Module 4

● Location Analytics
○ Sources of Location Data
○ Categories of Location Analytics
○ Location Analytics and Privacy Concerns
○ Location Analytics Tools
● Search Engine Analytics
○ Types of Search Engines
○ Search Engine Analytics
○ Search Engine Analytics Tools
Location Analytics
● Location analytics, also known as spatial analysis or geo-analytics is
concerned with mapping, visualizing, and mining the location of
people, data, and other resources.
● All sectors, including business, government, nonprofit, and academia,
can benefit from location analytics.
● scientists used six million geo-located Twitter messages to observe the
“heartbeat” of New York City. Using the dataset, the scientist were able to
study and map the waking, sleeping, commuting, work, and leisure
dynamics of the people living in the city during the weekday and
weekends.
● Such geo-analytics can be instrumental in better understanding our
cities
Module 4
● Location Analytics
○ Sources of Location Data
○ Categories of Location Analytics
○ Location Analytics and Privacy Concerns
○ Location Analytics Tools
● Search Engine Analytics
○ Types of Search Engines
○ Search Engine Analytics
○ Search Engine Analytics Tools
SOURCES OF LOCATION DATA
POSTAL ADDRESS
● Most business analytics applications rely on address information of their
customers, including city names, locality names, and postal or zip
codes.
LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE
● In geography, latitude (shown as a horizontal line on a globe) and
longitude (shown as a vertical line on a globe) are used to find exact
location on Earth.
GPS-BASED
● GPS is a satellite-based navigation system that can be used to find
exact location of people and resources. Mobile analytics mostly rely
on
SOURCES OF LOCATION DATA
IP-BASED
● Public IP (Internet protocol) can be used to determine the location
of Internet users.
● A public IP address is an exclusive numerical address (like a home address)
assigned to a device connected to the Internet. Different regions in the world
are assigned a specific block of public IP addresses; hence, it can be used to
mine approximate geo-location of Internet users.
Categories of Location Analytics
● Based on its scope, location analytics can be broadly classified into two
categories:

1) Business data-driven location analytics

2) Social media data- driven location analytics
Categories of Location Analytics
1. BUSINESS DATA-DRIVEN LOCATION ANALYTICS
● Business data-driven location analytics deals with mapping, visualizing, and
mining location data to reveal patterns, trends, and relationships hidden
in tabular business data.
● Capitalizing on the data stored in a business database, location analytics,
for example, can map and capture vast among of geo-specific data to
provide information, products, and services based on where customers are.
● Using the location of customers, for instance, it is possible to recommend the
nearest convenience store, coffee shop, taxi, or even probable social
relations. Or it can be used for any other business decision, such as, what is the
best potential new site for a business warehouse?
Categories of Location Analytics
Applications of Business Data-Driven Location Analytics
● Powerful Intelligence: Simple maps have been widely used, but they are limited in
providing insightful details. Using sophisticated mapping techniques, such as clustering,
heat mapping, data aggregation (e.g., aggregating data to regions), and color-coded
mapping, can generate powerful business intelligence.
● Geo-Enrichment: Simple data maps can be enriched with customer data, including
demographic, consumer spending, lifestyle, and locations. For example, where do my
loyal customers spend most of their time?
● Collaboration and Sharing: Maps are easy to understand and are good
communication and collaboration tools. Location analytics can map business data for
collaboration across organization. It can also be used for information sharing purposes
with customers.
● https://www.tableau.com/solutions/workbook/understand-your-local-customers
 Categories of Location Analytics
2. SOCIAL MEDIA DATA-DRIVEN LOCATION ANALYTICS
● Social media data-driven analytics relies on social media location data
to mine and map location of social media users, content, and data.
● Social media location information comes mainly from GPS and IP.
● https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/stanley.george.joseph/viz/Custo
merAnalysis_16378090881530/CustomerAnalysis
 Categories of Location Analytics
Uses of Social Media-Based Location Analytics
Social media location–based services are becoming a day-to-day reality. Organizations use
location-based services for a variety of purposes, including the following.
● Recommendation Purposes: Organizations can harvest location data to recommend
products, services, and social events to potential customers in real time as they
approach certain localities. For example, Tinder(online dating and geosocial networking
application.) recommends potential social relationships based on the location of users.
● Customer Segmentation: Social media location data can be used to segment customers
based on their geographic location. Tweepsmap (https://tweepsmap.com/), for
example, can be used to geo-locate your Twitter followers by country, state, or city.
● Advertisement: Location-based advertisement allows targeted marketing and
promotion campaign mostly delivered through mobile devices to reach specific target
audiences.
 Categories of Location Analytics
Uses of Social Media-Based Location Analytics
● Information Request: Based on their current location, customers can
request a product, service, or resource (e.g., the nearest coffee shop,
restaurant, or parking lot).
● Alerts: Location data can be used to send and receive alerts and
notifications, such as sales and promotion alerts traffic congestion alerts,
speed limit warnings, and storm warnings.
● Search and Rescue: Location data is vital in search and rescue operations.
For example, Agos a geo- tagging and reporting platform that enables
communities deal with climate change adaptation and disaster risk
reduction.
● Navigation: Mobile-and GPS-based navigation services and apps assist us in
finding addresses. BE-ON-ROAD, for instance, is a free offline turn-by-turn
GPS navigation app for Android devices.
 Benefits of Location Analytics for Business
● Hyper-local Intelligence
Companies can use location analytics to transform data into location-based insights for
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and communicate with business users, analysts,
scientists, and developers to create more informed decisions.

