Planet Google

Show off your Followers

2008-08-27T20:04:07+00:00

(Important Note: The Following feature will be rolled out to all over the next few weeks, so if you don’t see it right away, don’t worry. It’s coming soon.)

Would you like to know who enjoys reading your blog? Or stay updated with your favorite blogs right from your Blogger dashboard? You can do those things and more with Blogger’s new Following feature.
By following your blog, your readers tell you and the world that they’re a fan of what you post. Your Dashboard now shows you how many followers each of your blogs has. With a click on the Followers icon, you can browse your followers, see what blogs they write, and read the other blogs they’re following.

Now that you know who your Followers are, you can show them off by adding the Followers gadget to your blog’s sidebar. From the “Layout | Page Elements” tab, click “Add a Gadget” and select “Followers” from the gadgets list. The Followers gadget shows the profile pictures of your followers and gives your readers a “Follow This Blog” link to join up, too.

Your followers can stay updated with your blog with the Reading List that we’ve added to the Blogger Dashboard. The Blogs I’m Following tab automatically shows the latest posts from all the blogs you follow. You can follow any blog from your reading list, even blogs that haven’t added the Followers widget or aren’t hosted on Blogger. Just click the “Add” button and type in the blog’s URL.

If you’re a Google Reader user, you’ll now see a special folder in Reader called “Blogs I’m Following,” full of the subscriptions for all of the blogs you follow. You can follow blogs you’ve subscribed to in Reader, too: From the Reading List on your Blogger Dashboard, click “Add,” then “Import from Google Reader.”

And.... there's more to come! We are also in the process of integrating with Google Friend Connect so you can give your readers more engaging social features.

For more details about what we've launched, check out the help articles here:

October Google Developer Days Open Registration

2008-08-27T18:13:01+00:00

By Elizabeth Yin, Google Developer Programs

We are excited to open registration for four more Google Developer Days in October in India, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Russia.

(Please note we have moved Google Developer Day India to October 18th.)

As with the other 2008 Google Developer Days, we'll discuss the latest with our APIs and developer tools, diving into topics such as App Engine, OpenSocial, and Maps. We'll have some cool new topics in store, and there will be plenty of time to socialize with fellow developers and Google engineers.

If you are in western Europe, registration for the September Google Developer Days (UK, France, Germany, and Spain) is still open, though we expect to run out of space very soon. We hope you can join us for one of these upcoming eight events.

Update: We've also just opened registration for Google Developer Day Italy.

Strengthening the study of computer science

2008-08-27T11:46:28+00:00

At a time when more and more digital technologies are becoming indispensable to millions of people, the field of computer science (CS) is in trouble. Enrollment and retention of CS students, particularly those historically underrepresented in the field (women, African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Hispanics) has declined sharply. According to the Computing Research Association, CS enrollment in the U.S. was at its peak in 2000, with 15,958 undergrads. By 2006, enrollment declined by roughly half: 7,798 undergrads. And enrollment among already-underrepresented groups has dropped even more sharply.

We hope to address this problem (and potential shortage) with a variety of programs beyond our scholarship initiatives. Recently, our educational outreach group, University Programs, and Diversity and Talent Inclusion teams joined forces to create the Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI). This special institute included an interactive and collaborative CS curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. We chose 17 college sophomores, all aspiring computer scientists, to attend the all-expenses-paid CSSI in Mountain View from August 3–15.

Our goals for the institute:

To enrich the skills of students early in their CS studies (or at risk of leaving the major) in an effort to increase the pipeline into the CS major and boost retention
To provide a social and professional network for underrepresented (women, Hispanic, African-American, and/or Native-American) technology students
To empower students, giving them the tools, motivation and confidence to continue with CS studies
To show students daily life at Google and the amazing applications of CS that occur here

The CSSI faculty was comprised of Google engineers and our educational outreach group. We paired students with Google "buddies" - engineers with whom they can develop a long-term advising relationship. Students heard from professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a CS degree.

Students worked in teams to build a completely interactive Web 2.0 website, keeping in mind both practical programming skills and the theory behind it.

We plan to keep in touch with these students across their college careers, and to encourage future participants to complete their CS work and join the community of computer scientists.

Posted by Rebecca Selvenis, University Programs Specialist

Making money on YouTube with Content ID

2008-08-27T08:00:50+00:00

Late last year, we introduced our newest tool for YouTube's content identification and management system, Video ID. While we have long provided copyright owners with similar content policies and tools, Video ID was revolutionary because it provided real choice and control to content owners by combining a sophisticated policy engine with cutting-edge video matching technology. With the other tools in our content ID system, Video ID helps content owners decide exactly what they want done with their videos, whether to block, promote, or even—if a copyright holder chooses to license their content to appear on the site—monetize them.

We've been curious to see what copyright holders would choose. Would the vast majority of partners block user-uploaded videos? Or would they embrace Video ID as an opportunity to generate revenue and exposure for their content online?

As it turns out, our partners are choosing the latter, monetizing 90% of all claims created through Video ID. This has led directly to a similarly significant increase in monetizable partner inventory, as our Video ID partners are seeing claimed content more than double their number of views, against which we can run ads. This means that if a partner has, say, 10,000 views of its content, leaving up videos claimed by our system will lead to an average additional 10,000 views of that same content. We call this "partner uplift," and for some partners we've seen uplift as high as 9000%.

