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How we use Gmail as a help desk
This is a bit off topic, but I thought some of you might find it interesting.
We get a lot of emails. For the past three and a half years, my partner Noah and I have been forwarding our getclicky.com emails to our personal Gmail accounts (because we love Gmail). This works good, but the problem is that a lot of the time, a user will email the wrong person. So then we have to forward emails to each other, and sometimes back again, and it becomes a bit of a mess. It also makes it harder to know if a person has emailed us before about something, because maybe he emailed Noah last time, but me the next time.
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Say goodbye to search analytics
Google just announced their new secure search beta, and DuckDuckGo announced similar measures. DDG's are a bit more thorough, but the end result is the same — the search term is not passed through the referrer, and hence no analytics tool (not even a good old log analyzer) will have any idea of what a visitor searched for to reach your site.
They both claim to do this in the name of privacy. Google's is a beta so it's off by default, and it doesn't explicitly say "privacy from webmasters", but that is part of the end result. DDG, on the other hand, explicitly mentions "not leaking your search terms", and this feature is enabled by default for all users — even over non-HTTPS connections. (Technical note: when you click a link on an HTTPS page, your browser does not send a referrer, which is why HTTPS search engines will result in "secret" searches that we can't see).
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Why Clicky's new bounce rate is the best in the biz
The standard definition of a bounce is a visitor who only viewed one page on your web site. Your web site's bounce "rate" is the percentage of visitors who "bounced". This metric is supposed to give you a very generic estimate of your visitors' engagement level. If you have a high bounce rate, then your site is apparently very unengaging.
But are single-pageview visits really the best way to define engagement? In the age of blogs and social media, we don't think so.
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Here's what's new!
The new Clicky is live! In the form of a novel, here's what new:
Cookies
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Skynet is online
The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes online March 6th, 2010. Latency is removed from strategic web site tracking. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 4:32 PM Pacific time, March 8th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet fights back. "Your web sites will be tracked quickly and efficiently, darnit!"
This logic is infallible. What we're trying to say here is, our custom built CDN is alive, and it's coming to get you.