Thursday, December 18, 2008

Blog gadget 2.0

Back in September we introduced an iGoogle gadget that makes it possible to read recent posts from all of our corporate blogs, right on your dashboard. With the help of developer Ben Lisbakken, we're ready to roll out the next version of the gadget, which translates posts into 34 languages. Using Google Translate, the gadget gives people all over the world access to posts they might otherwise be unable to read. The default setting translates posts into the language in which your browser is set, but you can also choose from any of our supported languages by going into the "Edit" setting (found in the "Menu" arrow in the right-hand corner). If you want to learn more about Google in Latin America or AdWords in Russia, for example, but haven't had the chance to learn Spanish or Russian, give the gadget a spin. While machine translation is not exact, and we're constantly working to improve the quality, hopefully this new feature lets you get the gist of the post.Here's a list of the supported languages:Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

Monday, October 13, 2008

Ad perfect

The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editorsGoogle's advertising business was founded on the core principle that advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This is very similar to our mission in search, and, like our colleagues in search, those of us on the ads team are constantly striving to achieve better results. We have hundreds of thousands of advertisers who collectively have millions of products and services, and out of that vast amount of information our goal is always to show people the best ads, the ones that are the most relevant, timely, and useful (and, from the advertiser perspective, measurable). Achieving this ideal has been difficult since the early days of ads, but now, with the Internet, it is within reach.What does it take to do this? We need to understand exactly what people are looking for, then give them exactly the information they want. Timing is an important component. For example, when a person is looking for a specific item (like those table lamps I got a couple of weeks ago), the best ads will give more specific information, like where to buy the item online and locally, along with other relevant information such as style, size, availability, and pricing. Regardless of the timing, the best ads might include images, videos, or other formats about products and services to provide the most relevant information to people to make their purchasing decision.In other cases, ads can help you learn about something you didn’t know you wanted. For instance, a few weeks ago I was researching roller coasters for my son when I saw a great text ad for software that actually lets you design your own roller coaster! It turned out to be the perfect gift (and I now have a budding roller coaster engineer in my house). So in this case, I was doing some basic research, and the ad helped me discover something I didn't know existed.As we look forward, one way to make ads better would be to customize them based on factors like a person's location or preferences. If you're in a particular neighborhood using your mobile phone to look for a specific type of restaurant or shop, ads from local vendors are likely to be very useful to you.Finally, it is very important that anyone be able to advertise. People benefit when they see ads from any type of business or organization regardless of its size or geography. The right product for a user might be from a company they had previously never heard of, so it needs to be very easy and quick for anyone to create good ads, to show them only to people for whom they are useful, and to measure how effective they are.In Marissa's post on Wednesday, she talked about how the science of search is still in its infancy, and how we still have many breakthroughs before us. The same applies to advertising. In coming years, as people find new ways to use the Internet and new devices with which to access it, we have the opportunity to get even smarter about the ads we show. As always, we will use the best and most innovative technologies available so we serve relevant ads for you. We will do so in a way that safeguards user privacy by honoring our commitment to transparency and choice. And most importantly, we will continue to live by the philosophy that has guided our work from the outset: getting the right ad to the right person at the right time matters.

Browse what the world is saying on Blog Search

Did you know that millions of bloggers around the world write new posts each week? If you're like me, you probably read only a tiny fraction of these in Google Reader. What's everybody else writing about? Our Blog Search team thought this was an interesting enough question to look into. What we found was a massive mix: entertaining items about celebrities, personal perspectives on political figures, cutting-edge (and sometimes unverified) news stories, and a range of niche topics often ignored by the mainstream media.Today, we're pleased to launch a new homepage for Google Blog Search so that you too can browse and discover the most interesting stories in the blogosphere.

Adapting some of the technology pioneered by Google News, we're now showing categories on the left side of the website and organizing the blog posts within those categories into clusters, which are groupings of posts about the same story or event. Grouping them in clusters lets you see the best posts on a story or get a variety of perspectives. When you look within a cluster, you'll find a collection of the most interesting and recent posts on the topic, along with a timeline graph that shows you how the story is gaining momentum in the blogosphere.In this example, the green "64 blogs" link takes you inside the cluster and shows you all the blog posts for a story.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Submitting your content to Google

We've talked a lot about our mission to organize the world's information and make it readily available to all, but we haven't spent as much time as we could helping others understand how they can participate in this endeavor. Last week we took two steps to address this: we updated the Submit Your Content site and we launched our Content Central blog. The goal of both of these resources is to inform and help the many organizations that distribute various types of content via Google Web Search, Maps, Product Search, Book Search, YouTube, iGoogle and more.So whether you're a plumber, a map data provider, a local government, a major media company or a museum, we have a wealth of information available to help you reach your audience through Google. Comments are open on the blog -- we look forward to hearing from you.

