Should you use Google Trends to Estimate Site Traffic?

Google Trends for Websites is one among the few online tools that you may use to get an idea of a website’s traffic. Simply provide the address (URL) of the website and the tool will give you a rough estimate of the number of people who visit that site per day (unique visitors).

For instance, this report generated by Google Trends seems to suggest that the Wikipedia website, on an average, gets around 40 million unique visitors daily.

But how accurate is Google Trends data? I was recently comparing the Google Analytics data with Google Trends for labnol.org and, surprisingly, the results were vastly different. See these Google Trends and Google Analytics charts for the same period.

Google Analytics Chart for labnol.org

Google Trends Chart for labnol.org

The Google Trends chart for this site seems to suggest that global traffic (daily unique visitors) has been on a constant decline since March 2011 and almost hit the December 2008 level. However, another data source - Google Analytics - paints a very different picture.

Analytics puts the daily visitor count at 100K while Trends calculates that number as 50K. Yes, there was a dip in March when Panda struck but the site recovered soon thereafter.

Anyone else seeing such a discrepancy for their site in Google Trends?

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A Simple Fix for iOS 5 Upgrade Errors 3002 & 3200

If you have been trying to upgrade your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the all-new iOS 5 but getting unknown errors with codes that read like 3200 or 3002, here’s one possible solution.

I have used the same technique to update my iPad 1 and iPad 2 with iOS 5 and the software installed without any problems.

First you need to download the iOS 5 IPSW files from the Apple servers. Click the link that corresponds to your iOS5 device - iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 GSM, iPhone 4 CDMA, iPad (original), iPad 2 WiFi, iPad 2 GSM, iPad 2 CDMA. Remember that IPSW files are 700+ MB in size so you should probably use a download manager that can resume broken downloads.

Once the firmware file has downloaded, close the iTunes software and also disconnect your iPhone / iPad  from the computer. Next copy and paste the IPSW file to the following location:

On Windows:
%APPDATA%\Apple Computer\iTunes\iP{one|ad|od} Software Updates

On Mac:
~/Library/iTunes/iP{one|ad|od} Software Updates

Now plug-in your iOS device to the computer using the USB cable, launch iTunes and click Update to upgrade your device to iOS 5. This time it will directly pick the local .ipsw files and the upgrade should happen without any issues.

You can also upgrade the iOS firmware manually by holding down Shift while pressing the Update but for some reason, this approach always resulted in same 3200 and 3002 errors.

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Some Indian Companies Blocked “Steve Jobs” Related Searches

The inspiring and brilliant Steve Jobs passed away on October 5 and, as expected, people around the world turned to the Internet to read more about this sad news. The interest was so high that “steve jobs” became the most searched phrase on the web that particular day according to Google Trends.

It was early morning here in India but when employees of some tech companies went to Google, looking for news around Steve Jobs, they faced an interesting problem – the corporate web filters blocked their searches. Here’s why:

Apparently, the word ‘Jobs’ was blocked by the corporate firewall to stop employees from searching for jobs in other companies. To discourage staff from finding employment at other companies, the word ‘Jobs’ has been blacklisted.

Ria Sharma says that, due to this keyword-based Internet filtering, employees of Mahindra Satyam, iGate, Cognizant and Genpact weren’t able to search Google or any of the other search engines for news related to Steve Jobs.

Luckily they must have had Internet on their mobile phones that didn’t necessarily have to pass through the corporate firewall.

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A Better Way to Report Spam Profiles on Twitter

If you ever come across a Twitter profile that you think is spam, you can either block the user from replying to your tweets or you can use the Report as Spam button and someone from Twitter’s safety team will possibly review that account.

When you report an account to Twitter, it won’t tell you a thing about the status of your request  but there’s a new tool called Later, Spam that keeps track of your spam reports and will let you know whenever a spammer’s account, that you reported, get deactivated by Twitter.

The only limitation – you need to report spam to Twitter through the Later Spam site itself and it will let you report profiles that have recently mentioned you in their tweets. You can’t report any random Twitter profile as spam through Later Spam.

A commenter on Boing Boing does however make an interesting point on why report spam profiles on Twitter may be a waste of time – “Spammers set up new accounts constantly, and Twitter doesn't seem to have a strategy for dealing with the problem”

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New Net Neutrality Rules Become Official

The revised Net neutrality rules that the FCC approved in December became official on Friday when they entered the Federal Register. They will take effect on November 20.

Net neutrality advocates have long lobbied for laws that prevent Internet providers from blocking competitive content, charging for faster connections to certain sites, and a slew of other tactics that would destroy the “open web.” Meanwhile, broadband and wireless providers have argued that it’s government regulation — not Internet provider discrimination — that threatens the open web.

While the new rules [PDF] do prevent fixed broadband providers (cable, fiber and DSL) from blocking access to sites and applications, they are different for wireless providers and not as clear as advocates on either side would like.

The rules lay out three basic protections:

Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics and commercial terms of their broadband services. No blocking: fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services. No unreasonable discrimination: fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.

When a draft of the rules came out in December, roughly 80 grassroots organizations signed an open letter avowing their disapproval. The letter complained that the Order “leaves wireless users vulnerable to application blocking and discrimination,” uses “unnecessarily broad definitions,” and claims that specialized services “would create a pay-for-play platform that would destroy today’s level playing field.”

Wireless providers, which are in favor of minimal regulation, also complained. Verizon filed an appeal, Sen. Mitch McConnell said that the rules would “harm investment, stifle innovation and lead to job losses,” and the Republican party reportedly started planning its repeal within an hour of the rules’ approval.

The House of Representatives voted to overturn the rules in April, but the resolution is unlikely to pass in the Democrat-controlled senate. President Obama has threatened to veto it even if it does.

Now that the rules are official, however, all parties are free to launch their legal offensives. Get ready for another round of lobbying, damning public statements and lawsuits.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, enot-poloskun

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Hide the Past Before Opening your Facebook Profile to Subscribers

You have been using Facebook all this while to share pictures and other personal stuff with your close friends and suddenly, Facebook added the subscribe button that is enticing you to open your personal profile to the outside world.

You are however concerned that doing so might expose some of your old activity on Facebook to non-friends. Maybe you shared an embarrassing video on your Facebook profile two years ago that friends may find interesting but it is something you’ll definitely want to hide from your new subscribers.

To prevent such a situation, you may either carefully review the privacy settings of every single thing that you have ever shared / written on Facebook or you can choose to play extra safe and make all your past activity visible to “friends” only before opening the profile to public subscribers.

How you do this is easy. Open the Privacy Settings page of Facebook and under the “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” option, choose “Limit Old Posts.” Now all your old Facebook posts / shares that were “public” before will change to “Friends” only.

Thank you Mayur Dhande for the tip.

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HOW TO: Haunt a Modern House [COMIC]

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