We're Updating our Terms of Service

Hi Dennis, At Square, we strive to make our policies clear and easy to understand. As part of that commitment, we’ve updated our Terms of Service, which will be effective as of April 26, 2021. Here’s some of what’s new: •  General Terms: We’ve updated our dispute resolution and arbitration provision to provide an informal dispute resolution mechanism, provide greater specificity around the applicable AAA rules, clarify both your and our respective responsibilities, and give you more control over your participation in the arbitration, including the right to opt out. •  Payroll Terms of Service: We’ve updated our payroll terms of service to provide additional clarity around how our product functions and how they may support your particular business needs. •  ACH Service Terms: We’ve included terms for our ACH Service. What you should do: We encourage you to review the updated terms in full, which will apply to you if you continue to use our products and services on and after April 26, 2021. Thank you for being a part of the Square community. The Square Team

We're Updating our Additional POS Terms

Hi Dennis, As you may have heard, we acquired the website-building company Weebly last year. To reflect the new eCommerce features coming to Square sellers as a result of this acquisition, we've updated our Additional Point of Sale Terms, which will be effective as of July 10, 2019. Here's what's new: Additional POS Terms: We've updated the Online Store Terms to include additional terms that will govern your use of the Square Online Store and other exciting new eCommerce features that you can unlock through your Square Online Dashboard. These terms specify what you can and cannot do when selling and posting online, and provide additional information regarding your use of Square Online Store and other eCommerce features. What you should do: We encourage you to review the updated Terms in full, which will apply to you if you continue to use our products and services on and after July 10, 2019. Thank you for being a part of the Square community. The Square Team

© 2019 Square, Inc. 1455 Market Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94103

We're Updating our Terms of Service and Privacy Notice

Hi, At Square, we strive to make our policies clear and our services easy to use. As part of that commitment, we've updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Notice, which will be effective as of May 25, 2018. Here's some of what's new: •   General Terms: We've provided greater transparency, so you can more clearly understand how we communicate with you. We have also further clarified our arbitration procedures. •   Privacy Notice: We've updated our Privacy Notice to make it easier for you to understand what information we collect from you, why we collect it, how we use and store it, and when and with whom we share it. To help make our privacy practices clearer and easier for you to understand, we have separated the privacy notices that apply to Cash customers from the notices that apply to Square customers. You should read the privacy notice(s) for the product(s) you use. If you reside in the United Kingdom or other European Union member state, please review our Square and Cash privacy notices for the United Kingdom. Our UK privacy notices have been updated to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and explain how you can exercise your rights under GDPR. •   Payment Terms: We've clarified how we settle proceeds and recover funds. •   Intellectual Property Policy: We've added a non-exhaustive list of our trademarks, clarified when you may and may not use them, and added updates regarding fair use and repeat infringement. •   Additional Point of Sale Terms of Service: We've included new Employee Management terms. •   Square Installments by Square Capital Seller Terms: We've added new terms for sellers who offer Square Installments to their customers through Square Capital, LLC. What you should do: We encourage you to review the updated Terms and Privacy Notice(s) in full, which will apply to you if you continue to use our products and services on and after May 25, 2018. Thank you for being a part of the Square community. The Square Team

© 2018 Square, Inc. 1455 Market Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94103

We’ve updated our privacy policy and terms of service

These updates provide additional clarity and transparency, making our terms easier to read and understand.

Hello. We've updated Square's privacy policy and legal terms and wanted to give you an overview of the changes. These updates provide additional clarity and transparency, making our terms easier to read and understand. We encourage you to review the sections that apply to you, depending on how you engage with Square. Privacy Policy We reorganized our privacy policy to clarify the information we collect from specific user groups, based on your engagement with our products: •   Privacy Policy for users who have or apply for a Square account •   Privacy Policy for all others, including customers of Square sellers Terms of Service Given our expanded product offering, we also reorganized our terms of service to make it easier to find the terms that apply to you, depending on which Square products you use: •   General Terms of Service apply to all the services we offer •   Payment Terms apply to all payments made using our services •   Additional Register Terms apply to Square Register •   Additional Cash Terms apply to Square Cash and Square Cash for Business What you need to do You should review the new policy and terms in full. If you continue using our products and services, you'll be doing so under the new privacy policy and terms. Thanks for being part of the Square community.

© 2016 Square, Inc. 1455 Market Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94103

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Check out what we've been working on and then sign in to your Square account to request your new free card reader.

Check out the new Square

We've been working on some great new features. Take a look at what we've been up to, and then sign in to your Square account to finish activation and get your free card reader. • Send Invoices for free • Receive next business day deposits directly to your bank account • Accept payments without an internet connection • Manage inventory and keep stock of items • Integrate with your favorite third-party services like QuickBooks and Xero Get started

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Raven Mad to Raving Fans

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind.  I have the distinct privilege of representing a platform that is perhaps the closest to Raven tools as a competitor could be.  That was never our goal.  In fact, we've been much more focused on building a world class- Enterprise SEO platform.  Along the way, we also provide some of the same types of reports as Raven.  We also go much deeper than Raven- according to our raving fans.  The bottom line is, we are positioned very well.  We're offering a top notch SEO platform which encourages good, solid, white hat SEO techniques.  (HINT!  GREAT content that the Search Engines can read and index and that others also find valuable.)  This platform is more than just a safe place to land- we've also shown loads of new customers the many additional advantages we offer beyond what they even realized was possible. 

