Central Perk

luni, 23 septembrie 2013

Building Your Marketing Funnel with Google Analytics

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 04:21 PM PDT

Do you have an idea of the path a user typically takes to convert on your website? Or, are you simply building traffic from one channel (probably organic) and wondering why it's not converting better? As I've grown up as a marketer, I've begun to really appreciate the insights that data can provide us on how users interact with our sites, and more importantly, on how they convert and where the experience can be improved to increase our conversion rates, and thereby our top-line revenue from online channels.

I've recently been very interested in building a full marketing funnel based on Google Analytics data. While it's one thing to be able to identify where conversion discrepancies exist, such as low-converting types of visitors, it's quite another to build a full and informed funnel from your site's data. In order to do this and have an accurate view of where your conversions are actually coming from, you need to first have the following in place:

Email URL tracking: Check out Annie Cushing's thoughts here in slides 11-14. (Actually, look at the whole deck.)
Social network tracking (tagging parameters and using a shortener to see clickthroughs by link)
Display tagging
Referral links tagged (or at least be aware of HTTPS sites linking to you, like Medium)
Paid search campaigns tagged
Tagging on affiliates (if applicable)

You can build your campaigns here using Google's tool.

What's a funnel?

Before we get too far into the meat of this post, I want to make sure we're all talking about the same thing. I'm not referring to one of these. Rather, I'm referring to one of these:

The funnel is typically broken into three sections:

Top of funnel (TOFU)
Middle of funnel (MOFU)
Bottom of funnel (BOFU)

The goal of this post is going to walk you through how to identify the channels that are performing best for you in each of these areas. Once you know those, you know where to invest depending on your company's needs or priorities. Also, knowing the different areas to which you can contribute will help endear you to the people running those channels, which will help you avoid being siloed as "the SEO." Instead, you will start to be seen as part of the marketing team, which is what you are.

Another note: I'm not teaching you how to integrate into other marketing channels in this post. Stephanie Chang did a great job of it back in July when she wrote An Introduction to Integrated Marketing and SEO: How It Works and Why It Matters. Have a read there after you're finished here.

Understanding attribution

You may already know this, but Google Analytics offers multi-channel attribution tools within the "Conversions" section:

In the "Assisted Conversions" section, you will see a number of columns. The ones to pay attention to are:

Assisted Conversions
Last Click/Direct Conversions

It's important to understand the difference between assisted conversions and last click/direct conversions. According to Google's own Answer Bin, a channel gets credit for an assisted conversion for any touch that they bring to the site where the interaction was not the one that led directly to a conversion. Google says:

This is the number (and monetary value) of sales and conversions the channel assisted. If a channel appears anywhereâ€"except as the final interactionâ€"on a conversion path, it is considered an assist for that conversion. The higher these numbers, the more important the assist role of the channel.

On the other side, a last click or direct conversion is a touch on the site that led directly to a sale. These are your closer, aka bottom-of-funnel channels. Google says:

This is the number (and monetary value) of sales and conversions the channel closed or completed. The final click or direct visit before a conversion gets Last Interaction credit for that conversion. The higher these numbers, the more important the channelâ€™s role in driving completion of sales and conversions.

Make sense? Great. Let's build a funnel.

Identifying channels based on funnel level

As I said above, we're going to use Google Analytics to identify the channels in the different levels of your funnel. If you use a different Analytics platform, like Omniture or Piwik, write a guide using that and I'll be happy to share it out.

Top of funnel

The top of your marketing funnel is where the first interactions with your brand take place. This is typically attributed to search or organic, but is that really the case for your website?

First, let's identify the most common channels that people use to discover your site. To do this, go to Content > Site Content > Landing Pages. Set your secondary dimension to "Medium." You'll see something like this:

Now, export this data to Excel (I've provided a spreadsheet at the end that you can plug this data into) and pivot it to see which mediums are driving your best traffic. If you want to get super fancy, break it down by type of page as well.

Here's how that pivot table is set up:

For the site shown in these screenshots it is indeed PPC and organic search. But just knowing the channel isn't enough, so let's take it a step further to see where the different channels are driving traffic. You'll either need to manually classify your pages (if you have relatively few like in my example) or write an Excel script to do this automagically.

