug fix, tweak, update, support etc the JS file/Script itself. However, after June 2010 no further updates will be made to the JS file/ page script, meaning you will have to upgrade to Version 5 of the code to take advantage of any new features we release that are code reliant. We’ll have full information regarding this out to you shortly.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:47
Hi Dennis,
I just pre-ordered the book on Amazon.co.uk. My email from Amazon says “Delivery estimate: 28 May 2009 – 29 May 2009″.
Is Amazon.co.uk getting the book later than other outlets?
Let me know if there’s somewhere it will be available in April and I’ll cancel the Amazon order.
Thanks,
PB
March 10th, 2009 at 11:12
Hey Phil,
Welcome to my NEW BEST FRIEND club. :-)
As I understand it, Amazon will indeed be one of the first places to get your hands on the book.
Cheers
d.
March 10th, 2009 at 22:36
Hi Dennis,
I tried to get the information, but (perhaps, because it’s so late already :-)) I couldnt find what I was looking for. I just stumbled upon the link of the free yahoo analytics tool and remembered that you blogged about index tools being acquired by yahoo and being offered as a free tool, if I remember correctly. I’d like to ask two questions and would really appreciate if you find time to reply briefly:
1. Is it still free?
2. With Google Analytics some online marketers in germany suggest not using it, because of possible problems with the law and data privacy in germany (dont remember the whole story, but it has to do with google’s data policy and webmasters risking being sued, too because of it – probably a bit overly cautious).
Do you have any idea if this (technical) problem exists with yahoo, too? (Maybe an angle to beat g analytics in the german market?;))
thanks!
March 11th, 2009 at 8:34
Hey Patrick,
>>Is it still free?
Yes. $0 it is.
>>Do you have any idea if this (technical) problem exists with yahoo, too?
I would hate to comment on GA and Privacy. That’s for them to do, but let me elaborate on where Y! stand on this point:
- Yahoo! will never share your data with competitors or competitive Yahoo! businesses.
- You own the data and may export it and use it as you please.
- Yahoo strives to maintain 99% service up-time. We will notify you before any scheduled down-time.
On top of this and in particular in regards to the German (EU) market, you can setup the tracking code, so that we do NOT collect and store the IP number of any of the visitors. You can actually choose to obfuscate the IP as well, if you would want to keep 3 digits. Furthemore, there is a forced OPT-OUT opportunity attached to the T&C’s.
Cheers
d. :-)
March 11th, 2009 at 15:41
Hi Dennis,
thanks for the quick and thorough reply!
I’ll have to look into yahoo’s privacy policy a bit more (and find out what was the problem with GA, in the first place!), but what you say about being able to not collect/store the IP address and even obfuscating it, sounds like it should work. Great that it’s still free, too ;-)
March 13th, 2009 at 8:07
>> You or Dave Coming to SES NY?
The man himself will be there, just told him to make sure he stops by the Y! booth to pester you in person :)
March 13th, 2009 at 8:54
@Dennis: Great, every input are very welcome :-)
@Charlie: Thanx. Great to know. I am looking forward to get my fingers to your new code and the (hopefully) great new advantages :-) June 2010 is a nice long time limit to be able to remake all codes.
March 30th, 2009 at 13:34
[...] et brev til partnere og på Dennis´ blog d. 5. marts blev det offentliggjort at der kommer nye koder til registrering af data. Det betyder at man inden [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 10:08
It is now June 29th and Yahoo analytics is still very slow. I though that when it was Indextools, reporting was faster (in terms of refreshing and pretty much web page browsing). Right now it takes a lot of time to sit and wait while a report comes on the screen. Very dreadful.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:24
Hey Samuel,
Did you change to the new data center ?
If not, then today’s the day! :-)
cheers
d.
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:24
Hi Dennis,
I know this might be seen as a stupid question, but when capturing the sales information, Currently the amount of the transaction is not being recorded.
The following is the code that I have implemented:
var YWATracker = YWA.getTracker(‘XXXXXX’);
YWATracker.setDocumentName(“Payment Confirmation”); YWATracker.setDocumentGroup(“Shopping Cart”);
YWATracker.setAction(“01″);
YWATracker.submit();
Sales are being reported in the Sales Summary report, but not the amount. What do i need to add/changed?
Regards
Fiona
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:48
Hey Fiona,
You need to set the following:
YWATracker.setAmount(“USD100.00“);
Where USD100 is something you need to inflate at runtime. Here is a complete example including a few other items you might find useful:
YWATracker.setAction(“01“);
YWATracker.setSKU(“DM112899“);
YWATracker.setUnits(“2“);
YWATracker.setAmounts(“100.00“);
YWATracker.setDiscount(“5.00“);
YWATracker.setTax(“8.00“);
YWATracker.setShipping(“20.00“);
YWATracker.setOrderId(“10099803“);
YWATracker.setAmount(“USD123.00“);
Cheers
d.