Google has announced some major improvements to its Google Analytics traffic tracking package, mostly focusing on improving the way it tracks mobile devices. Adding a new snippet of code to the mobile version of your site will get you traffic analysis from mobile devices, and it works regardless of whether a visitor's mobile browser supports Javascript. Google has also added features for iPhone and Android developers to track how users are engaging with their apps. Aside from these mobile features, users will also be able to customize which variables Analytics will track.

The other big news is something called Analytics Intelligence. Analytics Intelligence watches the traffic patterns on your sites and alerts you if anything changes. It handles huge spikes or drops in traffic, but it can also drill down to look at changes by location and other factors. Alerts are customizable, so you'll only get email about changes you actually care about.

[via CNET]

Man, I wish this chart illustrated my salary over the past five years. Sadly, however, it's AV-Test.org's look at malware in the wild.

The actual number of unique samples doesn't necessarily mean all that much. So many of the nasties floating around the Internet are just mutations of other infections. Just look at the vast array of crud SmitFraudFix cleans up - it's a whole lot more than the original SmitFraud infection.

What's much more alarming is the number of infected PCs. Trend Micro points out the following in their blog post: "in the first six months of 2008, [Trend Micro] recorded that 253.4 million systems were infected with malware. The comparable volume for 2009 is almost double at 491.2 million."

That's a whole lotta infections. Trend's opinion on how to tackle the growing threat? Look to The Cloud, of course. They offer four possible benefits:

1. Each client is a part of a real-time global protection network.
2. When the network detects an Internet security threat on behalf of any one participant in the network, all participants are automatically and immediately protected.
3. All devices that connect to the Internet are protected. This protection complements your existing antivirus security solution.
4. There's correlation among the global protection network.

With so many threats, a global defense network makes a lot of sense to me. It would be even better if security providers joined forces to create a stronger, more responsive system than any one provider could on their own. I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

Something feels a little wrong about having to rely on a company that defines itself as a social media analyst to discover fully 15% of the Twitter users that follow more than 2,000 accounts on the social network identify themselves as "social media marketers." that of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people compared to 0.3% of total Twitter users following more than 2,000 people. Yet this is one in a set of ten interesting statistics to come out of a report by social media analysis company Sysomos on Twitter usage.

A summary of the 10 most interesting points from Sysomos' report was done by the Rohit Bhargava, and includes info-nuggets like the fact that over half of all Twitter accounts are inactive (have not posted an update in over a week), and that the top 5% of accounts by volume of updates are responsible for 75% of the updates published on the site. Unfortunately, some of the statistics given are tenuous at best. For example, the report contains a claim that 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25, but as Bhargava points out, less than 1% of Twitter users actually disclose their age.

Putting together meaningful statistics on Twitter is an admirable, but near impossible task. There are simply too many variables, and not enough data to go on; Twitter's minimalist approach doesn't give analysts much to go on. Further, as David Pogue recently pointed out, users can easily change their usernames, significantly muddying the water.

So, what do you think - can we trust the numbers that are put out by social media analysis companies? Is this information useful, or is it akin to reading tea leaves?

Although there's no doubt that Twitter is the current reigning social status update king of the hill, upstart FriendFeed is certainly a more than viable alternative. FriendFeed does everything Twitter can do and much, much more right out of the box, aggregating all of your feeds (including your Twitter stream) into a single unified online presence.

If you're already using FriendFeed, you might be interested in Feedstats, which shows you statistics about just what it is you get up to online, at least in terms of what you are funneling through the FriendFeed service. It also shows statistics about which other FriendFeed users you tend to interact with most, and which ones you are most compatible with, in terms of liking the same content.

Of course, all of these statistics are drawn from FriendFeed's openly available API, which means that you can snoop on your friends and see just what their habits are, as well. Or even better, check out a few A-list microbloggers to see just how much more social-networky than you they are.

Here's something that was practically made to be reblogged on Tumblr: TumblrStats, which generates some slick pie charts of your Tumblr activity. How many reblogs versus original posts did you make? How much of your content was photo, video or text? TumblrStats will also tell you how frequently you post to Tumblr, including a number for your peak posts-per-day.

Because of the quick and easy nature of Tumblr, you'll probably see everyone you follow posting their Tumblr stats soon. If you're curious about your favorite Tumblr user's stats, though, you don't have to wait. All of this information is public, so you can use TumblrStats to get info on anyone's Tumblelog.

With all the uproar about third-party Twitter app security and authorization, I thought it would be nice to talk about a Twitter site that works without logging in. Twitterfriends generates statistics about your conversations on Twitter: what percentage of your posts are @replies? What percentage are links? Who do you talk to the most? Twitterfriends can tell you all of this.

It also provides a visual representation of the network of people you @reply with. It can even go to the next step, and show your friends of friends. That's all without putting in a password.