● Real-World Context
A map links data to the real world which clearly demonstrates how location relates to other data
aspects. This strengthens the insights obtained as analytics teams and end users delve down into
visualizations to discover new opportunities and enhance operations.

● Actionable Insights
Users may create insightful geographical analysis instantly without the learning curve of
other GIS tools with location analytics. It also has the depth of analytical capabilities required
for predictive analysis and other location based optimizations.
Location Analytics and Privacy Concerns
● While location-based services bring ease, convenience, and safety to customers and value
to business, they also raise serious privacy issues related to collection, retention, use,
and disclosure of location information.
● Tracking, mining, and storing location information can endanger some fundamental
human rights, such as freedom of movement and freedom from being observed.
● Minch raised several issues arising from location-based services, including the
following.
● Should users of location-enabled devices be informed when location tracking is in
use?
● Should users of location-enabled devices be permitted to control the storage
of location information?
● Should location information as stored be personally identifiable, or should the
user have the option to preserve degrees of anonymity?
 Location Analytics and Privacy Concerns
● What legal protection should a person’s historical location information
have against unreasonable search and seizure?
● To what extent should users of location-based services be allowed to
choose their own level of identifiability/anonymity?
● What level of disclosure control should be dictated by government
regulation? By the affected individual customers, users, etc.? By other
parties?
● What governmental legislation and regulation is appropriate to assure
citizens’ rights of privacy in an era of location-aware mobile devices?
Location Analytics Tools
● Agos: Agos is a geo-tagging and reporting platform that helps communities deal with
climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction
● Tweepsmap: Tweepsmap (https://tweepsmap.com/) maps your Twitter followers by
country, state, or city.
● Trendsmap: Trendsmap (http://trendsmap.com/) is real-time tool that maps the latest
trends from Twitter, anywhere in the world.
● Followerwonk: This tool helps you perform basic Twitter analytics, such as, who are
your followers? Where are they located? When do they tweet? The tool can be
accessed via http://followerwonk.com/ Esri:
● Esri’s GIS (geographic information systems) is software to map, visualize,
question, analyze, and interpret data to understand relationships, patterns, and
trends (http://www.esri.com/).
Review Questions

1. Define location analytics.

2. Explain the two main categories of location analytics.

3. What are the sources of location data.

4. What are the main applications of business data-driven location analytics?

5.What are the main applications of social media data-driven location

analytics?