Access to our copyright management tools is open to all rights owners, regardless of whether they choose to license their content to YouTube. But it's clear to our 300+ Video ID partners that our technology has created a framework that allows copyright holders to sanction the creativity of their biggest fans. These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online, and with the help of our users, they are finding Video ID critical to discovering such opportunities.

You can learn more about our content identification and management system on its new home page.

Posted by David King, YouTube Product Manager

2008 U.S. Election Site: How did we do that?

2008-08-27T00:11:56+00:00

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

Mark Lucovsky of the Google AJAX APIs team has written up a detailed article on how the 2008 U.S. Election site was created and implemented.

A myriad of the AJAX APIs are used here. The election news comes from:

A News Search:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/news?v=1.0&q=Barack%20Obama%20unitedstates_uselections
A channel search for the YouTube tab:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/video?v=1.0&q=ytchannel:barackobamadotcom
And, a Custom Search Engine was created for the blog search:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=Barack%20Obama&cx=010222979794876194725:pqldevwuapa.

Take a look, and play with the control that he talks about here:

The Impact of User Feedback, Part 2 (and more Popular Picks!)

2008-08-26T17:34:22+00:00

As a follow-up to my recent post about how user reports of webspam and paid links help improve Google's search results for millions of users, I wanted to highlight one of the most essential parts of Google Webmaster Central: our Webmaster Help Group. With over 37,000 members in our English group and support in 15 other languages, the group is the place to get your questions answered regarding crawling and indexing or Webmaster Tools. We're thankful for a fabulous group of Bionic Posters who have dedicated their time and energy to making the Webmaster Help Group a great place to be. When appropriate, Googlers, including myself, jump in to clarify issues or participate in the dialogue. One thing to note: we try hard to read most posts in the group, and although we may not respond to each one, your feedback and concerns help drive the features we work on. Here are a few examples:

Sitemap details
Submitting a Sitemap through Webmaster Tools is one way to let know Google know about what pages exist on your site. Users were quick to note that even though they submitted a Sitemap of all the pages on their site, they only found a sampling of URLs indexed through a site: search. In response, the Webmaster Tools team created a Sitemaps details page to better tell you how your Sitemap was processed. You can read a refresher about the Sitemaps details page in Jonathan's blog post.

Contextual help
One request we received early on with Webmaster Tools was for better documentation on the data displayed. We saw several questions about meta description and title tag issues using our Content Analysis tool, which led us to beef up our documentation on that page and link to that Help Center article directly from that page. Similarly, we discovered that users needed clarification on the distinction between "top search queries" and "top clicked queries" and how the data can be used. We added an expandable section entitled "How do I use this data?" and placed contextual help information across Webmaster Tools to explain what each feature is and where to get more information about it.

Blog posts
The Webmaster Help Group is also a way for us to keep a pulse on what overarching questions are on the minds of webmasters so we can address some of those concerns through this blog. Whether it's how to submit a reconsideration request using Webmaster Tools, deal with duplicate content, move a site, or design for accessibility, we're always open to hearing more about your concerns in the Group. Which reminds me...

It's time for more Popular Picks!
Last year, we devoted two weeks to soliciting and answering five of your most pressing webmaster-related questions. These Popular Picks covered the following topics:

Seeing as this was a well-received initiative, I'm happy to announce that we're going to do it again. Head on over to this thread to ask your webmaster-related questions. See you there!

Posted by Reid Yokoyama, Search Quality

Ad serving for everyone

2008-08-26T14:26:29+00:00

Back in March, we announced the beta release of Google Ad Manager, our hosted ad serving and management solution for publishers with smaller direct sales teams. Today, we are pleased to announce general availability of the product -- no invitation required! Thousands of publishers in hundreds of countries already serve billions of impressions each day with Ad Manager, and we've heard from them that Ad Manager has helped increase revenue, cut serving costs, and save time managing campaigns.

Now we're excited to bring those benefits to all publishers. If you have an AdSense account, you can sign in to Ad Manager today. If not, apply for an AdSense account now. A Google AdSense account is a technical requirement for creating an Ad Manager account.

Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Best of all, Ad Manager can be optionally integrated with Google AdSense to offer you an automated way to maximize the revenue of your unsold and network-managed inventory.

We've been busy since March; in addition to supporting thousands of new publishers on Ad Manager, we've been adding new features including:

Interface available in 32 languages: Do you prefer to work in Turkish or Vietnamese or Hungarian? Now you can! Ad Manager supports international currencies, too.
Ad network management: Easily manage your third-party ad networks in Ad Manager to automatically maximize your network driven revenue.
Automatic macro insertion: Save time and avoid tagging errors since Ad Manager now automatically detects and inserts macros from most popular 3rd party vendors.
Creative preview on live site: Preview the look and feel of ads on your live site to ensure ads look as expected before you start the campaign.
Day and Time Targeting: Don't want your orders to run on weekends? No problem. With day and time targeting, you can set any new line items you create to run only during specific hours or days, or as little as 15 minutes per week. Use day and time targeting in addition to geography, bandwidth, browser, user language, operating system, domain and custom targeting.