I now know that referral is the primary driver of traffic and that the majority goes to the homepage. One specific referral, which I tagged with a Medium of "Link," sends the best traffic directly to conversion pages (which might not necessarily be the best place for people to land for their first interaction):

Middle of funnel

The middle of your funnel is the area where people are moving from a first brand interaction to an initial sale, or if they have already made a purchase, towards another sale. What we're looking for in the data here is channels that are not necessarily our primary first- or last-touch drivers. Rather, these are the channels where the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-time visitors come from in order to interact with your content again.

We can figure out the most popular and most effective middle-of-funnel channels a couple of different ways. The first, and by far the easiest, is by comparing different types of attribution to discover which channels get more credit based on first click, linear (where each channel gets equal credit), and last-click. To learn what each of the different attribution models really means, check out the Google support page.

By sorting the Model Comparison Tool in Analytics by Linear (high to low), you can find the channels that perform best when given equal credit independent of where they are in the funnel.

But this doesn't give us great insight into which channels perform best in the middle. Rather, it's telling us which channels account for the most revenue overall (which is still important to know), and the place doesn't matter. In the above example, for Distilled that's Direct, then email, organic search, and referral, in that order.

To find which channels are the most popular for your users to come back, we need to do some manipulation in Excel (my favorite tool) to clean out the first- and last-touch interactions in the Top Conversion Paths report.

What you want to do now is expand the number of rows in Analytics to account for as many of your paths as possible. For most sites the 5,000-row limit in Analytics will suffice.

Download all of your conversion paths into Excel. You'll have one column with the complete paths, followed by the following columns:

Conversions
Conversion Value

To wrangle the data into the format we need, I also added the following columns:

Steps in Conversion Path
First Touch
All Middle
Last Touch
$/Conversion

If you're a visual person, this screenshot may help you out to see how the sheet is set up:

Larger version

Note: the hardest part here is figuring out what your cutoff is for conversion amount. For Distilled, for example, I removed anything under $30, because we don't do anything with the data underneath that. I also picked a minimum threshold for the number of conversions that channel brought.

In Distilled's case, five seemed pertinent because it gives enough to get a decent idea of $/conversion but also eliminates the very long (20+) conversion paths that we're not going to optimize for anyways. However, also keep in mind that the length of the path matters. For example, Distilled's median # of steps before a conversion is eight. With fewer than eight steps, our average per conversion is 30% higher than it is with eight+ steps in the funnel.

So, to clean up the data, I removed the following:

Paths with conversions < 5
Paths with conversion value < $30
Paths with (unavailable) in the path
Paths with more than 15 steps in the path

After you clean up the data, it will pull into the "Common Middle" sheet within the Excel workbook I link to below. Then, you can see pretty quickly which channels are driving the most middle conversions, and which middle paths give the best $/conversion:

Here's the setup for that pivot table:

Once again, this will automagically work for you in the Excel sheet.

Bottom of funnel

The bottom of the funnel is the last touch that occurs before someone buys. These channels are incredibly important to know about because you can then build your strategy around how to get people into those channels and convert them later.

This one is easy to find. It doesn't take tricky Excel functions. It doesn't involve crazy data analysis.

Assuming you have Analytics set up correctly, you can find this data in Conversion > Attribution > Model Comparison Tool. When you set the Model to Last Interaction, you'll see something like this:

For Distilled, you can see that our highest last-touch channels are direct, then email, then organic search.

Applying the data

Remember this funnel from the beginning?

Based off the data, I now see that for Distilled, the sections of our funnel look this way:

Top
- Direct
- Organic Search
- Social
Middle
- Organic to Organic
- Direct to Email
- Direct to Organic
Bottom
- Email
- Organic
- Direct

Now we can build out a marketing plan depending on our needs.

Excel sheet

I promised you an Excel sheet that I have put together for you. Note that it does not automatically clean out your very long conversion paths, but use the parameters given above to narrow down your data to make it actionable if that makes sense for your business.