6. Discuss privacy concerns related to location analytics.

Search Engine Analytics
● Search engines are the gateways to social media and help users search for and
find information.
● To be more precise, a search engine is an Internet service or software designed to
search information on the web that corresponds to a request (e.g., keywords) specified
by the user.
● Considering that there are billions of websites over the web, search engines play a
crucial role in helping us find the right information in a limited amount of time.
● https://neilpatel.com/blog/alternative-search-engines/
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES
● Based on the mechanisms they operate, search engine can be divided into three
types:

1) Crawler-based

2) Directories
3) Metasearch engines.
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : Crawler-based
● crawler-based search engines create their databases or lists automatically, without any
human intervention.
● Example: Google.com and Bing.com.
● Crawler-based search engines are widely used to find and access content over the
Internet.
● They operate in three steps:

1) web crawling
2) indexing
3) searching.
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : Crawler-based
Web crawling
● Search engines start by collecting and storing information about web
pages. This mechanism is termed web crawling.
● A web crawler (also known as web spider or bot) is a computer
program or software specifically designed to collect and store data
about websites for indexing.
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : Crawler-based
Indexing
● Indexing helps classify a website correctly for searching purposes.
● The data crawled or extracted is then indexed and stored in a database
for quick access.
● Every search engine may follow different techniques for indexing web page
data.
● Common indexing techniques include storing meta tags (which are used
in the header of a web page and provide descriptions of the website) and
keywords related to a website.
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : Crawler-based
Searching
● Searching is the final step in search engine operations.
● When a user requests specific information by entering keywords in a search
engine, the search engine queries the index and provides a list of the most
relevant web pages by matching it with the indexed keywords.
● However, it may not be that simple; search engines use a variety of factors
to rank and provide a list of matching websites.
● The engine ranks content on a number of factors, such as the
authoritativeness of a page, back links to the page and keywords a page
contains
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : Crawler-based
● In order to achieve good search results an organization must place keywords in section
titles, images, and in the general content of its website.
● A keyword density of 5–8 percent (i.e., five to eight keywords per one hundred words)
is an optimal number.
● Having important keywords embedded in a website enables a search engine robot
to evaluate the website as being the most suitable site for the searched word.
● However, if one repeatedly uses the same keywords or definitions in page content, it may
be perceived by a robot to be spamming.
● Research has shown that the position of keywords in a website, as well as their
duplication, layout, and combination, impact web page visibility in a search
engine,which can be improved by increasing the frequency of keywords in the title,
the full text, and in both the title and full-text.
 TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : Crawler-based
● In conjunction with key words, the overall design of a website is an
important factor that must be taken into consideration when
discussing search engine optimization.
● For a corporation to better understand its Internet presence, its website
statistics should also be checked on a regular basis so as to
understand both how users access and utilize the site and also what
impact site changes may have on these behaviors.
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : DIRECTORIES
● The listings in directories are manually compiled and created by human editors.
● People who want to be listed in a directory submit an address, title, and brief
description of their website, which is then reviewed by the editor and included in it.
● Some good examples of human-created directories are Yahoo Directory, Open
Directory, and LookSmart.
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : METASEARCH ENGINES
● Metasearch engines compiles and display results from other search engines.
● When a user enters a query, the metasearch engine submits the query to several
individual search engines, and results returned from all the search engines are
integrated, ranked, and displayed to the user.
● Examples :Metacrawler, Mamma, and Dogpile.
● By integrating results from several search engines, metasearch engines are capable
of handling large amounts of data and can help us save time by focusing on one
search engine.
● Based on their scope, search engines can be divided into two types:

1) Local
2) Global
TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES : METASEARCH ENGINES
LOCAL SEARCH ENGINES
● A search engine is local in the sense that it is embedded within a website and
only indexes and searches the content of that website.
○ Amazon’s CloudSearch or any other search engine embedded within a website
is an example of local search engine.

GLOBAL SEARCH ENGINES

● Global search engines are used to search for content on the web.
○ ex:Google.com and Bing. com. However, note that global
search engines can be localized.
 SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS
When we talk about search engine analytics, we mean two
things:

1) search engine optimization

2) search engine trend analysis
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: Search Engine optimization
● Search engine optimization (SEO) are the techniques used to improve a website’s
ranking in a search engine result page (SERP).
● A SERP is the list of the results returned by a search engine in response to a user’s
query.
● SERPs generally have two types of results: organic and non-organic search
results.
● Organic results appear mainly because of their relevance to the user’s query.
● Non-organic search results include paid advertisements.
● A study tested the effect of sponsored ad ranks on the click-through and conversion
rates for an online retailer and found that top positions usually had higher click
through rates, but not necessarily higher conversion rates.
● Social media marketers strive to develop search engine strategies to
 SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine optimization
● It is important for their websites to appear at top (e.g., in the top ten) in
the SERP, as users pay closer attention to the top results on search
engines.
● The ranking becomes more crucial when the website is commercial
by nature; that is, selling products or services.
● High rankings on SERPs can mean more Internet traffic to a website,
which in some cases converts to more paying clients and higher return on
investment.
● For social media marketers, it is important to understand the mechanism
behind the SERP ranking. There may be variety of factors search engines
take into account to rank websites, such as keywords and relevance.
● the most important factor that determines SERP ranking is the PageRank.
 SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine optimization
● PageRank is a mechanism (or an algorithm, to be more
precise) used by Google search engines to rank websites’ SERPs.
● The websites that rank higher are displayed on the top of the
search results page.
● Google’s PageRank algorithm predominantly relies on the
quality of incoming hyperlinks (or in-links) to rank websites.
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine optimization
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine optimization
● A website, for example, with in-links from a famous websites (e.g., cnn.com)
will appear on the top of the SERP if compared with a website with no quality in-
links or many low-quality in-links.
● To understand the in-link quality and number argument, consider
previous slide Figure, where nodes = web pages and lines = in-links and out-
links
○ The PageRank algorithm will place page B higher on the SERP, even though
there are fewer in-links to B when compared to D.
○ The reason for this ranking is that in-links to website B are from an
important website; that is, A.
○ Bottom line, your objective is to increase the number of quality in-links
to your website.
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine optimization
● By using, for example, Open SEO Stats (an extension for Google
Chrome ), users can be determine the ranking of a website based on
Google PageRank.
● Google PageRank uses a scale of 0 to 10, indicating the importance
that the Google search engine allocates to the page.
● In addition to page ranking, Open SEO Stats also provides information
about website traffic, hyperlink status, and speed of the page,
among other things.
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine trend analysis
● Search engine trends analytics deals with analyzing and understanding the keywords
people use in a search engine.
● Search engine data are gateways into the minds of customers. Through search
engines, customers search for what they want, thus search trend analysis can provide
value information to the social marketers.
● When it comes to trends analytics, Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) is
one of the most convenient and comprehensive search engine trend analysis tools.
● Google trends use massive amounts of search engine data to analyze the world’s
interests and predict trends.
● In the financial sector, Google Trends data, for example, has been used to detect “early
warning signs” of stock market moves. In the health sector, Google Trends data has helped
determine world flu epidemics
 SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS: search engine trend analysis

From a business perspective, Google Trends can help also answer a variety of questions,
including the following.
● How people search for your brand?
● When does interest spike in your products or services?
● Which keywords drive more traffic?
● Which regions are interested in your brand?
● What are trending topics over the Internet?
● How are your competitors performing?
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS TOOLS
● Google Trends: Google Trends (http://trends.google.com/) is a search engine analytics
tool. This chapter includes a detailed tutorial on Google Trends.
● Canopy: Canopy is multimedia analytics tool designed to support deep investigation of
large multimedia collections, such as images, videos, and documents. More information
on Canopy is available here: http://www.vacommunity.org/article32
● Google Alerts: Google Alerts (https://www.google.com/alerts) is a content detection and
notification service that automatically notifies users when new content over the
Internet (e.g., social media, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups) matches a set of
search terms based on user queries. Users are alerted through e-mail. Find out about how
to use Google Alerts.
SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS TOOLS
● Icerocket: Icerocket (http://www.icerocket.com/) specializes in blog searches and also
captures activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.
● Social Mention: Social Mention (http://socialmention.com/) is similar to Google Alerts,
but it only focuses on social media sites, and you can choose to focus on particular
areas, such as blogs. With Social Mention you can monitor for the appearance of
particular keywords and it will give you information on related users, hashtags, and
more.
● TweetBeep: TweetBeep (http://tweetbeep.com/) is like Google Alerts for Twitter. Choose
some keywords and receive daily search results via e-mail.
Review Questions
1. What is the function of a search engine?
2. Explain different types of search engines.
3. Differentiate between local and global search engines.
4. What is search engine analytics?
5. Explain the two main categories of search engine analytics.
6. What is the purpose of search engine optimization?
7. What is the purpose of search engine trend analysis?