We also continue to roll out new features for the DoubleClick Revenue Center suite of publisher solutions, including DART for Publishers (DFP), our ad serving platform for publishers with larger direct sales teams. Google Ad Manager serves as an effective complement to the DoubleClick Revenue Center by providing new opportunities for publishers of all sizes.

If you have any additional questions about Ad Manager or want to learn more, visit the Ad Manager Help Center.

Posted by Alex Vogenthaler - Product Manager, Google Ad Manager

Search experiments, large and small

2008-08-26T11:24:41+00:00

In my previous post, I described the components of your web search experience and the principles behind creating a great search experience. There are complex algorithms underlying simple features such as spelling correction and the two line snippets that describe each search result. We figure out what works by running experiments - tiny tests for a small number of users which help us determine whether that feature helps or hurts.

Experimentation is a very powerful tool, and we use it very widely to test potential changes to search. At any given time, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments on Google sites all over the world. I'll start by describing experimental changes so small that you can barely tell the difference after staring at the page, and end with a couple of much more visually obvious experiments that we have run. There are a lot of people dedicated to detecting everything Google changes - and occasionally, things imagined that we did not do! - and they do latch on to a lot of our more prominent experiments. But the experiments with smaller changes are almost never noticed.

For example, can you tell the difference between the two pages below?

Choice 1:

Choice 2:

I'm pretty sure I would not be able to tell the difference if I were to see each of them on their own. But apparently you can! At least in the aggregate, there is a measurable difference with a change like this. In case you can't tell after staring, the white space around the first search result has changed, which makes the first result in Picture 2 slightly more visually prominent. This visual prominence conveys the fact that according to our ranking signals, the first result is a substantially better match than the next result. On the plus side, it helps you focus on the first result. But if you were looking for one of the other results, it can disrupt your scanning of the page. An experiment helps us determine which effect is more prominent, and whether a change would help you search faster.

Another change, almost as minimal visually, is between these two results:

In this case, the difference in user interaction is so clear and marked we could tell extremely quickly which one worked better: the difference is in the thickness of the plus box next to the stock quote. Now, coming to the conclusion that one is "better" is tricky, and there's many a possible slip on the way there. Does more interaction with the plus box mean that it is better? How about if users then miss good results because they are distracted by the more prominent plus box? Keep watching Google to see which version won! If we've done our job right, almost without your noticing, things will work just that little bit better for you. The world will seem rosier. Birds will sing. Or maybe not - but at least you will have the best-designed plus box we can come up with :)

Okay, so not all of our experiments are insane eye tests. My main point in highlighting the above experiments is that we test almost everything, even things that you would think are so small that we could not possibly care (nor could they possibly matter). In fact, small changes do matter, and we do care.

Another class of experiments have to do with changes that are not purely visual, but rather involve changes to the underlying presentation algorithms. For instance, the algorithm that is responsible for the titles and snippets of result pages now highlights stems and some synonyms of the original query term. For the query [hp printer drivers] we will also return results that include and highlight the word "driver".

This sort of "stemming," as it's called, is generally a good idea, because it helps you better identify results that match your query, but not always. Experiments of this sort help us verify (or, occasionally, overturn) our assumptions regarding changes in these algorithms.

There is a further class of experiments - the kind that are hard to miss - which introduces fairly prominent features. Even with these larger features, the goal of experimentation always remains the same: are we adding something that really helps people, or is this just another distraction? Google does not really come with a user manual (actually, there are some nicely-written help pages, but we're pretty sure most of you don't bother to read them!). So features need to stand on their own feet, without the help of a careful explanation. Part of the goal of an experiment is to understand just how a feature will be used, which might be quite different from what we initially intended.

Here's an example of an experiment that lets you comment on search results and move them around on the result page:

At this point, I can't say what we expect from this feature; we're just curious to see how it will be used.

These are a small sample of the kinds of experiments we run as we test everything from the barely visible to the glaringly obvious. So the next time you use Google and it seems a little different - well, maybe it is. Just for you!

Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

AdWords Report Center: Summer cleaning

2008-08-26T09:44:14+00:00

We'd like to give you a heads-up that on September 2nd, all reports in your AdWords Report Center created over six months ago (before March 2nd, 2008) will be deleted. We're clearing out old reports to make room for new ones. But, don't worry! All of your account data will be retained and unaffected by any report deletions.

Please plan accordingly before September 1st if you have reports in your AdWords Report Center that are more than six months old. If you'd like to save older reports, you can export them into Google Spreadsheets, .CSV files, Excel, HTML or another format with the click of a button.

And remember, you can always run a report again for any date range. As we mentioned, no account data is being removed. Moving forward, we will periodically delete reports older than six months.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

Table Formatters make Visualization tables even nicer

2008-08-26T08:43:42+00:00

By Hillel Maoz, Google Visualization Team

We often forget, but the simple table is a visualization too. In fact, all of our visualizations are based on the DataTable structure - a table itself.

