iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 26/09/2026

MeasureCamp London going with a somewhat brave 'we're all a bunch of cowboys' theme this year

MeasureCamp London stage with cowboy-related slide and hosts dressed as cowboys

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 18/09/2026

I feel personally attacked by this age group selector

Screengrab of an age group selector from the Praktika website. The oldest group available is "Age: 45+" and is illustrated with an image of a grey-haired woman with glasses

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 01/08/2026

Use Slack for your business and want to save a bit of money? Go to cancel your paid plan and chances are you'll be offered a 50% discount instead. You're welcome.

Pricing for the Slack "Business+" plan, with the monthly cost per person reduced from £12 to £6

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 26/05/2026

Maybe it's just the hot weather, but this Meta setup option seems confusing. Have I toggled automatic advanced matching on or off? Don't show me an 'on' toggle with the word 'off' alongside!

The option to 'Grow your audience size', as part of the 'Connect Your Google Tag Manager Account to Meta'. A toggle with the label "turn off automatic advanced matching" is turned on

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 22/04/2026

Facebook moderation is an absolute joke. This comment (in blue) didn't qualify as "calling for violence". Preparations are underway that require baseball bats and stun guns but it's not calling for violence, oh no

A Facebook post saying "Plans are already in motion. Preparations are underway" with a comment underneath saying "buy a few baseball bats or stun guns"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 13/04/2026

Hey Search Console, slow down, you're putting the rest of us to shame

The Achievements section of a Google Search Console property, showing the message: "We're gathering data, please check back in about 22 days"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 24/03/2026

Hmm, just checked one of my clients' properties and they're all separate there

Partial list of default channels in GA4, with organic social, organic video, and organic search circled

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 27/02/2026

One of my clients is absolutely smashing organic search! I'm supporting them on ad ops mostly so can't take credit for this, but still good to see

A Google Search Impact badge saying "Congratulations! Your site reached 250K clicks from Google Search in the past 28 days"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 29/01/2026

Today I learned that analytics tools sometimes report iPads as OS X devices rather than iOS devices. Here's Mixpanel reporting on a device that I'm 99% sure is an iPad - note the portrait aspect ratio #analytics

A screengrab of a Mixpanel report, listing a device with a screen width of 810, a screen height of 1080, and Mac OS X as the operating system

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 26/01/2026

Them: "Would you like an email receipt?" Me: "Sure, where's the harm"

Screengrab from my Gmail account showing 9 emails from Shoezone in a four-day period

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 24/11/2025

For me, this is low-key horrific. I want to leave a review by writing a review! Probably "Form" is the least bad option but it still forces me to follow their preferred structure, not my own.

Screengrab from a website saying "How do you want to leave your review?" with three options: Voice, Chat and Form

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 09/11/2025

I love email personalisation, it makes me feel so valued

A screengrab of an email to me, opening "Hi contact.name"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 09/10/2025

Here's one for @graphcrimes.bsky.social. Without a label on the Y axis, it took me way too long to work out that it is showing me 'knife offences in schools per 100,000 people'. And wouldn't 'per 100,000 pupils' be a more useful metric?

Bar graph from a BBC article with the title text "Despite an overall decrease, more than a third of police forces have recorded increases in the knife offences in schools. Based on the rate of offences per 100,000 people"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 23/08/2025

I did my first Parkrun today! Apparently "VM" stands for "Veteran Male", not sure how I feel about that

Screengrab from the Nonsuch parkrun website showing the runner "James Clark" along with a position of 586 and a time of 31min 03sec

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 28/06/2025

If you're a blogger or any other type of creator with a website, I'd recommended adding a 'buy me a coffee' widget. It isn't a big money spinner (at least not for me), but when someone takes the time to thank you like this it's an amazing feeling. Kudos to everyone who supports independent creators.

Screengrab from Ko-fi saying "Alistair Warwick Bought you a Coffee!" and then "Thanks for your help with the BlueSky media icon"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 17/06/2025

#GA4: It took me a moment to work out why these sessions with source 'Direct' and medium 'Direct' were being placed in the Unassigned channel! And I still have no idea why they are Direct / Direct and not (direct) / (none)

Screengrab from a Google Analytics 4 Exploration. It is showing 140 sessions with a Session source/medium of Direct/Direct. They have been placed in the 'Unassigned' session default channel group.

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 11/06/2025

I have to say that the Royal Institution is a fantastic venue. And very fitting in a way for an analytics conference! Nice choice, Mixpanel

Library of Royal Institution in London. Book-lined walls, chandeliers.

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 07/06/2025

Google Ad Manager is threatening me now. "Remove dimension 'Week', or else..."

Screenshot of a "Report warning" from Google Ad Manager. It simply says "Remove dimension 'Week' or" followed by an empty bullet point

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 22/04/2025

If money can expire, it isn't money. I don't know what PayPal has sent me but it isn't £5 GBP

Screengrab of part of an email from PayPal saying "Reminder to spend your £5.00 GBP. We've sent you £5.00 GBP as a token of our appreciation for your business. You now have until 26 April 2025 to use it."