That said, you can download the spreadsheet here.

Bonus Excel sheet to find profitability by # of touches

I mentioned above about finding the number of touches that perform best for you. Here is a quick and dirty spreadsheet that allows you to do just this. Basically, the sheet looks at the number of touches and averages the conversion amount for each bucket. You can see the results on the far right.

To use this sheet for yourself, download your Multi Channel Funnel groupings in Analytics (you need to have ecommerce enabled) and enter your data into the sheet.

Download this bonus spreadsheet here.

Example and conclusion

If we are trying to convert more people to DistilledU, through that goal I know that Organic converts best for us on the last touch. This means that we need to invest in content that drives people towards a conversion through organic, so either blog content with a call to action or larger content teaching people SEO. We know that email converts 4th best for DU, but it works well higher in the funnel to convert people eventually. Therefore, we need to get more people onto our DistilledU email list.

Direct traffic converts well, of course; people are coming to the site because they know about it. Therefore we need to get top-of-mind and convert them into email and RSS subscribers so that they become familiar with our content and eventually buy through email or search.

We've built our funnel. You should go and build yours. I'd love to hear what insights you have.

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Seth's Blog : Compared to what: Marketing and relativity

Compared to what: Marketing and relativity

What tastes better, a $30 bottle of wine that's the cheapest the restaurant offers...

or the very same bottle at the restaurant next door, where it's the most expensive?

When asked about our experience, the essential question is always, compared to what?

What offers a better education: four years at your first choice selective college like Purdue or Williams?

or four years at the same place, but it's your last resort safe school, after you've been rejected by more famous (and thus selective) schools like Yale and Harvard?

What represents a better performance: a three hour marathon when you come in first in the small-town meet, or a three hour marathon when you come in last at the elite one?

We often need a frame before we're comfortable evaluating value. Marketers regularly exploit this glitch by creating the illusion of value (or non-value) by highlighting comparisons, when in fact, those comparisons really don't have to matter.

Without a doubt, there are competitive items and experiences where extrinsic status matters, and where understanding the context of what is created is part of the point. Winning may in fact be the goal. For most of what we experience, though, it's our own interpretation of the experience itself that matters, not what a marketer tells us about how this ranks against that.

Good enough, is.

(Bonus: jazz).

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 22 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

May Be a "Grand Coalition" Nightmare After All

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 03:44 PM PDT

As votes near final counting, CDU/CSU may be 1-3 seats short of an out majority.

The projections posted earlier may be incorrect. For example Haartez and PressTV had stories proclaiming an outright majority for CDU/CSU.

From Haartez

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives are on course to win a historic absolute majority in Sunday's election, according to a projection based on exit polls and some results from broadcaster ARD.

The projection put Merkel's conservatives on 42.5 percent, a whisker over the combined total for the left parties who together scored 41.6 percent

Even though it's a big win for Merkel, the Financial Times speaks of a "Grand Coalition Nightmare", noting Coalition uncertainty hangs over Angela Merkel victory.

Even if Germany's knife-edge general election ultimately produces a grand coalition, the result is still a big personal triumph for Angela Merkel.

A minority government – or one with a narrow majority – for Ms Merkel would be very difficult to manage, and the chancellor is more likely to prefer a coalition. The most popular in Germany – backed by some 52 per cent of voters – would be a grand coalition. But that could still be very difficult to negotiate.

On television on Sunday night, Ms Merkel insisted that she would not answer "speculation" over the shape of the next government until the final result was clear. "We will discuss this in our party circles," she said. "Tomorrow we will have another look. It will not depend on us alone."

Inside the SPD, many members regard a grand coalition as a nightmare.

Mr Gabriel has summoned a party convention for next Friday to consider how the SPD should proceed. Leftwingers want to call an all-party referendum on any proposal for a grand coalition. That could prove a severe obstacle.

If Ms Merkel is just one or two seats short of an absolute majority – something that was still unclear on Sunday night – she might be more tempted to approach the Greens, whose Jürgen Trittin, co-leader of the campaign, has never entirely ruled out such a "black-green" combination.

