Thursday, January 21, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Clicks vs. Visits Revisited

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 02:39 AM PST

Google Analytics Blog: Clicks vs. Visits Revisited

Online advertisers make frequent use of AdWords reporting in Google Analytics to measure the impact of paid visitors to their site and business. The insights and actions based on these reports help search advertisers to optimise their online campaigns and site experience for maximizing conversions. We see a lot of questions, however, on why there is sometimes a discrepancy in the reported number of visits and clicks.

It is not unusual to see a discrepancy in the numbers reported for AdWords clicks and Google Analytics visits from your AdWords campaigns. There are a few reasons as to why this happens even if your Google Analytics implementation is correct. However, there are steps you can take to ensure that the discrepancy is kept to a minimum. Over at the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog, we take a look at some common implementation errors plus any steps we can take to identify campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that are causing us trouble. We also cover best practices to put in place to ensure that we are measuring and reporting to the best of our abilities.

The post provides a 4-step guide to identify which campaigns or keywords are not tagged correctly and how to rectify the situation. The steps are summarised below:

Step 1: Check that you have the basics covered. Check that you have linked the correct AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, applied cost data to the right profiles, and that auto-tagging has been enabled in the AdWords account.

Steps 2 and 3: Identifying the culprits. Look through the AdWords reports to identify campaign and keyword landing pages that are contributing to the discrepancy.

Step 4: Fix the problem. For each of the problematic landing pages check that:
  • The correct Google Analytics Tracking Code is implemented
  • The Google Analytics Tracking Code is in the right location in your HTML source code
  • The auto-tagging parameter is present in the URL of the landing page that the visitor ends up on
  • You are not using a combination of auto-tagging and manual campaign tracking parameters
  • Paid visits are not being filtered out in your profile
Head over to the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog for a full guide on troubleshooting Google Analytics visits and AdWords clicks discrepancies.

Posted by Prissilia Kho, Google Analytics Specialist and Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer, Google Southeast Asia
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/01/clicks-vs-visits-revisited.html

[G] MomDotCom Webinar

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 08:26 PM PST

Official Google CPG Blog: MomDotCom Webinar






Mothers today seek reliable information to make the best decisions and purchases they can for their families. Increasingly, they're seeking this information through digital channels. This behavior provides an opportunity for marketers to reach moms in contextually relevant environments. Are you adapting your online strategies to target moms?

Google, in partnership with BabyCenter®, the leading global online parenting resource, explored how you, as marketers across industries, can empower mothers through online channels. The insights will help you best utilize the Internet and search in your marketing programs targeting moms.

The webinar will spotlight two pieces of research:

• BabyCenter's 21st Century Mom™ Report: A Comprehensive Look into the Hearts and Minds of the Modern Mom

• Google's The Four Truths About Moms & Search: How and Why Moms Search

Date: Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm EST, 12:00pm – 1:00pm PST

Click here to register for this MomDotCom webinar.
URL: http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/2010/01/momdotcom-webinar.html

[G] Love for LuaJIT

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 06:04 PM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Love for LuaJIT

The last few years have been an exciting time for dynamic language implementations. The latest generation of JavaScript engines – Mozilla TraceMonkey, WebKit SquirrelFish Extreme, and Google's own V8 – are all based on just-in-time (JIT) compilation, which has led to dramatic speedups for web applications. The Unladen Swallow project is building a JIT for Python based on LLVM. But you may not have heard of the dynamic language Lua or the one-man LuaJIT project, which released a beta of its long-awaited 2.0 two months ago, along with some very impressive benchmarks.

LuaJIT is developed by Mike Pall, an open source developer located in Germany. Since its first release in 2005, LuaJIT has been at the forefront of dynamic language performance. In 2008 Mike announced that he was working on a complete rewrite based on trace compiler technology. It breaks with a long tradition of method-at-a-time JIT compilers and seems especially well suited for compiling dynamic languages. As LuaJIT shows, this approach yields performance that can rival even offline, static language compilers.

We use Lua internally at Google, and are very happy to be sponsoring the port of LuaJIT 2.0 to x86-64 (the initial release was for 32-bit x86 only). The full list of sponsors can be found on the LuaJIT sponsors page. The x86-64 port will be released under the MIT/X license, just as previous LuaJIT releases have been. Many thanks to Mike Pall for his excellent work on LuaJIT.

by Joshua Haberman, Software Engineering Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/01/love-for-luajit.html

[G] Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 06:04 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos

A while ago, YouTube launched a simple demo of an HTML5-based video player. Recently, we published a blog post on our pre-spring cleaning effort and your number one request was that YouTube do more with HTML5. Today, we're introducing an experimental version of an HTML5-supported player.

HTML5 is a new web standard that is gaining popularity rapidly and adds many new features to your web experience. Most notably for YouTube users, HTML5 includes support for video and audio playback. This means that users with an HTML5 compatible browser, and support for the proper audio and video codecs can watch a video without needing to download a browser plugin.

