1X1 Tracking Pix

Do they have an effect on ranking?

[Munster]

I have a site that is not performing anywhare near as well as it should be. I am now looking fpr a scape goat.

I have looked over the page and found a 1x1 tracking pix at the bottom, does Google penalise for these?

There is also a large amount of hidden form values on the page, is that a penalisable offence?

I really cant think of anything else.... I am wearing white socks with black shoes....does that make a difference?

[jeremy goodrich]

Well, it's not the tracking pixel.

Here is a list of common scape goats:

1) did you eat the chicken, or the fish?
right answer: fish, as if you had the chicken, you would be penalized.

2) did you roll out of bed on the left or right?
right answer: if it was the left, you would be penalized.

3) are there any other search engines or ways to drive traffic than google?
right answer: of course there are! so i could care less about my natural rankings, and consider them a daily gift from a benevolent Googlebot.

[mrbrad]

Oh no Munster ... HURRY ... remove the 1x1 image or Google will ban your site! ;-P

Seriously now ... its nothing to worry about.

[Munster]

Cheers fellas most useful, espessially the fish thing, to tell the truth I did not think it would be the tracking pix but I am running out of ideas.

[jeremy goodrich]

Well, my post was serious in a way: if you're ecomm, adwords can work wonders.

So can Overture, Inktomi driven search engines, viral marketing, 'tell a friend' features, contests, promos, public relations, offline marketing, flyers, etc, etc.

There are a lot more ways to drive a site's profitability up than just worrying about the traffic.

What is the conversion rate? What's your epv, or earnings per visitor? What % of people buy from you?

How can you make that better? What size screen works best with your audience? What size did you design for? Can you make it more 'user friendly' in any way?

etc, etc - there is a lot more to life than just Google. Sure, you can get lots of traffic there :) but, if you know what to *do* with that traffic, it is even better.

[Munster]

Thats all well and good, but this is a clients website and he is jumping up and down for google postions even though we have a graph with sales going up we just get "your supposed to be the experts why doesn't my site come up in google when I type ******" the truth is I dont know, the site is as far as I can tell 'optimised' I just cant help thinking that they have been penalised for something in the past, but I cant get an answer from Googleguy to confirm. We do the AdWords, Looksmart, overture, espotting,etc thats fine its this part we need to get sorted before I have a happy client!

[GoogleGuy]

A 1x1 tracking pixel (esp. to a well known tracking company) wouldn't hurt. What *would* hurt is this company that I saw earlier today--48 1x1 links leading to doorway domains. Our hidden text/link algorithms spotted it automatically. That, I would not recommend. :)

[chiyo]

We have a 1X1 tracking gif on each of our pages which is used for our live customer service facility which all goes to a "less well known" hosted live customer service solution. (its all we can afford!)

In short people can click on a button on each page if they want to talk live to one of our staff (usually me!) who has the chat panel running on their workstation.

We have noticed rankings going down since we institited this. People associated with the site are suggesting that this change MAY be the cause. Would love to know whether we can rule out this cause.

[Munster]

Thanks for that Google guy, Invisable links I can understand why Google would pick them out. I sent you an email on Webmaster@google regarding the site I am talking about. I dont suppose you have had a chance to have a look at it?

[GoogleGuy]

Nah chiyo, that wouldn't have done it. I'll try to ask someone to check it out, Munster. Doesn't sounds like that would have anything to do with it though.

[Munster]

Thanks Googleguy, I do appreciate that! Any clues as to the cause would be fantastic.

[skipfactor]

I use a popular cgi log file script recommended here that uses this technique on each page. However, I've made it an external js include at the bottom of each page. It does not reference the popular company.

Here's the external (allowed) *.js:

document.write('<img src="/mydomain/cgi-bin/foo.pl?trans.gif&ref=');
document.write(document.referrer);
document.write('" height="1" width="1" alt="" />');

It sounds like from what I've read that I'm fine, but am I? And I'm thinking what's the harm in changing the height & width to ="5"?

added: but my cgi is disallowed, geez, getting gun-shy.

[div01]

If that was the case, every site using the CJ affiliate program would take a hit.

[rtfmnews]

I'll admit to a bit of ignorance on this, but if you've got a 1x1 tracking pixel, I assume you're paying for the service. Why would you need it linked to their service? They should be able to do everything they need when the browser fetches the image from their server.

As in:
<img src="http://www.theirdomain.tld/blablabla.cgi?accountnumber=123456" width=1 height=1>