Marketing Pilgrim

If you’re a fan of Google Analytic’s data, but don’t like the actual interface, you’ll be pleased to learn that there’s a new API which will allow developers to provide their own flavor of analytics.

If you’re a code junky, here’s what you’re getting:

The new Google Analytics Data Export API is now publicly available to all Analytics users as a Labs API that provides an easy to use way to get read-only access to your Analytics data. All report data that is available to you through the web interface will also be available through this new Google Data API. In addition to the standard Google Data API protocol of making requests over HTTP and accessing your data in XML, we will also be providing both a Java and JavaScript client library to make it even easier to integrate with your Analytics information.

Oprah does everything in a big way. She affects book sales in ways that make publishers drool. She gains a lot of weight then she loses a lot of weight. She can make someone go from just living in a household to being a household name. She certainly has a pop culture Midas touch of sorts so recently she lent that power to none other than the folks at Twitter.

Of course her impact has its supporters and detractors. Hitwise reports some pretty strong numbers around the posting of her first tweet last Friday. Interestingly, the chart below may also reflect the promotion leading up to the event itself more than anything else.

Yahoo posted its first quarter earnings report today. The company adjusted analyst expectations in January by announcing they expected to make as little as $1.1B in net revenue. While they exceeded that expectation, the company still saw a 80% drop in profit year over year and confirmed the layoffs rumored last week.

MarketWatch reports today that up to 700 positions will be cut in the next few weeks as Q1 net income fell to $117.6M (8 cents per share). By comparison, in Q108, Yahoo saw $536.8M in net income (37 cents per share). Yahoo hit analyst expectations with $1.2B in net revenue. Display advertising revenue declined 13% YOY, contributing to the downturn.

Google must have big plans for Google Profiles. Just last week, it implemented a change that allows you to use a vanity URL and now we learn that Google will start showing said profiles in its search results.

To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we’ve begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We’ve also added links so it’s easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn.

Here’s how it looks:

[If you don't have a Google Profile yet, simply search for "me"]

Buying ads on ad networks is standard practice these days. In fact, according to an article from AdAge, 65% of ad buys will pass through ad networks in 2009. Even in tough times like these that’s a lot of money.

The referenced article is actually about the announcement of Time Inc.’s own ad network that will leverage the 26 properties that they have which includes some big names like People, Time (duh!) and Sports Illustrated. The network, called Time Axcess, offers advertisers access (get it?) to about 27 million unique visitors per month.

It appears Google’s decision to shutdown non-performing divisions has freed-up engineers’ time to get back to focusing on “core search.”

Two new Google Labs products “hit shelves” today.

Similar Images

Searching for a particular kind of image and wish Google Image Search would show you more of them? When you search “Jaguar” are you more interested in the cat than the car? Similar Images has got you covered.

When you search for this:

You can now use one-click to refine to this:

Google News Timeline

Next from Google Labs is a new feature that allows you to view news events on a zoomable, graphical timelime.