Our support for HTML5 is an early experiment, and there are some limitations. HTML5 on YouTube doesn't support videos with ads, captions, or annotations and it requires a browser that supports both the video tag and h.264 encoded video (currently that means Chrome, Safari, and ChromeFrame on Internet Explorer). We will be expanding the capabilities of the player in the future, so get ready for new and improved versions in the months to come.

To try it out, go to the HTML5 page via TestTube or visit this page and join the experiment. This will enable HTML5 video for your browser, provided that it's one of the browsers mentioned above and fits in with the parameters we already referenced. (If you've opted in to other experiments, you may not get the HTML5 player.) You can also enable Feather watch (visit http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta) along with HTML5 video for an even simpler, faster YouTube experience.

We are very excited about HTML5 as an open standard and want to be part of moving HTML5 forward on the web.

Kevin Carle, Engineer, recently watched "Paranormal Cativity," and Chris Zacharias, Engineer, recently watched "Amsterdam Acoustics - Erlend Øye."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/LfYLE3I5nhY/introducing-youtube-html5-supported.html

[G] Serving better ads in Gmail

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 03:36 PM PST

Official Gmail Blog: Serving better ads in Gmail

Posted by Steve Crossan, Gmail Product Manager

Ever since we launched Gmail, we've tried to show relevant and unobtrusive ads. We're always trying to improve our algorithms to show better, more useful ads.

When you open a message in Gmail, you often see ads related to that email. Let's say you're looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago. Next to your email, you might see ads about flights to Chicago.

But sometimes, there aren't any good ads to match to a particular message. From now on, you'll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let's say you're looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren't any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead.

To show these ads, our systems don't need to store any extra information -- Gmail just picks a different recent email to match. The process is entirely automated: no humans are involved in selecting ads, and no email or personal information is shared with advertisers.

We've updated a help center article and a few faqs where we had specified that ads alongside an email were related only to the text of the current message. This doesn't change the Gmail privacy policy. We've also created this short video explaining the change:



We'll be rolling this out over the next few days. With this change, we hope you see better ads in Gmail -- more of what you're interested in and less of what you're not.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/serving-better-ads-in-gmail.html

[G] YouTube to Sundance: Independent Filmmakers Wanted

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 03:36 PM PST

YouTube Blog: YouTube to Sundance: Independent Filmmakers Wanted

Today's blog post comes from the chilly slopes of Park City, Utah, where we're getting ready to kick-off our sponsorship of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. So, why are we here?



Independent filmmakers have been critical contributors to our platform ever since we launched our site, almost five years ago. In that time, we've increasingly come to understand some of the challenges facing these filmmakers: technology has made it easier and cheaper than ever to produce films; more films have led to more competition for audiences; more competition for audiences has led to more films needing massive marketing budgets to cut through the clutter. And these high costs have made it difficult for independent films to compete, leaving too many films going unseen. 



While YouTube has offered an easy and economical way for filmmakers -- as well as content creators of all kinds -- to instantaneously connect with fans around the world, many of them have told us that the ad-supported business model doesn't always meet their distribution and monetization needs. And so, we are excited today to announce our partnership with the Sundance Film Festival to make five films from the 2010 and 2009 festivals available for rent for U.S. users on YouTube starting this Friday and running through Sunday, January 31. In addition to these five films, a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, will be made available in the weeks ahead.  We're also excited to put out the call for more independent filmmakers to join the rental program as part of our "Filmmakers Wanted" campaign at the festival. 



These are early days and in the coming weeks we'll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option. Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing. And making content available for rent will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work -- they can decide the price of their videos and the rental duration; they can decide when and where their content is available; and they can keep 100% of their rights.



But enough talking! You want to watch movies! To prepare for Friday's debut, take a minute to set up your Google Checkout account and watch the trailers below to decide what to rent.  On Friday, we'll post another blog to walk you through how to find and start watching some of these independent films.











 



Grab the popcorn and Swedish Fish,



The YouTube Team





URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/_wwcz1Hb32Q/youtube-to-sundance-independent.html

[G] Google Cluster Data

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 12:48 PM PST

Official Google Research Blog: Google Cluster Data

Posted by Joseph L. Hellerstein, Manager of Google Performance Analytics

Google faces a large number of technical challenges in the evolution of its applications and infrastructure. In particular, as we increase the size of our compute clusters and scale the work that they process, many issues arise in how to schedule the diversity of work that runs on Google systems.