Feel free to read more about our Raven Migration Process and our SEO resources including what we feel are "reasonably" unbiased reviews of other SEO solutions. 

In an effort to pay homage to my journalist roots, I'll pretend that this article is being written in inverted pyramid style.  That is, the most important information is at the top.  I haven't posted anything on this blog in quite a while.  Lame excuse, but I've been busy starting Analytics SEO in the US and Canada.  that's been rather time consuming.  I think I've discovered more about the role of this blog in my overall "Voice."  If you don't know what that means, please check out some of my much older posts.

Google Analytics Blog: Email scheduler, PDF export, and a transition to the new Google Analytics interface

Google Analytics Blog: Email scheduler, PDF export, and a transition to the new Google Analytics interface

Google Analytics Blog: Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics for everyone

Google Analytics Blog: Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics for everyone: Back in June, we announced a pilot program to allow users to surface Google Search data in Google Analytics by linking their Webmaster Tool...

Google Analytics Blog: Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics for everyone

Google Analytics Blog: Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics for everyone: Back in June, we announced a pilot program to allow users to surface Google Search data in Google Analytics by linking their Webmaster Tool...

Customizing Omniture

Recently, I've been using Omniture er um I mean Adobe Analytics to extract some rather complex metrics. A few things struck me that I believe I should share. Because I've tried not to blog about too many technical or implementation issues, I thought I would explain how Omniture has been providing more and more new features which are reducing the need to "re-implement" new code in the form of new (jargon alert) e-vars.

New Implementation:

This is really targeted to those of you who (like me) remember the horror stories (or worse yet lived the nighmare) of a painful omniture implementation. Omniture now claims that they are leveraging the experience from deploying SiteCatalyst over 3000 times and have developed best practices which combine business, industry, and technical needs in a process they are calling their Fusion Methodology.

If you are wondering how much easier this is since the "good ol days," consider that Omniture is still suggesting that implementation will take between 4 and 6 weeks- working with a technical contact and includes weekly status calls. It's still not as easy as GA for sure. They have also moved from what they call "G" code to "H" code and offer migration guidelines.

Server Side versus Client Side scriptng also seems to be an important "new" option. It used to be that all the code was on the client side and that was the only option. That is based on hearsay on my part, but my research seems to back that up as well. I never personally implemented under this methodology. The "variables" can now also be contained in a library for reference by the javascript.

This is in no way designed to be an exhaustive list of all implementation methodologies, but suffice it to say that if you have been constantly ruling out Omniture because you don't have the technical resources or the time to implement this robust solution, you may want to look again.

Modifications:

Depending on how your particular instance of Omniture was implemented (and likely WHEN), you may find yourself lacking the flexibility you might "want" in the reporting suite. Traditionally, the problem I've run against is that a website is a dynamic entity which often doesn't resemble itself from one year to the next. Check out the archive.org project and you'll see what I mean. Also- all too often, you "don't know what you don't know" when you first implement any analytics application and that can be a real problem.

Omniture seems to have been adding functionality to help with these issues. Custom dashboards are easier that ever to build and their Excel tools are greatly improved from the past as well. The "Excel Client" has been replaced with the new "Report Builder" which opens up a whole new layer of flexibility. Originally, I was not a fan of "having" to use excel with an enterprise application like Site Catalyst, but it turns out that there is tremendous benefit.

For one thing, most business users are already trained on how to use excel. It's a native environment for them. Also- regardless of your level of experience with Site Catalyst, custom dimensions and metrics can be confusing and you're likely to run into limitations. Report Builder removes many of those limitations. It also provides a means of refreshing the data automatically and can even send reports on a schedule as well.

I recently ran into a situation where the only way I could determine to reasonably get the data I wanted was by using Report Builder. Unfortunately, I needed to request access to Report Builder from the admin of this client- which can sometimes be a problem. It's also kinda hidden- I couldn't find it even when I knew what I was looking for. There doesn't appear to be a way to just download the excel add-in except from the post log in menu and even then, it won't do you much good if you don't have the proper permissions to use it.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to Report Builder is that, based on my unscientific observations, I'd say it would likely dramatically reduce the need to re implement code or even new variables into the library. That removes a ton of hassle and, of course, the need to wait for new data to build- since you can't go back in time with new variables.

Remember- approach your analytics in the right order:

• Strategy
• Implementation (Access)
• Reporting
• Ad Hoc Analysis

Re implement only if you're sure it's necessary...

Connecting Adwords and Google Analytics

I don't usually blog about "technical" issues, so I'll try to keep this as practical as possible. There are a few really important decisions that need to be made when setting up both Adwords and Google Analytics. Some of these decisions can have traumatic long term implications by missing a few key subtleties.