In order to make this most basic visualization more appealing and useful, we added formatters to our JS table. Take a look at this arrow-format example, great for visualizing stock quotes or anything else that goes up and down. :-)

  <script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.google.com/jsapi'></script>
  
  <script type='text/javascript'>
    google.load('visualization', '1.0', {'packages': ['table']});
    google.setOnLoadCallback(draw);
    function draw() {
      // Create a datatable with your data.
      var dataTable = new google.visualization.DataTable();
      dataTable.addColumn('string', 'Equity / Index');
      dataTable.addColumn('number', '% Change');
      dataTable.addRows(5);
      var r = 0;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Acme.com');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 3.1, '3.1%');
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Brick & Mortar Groceries Inc');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -2.43, '-2.43%');
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'S&P 500');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 0.94, '0.94%');
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Dow Jones');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 1.2, '1.2%');
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Nikkei');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -0.23, '-0.23%');
      // Create a table visualization.
      var container = document.getElementById('table');
      table = new google.visualization.Table(container);
      // Apply a number formatter to the 2nd column.
      var options = {'allowHtml' : true};
      var formatter = new google.visualization.TableArrowFormat();
      formatter.format(dataTable, 1);
      // Draw the table visualization with the applied formatting.
      table.draw(dataTable, options);
    }
  </script>

Or this example of Number Formatters, good for accountants and whoever likes numbers:

  <script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.google.com/jsapi'></script>
  
  <script type='text/javascript'>
    google.load('visualization', '1.0', {'packages': ['table']});
    google.setOnLoadCallback(draw);
    function draw() {
      // Create a datatable with your data.
      var dataTable = new google.visualization.DataTable();
      dataTable.addColumn('string', 'Account', 'account');
      dataTable.addColumn('number', 'Balance', 'balance');
      dataTable.addRows(5);
      var r = 0;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Electronics');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 12000);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Appliances');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -1000);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Gadgets');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -21000);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Accessories');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 5560);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Casings');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 13092);
      // Create a table visualization.
      var container = document.getElementById('table');
      table = new google.visualization.Table(container);
      // Apply an number formatter to the 2nd column.
      var options = {'allowHtml' : true};
      var formatter = new google.visualization.TableNumberFormat(
          {prefix: '$', negativeColor: 'red', negativeParens: true});
      formatter.format(dataTable, 1);
      // Draw the table visualization with the applied formatting.
      table.draw(dataTable, options);
    }
  </script>

And, lastly, this example of a bar-formatter, which can be used to visually show relative distances from an anchor-point:

  <script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.google.com/jsapi'></script>
  
  <script type='text/javascript'>
    google.load('visualization', '1.0', {'packages': ['table']});
    google.setOnLoadCallback(draw);
    function draw() {
      // Create a datatable with your data.
      var dataTable = new google.visualization.DataTable();
      dataTable.addColumn('string', 'Place', 'place');
      dataTable.addColumn('number', 'Altitude', 'altitude');
      dataTable.addRows(5);
      var r = 0;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Dead Sea');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -420);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Death Valley');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -86);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Mt. Everest');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 8848);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Mt. Kilimangaro');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, 5895);
      r++;
      dataTable.setCell(r, 0, 'Marianas Trench');
      dataTable.setCell(r, 1, -10924);
      // Create a table visualization.
      var container = document.getElementById('table');
      table = new google.visualization.Table(container);
      // Apply an arrow formatter to the 2nd column.
      var options = {'allowHtml' : true};
      var formatter = new google.visualization.TableBarFormat(
           {base: 0, showValue: true, min: 12000, max: 12000});
      formatter.format(dataTable, 1);
      // Draw the table visualization with the applied formatting.
      table.draw(dataTable, options);
    }  
  </script>

For the complete list of currently available formatters, see our Table documentation with included examples. We're working on more formatters, which we will announce on our discussion group when we make them available.

For more info on using and creating visualizations, visit our documentation pages.

At a loss for words?

2008-08-25T19:38:18+00:00

Have you ever been stumped in finding the right words to search for? Back when I was planning my wedding, I had a list of wedding songs in mind, but the problem was that I couldn't remember any of the artist names or song titles. So I started typing into the Google search box parts of the lyrics that I did remember -- and like magic, I saw suggestions with the artist name and song titles that I wanted! (I was opted-in to the keyword suggestions Google Labs experiment at the time). At that moment, I was so proud to be working on Google Suggest, a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.

Today we're excited because Google Suggest will be "graduating" from Labs and available by default on the Google.com homepage. Over the next week, we'll be rolling this out so that more and more of you will start seeing a list of query suggestions when you start typing into the search box.

We find that by providing suggestions upfront, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently. Below are some great ways Google Suggest can help simplify your searching.

Help formulate queries: Instead of just typing [hotels in washington] - did you want [hotels in washington dc] or [hotels in washington state]? Don't remember that song title or person's name? Let Google help you search (and yes, I ended up choosing "From This Moment" as our wedding song).

Reduce spelling errors: Since suggestions are spell-corrected using the same "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, misspellings and typos can be corrected ahead of time. Instead of wasting your time with a misspelled query like [new yrok times] or [tomorow never dies], search the first time with the correctly-spelled query.

Saves keystrokes: Who wants to spend their time typing [san francisco chronicle] when you can just type in "san f..." and choose the suggestion right away?