We have distilled these challenges into the following research topics that we feel are interesting to the academic community and important to Google:
  • Workload characterizations: How can we characterize Google workloads in a way that readily generates synthetic work that is representative of production workloads so that we can run stand alone benchmarks?
  • Predictive models of workload characteristics: What is normal and what is abnormal workload? Are there "signals" that can indicate problems in a time-frame that is possible for automated and/or manual responses?
  • New algorithms for machine assignment: How can we assign tasks to machines so that we make best use of machine resources, avoid excess resource contention on machines, and manage power efficiently?
  • Scalable management of cell work: How should we design the future cell management system to efficiently visualize work in cells, to aid in problem determination, and to provide automation of management tasks?
To aid researchers in addressing these questions in a realistic manner, we will provide data from Google production systems. The initial focus of these data will be workload characterization. Details of the data can be found here. The data are structured as follows:
  • Time (int) - time in seconds since the start of data collection
  • JobID (int) - Unique identifier of the job to which this task belongs
  • TaskID (int) - Unique identifier of the executing task
  • Job Type (0, 1, 2, 3) - class of job (a categorization of work)
  • Normalized Task Cores (float) - normalized value of the average number of cores used by the task
  • Normalized Task Memory (float) - normalized value of the average memory consumed by the task
We solicit your feedback in terms of: (a) the quality and content of the data we are providing; (b) technical approaches and/or results related to the topics above; and (c) other research topics that you feel Google should be addressing in the area of Cloud Computing (along with details of the data required to address these topics).
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-cluster-data.html

[G] New imagery of Port-au-Prince

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 12:48 PM PST

Official Google Blog: New imagery of Port-au-Prince

(Cross-posted with an update from the Google Lat Long Blog)

In the wake of the devastating Haiti earthquake, aid organizations have been hard at work on the ground and citizens around the world have pitched in to help in whatever way they can. On the Geo team, we've been looking for ways we can help relief efforts using our mapping tools. Last week, thanks to our partner GeoEye, we published updated satellite imagery of Haiti in Google Earth and Google Maps which illustrated the devastation and current conditions on the ground. This data was made available for public consumption and also to assist relief efforts including those by many UN organizations and the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies.

With the hope of furthering awareness and relief efforts, we arranged for a collection of the Port-au-Prince area at even higher resolution (approximately 15cm) to complement the existing imagery. Here are some examples of the kind of detail this new dataset can convey:



click to see full-size

These images were gathered on Sunday (January 17). You can currently view the imagery in Google Maps in Satellite mode. It will also be available via the Google Maps API and in Google Map Maker. As of this morning, this high-resolution imagery is now available as the base imagery in Google Earth (all previous imagery of Haiti will be included in the Historical Imagery feature) and has been published in the Haiti Earthquake KML layer. We're also making this imagery directly available to relief organizations.

We've also updated the Haiti Earthquake KML layer (download for Google Earth) with additional information, including more imagery from GeoEye, Digital Globe, and NOAA, as well as earthquake epicenters and other maps. Aid groups can also download Map Maker data as well.

Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior GIS Strategist
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-imagery-of-port-au-prince.html

[G] New targeting options for mobile ads

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 11:42 AM PST

Inside AdWords: New targeting options for mobile ads

If you've chosen to show ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers, you can now target specific mobile devices or carriers.

This feature makes it easier for you to reach the right users if you have a carrier- or device-specific message. This includes landing pages that have been optimized for a specific device, billing relationships with certain carriers, or mobile apps developed for a specific platform. For example, if you sell iPhone cases, you can use device targeting to ensure that users with Android phones won't see your ads.



Starting today, we're also making sure that ads linking to mobile app downloads will automatically appear only on devices that offer those apps. Plus, the ad will display a 'Download' link instead of a URL. Simply include 'itunes.apple.com/' or 'market.android.com/' followed by the app name in the ad's visible URL, and it will automatically display as 'Download iPhone App' or 'Download Android App.'




We hope these new features will deliver a better, more relevant user experience.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-targeting-options-for-mobile-ads.html

[G] Vote on 2010's Most Critical Issue

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 09:01 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Vote on 2010's Most Critical Issue

Exactly one year ago today, Barack Obama took office as President of the United States -- and what a year it's been. From the economic crisis and the battle over health care, to the global challenge of climate change and the threat of terrorism at home and abroad, 2009 was a challenging one for the country, and most Americans would agree the nation is facing some of our biggest and most complex challenges in decades.

Today on our homepage we're featuring analysis of the President's first year from Fox News, PBS News Hour and Agence France-Presse. We're also asking you to weigh in on which issue should be the top priority for the country in 2010, and what you think should be done about it.



With our new Google Moderator tool, you can submit your ideas in both video and text on CitizenTube and vote on your favorites submitted by others. We'll promote the most popular submissions on YouTube in the lead-up to the President's annual State of the Union address, which we'll be streaming live on YouTube next Wednesday night, January 27, 2010, at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT.

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "President Obama's Inaugural Address"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/ZMEIMJnsqag/vote-on-2010s-most-critical-issue.html
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