If you do feel like logging in, you can see who in your network is inactive, and who's online - presumably based on the time of their latest tweet. This can be handy if you're looking to prune back an overgrown network. Mostly, though, Twitterfriends is a fun way to find out about and evaluate how you're using Twitter.

Web analytics company SiteMeter has rolled out a major update to its free and premium web stats tracking service. The new version of SiteMeter is full of new charts and graphs that let you see how a web site is performing at a glance. The update is also supposed to do a better job of accurately tracking unique visits and page views.

One of the biggest changes for web publishers is that you no longer need a separate login for each web page you maintain. You can bring all of your accounts together under a single username and password. You can also decide whether to offer visitors full, partial, or no access to your statistics.

Some reports appear to have been retired, like the traffic prediction report. But others have been added or expanded. For example, you can now see how your site stacks up against other web sites in a given category using SiteMeter. And while users used to be able to see visits and page views by day, week, month, or year, you can now select a custom time period to view.

Overall, the new SiteMeter looks a lot prettier and offers you many new ways to analyze web site traffic. Will that be enough to convince people to choose SiteMeter over other free services like Google Analytics? It doesn't really matter. There's nothing preventing you from using both services simultaneously. Many web publishers do.

Update: In response to the overwhelmingly negative reception this redesign has received, Sitemeter is rolling back its service to the old version. No word on how much time and money they've spent on the "upgrade." While the new service certainly offers more features than the old version, reports take longer to load, they're not as simple to read as the old versions, and most importantly, a large number of Sitemeter users had complaints.

Results from a new survey by Marshal are in, and apparently 29% percent of the respondents to a recent survey admitted they made purchases from spam messages. That number is up from a 2004 survey in which only 20% admitted doing so. I was all set to vent about people getting sucked in when I realized something: who cares?

Marshal's VP of Products, Bradley Anstis, said "Many of us often question ourselves, why is there so much spam? The answer is, enough people are purchasing products from spam to make it a worthwhile and profitable endeavour for spammers."

Well duh. Thanks for the press release!

There's no shortage of packages for tracking statistics on visitors to your blog or web site. But we have to say, Woopra looks like it could blow the competition out of the water. That's because it offers real-time stats tracking, showing you a list of who's on your site right now, where they came from, and what they're looking at. And if they've left comments or otherwise identified themselves to Woopra, you can check out their user profiles and even send them an invitation to chat in real-time while they're visiting your site.

The service is currently in beta, but the plan is to make it available free of cost to Linux, Mac, and Windows users. You can sign up for a free account today, but you might have to wait a little while for Woopra to approve your web site. The developers are still working on scaling the system to support a large number of accounts.

[via GeekBrief.TV and TechCrunch]

Most word processors will give you some basic statistics about documents you're working on, like a word count. But what if you want to see how many words, paragraphcs, sentences, characters, and spaces are in a text-based document without opening it up in a word processor?

Text Stat is a lightweight, open source Windows application that will let you analyze any TXT or HTML file. In addition to those stats, you Text Stat will spit out a whole bunch of numbers that you'll probably never need to know, including the average number of syllables per word, the average number of words per sentence, and a Flesch score, which basically tells you how difficult the article is to read.
[via gHacks]

I haven't met two small business owners in a meeting where one doesn't ask how to get his or her site to the top of the Google search results list. There are transparent reasons for wanting to be first: you get more clicks, your business seems important, clicks convert into business, and your Internet traffic can skyrocket. What's the magic formula for getting to the top?

There is no magic formula
Disappointing as it is, there is no single solution to move your site's rank to #1 in Google. Now that you're over that impractical wish, let's find out how you can increase your page rank and stay away from what will get your Web site tossed from consideration.

Optimize your Web site
Sometimes called SEO, Search Engine Optimization (or SEM, Search Engine Marketing are related but not the same), is a marketing tool more than it is a technology process (so put it in your advertising budget). People type queries (search terms) into search engines and Google delivers results. If your site is optimized for your key product or service, then why isn't it at the top of the results? Common problem: your site hasn't been optimized and search engines cannot find it. You want examples?

Have you ever wondered how many diseases there are in the world right at this moment? Wondered to the extent that you would like it broken down into noncommunicable diseases, and infectious diseases? How about how many injuries of the various most common types (traffic accidents, falls, drownings, poisonings, etc) or how many deaths have happened?

The World Clock at Poodwaddle is a little different than your average world clock. This one attempts to estimate a whole bunch of statistics calculated based on recent estimates. You can control the time frame you are looking at - either year to present, or maybe just this hour... it's up to you.

It seems like the kinds of things that have large bodies of statistics available to put together a project like this are all quite morbid. Or maybe it was a conscious decision on the part of the developer to make us think a bit more. In any event, it's kind of creepy.