The Google Suggest feature originally started as a 20% project in 2004, and has since expanded to Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox search box, Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com. Special thanks to my teammates Miki Herscovici (Tech Lead) and the rest of the engineering team in Haifa for their hard work in making this happen.

So what are you waiting for? Give it a try. Start typing in a query on Google.com to see Google Suggest in action!

Update: Corrected team mention.

Posted by Jennifer Liu, Product Manager

Fall is webinar season

2008-08-25T11:45:58+00:00

In the spirit of the back-to-school season, we have a very large curriculum of free upcoming advertising webinars to help you prepare, optimize, and expand your campaigns. Here's a breakdown of the material:

Subject: Website Optimizer - Test and enhance your site - Register here

Date: Tuesday, August 26, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructor: Tom Leung, Google Business Product Manager
Class Description: Thinking of redesigning your site? With Google's free Website Optimizer, you can test different layouts for key pages of your website, and measure exactly which one generates most sales or leads. The webinar will provide you with an introduction to Website Optimizer and website testing.

Subject: Holiday webinars - Register here

Date: Wednesdays, August 27, September 3, September 10, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructors: Members of the AdWords Retail and Tech B2C Teams
Class Description: The holidays may seem far off, but it's never too early to start planning. To help you get a jump start on the season, we've designed Unwrapped: Retail Holiday Guide, a series of three free webinars featuring tips and strategies for running and tracking successful holiday campaigns. All advertisers are welcome to register, though the sessions are tailored to retailers and those marketing to consumers. To get the most impact out of this series, we recommend attending all three webinars:

     Setting the Stage: Make the Most of the Holiday Season
     Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 10:00 AM PDT

     Expanding Reach: Find Your Target Audience
     Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 10:00 AM PDT

     Analyze & Simplify: Measure Success & Streamline the Buying Process
     Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 10:00 AM PDT

Subject: How to effectively reach your audience on social media sites in the content network - Register here

Date: Wednesday, September 3, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructor: Anastasia Leng, Social Media Specialist
Class Description: What is social media? Learn what kind of users visit social media sites and what they're doing once there. Obtain an overview of the social media sites in the Google content network.You will also learn what tools Google offers you to effectively reach the users you need, including Demographic Bidding and Reports, User Interest Placements, and Enhanced Online Campaigns.

Subject: Optimizing in AdWords Editor - Register here

Date: Thursday, September 11, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructor: Taylor Marcus, AdWords Editor Specialist
Class Description: If you're an AdWords Editor power user, we have excellent news. We'll be hosting an 'Optimizing in AdWords Editor' webinar to help you learn to how to more efficiently optimize your campaigns. Taylor Marcus, an AdWords Editor specialist, will demonstrate how to use AdWords Editor to achieve ROI best practices, improve and maintain account health, and utilize different ad formats.

To stay on top of these and more of our free webinars for advertisers, check this calendar for updates.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

Featured gadget: U.S. Senator Search and Contact

2008-08-25T09:21:31+00:00

Name: U.S. Senator Search and Contact
Author: Rosie Ojo
Description: Search for U.S. senator information

More information | Download gadget

Each week this blog features a recently added Google Desktop gadget that looks promising. If you'd like to see all new Desktop gadgets as they're published, subscribe to the RSS feed.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Election season in high gear

2008-08-25T09:04:23+00:00

As many of you know, the 2008 U.S. political conventions--two weeks of party business that begins for the Democrats in Denver today, and for the Republicans in Minneapolis next week--marks the beginning of the general election season. To help you stay informed and engaged in the upcoming election, we're launching a one-stop shop for political information: www.google.com/2008election.

Can't make it to Denver or Minneapolis? Go to our conventions site to view the latest news, videos, photos and blog posts. See what the candidates are saying about the issues that concern you by using Elections Video Search, which lets you search across all of the candidate speeches and videos by word. If you want to see what the Obama or McCain campaigns and other political journalists are reading, check out Power Readers in Politics and subscribe to get daily snippets. You can also interact with a wide variety of political mash-ups in the Google Maps Elections Gallery. If you're a teacher, inform your students about the political process with our Election Toolkit for Teachers. If you happen to be running for office yourself, or are blogging about various campaigns, go to our Campaign Toolkit to find out how you can use online tools to raise money, follow the campaign trail or spread your influence.

And as election day grows closer, we're working on ways for you to find local voter registration sites or polling places on demand -- stay tuned for more details on that.

We're excited to be a part of this exciting election season, where technology is playing a groundbreaking role in connecting candidates and voters.

Posted by Rick Klau and Brittany Bohnet, Google Elections Team

silver_medal_count++

2008-08-22T16:29:05+00:00

Since both tennis and table tennis are in the Olympics, perhaps you're wondering: if there's soccer, why not "table soccer?" Of course, we know table soccer by another name; and while foosball may not be an Olympic sport, we still cheered Nathan Johns and Jan Backes—two members of our Search Quality team—as they brought home the foosball silver medal at the search engine foosball smackdown at SES San Jose.

"Smackdown" doesn't quite equate to "Olympics," but check out the intensity—you could hear a pin drop!

The gold medal (cup) went to the search engine down the road. :)

Yahoo's first place winners Daniel Wong and Jake Rosenberg.