He is known to be keen to become finance minister, but many grassroots members of his party are horrified at the idea of co-operating with the conservatives, and especially with the Bavarian CSU.

One possibility is that Ms Merkel would approach the SPD for a grand coalition, and initially be rejected.

She would then try the other possibilities of an alliance with the Greens, or forming a minority government, before eventually returning to the SPD with a more persuasive offer.

Whatever happens, the negotiations could take many weeks. The longest negotiations ever were in 1976, when Helmut Schmidt, the SPD chancellor, took 73 days to reach agreement with Hans-Dietrich Genscher of the FDP.

The last grand coalition talks, in 2005, took a more modest 65 days. The average time is 37 days.

The latest projection tally I now have suggests CDU will be 1-3 seats short. This is going down to the wire.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

FDP Out; Possible CDU Outright Majority; No Grand Coalition

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 10:37 AM PDT

Shortly after posting "Too Close to Call", reader Bernd pinged me with an update.

"Polling agency ZDF predicts CDU/CSU has an absolute majority of 304 seats in Parliament."

Bernd also added ...

Hello Mish

We are unlikely to know until very late tonight or tomorrow, if AfD made it. I will keep you posted. This has to do with a lot of technical/statistical problems and with the number of "voters by mail". This was the highest number of "mail voters" ever. Mail voters are people who voted beforehand by mail as per request.

The clear winner, undoubtedly, is Angela Merkel. 42+% is impressive.

Bernd

Those who assumed a Grand Coalition was inevitable were simply wrong. It could still happen, but I doubt it. Why enter a coalition if you do not need to?

Addendum:

If AfD does squeak in, the absolute majority for CDU-CSU goes away.

In that case, Merkel would have to choose between a coalition with AfD that would be relatively stable, or a coalition with SPD that would not be stable because of demands on minimum wages, banking unions, tax hikes, etc.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : The GIGO buffer

The GIGO buffer

Computer wonks like to talk about garbage in/garbage out. A simple example: if there's a mistake in the way a blog post is encoded, many XML/RSS readers will choke on it, preventing all future posts from showing up.

The IT guys put up their hands and say, "well, if you hadn't had a lousy character, it wouldn't have broken... GIGO."

That's not resilient.

The work of the middleman is to inspect and recover. If your restaurant gets lousy fish from the boat, you don't get to serve it and proclaim garbage in garbage out. No, your job is to inspect what you get, and if necessary, change it.

If the school board gives the teacher lousy instructions, the teacher can easily put up his hands and say, "I'm just doing my job." The great teacher doesn't do that, of course. He provides a buffer between the administrators and the his real customers, the students.

There will always be garbage in. It's up to you as to whether or not there will be garbage out.

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sâmbătă, 21 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Is Risk-Free Banking Possible? What About Fractional Reserve Lending? 30-Year Mortgages?

Posted: 21 Sep 2013 08:58 PM PDT

Reader "Nate" noted that Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle stated that banning Fractional Reserve banking won't work.

Nate asked "What would a future without fractional-reserve banking look like?"

Let's start with a look at Megan McArdle's article: Banking Without Risk Is Impossible.

The fundamental fact of a banking crisis, which is different from a crisis in any other industry, is that if people believe a financial institution to be bankrupt, it actually is bankrupt.

As Arnold Kling puts it, banks exist to reconcile the desire of households to lend short and borrow long -- we want to have bank accounts we can empty at any time we want, but we want mortgage loans that carry fixed payments and last for decades.

This creates a vulnerability at the heart of modern banks: If too many depositors try to turn their bank accounts into cash at the same time, the bank will be insolvent, because it cannot liquidate the mortgages fast enough to pay the depositors. And when are you most likely to get a flood of people trying to empty their accounts? When they think the bank is insolvent.

So why not build a banking system where this can't happen? Well, alright. How shall we do that? Are we going to forbid the structure of modern banks ("fractional reserve banking," for those who are interested in the technical term).

Leave aside the irony that outlawing a practice engaged in by millions of upstanding Americans is not, at first blush, a particularly libertarian solution.