A fresh take on the browser

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We'll post an update here as soon as it's ready.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Ten years and counting

The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editorsHistorically, the Internet has been all about connectivity between computers and among people. The World Wide Web opened enormous opportunities and motivations for the injection of content into the Internet, and search engines, such as Google's, provided a way for people to find the right content for their interests. Of course, the Internet continues to develop: new devices will find their way onto the net and new ways to access it will evolve.In the next decade, around 70% of the human population will have fixed or mobile access to the Internet at increasingly high speeds, up to gigabits per second. We can reliably expect that mobile devices will become a major component of the Internet, as will appliances and sensors of all kinds. Many of the things on the Internet, whether mobile or fixed, will know where they are, both geographically and logically. As you enter a hotel room, your mobile will be told its precise location including room number. When you turn your laptop on, it will learn this information as well--either from the mobile or from the room itself. It will be normal for devices, when activated, to discover what other devices are in the neighborhood, so your mobile will discover that it has a high resolution display available in what was once called a television set. If you wish, your mobile will remember where you have been and will keep track of RFID-labeled objects such as your briefcase, car keys and glasses. "Where are my glasses?" you will ask. "You were last within RFID reach of them while in the living room," your mobile or laptop will say.The Internet will transform the video medium as well. From its largely programmed, scheduled and streamed delivery today, video will become an interactive medium in which the choice of content and advertising will be under consumer control. Product placement will become an opportunity for viewers to click on items of interest in the field of view to learn more about them including but not limited to commercial information. Hyperlinks will associate the racing scene in Star Wars I with the chariot race in Ben Hur. Conventional videoconferencing will be augmented by remotely controlled robots with an ability to move around, focus cameras and microphones, and perhaps even directly interact with the local environment under user control.The Internet will also become more closely integrated with other parts of our daily lives, and it will change them accordingly. Power distribution grids, for example, will become a part of the Internet's information universe. We will be able to track and manage electrical power demand and our automobiles will participate in the generation as well as the consumption of electricity. By sharing information through the Internet about energy-consuming and energy-producing devices and systems, we will be able to make them more efficient.A box of washing machine soap will become part of a service as Internet-enabled washing machines are managed by Web-based services that can configure and activate your washing machine. Scientific measurements and experimental results will be blogged and automatically entered into common data archives to facilitate the distribution, sharing and reproduction of experimental results. One might even imagine that scientific instruments could generate their own data blogs.These are but a few examples of the way in which the Internet will continue to surround and serve us in the future. The flexibility we have seen in the Internet is a consequence of one simple observation: the Internet is essentially a software artifact. As we have learned in the past several decades, software is an endless frontier. There is no limit to what can be programmed. If we can imagine it, there's a good chance it can be programmed. The Internet of the future will be suffused with software, information, data archives, and populated with devices, appliances, and people who are interacting with and through this rich fabric.And Google will be there, helping to make sense of it all, helping to organize and make everything accessible and useful.

Ten years and counting

9/26/2008 09:00:00 PM The Google doodle tradition started a long time ago (in summer 1999, in fact) when Larry and Sergey put a stick figure on the homepage to signify that they were out of the office at Burning Man. Nothing against stick figures, but our logo designs have become rather more varied since then. Today you'll see a special design that commemorates our 10th birthday. We've incorporated a little bit of history by using the original Google logo from 1998. And since everyone keeps asking what we'd like for our birthday (besides cake and party hats) -- the first thing we thought of was a nice new server rack.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Google Launches Android, an Open Mobile Platform

"Google Phone" turned out to be a mobile platform and not a phone optimized for running Google apps. "Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications -- all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation," announced Andy Rubin on the Google Blog. Android was launched as part of the Open Handset Alliance, an organization that has a lot of other important members: Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Intel, NVIDIA, LG, Motorola, eBay, Nuance Communications and more.The goal: "through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform". The SDK will be available on November 12 and the first devices based on Android should be launched next year."Through Android, developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers will be better positioned to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. (...) The Android platform will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Developers will have complete access to handset capabilities and tools that will enable them to build more compelling and user-friendly services, bringing the Internet developer model to the mobile space. And consumers worldwide will have access to less expensive mobile devices that feature more compelling services, rich Internet applications and easier-to-use interfaces -- ultimately creating a superior mobile experience," explains the press release.