Just to be sure they weren't ringers, I quizzed Daniel and Jake, "How can you prevent a file from being crawled?" They correctly answered, "robots.txt."

Gold cup well deserved.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

One account, multiple sites

2008-08-22T14:17:22+00:00

We'd like to remind you that once you've been approved for AdSense, you can place the code from your account on any page that complies with our program policies. Simply generate new code and paste it onto your site -- we don't need to update your account, so there's no need to contact us about your new site (although we appreciate the thought!). Even if your sites relate to completely different topics, our system will display appropriate ads for each site. This is because your ad targeting is based on the content of your pages, rather than set within your account. In addition, please keep in mind that publishers may only maintain one account per payee name, so there's no need for you to submit a new application.

If you run multiple websites, you may wish to view separate reports for each domain. Simply create a URL channel for each one. You won't need to modify your code in any way, and your URL channels will begin tracking data almost immediately. If you need to send these reports to other people who manage your site with you, you can set up emailable reports.

But what if you've sold the website you applied to AdSense, and now you run another one? We don't need to update your account information in any way. Just remove your ad code from the old site, paste new code onto your current site, and our system will automatically take care of the rest.

Finally, we'd like to note that we do constantly review sites displaying Google ads to make sure that they're complying with the AdSense program policies. If we find that a site isn't compliant with our policies, we'll contact the publisher whose ad code appears on the site to address the situation. If you're concerned about others placing your ad code on non-policy compliant pages, we recommend using our Allowed Sites feature.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Meditating on books

2008-08-22T10:55:21+00:00

Posted by Dan Abbe, Book Search Support Team

Hello again, and welcome to the Inside Google Book Search blog. We’ve been taking things slow lately, as summer slides by. But we’re not making excuses. Maybe while not blogging, we’ve been outside reading under the shade of a tree, or on the beach, where the rustling of pages finds its counterpart in the lapping of waves. Maybe we were too enthralled with Aleksandar Hemon’s latest book to pick up a virtual pen. Maybe we weren’t reading at all and were just lazing about under that tree. Would you begrudge us that?

I do think summer is the best time to read a book. Some might say it would be winter, because you’re inside so much, but I’m not so sure about that. Something about heat makes it even more pleasant to read: coldness demands motion, or at least bundling up, but the paltry effort required to turn a page is suited to a warm day.

Thoughts of this tone lead me think of the 14th-centry Japanese writer Kenkō. My favorite book of his, Essays in Idleness—actually the only one I know, but literary honor demands that I refer to it as “my favorite”—is a series of meditations about such simple things. He often reflects upon minute, later historical details of his time, people's behavior or, in this case, the pleasure of reading:

The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.

The concept of transience and impermanence runs through Kenkō’s work, but the book has been given a long life by other authors who have cited him. Here you can read all the instances of the above quote on Book Search. I would guess that Kenkō never imagined this blog-rebirth I have granted him, but he would know that as blogs become passé, antiquated and finally forgotten, he’ll still be there to be found by unknown friends.

Meet the Team: David Wurtz

2008-08-22T10:49:06+00:00

From time to time we'll introduce you to a member of the Checkout team. Meet another one now.

Alyssa: How long have you been at Google, and what role do you play on Checkout?

David: I've been an associate product manager on Google Checkout since joining Google last June.

Alyssa: What did you do before coming to Google?

David: I came to Google directly out of college. I attended a very small engineering school in Boston called Olin College of Engineering, where I studied bioengineering. I know, I know. It has nothing to do with my job at Google. But hey -- one of these days, I may find a way to apply my degree to Checkout. In junior year of college, I actually dropped out for a semester to start a web 2.0 company called Flagr. Flagr is a social network based around the places you go and the things you see. Flagr's slogan explains it all: Bookmark the real world. This was a fantastic experience, and offered me incredible insight into the world of Silicon Valley, angel investors, and VCs. I often reference my experiences at Flagr on my day-to-day role on Checkout.

Alyssa: What sorts of things fill your day?

David: One of the best aspects of my job at Google is that each day I face a completely new set of challenges and opportunities. It's such a fast-paced, dynamic environment that it's hard to fall into a routine. This makes a question like this difficult to answer, but let me give it a shot...

In a typical day, here are some things I may do:

Draft a product brief: This is a proposal that outlines a potential new Checkout feature and presents a strong business case for why we should add it to the product. We work hard to ensure our time is spent developing the most effective features.
Mock something up: I'm a fairly visual guy, so I tend to get myself involved in the user interface design of my projects.
Reach out to merchants: Merchant feedback plays a big role in new feature development, so I frequently reach out to merchants to add them as testers.
Learn about other Google initiatives: As you might expect, there's a lot going on at Google. A big part of the product management role here is understanding all the other initiatives that are under way, so you can better grasp a) how your features fit into the bigger picture and b) how your team can collaborate with other Google teams to create even better products.
Try stuff out: I typically sign up for one or two web services in the commerce space each day, just to see what the competitive marketplace looks like.

Alyssa: What has been an incredible moment that you have experienced since joining?

David: A few months ago, I traveled around the world (literally) with 35 of my fellow associate product managers as part of an annual trip. We visited four countries over the span of two weeks: Japan, China, Russia, and Norway. Our schedule was jam-packed! We visited local Google offices, interviewed Google users, met with high-tech startups and venture capitalists, and toured all four cities.