I've heard arguments that you could fix this by allowing banks to freeze withdrawals in the event of a liquidity crisis. But I'm unpersuaded because during the Great Depression many places did freeze withdrawals. ....

Megan McArdle Wrong Twice

For starters a 100% reserve system is indeed a "particularly libertarian solution" for the simple reason fractional reserve lending is fraud.

If I lent you a house that I did not have ownership of (or rights of control to), I surely would be convicted of fraud. If I sold you 100 tons of wheat, and only had 10, I likewise would be convicted of fraud.

Reflections on "Legitimate" Right-To-Use

Some argue that as long as customers agree to these various banking schemes it is OK.

However, it's not OK because such lending is nothing more than a gigantic kiting scheme. Moreover, it affects others by cheapening the value of money, pushing up asset prices for the benefit of those with first access to money, the banks and the wealthy.

Logically, two people cannot have the right to use the same money at the same time, whether they agree to such a scheme or not!

Banks are allowed to lend money that does not exist, but if you or I did it, we would be convicted of kiting (fraud).

100% Reserve System Does Not Mean There Will Be No Loans

Megan McArdle is also wrong about lending. A 100% reserve system does not mean there will be no loans. Instead it means banks cannot make loans for longer duration than they have ownership or control of the money.

If banks want to lend money for 30 years then need to have 30-year term deposits. If banks want to lend for 5-years then they need to secure money for 5 years. Might this mean the end of 30-year mortgages?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps it just means the end of cheap 30-year mortgages. As far as I am concerned that would be a good thing. 30-year mortgages with credit created out of nowhere fueled the property bubble.

Would it mean the end of mortgages? Certainly not but 10 and 15-year mortgages would carry a far lower rate than 30-year mortgages than they do now. And why shouldn't they? Are not 30-year mortgages inherently more risky?

Checking Accounts vs. CDs

Since checking accounts represent money on demand, banks could not lend them at all in a 100% reserve system. Such deposits would indeed be risk-free. They would be fee-based, but without risk.

Want to collect interest on CDs? OK, but such deposits would no longer be risk-free.

Notice that a run on the banks in a full reserve system is not likely. 100% of demand deposits are always available. And term deposits would match term-loans and no longer.

Of course, banks can foolishly lend money and not be able to return it at the end of the period. But that is the risk people take when they lend banks money. If people do not want to take those risks, they can leave the money in checking accounts and pay a fee for storage.

For more on the case against Fractional Reserve Lending please see

Fractional Reserve Banking by Murray Rothbard.

Case Against The Fed by Murray Rothbard

Please click on the second link above and read it.

On page 46 of the book Case Against The Fed Rothbard says "By the very nature of fractional Reserve Lending, banks cannot honor all its contracts".

Does knowingly entering a contract that one cannot possibly honor, constitute fraud? Of course it does.

I have talked about these issues many times before. For a synopsis, please see Central Bank Authorized Fraud; Fractional Reserve Lending Problems Go Far Beyond "Duration Mismatch" .

Megan McArdle seriously needs to read the eBooks above, starting with Case Against The Fed.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

What Colleges Have the Highest Tuition? How To Save $244,000 On Your Education; Avoid the College Debt-Trap

Posted: 21 Sep 2013 12:29 PM PDT

The data is a bit out of date, but the US Department of Education has a College Affordability and Transparency Center where you can see the highest and lowest tuition and net tuition (including aid) of various types of two and four-year colleges.

The highest costs are over $60,000 per year. And that is just tuition and books, not just room and board.

Business Insider commented on the costs in America's REAL Most Expensive Colleges.

Fast Company also commented on the sad cost situation in How To Save $244,000 On Your Education.

You, too, can experience the best that American education has to offer--without enrolling at NYU. Might I recommend that the curious would-be undergraduate or returning student check out:

Coursera, one of the three major Massive Open Online Course platforms, just announced a $43 million Series B round of funding to expand its mobile apps, API, and its "Signature Series" classes, which can be taken for a small fee and applied for college credit. The company offers free video versions of almost 400 courses created by professors from Stanford, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities--in all, these courses have had about 4 million signups to date. The State University of New York, the largest public university system in the country, has a special partnership with Coursera , developing shared solutions to enable more of its students to follow flexible paths toward a degree.