Android is based on the Linux Kernel and has some interesting particularities. "Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. (...) Android breaks down the barriers to building new and innovative applications. For example, a developer can combine information from the web with data on an individual's mobile phone -- such as the user's contacts, calendar, or geographic location -- to provide a more relevant user experience. With Android, a developer could build an application that enables users to view the location of their friends and be alerted when they are in the vicinity giving them a chance to connect. (...) Android provides access to a wide range of useful libraries and tools that can be used to build rich applications. For example, Android enables developers to obtain the location of the device, and allow devices to communicate with one another enabling rich peer-to-peer social applications."

Monday, September 1, 2008

Making money on YouTube with Content ID

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.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Translations on your iPhone

Have you ever been traveling and suddenly realized that you didn't know how to ask the taxi driver to take you to your hotel? It's happened to us too, so the mobile team has put together an iPhone interface for Google Translate, our machine translation project. Read more about it on the Google Mobile blog.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

YouTubing the conventions

Through unprecedented partnerships with both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, we just debuted a video contest that will send one talented winner from each side of the aisle onto their candidate's campaign trail, and ultimately into their party's national convention in Denver or Minneapolis-St. Paul. The call to action is simple: submit a video explaining why you're a Democrat or Republican in 2008. The five most compelling and creative videos selected by each convention will be voted on by the YouTube community, who will determine the final winner.Learn more by watching these videos from Republican Chairman Mike Duncan or Democratic Chairman Howard Dean.These contests are a part of our larger partnership with the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. As the official providers for search and online video community, Google and YouTube are contributing a broad range of technology and services to help delegates, members of the media and interested citizens around the country to access convention events and information. And on YouTube, the two convention staffs have been busy posting videos to build buzz about the exciting events in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul this summer - like speeches from great moments in convention history.So check out YouTube's Convention Headquarters and submit your video to the contest today. It's your chance to get involved in what promise to be two of the most exciting political events this summer.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Google learns to crawl Flash

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology.In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.Now that we've launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There's more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.

Monday, June 30, 2008

(Ad)Word of the Day: Ad Variations

Did you know that we have an AdWords Glossary? It's a great resource for learning more about AdWords; so we're starting a new series here at Inside AdWords entitled (Ad)Word of the Day. Each post in the series will cover one term in the glossary and talk a little bit about it.For our inaugural post, we'll start with ad variations:
Ad variations are multiple versions of an ad for a single product or service, all based on the same set of keywords. Variations are a good way to test many versions of the same message to see which works best with potential customers.One advantage of using ad variations is that AdWords can automatically show the best performing ad. If you are not sure which message will work best with your potential customers, you can simply create multiple ads for an ad group. AdWords will automatically show the best performing ad more often over time.We hope you've enjoyed the first part of our new series. If you have suggestions for words you'd like to see, we're always listening at inside-adwords@google.com.Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew
Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 2:24 PM

Friday, June 27, 2008

Celebrating 50,000 of you

This week, the 50,000th person subscribed to the English AdSense Help Group. To mark this milestone, the AdSensePro Team would like to extend a special word of thanks to all the folks who use our forums, particularly everyone who takes the time to share their knowledge with other publishers. Thank you for providing useful help and advice, and for contributing to the AdSense community.

If you're not familiar with the Help Group, do check it out to share your AdSense experience. Members of the AdSensePro team will also be on hand to help answer questions, raise issues to our product and engineering teams, and collect your valuable feedback. And if you'd prefer to discuss AdSense in a language other than English, feel free to visit one of our international forums: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Turkish.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Keeping kids safe in a digital world

In the spirit of National Internet Safety Month, we welcomed Ernie Allen, co-founder and president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to the Googleplex last week to discuss child protection issues.