As you may have guessed, the trip was full of incredible moments. But one morning, we woke up early to visit the Tsujiki fish market in Tokyo. The market serves as a central auction place for Japanese fish vendors and merchants. Thousands of merchants line up for their chance to bid on the latest catch -- huge, one-ton tunas that cost thousands of dollars each. Surrounding the auction are hundreds of local vendors, each selling a variety of unidentifiable (but edible) sea creatures. Some of these merchants are bargaining with customers, some are slicing and dicing fish with machetes, and some are transporting their loads at lightening speed on modified go-carts.

A hectic place to be at 5:00 am! As a sushi lover, you can imagine this was an amazing experience. What topped it off was the two pounds of raw fish I had for breakfast that morning. With so much supply, the prices were incredibly low and the fish was really fresh. It certainly reset my expectations for what good sushi should taste like.

Alyssa: What about when you are off duty?

David: When I'm not at Google, I enjoy throwing a Frisbee, exploring new and interesting places around the world with my fiancée, dabbling in some eCommerce ventures of my own, and -- of course -- playing with my Maltese puppy, "Maya." I'm also a big fan of the financial markets, where I like to trade option spreads. How do I spend Friday night? Watching a Netflix DVD, a Lost episode, or perhaps hanging out at Barnes and Noble with a great book.

Posted by Alyssa England, Google Checkout Team

Two new ways to location-enable your web apps

2008-08-22T03:12:13+00:00

By Steve Block, Gears Engineer

We just launched two new ways to give your web apps free and secure access to a user's location, without requiring that user to enter it manually.

First, there's the AJAX API property that provides a simple way to get an approximate, region-level estimate of a user's location based on their IP address. It's as simple as referencing google.loader.ClientLocation, which is made available using the Google AJAX API Loader. This API does not require users to install any client-side software. You can see this new AJAX API in action as part of the 2008 US Election gadget -- the "News by State" will show local news for the state associated with the user's IP.

Second, the Gears Geolocation API provides a way to get a more precise estimate of a user's location. On mobile devices with Gears installed, the Geolocation API can use the cell-ID of nearby cell towers or on-board GPS (if either is available) to improve the postion fix. In the near future, we'll be adding data from your WiFi connection to improve accuracy even further, on both desktop and mobile. In all cases, Gears takes care of assimilating the results from each source and returning the best available position estimate.

The Geolocation API has two JavaScript methods: getCurrentPosition() makes a single, one-off attempt to get a position fix, while watchPosition() watches the user's position over time, and provides an update whenever the position changes. Both methods allow you to configure which sources of location information are used. Gears also keeps track of the best position fix obtained from these calls and makes it available as the lastPosition property. This is a simple way to get an approximate position fix with low cost in terms of both network and battery resources.

The privacy of users' location information is extremely important. The first time your site calls the Geolocation API to request a user's location, that user will be shown a permissions dialog where they can choose to allow or deny your site access. Users can change that decision at any time via the "Gears settings" dialog in the browser menu. Google does not keep location information about users when your site uses the Geolocation API.

To use the Geolocation API your users may need to install the Gears browser plugin, a simple process on both desktop and mobile. The Geolocation API is available on platforms currently supported by Gears, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and IE Mobile (selected devices only). For users to be able to use location-enabled features on mobile they will need a Windows Mobile device that supports GPS or cell-ID lookup (for example the Samsung BlackJack II and the HTC Touch Dual, see list of supported device models in our FAQ). We are working hard to bring Gears to more mobile platforms soon. You can download and install Gears at gears.google.com. Or try out some of the first location-enabled mobile web apps using Gears.

Like the rest of Gears, this new Geolocation API is open source. We're also doing our best to work with existing and emerging standards. Gears now implements the current editor's draft of the W3C Geolocation specification, which we've helped to define in collaboration with Microsoft, Mozilla, and others. We're committed to continued collaboration around the emerging HTML5 standard and the APIs specified by the W3C Web Applications Working Group. The goal for Gears is to advance browser capabilities, and part of that is helping define future web standards.

If you're interested in providing feedback or contributing to Gears, there's more info on the project website. There's also an AJAX APIs discussion group -- we're anxious to hear what you think.

Hey Google, I no longer have badware

2008-08-21T17:43:18+00:00

This post is for anyone who has been emailed or notified by Google about badware, received a badware warning when browsing their own site using Firefox, or has come across malware-labeled search results for their own site(s). As you know, these warnings are produced by our automated scanning systems, which we've put in place to ensure the quality of our results by protecting our users. Whatever the case, if you are dealing with badware, here are a few recommendations that can help you out.

1. If you have badware, it usually means that your web server, your website, or a database used by your website has been compromised. We have a nifty post on how to handle being hacked. Be very careful when inspecting for malware on your site so as to avoid exposing your computer to infection.

2. Once everything is clear and dandy, you can follow the steps in our post about malware reviews via Webmaster Tools. Please note the screen shot on the previous post is outdated, and the new malware review form is on the Overview page and looks like this:

Other programs, such as Firefox, also use our badware data and may not recognize the change immediately due to their caching of the data. So even if the badware label in search is removed, it may take some time for that to be visible in such programs.