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 09/03/2025

Imagine your political system being controlled by a few rich men

A display from the People's History Museum in Manchester, England, saying "Two hundred years ago Britain's political system was corrupt and controlled by a few rich men"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 06/03/2025

I'm glad #GA4 has Custom Insights (triggered alerts) but they seem weirdly limited. For example, the metric 'Sessions' isn't available. I think it's reasonable to want an alert if there is a sudden change in the number of sessions on your site

'Create Custom Insight' configuration panel in GA4, with a dropdown showing the available metrics. The metric 'Sessions' is not in the list even though users, views, and sessions per active user are all available

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 28/02/2025

My favourite thing at Confex yesterday was Sketchbot. It takes your photo and then the little robot arm draws your picture. I thought it might have struggled with my beard and glasses but no! I do have a slight Obi-Wan Kenobi vibe going on though

Sketchbot's robot arm drawing a line sketch of James Clark

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 27/02/2025

Most of my clients are involved in the events sector, either because they provide event tech they are publishers that run their own events. So today I'm at International Confex to learn about new trends and catch up with old faces...

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 19/02/2025

Google Ads question! I have a Google Tag set up in GA4. Is there any benefit to also adding Google Ads as a 'Destination' for this tag? (I have already linked GA4 and Google Ads, and imported my key events as conversion actions)

Google Tag settings in GA4 showing GA4 as an existing 'Destination' and giving the option to add another 'Destination'

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 18/02/2025

More playing around in Looker Studio today. I came up with a new way to make annotations (sort of) using calculated fields rather than a second data source. Sadly if you hover over the data point it shows a numeric value - because it is a metric rather than a dimension. So that's annoying

A line graph with one particular point on the line marked with a red dot. This shows that "thing happened" at that moment in time

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 13/02/2025

Google Tag Manager's preview tool was acting glitchy for me. Turns out I had both the 'Tag Assistant' and 'Tag Assistant Companion' Chrome extensions running! Not sure how that happened. The Companion one is being deprecated so you can deactivate or remove it. #gtm

A screengrab of part of my Chrome extensions page, showing the Tag Assistant extension and the Tag Assistant Companion extension side by side. They have identical descriptions.

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 07/02/2025

Just used the 'Group' feature in Looker Studio for the first time. It's basically a friendlier interface for writing CASE statements. That's good, but maybe the two things need to have the same/similar names? Someone looking to create a CASE statement wouldn't necessarily know to click on Group

Screenshot of the 'Group' feature in Looker Studio, showing how values that match certain criteria are placed into specific groups

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 16/01/2025

An example of AI being completely incorrect about #GA4, as per usual

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 15/01/2025

Shout-out to my fellow UK-based digital marketing freelancers and agencies! Looking at economic data for 2024, 'professional and technical services' was one of the strongest performing sectors. Green line is our sector, grey line is economy as a whole commonslibrary.parliament.uk/economic-upd...

Graph showing economic growth in 'professional and technical' sector outperforming the economy as a whole in 2024

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 30/12/2024

Normally I use the week between Christmas and New Year to renew my Google Analytics certification... but this year I thought I'd mix it up and take the Google Ads Search certification instead! I still have no plans to manage search ads for clients, but it's good to keep a working knowledge.

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 29/12/2024

Official Google training video is restricted from being viewed in official Google training course 😆

A Google training course on the Skillshop website with an embedded video also from Google. The video panel says "Video unavailable - this video is restricted from being viewed on this domain"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 27/12/2024

'Your password must not contain special characters'

An online service asking me to set a new password. I have entered a password only to be told that it does not meet the criteria because "your password must not contain the following special characters" and then a list of special characters such as exclamation mark

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 12/12/2024

I renewed my boiler cover and so far I've had five emails about "the experience". There was no experience, it was an auto-renewal, it just happened without me getting bothered. Oh wait

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 10/12/2024

SEO friends - I'd love your thoughts on this. Search performance gradually declining, huge bump in August Core Update, then resuming decline. It's a quality niche content site, no display ads, monetised through affiliates. No big technical issues, made lots of improvements. Just can't change course!

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 17/10/2024

Is the new 'Realtime pages' report actually working for anyone in #GA4? I just get 'missing permissions' (despite being an account admin)

Screengrab from Google Analytics 4 saying "Missing permissions: You do not have access to the account, property or view"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 18/09/2024

Consent mode experts - is it a problem if I update consent state *before* the default state is set? It all looks OK in Tag Assistant (Platform limitations mean I can't set a default of Denied, or set the update to fire after the default)

Tag Assistant showing a Consent Update of 'Denied' firing before a Consent Default of 'Granted'. The Update value still overrides the Default value

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 12/09/2024

Mixpanel reports can now be filtered by minutes! You need to enable this in the filter itself, under Advanced > Enable Time Ranges. This was a feature I requested, so I'm pleased to see it being rolled out... I'm taking full credit of course :)

A time filter in a Mixpanel insights report, with the value set to "Last 30 minutes"

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 27/08/2024

Sutton Council have emailed me to let me know they have just cleared away the fly-tip I reported... back in April! It's a strategy I suppose, waiting four months in the hope that the rubbish will spontaneously combust or blow away or something

An official email from Sutton Council saying that they have successfully cleaned a reported fly-tip

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James Clark | Technically Product @technicallyproduct.co.uk · 14/08/2024

Ooh, I've got a spot on the freelancers round table discussion at BrightonSEO in October! I've been going to BrightonSEO for a few years now, but this is a first for me. Always good to do new things (and meet other freelancers)

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