For those not familiar with it, NCMEC works closely with federal law enforcement across the U.S. to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation and to help find missing children. From serving as the clearinghouse for reports of online child pornography to issuing Amber Alerts when children go missing to reuniting families in the wake of Katrina, NCMEC is at the forefront of efforts to protect society's most vulnerable members.

In a policy talk called "Beyond Milk Cartons: Keeping kids safe in a digital world", Ernie provided an overview of NCMEC's work and chatted with Googlers about the ever-changing landscape of child protection challenges shared by parents, educators, advocacy organizations, and technology companies like Google as we work to help families make smart choices online. Watch Ernie's talk on YouTube.

Technology is an invaluable tool for addressing some of these challenges. In a recent example, a team of Google engineers dedicated their 20 percent time over the last year and a half to build cutting-edge software for NCMEC that uses image and video recognition technology to help NCMEC analysts more effectively sort and review incoming reports of child exploitation. NCMEC analysts sort through tens of millions of images in child sexual abuse investigations, and we've tried to leverage our expertise in organizing huge amounts of data to help make their important work more automated and efficient.

When it comes to keeping kids safe on the Internet, we believe that education for families, support for law enforcement, and empowering technology tools, like our SafeSearch filter and the NCMEC software, are all critical pieces of the puzzle.

Tackling online child safety issues is no small task, but we'll continue our collaboration with organizations like NCMEC, along with other partners in schools, government and industry, to take collective strides in the right direction.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The AdSense Pub(lisher) Crawl

As you may know, it's important to allow the AdSense crawler access to the pages that display your ads. If our crawler can't see the content of your pages, your ad targeting may suffer, and with it your earnings. It's also important that we hold all pages to the same policy standards, and we may eventually stop serving ads to pages that the crawler can't access. With this in mind, I'd like to ask you two questions highlighting potential roadblocks to a successful AdSense crawl and let you know what you can do to correct them.1. Are you using a robots.txt file on a site with Google ads?
If so, you might be inadvertently blocking the AdSense crawler from accessing parts of your site. If you aren't sure what a robots.txt file is, it's a text file that you include on your domain that allows you to block crawlers from accessing your site. You can find out if you're using a robots.txt file by going to example.com/robots.txt (replace 'example.com' with your own domain name) or by using Site Diagnostics. If you do use a robots.txt file to block certain crawlers from accessing your site, it's a good idea to add an explicit invitation to the AdSense crawler so it knows it's welcome to visit any page with AdSense code. Please keep in mind that the AdSense crawler is separate from the Google bot for our search index.To give the AdSense crawler access, add these two lines to your robots.txt file:User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*Disallow:You can use the Site Diagnostics link in your AdSense Reports tab to see whether we're having trouble crawling any pages on your sites. If you're concerned about the privacy of some pages on your site, keep in mind that we don't publish any of the information retrieved by the Mediapartners-Google crawler, also known as the AdSense crawler, in any index, and it will only crawl pages of your site which contain the AdSense code.2. Are your pages restricted by a login?
Our crawler will also get tripped up by any page that's only accessible to a logged-in user. If certain pages of your site are only available to users that have logged in, and you place ads on these pages, it's important to give the Mediapartners-Google crawler explicit access to view them too. In this case, the answer is site authentication, which you can find under your AdSense Setup tab. (Please note that you'll need to be migrated to Google Accounts to use this feature.) You can give our crawler access while continuing to prevent other users or bots from accessing the content on your site.While using the Site Diagnostics tool, you may notice sites that are blocked for other reasons -- please review our Help Center for more information about why your site may be showing up as blocked. By allowing our crawler access to pages hosting Google ads, you'll get the most targeted ads for your pages in return. I think we can all toast to that.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Add your business to Local Search in India

- Do you own a restaurant in Delhi and wish more people knew about your delicacies?- Are you an insurance agent seeking new clientele?- Would you like more tourists for your travel agency in Goa?- Are you a custom apparel merchandiser in Bangalore seeking to expand your customer base?Every day several lakhs of people search the Internet seeking firms like yours. It will help you to be listed in Google local search. It's really simple to add your business, and it's free. Call us at 1-800-419-4444 (in India only, for your Indian-based business), SMS "register" to 09900800000, or just add your listing.Spending a few minutes on this can make all the difference to your business - why not do it now?

Get outdoors with GO Georgia!

