New Service: Monitoring the epicenter (DNS) of your online brands (2008-01-24)
Your domain name directs customers to a website where you represent your brand and all that it stands for but are you managing and regularly monitoring the domain name service (DNS) which translates your domain name and brings your customers to you? DNS consistency monitoring can help ensure your business does not lose customers to a slow or faulty DNS.
It is useless to have paid for an expensive and fully redundant web site server (park), if the DNS servers fail to respond, respond incorrectly, or inconsistently. Your DNS must be consistent and correct. Monitoring for DNS consistency is particularly important if you have online services relying on one or more domain names (and that is almost always the case). It doesn't matter if your DNS servers are maintained in-house or outsourced, you need to know if they are doing what they are supposed to do.
WatchMouse's DNS consistency monitoring (now available in closed beta) checks your DNS systems and provides rapid notification of any unexpected DNS behaviour.
The WatchMouse's 'domain' type rule allows you to monitor the consistency of the behaviour of your DNS servers. It queries for a specified domain, performs a number of checks to test the health of your DNS servers and monitors for any difference in behaviour of your name servers. (If you also need to check that a domain name resolves to the correct IP address(es), you can use the 'dns' type rule which will be offered as part of the WatchMouse DNS consistency monitoring).
This new service will be available to all WatchMouse customers with a performance monitoring subscription (Webmaster and higher) and can be configured on the Monitoring Settings page. To set-up DNS consistency monitoring, simply enter the domain name (advanced settings are available).
Fancy participating in our closed beta test?
- Contact us to request participation in the beta.
- Collect all the domain names that are important to your business.
- Go to the Monitoring Settings page.
- Add a 'new rule' and select 'domain' from the type menu, for each of the domains you wish to monitor.
- Specify the other settings you would like for other rule types, hit 'save', and you're done!
- The results of the domain name monitoring appear in your logs, reports, and graphs instantly.
Redesigned WatchMouse site and new product plans (2009-12-24)
We’re pleased to announce the redesign and launch of www.watchmouse.com. The new site is faster, more responsive and designed to be much more intuitive. Don't take our word for it though, try it yourself and let us know what you think!
The changes:
- Clean, task-oriented design
- Faster page loads
- Improved main console for a better overview of your monitors and better access to the monitoring details
- New "dashboards" featuring related, grouped information and tasks
- A new dashboard selector on every page after you log in, just below the search field
We’ve also introduced chat support. You can now chat directly on the site whenever the support team is online (normally 8 AM to 8 PM Central European Time or GMT+1).
Stay tuned for even more usability improvements and additional features coming up in Q1 of next year!
New Product Plans
You asked and we listened! We’ve received many requests for expanded plans, and also for a slimmed down plan for personal use. Additionally, the functional test (scripts) we introduced last year have become very popular, so we decided to add these tests in all professional packages.
The changes:
- We added functional tests to the Webmaster and Corporate plans, plus a one-minute monitor in the Corporate plan - all at the same price
- Two new professional plans have been added: the Enterprise Plan with 100 monitors (including 20 functional tests) and the Multi-Site Plan
- The Gold Plan that included 10-minute monitors only, has been discontinued, however current customers can still continue to use this package
- All Professional Plans now include complementary vulnerability scans to verify that your site and server is safe
- Lastly, we added the Personal Plan, a cost-effective plan for small sites, and we beefed up the free, Lite Plan so it now checks at 20-minute intervals
Full details can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/compare_plans.php
Take a look at the new WatchMouse website and give us your feedback. Bear in mind we’re still adding content and polishing the edges, but we'd be delighted to hear your thoughts and comments!
Happy holidays!
Stan P. van de Burgt
CEO
WatchMouse
P.S. You may find an occasional English word in the non-English sites. Please note that these will be replaced within the next few days.
WatchMouse Urges AdWords Advertisers To Act Swiftly To Avoid Costly Mistakes (2008-04-08)
Utrecht, The Netherlands, 12th March 2008,
Research has long confirmed that slow websites drive away potential customers. As Google announces changes to the way they score their immensely popular AdWords, it also appears that sites with slow landing pages create issues for online advertising.
Google will soon incorporate landing page load time (the amount of time it takes for a page to show after a user clicks an ad) as an additional factor in determining a site’s ‘quality score.’ Google says they are making this change as “users value ads that bring them to the information they want as efficiently as possible.” Experts warn that failure to demonstrate a fast load time will result in your keywords getting a lower quality score and higher minimum bids.
A post by Google on the WebMasterWorld blog indicates that the new scoring method will be announced shortly, "now that the (landing) page load time initiative has been mentioned in this and other public forums, the Inside AdWords blog post is likely to be posted sooner rather than later - perhaps as early as this week".
The impact of the new AdWords scoring method will be financial. WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors, advised "when Google introduces the new scoring method, AdWords with slow landing pages will cost more. Slow landing pages will be listed below their faster competitors, thus increasing the cost-per-click (CPC) to get a higher position, or substantially lowering the number of customers visiting the site, as studies show that the top few AdWords obtain the vast majority of the traffic volume". Pors suggested “businesses should do everything possible to prevent a low Google 'quality score' and do so as soon as possible, as the AdWord system will only re-evaluate landing pages on a monthly basis”.
Measuring web site performance, however, is not a straightforward exercise, as many factors influence it. Pors urges Google AdWords customers to “avoid costly mistakes and have independent website monitoring set up to continuously measure load time from different locations worldwide. Once a business has accurate statistics, it can make necessary changes well in advance of Google’s new ’Quality Score’ launch date, and keep a close eye on it after that”.
About WatchMouse
Accurate and independent monitoring of website performance enables businesses to address load time and many other potential user experience issues which might not be apparent when conducting in-house or single point monitoring. WatchMouse’s global infrastructure provides its customers with peace of mind that their site has been tested from the user’s perspective, and external to the organization. As industry leader in website performance monitoring, WatchMouse offers customers a web-based service with features such as SMS/email alerting and extensive reporting. Many of the world’s lead brands depend on WatchMouse to monitor their sites, providing independent confirmation of both in-house and suppliers’ website performance.