3. Lastly, if you believe that your rankings were somehow affected by the malware, such as compromised content that violated our Webmaster Guidelines [i.e. hacked pages with hidden pharmacy text links], you should fill out a reconsideration request. To clarify, reconsideration requests are usually used for when you notice issues stemming from violations of our Webmaster Guidelines and are separate from malware requests.

If you have additional questions, please review our documentation or post to the discussion group with the URL of your site. We hope you find this updated feature in Webmaster Tools useful in discovering and fixing any malware-related problems.

Written by Evan Tang, Search Quality Team

Quality Score improvements

2008-08-21T17:25:26+00:00

In July 2005, AdWords introduced minimum bids for keywords based on Quality Score. This system allows us to show very high quality ads to Google users, while also giving advertisers control over their keywords. Since 2005, we've improved Quality Score in many ways, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors. Along the way, we've also received much helpful feedback from both users and advertisers.

Today, we'd like to let you know of further improvements we'll introduce in the coming weeks -- based, in part, on this feedback. First we'll outline the key points, and then dive into the details:

Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
Keywords will no longer be marked 'inactive for search'
'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid' in your account

A more accurate Quality Score

Most importantly, we are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad's quality each time it matches a search query. This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed. Your ads will be more likely to show when they're relevant and less likely to show when they're not. This means that Google users are apt to see better ads while you, as an advertiser, should receive leads which are more highly qualified.

Keywords no longer marked 'inactive for search'

The new per-query evaluation of Quality Score affects you in that keywords will no longer appear as 'inactive for search' in your account. Instead, all keywords will have the chance to show ads on Google web search and the search network (unless you've paused or deleted them). Keep in mind, however, that keywords previously marked 'inactive for search' are not likely to accrue a great deal of traffic following this change. This is because their combined per-query Quality Score and bid probably isn't high enough to gain competitive placement.

'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid'

As a result of migrating to per-query Quality Score, we are no longer showing minimum bids in your account. Instead, we're replacing minimum bids with a new, more meaningful metric: first page bids. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search. They're based on the exact match version of the keyword, the ad's Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword. Based on your feedback, we learned that knowing your minimum bid wasn't always helpful in getting the ad placement you wanted, so we hope that first page bids will give you better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals.

It's worth mentioning that the impact of these changes will vary from advertiser to advertiser; some might see no changes to their ad serving, while others may see a noticeable difference. As always, we recommend optimizing ads to prevent them from receiving a low Quality Score.

Putting it all together

Here's an example to illustrate how per-query Quality Score works:

Nancy's Dairy advertises on the keyword 'milk.' Nancy's ads perform better on the keyword 'milk' in the U.S. than in Canada. Her ads also perform better on the query 'milk delivery' than on 'milk,' and better on certain search network sites than on others. Instead of one static Quality Score and minimum bid that determines whether the keyword 'milk' is eligible to trigger an ad for all search queries, we will now determine eligibility dynamically, based on factors such as location, the specific query, and other relevance factors. For that reason, Nancy's keyword 'milk' will be able to trigger an ad for search queries where it's likely to perform better, i.e., in the U.S., on 'milk delivery' and on certain search network sites.

We're working to update the AdWords API and AdWords Editor so that, in the future, they will support first page bids. Until then, both the AdWords API and AdWords Editor will continue to show the minimum bid field. However, the information shown in this field will be based on the new per-query Quality Score. You may keep current with upcoming API releases on the API Blog and learn about upcoming AdWords Editor releases via the AdWords Editor Forum.

Finally, please note that we'll release these Quality Score changes to a very small segment of advertisers within the next day or two, so that we can gather feedback before launching to all our advertisers. We will, of course, post again in advance of the time that these changes go live for everyone.

In the meantime, please see this comprehensive list of frequently asked questions for more information.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Back-to-School savings now in session

2008-08-21T11:17:50+00:00

Whether you're looking to fill up a backpack or a dorm room, Google Checkout is a fast, easy way to buy what you need this fall. Checkout shoppers can get savings of $5 or more at hundreds of stores for a limited time. And after you take advantage of these exclusive offers, you can use your Google Checkout login for quick, secure shopping throughout the school year at thousands of online stores.

Posted by Christian Yee, Product Marketing Manager

Site maintenance on Saturday, August 23

2008-08-21T09:56:39+00:00

This Saturday, August 23rd, our engineers will be performing site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You'll be unable to log in during these hours, but we'll continue to track your earnings and serve ads to your pages. For those of you located in different time zones, we've provided the maintenance start time for a few international cities:

London - 6pm Saturday
Istanbul - 8pm Saturday
Bangalore - 10:30pm Saturday
Hanoi - 12am Sunday
Auckland - 5am Sunday

Finally, you may have noticed that we're posting this message a little earlier than usual. Based on your feedback, we'll do our best to post these maintenance reminders earlier in the week to help you plan ahead. Thanks for the suggestion!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

AdWords system maintenance on August 23rd

2008-08-20T16:53:13+00:00

On Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT, with this Saturday being an exception.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the August 23rd date and our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Google to Present at the Citi Investment Research Technology Conference*

2008-08-20T13:02:00+00:00