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SEO with Omniture
By Amrit Gill | June 16, 2010
Wondering why such a title is on SEO Bullshit? And no I’m not pulling Omniture up on the money one has to spend to try and get that nearly real time data that they try and pass off as information! Nope, its something far more cunning and totally gets my fucking goat!
And I’ll cut straight to the chase.
YOU pay Omniture for Omniture, then YOU give them an optimised site wide link as well?!?
Yep that’s right, you PAY them £20,000 + and then you give them a sitewide link that’s optimised for “Web Analytics”!!!!
Image Credit: mistilittle @Flickr
Not only do they pull down your pants over the price, but they go straight in for the kill and not even say hello! Yep that’s right folks, the Utah Saints didn’t even ask for permission, they just dropped it with their tracking pixel!
I asked our Omniture specialist about the JS and he replied that this method allows for us to track basic information for visitors who have JS disabled, which is fair do’s but however I cannot stress the sly-cunning-dick-dastardly move they made to sneak in the optimised link through their tracking pixel.
Here it is, in all its glory:
/********* FOR ALL PAGES *********/
/************* DO NOT ALTER ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE ! **************/
var s_code=s.t();if(s_code)document.write(s_code)//--></script>
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!--
if(navigator.appVersion.indexOf('MSIE')>=0)document.write(unescape('%3C')+'\!-'+'-')
//--></script><noscript><a href="http://www.omniture.com" title="Web Analytics">
<img src="http://metrics.******.com/b/ss/******prod/1/H.19.4--NS/0" id="ctl00_ctl00_noScriptImgTag" height="1" width="1" border="0" /></a></noscript>
<!--/DO NOT REMOVE/-->
<!-- End SiteCatalyst code version: H.19.4. -->
Oh yes, you like those warnings dontcha! Do not alter, do not remove, and when it comes to tracking pixel’s and Omniture tags, you tend to listen to the stern ****** warnings. It’s an easy fix, we’d simply add a rel=”nofollow” but I’m awaiting confirmation from our Omniture guys if it could break our tracking, I very much doubt it, but when you’ve spent that much money – you have to double double check everything!
But fuck it, they’re absolutely riding us red raw here and these guys don’t even rank #1 for web analytics! Obviously the type of link and how its being dropped within a <noscript> won’t exactly pass on the best equity but boy oh boy, how I would love to have a sitewide from lets say, Wired Magazine (PR9), how about from a charity, no problems – cancer.org (pr 8) humm how about another PR9 sitewide? Well take CBSNews.com!
Okay, not bad so far, but you know you need some .edu link love? No problems, why not pull them through MIT! Oh yes, they’ve even got the big geeks out in Massachusetts licked every which way within their Press area (web.mit.edu/press pr8).
The list is rather endless but here is a nice sample of what I manage to find:
Puma.com PR 6// Subaru.com PR 7 // Kellyservices.com PR 6 // Macworld.com PR 5 // Homestead.com PR 7 // webstore.amazon.com PR 7 // bsa.org PR 7 // Avatarmovie.com PR 7 // asp.net PR 8 // redhat.com PR 8 // Converse.com PR6 // Nikkei.com PR 7 // HP PR 8 // doi.gov PR8 // americanbible.org PR 6 // newyorker.com PR 8 // Nintendo.com PR7 // Economist PR8 // Army.mil PR8 // radissonblu.com PR7 // ramada.com PR8
So, Omniture, you’ve been busted for your SEO Bullshit and I’m pretty sure the guys behind the online marketing to the sites listed above will be gracing your presence with the words “What the fuck guy!” – I know I will be!
Topics: Reality Check | View Comments
Posted on 16 June 2010 by Amrit Gill
Amrit can be found dicking around at the bests of times at flybmi.com as the in-house SEO manager and occasionally posts a thing or two at I Am Search (www.iamsearch.co.uk). You can find him on twitter (@apsg).
Amrit Gill has written 1 articles for SEO Bullshit
June 16th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Got a sack on 'em, they do.
June 16th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
This is common with more than just Omniture, but agreed they could better optimise the backlink for more terms than just “web analytics”….
June 16th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
A noscript link won't pass on that much juice and the fact that its also site-wide, will diminish nearly all of the power anyway.
While they may be seeing some advantage from it, it wouldn't be a massive possitive for them; as can be seen by the current P5 positioning which is very low when you consider where the links are coming from.
Had these links been on just one powerful page of the site rather than being site-wide, and standard HREF out of the noscript tag…then your talking the big money!
June 16th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
This is the reality of all java script tracking if you want to track people who have js turned off or a browser that doesn't support JS.
At least with their competitor Webtrends, they don't point it to their www site, but rather their data collection site. But really who cares about the link to a gif. Ooo it will help the gif rank well in Google Analytics.
Yes they can all do better and a no follow is an option. What's interesting, is even with this no java script function they still don't report on search bots. Hmmm makes you wonder.
June 16th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
It's not a link to a gif. It's
[http://www.omniture.com" title="Web Analytics"]
June 16th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
It's site-wide on some of the biggest sites in the world, in footer links or what have you. Bottom line, you honestly think Google doesn't see through this? It's a shotgun link that is totally out of context and I doubt there would be any reason to no follow it anyways.
June 16th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I agree, Google sees right through this.
June 16th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
I think the quality of the link is clearly poop – however the audacity to simply drop a link in within the tracking script without asking permission is total bullshit! Its like an SEO agency working on a clients site and stealing some form of equity one way or another!
However, if i was Omniture and wanted to steal some love, i'd have a designated script for the homepage as per @Paul Martin.
June 18th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
We cut off everything after that first /script. No problems with tracking.
June 21st, 2010 at 1:26 pm
that a href isn't even needed to track anything. All they need if js is off is the tracking pixel img url. The a href has been added as a pure seo play. Just remove the a href around the tracking pixel.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:03 am
Why would Google Care?
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Did anybody notice that the IMG has no ALT text, hence there is no Anchor Text for the link (but only an useless Title in the A)?
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June 27th, 2010 at 9:13 am
isn't this technically “hiding links” – and on their client sites no less? and in <noscript> boxes? shouldn't G be penalizing someone here? ..as if..
we have Omniture on one client site, never paid any attention to the tracking code previously, but i just looked and its not on the page.
must be the developers doing some separate file offsite trickery with it or something?
July 2nd, 2010 at 5:43 am
These type of footer links are already devalued by google algo, and they pass very little or no value
July 7th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Haha, how is the link required to track people without JavaScript? Surely the image alone would suffice :-)
July 30th, 2010 at 4:34 am
variation in keyword “web analytics” or alternative keyword will sure double the traffic…but somebody need to make them this understandable…like if they read this post and comments