Enstitute, an apprenticeship program created by two Millennials, is heading into its second successful year placing 18-to-24-year-olds with top New York City tech startups, nonprofits, and media companies. The Fellows, who pay $1500 tuition but also receive a stipend to cover living expenses, live together and complete a core curriculum and digital portfolio in addition to their hands-on experience learning business, creative, and technology skills.

General Assembly, a Silicon Alley incubator turned education provider, offers classes and workshops ranging in length from a few hours to full semesters, and ranging in cost from free to $3,500, in highly relevant areas such as business, marketing, mobile, web, and product development. They also offer networking and mentoring opportunities, and a growing online course channel.

About Coursera

The above links to Coursera, Enstitute, and General Assembly are Fast Company reports on those organizations, and well worth a look for those seeking alternatives to extremely costly education.

I also encourage readers to go to the actual Coursera site.

About Coursera®

We believe in connecting people to a great education so that anyone around the world can learn without limits.

Coursera is an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Our technology enables our partners to teach millions of students rather than hundreds.

We envision a future where everyone has access to a world-class education that has so far been available to a select few. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.;

We offer courses in a wide range of topics, spanning the Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer Science, and many others. Whether you're looking to improve your resume, advance your career, or just learn more and expand your knowledge, we hope there will be multiple courses that you find interesting.

Future of Education is At Hand: Online, Accredited, Affordable, Useful

On September 3, I wrote Future of Education is At Hand: Online, Accredited, Affordable, Useful.

Please check it out.

Avoid the College Debt-Trap

Those with money to burn may wish to go (or wish to send their children to go) to 4-year brick-and-mortar colleges for $60,000 a year plus room and board.

For everyone else who wants to avoid the college debt-trap, I strongly suggest exploring alternative approaches.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Weekly Address: Congress Must Act Now to Pass a Budget and Raise the Debt Ceiling

Featured

Weekly Address: Congress Must Act Now to Pass a Budget and Raise the Debt Ceiling

In his weekly address, President Obama says the economy is making progress five years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, but to avoid another crisis, Congress must meet two deadlines in the coming weeks: pass a budget by the end of the month to keep the government open, and raise the debt ceiling so America can pay its bills. Congress should vote to do these now, so that we can keep creating new jobs and expanding opportunity for the middle class.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Google Authorship Troubleshooting: Article Attributed to Wrong Author

Posted: 20 Sep 2013 05:03 AM PDT

Posted by MarkTraphagen

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

One of the toughest Google Authorship troubleshooting requests we get at the Google Authorship and Author Rank community on Google+ concerns misattribution of Authorship in Google search results.

Misattribution (Google Search showing an author photo of someone other than the actual author of a content piece) occurs because over the past year-and-a-half or so Google has become more aggressive in trying to attribute Authorship. In many cases, Google will take what appears to be an "educated guess" at the author of a piece.

But sometimes, the fault of misattribution is more the site's responsibility, and that's when some careful troubleshooting (ok, outright sleuthing!) can often uncover the problem.

Here's an example mystery attribution that we were able to track down and solve:

Community moderator Ann Smarty asked us to look at this result for a search for "Time-Saving Apps for Social Media Promotion":

Misattribution in Google Authorship results in Search

A very nice Google Authorship rich snippet search result, right? Only one problem. Nwosu Mavtrevor is not the author of that article! A woman named Anna Fox is, as the author box at the bottom of the article clearly displays:

Author box from a blog post

So how did Google switch authors?

Step one in our investigation was to do a quick on-page search to see whether Mr. Mavtrevor's name appeared anywhere on the same page as Ms. Fox's article. In the majority of mis-attribution cases it turns out that Google grabbed the displayed author from that author's name appearing somewhere on the content page.

Sure enough, there was Mr. Mavtrevor, early in the post's comment thread:

Blog comment box

But out of all the commenters on that page, why did Google latch on to his name for attributing authorship to the page? His comment isn't even the first one in the thread.