Our Atlanta office recently teamed up with the Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to support an initiative called Get Outdoors Georgia (GO Georgia). An effort to help Georgians get outdoors, get fit and enjoy their diverse natural resources, the initiative focuses on family-friendly, nature-based, healthy outdoor recreation opportunities throughout the state. As a founding sponsor of the program, Google will offer consultation on products including AdWords, Analytics, Maps, Earth, Picasa, Gadgets and a branded YouTube channelAccording to a 2007 report from the Trust for America's Health, Georgia is one of the "heaviest" states in the union, ranking 14th for adult obesity and 12th for overweight children (16+ percent of its youth overweight or obese). We're pleased that our products will play a part in an historic effort to improve the health and well-being of all Georgians. And today, we're expanding our relationship with GO Georgia by spending a day in Panola Mountain State Park. Atlanta Googlers will help to restore the park and remove growth not indigenous to the area, improving the experience for Georgians and other visitors when they get out and visit the park.For more info on this forward-looking new program, visit the GO Georgia site.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Analytics integrated into Google Sites

Wouldn’t it be great to know how many people visit your site, what content is most popular, and if searches are getting people to the right places? Google Analytics is a free online service with stats, graphs, and reports that answer these questions and a number of other things you might like to know about how people use your site. Analytics offers sophisticated analytical tools that are simple and secure to use, and appeals to a wide range of users.Up until recently, Google Analytics wasn’t integrated with Google Sites, but now it is easy to get started (no coding required) with three steps:1. If you don’t have Google Analytics already, sign up for a free account2. Login to Google Analytics and find your tracking ID3. Login to Google sites to enable Google Analytics and enter your tracking ID in your Google Sites settingsIf you have any questions, check out our help center article on configuring Google Sites to use Google AnalyticsYou only have to set this up once to apply to all the existing and future pages in your Google Sites website. It works if your site is public or private. If you would also like to track search results on your site (good for knowing what people are looking for and whether they are finding it), this feature can also be enabled.Once you are set up, all you need to do is login to Google Analytics to check reports and see how people are using your site. Here are some of the cool things you can do.Posted by Jeanie Komarek, Software Engineer

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Google parodies

Cthuugle Search Fhtagn! (http://www.cthuugle.com/) The complete HP Lovecraft Search Engine
elgooG (http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/) the elgooG Search Engine

Sites about Google

Google Fight (http://www.googlefight.com/) - instantly compare two search queries
The Unofficial Google Directory (http://www.google-directory.co.uk/) - collection of tools and resources
Google World - a directory to find any type of information about the world according to Google (http://google.indicateur.com/)
The Unofficial Google Fan Club (http://www.ugfc.org/)
Google Blogoscoped (http://blog.outer-court.com/)
Google Watch China Organization (http://www.google-watch-china.org)
Google Watch (Why we nominated Google for the 2003 U.S. corporate Big Brother of the Year) (http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html)
Google IPO Coverage (http://www.google-ipo.com/)
Google News (http://www.realseo.com/archives/cat_google_news.html)
Logoogle.com - Google Logos (http://www.Logoogle.com)

Google Calculators and Tools

Explanation of Google Calculator
Google 4x4 Surfer
Google Dance Watch Tool
Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports
AdSense Tracker. Detailed AdSense reports for boosting your AdSense revenue!

