Bryan Eisenberg wrote a post about what the ideal single web analytics report might be and tagged me.

That's a hard question to answer because there's so much ad-hoc work that has be done, more often than not, that it's difficult to know in advance all the information you'd need for each client.  Sure, there's basic stuff all clients need, but each client is different and the ideal report …… would probably be the one that addresses the unique needs each client has but also include:

1. Total traffic and Search Referral traffic to a site monthly for the last year
2. Keyword Traffic
3. Top Conversions by keyword and by page
4. Social Media Traffic to site (also sorted by page and area of site)

There's more to write here and I'll return to this subject again in the near future.

I'm in Paris right now – it's a long day and I have had little chance to post (though I do have some posts queued up).   I meant to write about SaveNetRadio.org two days ago; B.L. Ochman already posted on SaveNetRadio today - the case is compelling.

"…Internet radio is in immediate danger of extinction, according to Save Net Radio, a coalition of artists, labels, listeners, and webcasters fighting to preserve the diversity of Internet radio. The group's blog is here."

What made the Internet attractive in the first place was the freedom people have in consuming content that's usually free – if that changes many of the streaming Internet radio sites will not be able to continue to broadcast.  According to B.L.

"..The Internet Radio Equality Act has recently been introduced in both the House (H.R. 2060) and Senate (S. 1353) to save the Internet radio industry. Internet radio provides promotional and royalty opportunities to independent labels and artists that are not available to them on broadcast radio. Internet radio listenership increased over the past year, from 45 million to 72 million listeners a month. I'm listening to WBGO's internet stream on iTunes as I write."

Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!) …. It seems to, as I understand it, companies like Clear Channel are behind the recent rulings and want to put in dependants out of business, let's hope they don't succeed.

I'm surprised I did not hear about TextMap, the entity Search Engine, earlier. According to the marketing text, TextMap is a search engine for entities – namely important (and not so important) people, places, and things in the news. TextMap news analysis system automatically identifies and monitors these entities, and identifies meaningful relationships between them.

There's a good post about TextMap's capabilities at ResourceShelf.

But how good is it? I tried using TextMap but can't say I felt there was anything that I could use as direct information.   I tried a political figure – Hillary Rodham Clinton, just to get a full readout (since many of the other candidates don't have all the information processed that TextMap can provide).

First I get a bunch of articles and a map:

I don't actually understand this map as well as I'd like to – nor do I understand what to do with the information – maybe that's the problem for me.

And yet, if we compare the TextMap of Clinton with Barack Obama we get something  much stronger, more direct in h is map than hers – and that's all based on semantic analysis of text in the news media that may, in itself, not be that accurate – but that's what we have to work with and that's what TextMap is using – along with the other online sources that were cited:

It's all very interesting – and I'll get into that more in my next post, tomorrow.