Perhaps Mr. Mavtrevor has claimed Authorship for the same domain. So our next step was to search for him on Google+. Thankfully he has a rather unique name, so we quickly located his Google+ profile.

Sure enough, Mr. Mavtrevor has the netmediablog.com site listed in the Contributor To section of his profile links:

Google+ Contributor To links

The Contributor To section of a Google+ profile is where Google looks for content that the profile owner claims to have authored. The other half of the required two-way linkage is a link back from that domain to the same Google+ profile.

So why has Mr. Navtrevor put Netmediablog in his Contributor To links? Because he legitimately is an author there!

Blog post by Nwosu Mavtrevor

Mystery solved! Er...not so fast...

Normally at this point, I would declare case closed and ask my Mr. Watson to write it up in his journal. But there's more to this case.

Usually a misattribution like this where two people have linked their Contributor To to the same site occurs when the page author does not have a clear byline on the page. Google's recent Authorship FAQ recommends "[s]howing a clear byline on the page, stating the author wrote the article and using the same name as used on their Google+ profile." Doing that usually clears up most misattribution problems of this type.

But not in this case. Ms. Fox has a byline at the top of the article, and the name exactly matches her Google+ profile name:

Anna Fox byline

So what gives now? How could Google possibly misattribute this article when it appears that every clue to its real authorship is right there on the page?

The answer was just a click away.

Page vs. domain authorship

Google allows for there to be a "default" Authorship for a site. Usually this is the Authorship profile (if any) associated with the home page of the domain.

When we clicked on Anna Fox's byline on her article, instead of going to a unique author page for her as we expected, the link takes us to the blog's home page. And the source code for the home page shows that Mr. Mavtrevor has his authorship markup on it, and thus is seen as the default author for site.

So it was our conclusion that Google followed the byline link to the home page and picked up the authorship attribution from there.

An ounce of prevention

Let's get to some practical takeaways from this investigation that can help prevent Authorship misattribution, particularly for multi-author sites.

1. Give each author on your site a unique author page. Most up-to-date Wordpress themes and frameworks (such as Genesis) include the option to set up unique author pages (under the Users tab). These templates automatically create a byline on each page created by a certain author, and the byline automatically links to that author's author page. When this is the case, each author only needs to link to her or his Google+ profile once from their unique author page (and of course, link back from the Contributor To section of their G+ profiles) and they are done. Google will follow the links from their bylines to their author pages to their G+ profiles.

If your site doesn't have such a theme, you should consider coding in author pages that are linked to by each author's content.

2. Make sure each author's byline name exactly matches her or his Google+ name. As mentioned above, Google now recommends that as a best practice. In most cases where we've seen misattribution just adding the byline name (in the form "by firstname lastname"), and placing it at the beginning of the content, are enough to correct the problem. The only reason that didn't work in our test case above was the fact that the byline linked to the site's home page.

3. Avoid using domain authorship attribution. Even though many themes and plugins (such as the popular Yoast SEO Plugin) offer the option to set up authorship for the home page/domain, we now recommend against using it. Google recently made clear that Authorship should only be applied when "[t]he URL/page contains a single article (or subsequent versions of the article) or single piece of content, by the same author. This means that the page isn't a list of articles or an updating feed." In addition, they noted that, "Authorship annotation is useful to searchers because it signals that a page conveys a real personâ€™s perspective or analysis on a topic. Since property listings and product pages are less perspective/analysis oriented, we discourage using authorship in these cases"

Since home pages, and about pages and such don't fit the descriptions above, authorship is not intended for them. My concern in light of these guidelines is primarily with watering down one's Author Rank (if and when that becomes a reality). But in terms of our present topic, I also believe that refraining from attributing authorship to a homepage or entire domain will help avoid misattribution issues of the type we saw above.

Conclusion

Google Authorship is an evolving product. It has already gone through some major changes since the summer of 2011 when it first went public. We can expect that as time goes by Google will get better and better at correct author attribution. In the meantime, though, it is best to be vigilant for misattributions of your content, and to employ a triage similar to the one we walked through in this post when they happen. Follow the best practices we outlines above, and there's hope that you'll head those issues off before they happen.

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