Google Regions and Google Countries, Google in other Languages

American Samoa (http://www.google.as/)
Anguilla (http://www.google.off.ai/)
Antigua and Barbuda (http://www.google.com.ag/)
Argentina (http://www.google.com.ar/)
Australia (http://www.google.com.au/)
Austria (http://www.google.at/)
Azerbaijan (http://www.google.az/)
Belgium (http://www.google.be/)
Brazil (http://www.google.com.br/)
British Virgin Islands (http://www.google.vg/)
Burundi (http://www.google.bi/)
Canada (http://www.google.ca/)
Chad (http://www.google.td/)
Chile (http://www.google.cl/)
Colombia (http://www.google.com.co/)
Costa Rica (http://www.google.co.cr/)
Côte d'Ivoire (http://www.google.ci/)
Cuba (http://www.google.com.cu/)
Dem. Rep. of the Congo (http://www.google.cd/)
Denmark (http://www.google.dk/)
Djibouti (http://www.google.dj/)
Dominican Republic (http://www.google.com.do/)
Ecuador (http://www.google.com.ec/)
El Salvador (http://www.google.com.sv/)
Federated States of Micronesia (http://www.google.fm/)
Fiji (http://www.google.com.fj/)
Finland (http://www.google.fi/)
France (http://www.google.fr/)
The Gambia (http://www.google.gm/)
Georgia (http://www.google.ge/)
Germany (http://www.google.de/)
Gibraltar (http://www.google.com.gi/)
Greece (http://www.google.com.gr/)
Greenland (http://www.google.gl/)
Guernsey (http://www.google.gg/)
Honduras (http://www.google.hn/)
Hong Kong (http://www.google.com.hk/)
Hungary (http://www.google.co.hu/)
India (http://www.google.co.in/)
Ireland (http://www.google.ie/)
Isle of Man (http://www.google.co.im/)
Israel (http://www.google.co.il/)
Italy (http://www.google.it/)
Jamaica (http://www.google.com.jm/)
Japan (http://www.google.co.jp/)
Jersey (http://www.google.co.je/)
Kazakhstan (http://www.google.kz/)
Korea (http://www.google.co.kr/)
Latvia (http://www.google.lv/)
Lesotho (http://www.google.co.ls/)
Liechtenstein (http://www.google.li/)
Lithuania (http://www.google.lt/)
Luxembourg (http://www.google.lu/)
Malawi (http://www.google.mw/)
Malaysia (http://www.google.com.my/)
Malta (http://www.google.com.mt/)
Mauritius (http://www.google.mu/)
México (http://www.google.com.mx/)
Montserrat (http://www.google.ms/)
Namibia (http://www.google.com.na/)
Nepal (http://www.google.com.np/)
Netherlands (http://www.google.nl/)
New Zealand (http://www.google.co.nz/)
Nicaragua (http://www.google.com.ni/)
Norfolk Island (http://www.google.com.nf/)
Pakistan (http://www.google.com.pk/)
Panamá (http://www.google.com.pa/)
Paraguay (http://www.google.com.py/)
Perú (http://www.google.com.pe/)
Philippines (http://www.google.com.ph/)
Pitcairn Islands (http://www.google.pn/)
Poland (http://www.google.pl/)
Portugal (http://www.google.pt/)
Puerto Rico (http://www.google.com.pr/)
Rep. of the Congo (http://www.google.cg/)
Romania (http://www.google.ro/)
Russia (http://www.google.ru/)
Rwanda (http://www.google.rw/)
Saint Helena (http://www.google.sh/)
San Marino (http://www.google.sm/)
Singapore (http://www.google.com.sg/)
Slovakia (http://www.google.sk/)
South Africa (http://www.google.co.za/)
Spain (http://www.google.es/)
Sweden (http://www.google.se/)
Switzerland (http://www.google.ch/)
Taiwan (http://www.google.com.tw/)
Thailand (http://www.google.co.th/)
Trinidad and Tobago (http://www.google.tt/)
Turkey (http://www.google.com.tr/)
Ukraine (http://www.google.com.ua/)
United Arab Emirates (http://www.google.ae/)
United Kingdom (http://www.google.co.uk/)
Uruguay (http://www.google.com.uy/)
Uzbekistan (http://www.google.uz/)
Vanuatu (http://www.google.vu/)
Venezuela (http://www.google.co.ve/)
Vietnam

Online Google Websites

Google Sites and Services
Google (http://www.google.com/)
Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) product search engine (active beta)
Google News (http://news.google.com/)
Google Local (http://local.google.com/)
Google Wireless (http://www.google.com/options/wireless.html)
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/)
Google Suggest (http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en)
Google Keyhole (http://www.keyhole.com/)
Google Print (http://print.google.com/print/faq.html) (beta) (Example (http://print.google.com/print/doc?isbn=0195128427))
Google Books (https://www.googlestore.com/)
AdWords (https://adwords.google.com)
AdSense (https://www.google.com/adsense/)
Gmail (http://www.gmail.com/) (private beta)
Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/) (a testing ground for Google services that are in beta)
Google Groups 2 (http://groups-beta.google.com/)
Official Google weblog (http://www.google.com/googleblog)
googlesyndication.com (http://www.googlesyndication.com/) - Official Google mirror
Early Google.com (http://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/www.google.com/) - Google as on November 11, 1998 from Internet Archive