Beginning with the end in mind, suppose you have a few websites. Many companies do. You're likely to want to manage those websites separately, but you may also want to see them "together" in a roll up. So- many Google Analytics Gurus will recommend setting up ONE account with several "profiles" to see the separate websites. That's the easiest way to set things up. With a few tweaks, you can even see traffic crossing domains and referring to one another.

This can have some unintended consequences. You are also likely to want to run separate AdWords campaigns with separate line item budgets. In order to do that, you'll need at LEAST separate campaigns (because you can only control budgets at the campaign level) but ideally you may even need separate ACCOUNTS.

As of a few years ago, you can now "connect" Adwords and Analytics. that's a really nice feature- you can open analytics directly in adwords, and some other nice features present themselves as well- likely even more to come as this becomes more standard. Here's the problem:

You can't connect one Adwords account with a "profile" you can only connect an adwords account with one analytics account. To make matters even worse, some Analytics accounts are set up with an incrementing "UA" number in other words, you can set up a new "site" under the same account and your UA structure will look something like this: UA-XXXXXX-1 then UA-XXXXXX-2 and so on. Google Analytics mixes it's metaphors on this one- and they consider these to be the same account but separate profiles- even though there are unique profile numbers assigned separately. Perhaps Danny Sullivan will add this to his list of the 25 Things I Hate About Google and this one may be on it next time.

This may seem rather trivial, but it's pretty interesting the number of things that don't behave properly as a result of this. So how do you fix it? Well- that's the worst part- the only fix is to start new accounts- which of course means starting your numbers from scratch...and this is according to two separate Googlers I've spoken with about this issue. It's kinda one of those things where you need to think carefully about whether there are enough reasons to re-implement. Unfortunately, there may be more and more features only available for accounts that are connected.

If your accounts are connected, You'll get this neat option inviting you to import conversions from Google Analytics into adwords under "conversions." Only problem is, I've tested this a bunch, and it's unreliable. I'm not even allowed to try it again or my boss will get mad at me. He's convinced it's never going to work. Ironically, you can't import Adwords conversions into Google Analytics. It's just not an available feature...so you have build conversions in Adwords and goal conversions in GA...urgh.

So- be careful when setting up your new Google Analytics account and reach out to me if you need info on some of the work arounds we've developed- there out of the scope of the blog.

Inside AdWords: Location targeting on AdWords: Now with more advanced controls

Inside AdWords: Location targeting on AdWords: Now with more advanced controls

2011 the Year of Dividends

I've been reading all sorts of articles and blog posts these days offering tips for the New Year. I thought it would be best to offer a few of my consolidated thoughts from my various explorations and my own experiences.

1. ROI- 2011 should be the year that our customers are able to more accurately measure their return on investment. Web analytics is very powerful when it is applied to real life business decisions. I am still surprised and how few marketers still don't know how their marketing efforts affect their bottom line. This is often a significant challenge, but new technology and more sophisticated techniques can bridge that gap. Get there. It's worth the effort. Without being able to measure ROI, you won't be able to understand how to cash in on your marketing efforts.
2. Cash in your Analytics Dividends- If you've been "analysing" a lot, the first part of the year may be a good time to cash in on some learnings. This can take several forms, but here is an example. We know of a company that has invested a considerable amount of money in PPC advertising. Using analytics as a guide, they can now expand into new markets or at least new market segments while applying those learnings. The pain and suffering is over and now they can count on a lower cost per conversion.
3. Refine your Dashboards- If you are still feeling overwhelmed by all the data you are dealing with, take advantage of the built in "first of the year" recalibration excuse. Have that conversation with your team about simplifying your life by focusing on the KPI's (key performance indicators) that really matter to your bottom line.

3 reasons why this is a BAD Link request

I'm not sure why I'm SO surprised that it has been a while since I've received such a blatant and poorly executed attempt to exchange links. Perhaps I thought that most people were wiser by now. For those who still haven't heard, this is NOT how you exchange links:

Dear Sir or Madam

We would sincerely like to exchange links with your website.

Exchanging links will increase search engine rankings and website popularity, therefore, we will both benefit from exchanging links.

If you are interested, please add our link on your site and let me know.

Our linking details are as follows:

Title: Stourbridge Motor Company

URL: http://www.stourbridgemotorcompany.co.uk

Description: Stourbridge Motor Company deliver quality used cars, vans and mpv’s at realistic prices in West Midlands, Birmingham, Stourbridge, Redditch, Halesowen, Dudley and surrounds.

Please let me know as soon as you have posted our site details onto a link page that is cached by Google.

In exchange, please send your link information to me, which we will upload within 24 hours of receipt, and we will also notify you as soon as the link is posted.

We sincerely forward to your positive response.

Kind regards

[from someone I've never heard of]

Three reasons why this is wrong:

1. My site has nothing to do with their site: They're even on a different continent!

2. Trading links for pure SEO value is a huge NO NO. Even if that's what you're really doing, that's not why you should be doing it. You should exchange links because your site and the site you're exchanging a link with are in the same "Cyber neighborhood." Otherwise, Google won't understand the connection and it does neither of you any good.

3. Unsolicited link exchange requests are still SPAM.