I get this question a lot: “how do I track how many people click through from my newsletter/ad/flux capacitor?” The best way to do it is to use Google’s URL Builder
What it does is tack on extra information to the URL for analytics tools (like Google Analytics and LiveStats) to chew on.
Here’s an example:
Okay, I’m still reading How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web’s Haystack, but this much is clear:
PageRank is complicated.
My motivation for posting this is entirely selfish. Next time someone asks “can you tell Google to put my page at the top?” I can reply “that all depends on your eigenvalues, here’s a link.”
I don’t know about you, but in my experience, using the word eigenvalue usually puts an end to any conversation. 
From great comments and questions comes great fodder for blog posts.
The first question comes from yesterday’s post on search engines. Chris asks:
But webmaster, your stats seem to indicate that 99.7% of our traffic comes from a search engine. Aren’t there some visitors that just come here because they know about us already? Or, what about someone like me that has a page in the www.bus.wisc.edu domain set as their homepage, so I visit like a bajillion (also a math thing) times per day? Is this an example of the skewed statistics that [insert partisan talk show host] keeps warning me about?
I get a lot of questions about search engine optimization (SEO), and with good reason. A recent competitive analysis found that over 50% of prospective students conducted an internet search during the course of their evaluation of different MBA programs. Not only that, but this method of research was the largest percentage of any other communications channel. Let me repeat this by yelling on the internet: THE LARGEST PERCENTAGE OF ANY OTHER COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL.
Caphyon Advanced Web Ranking is a fantastic tool to monitor your keyword campaigns. You can enter all your key phrases, select the search engines you want to monitor (Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN, etc) and the URLs of your competition to see how you stack up. All that for only $150. Read more at Digital Web Magazine.
Stephan Spencer, founder of Netconcepts and speaker at University of Wisconsin-Madison Executive Education e-Marketing courses runs down some recommendations for doing competitive analysis for Search Engine Optimization projects.
Stephan runs down a great list of tools and reminds us to pay close attention to our neighbors on the search results pages. This is what’s referred to as “search engine reputation management,” and it’s important.
A quick example would be a search engine results page (SERP) that lists Super-Duper Widget Company’s web site first in the results, but right underneath it is a blog post from an angry customer delcaring “Super-Duper Widget Company has the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered.”
Check those SERPs, how are you doing?