Sunday, December 12, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] More information about how our partners work with advertisers

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 01:51 AM PST

Inside AdWords: More information about how our partners work with advertisers

In July, we shared some upcoming changes to the way our third party partners should provide reports and information about AdWords to their clients. Starting in February 2011, all advertisers should be able to find out how much of their advertising budget (cost) was spent on AdWords, how many times their ads appeared (impressions) and how many times users clicked on their ads (clicks). While most of our third party partners already provide this basic reporting, for those that are still preparing to meet these new requirements, we've included some simple guidelines and answers to frequently asked questions in our Help Center.

We've heard from our third party partners and advertisers that it's important for advertisers to know what to expect when working with a third party partner and how to notify us at Google about violations of our policies. So we've created a document for all advertisers that includes this information.

We believe it's especially important for advertisers with small to medium advertising budgets -- who may not have the resources and expertise of large advertisers -- to know what they can expect when working with our third party partners. If you're a third party partner and 80% or more of your customers spend less than $1,000 USD (or local currency equivalent) per month on AdWords, you'll be required to share this document with your customers. To learn how you can meet this requirement, visit our Help Center.

We think that these new requirements ensure that every advertiser that works with a third party partner understands the value that they receive from their partner and AdWords.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-information-about-how-our-partners.html

[G] International tourists find the Polish seaside through Google AdWords

Posted: 12 Dec 2010 01:51 AM PST

Inside AdWords: International tourists find the Polish seaside through Google AdWords

Sebastian Hejnowski's parents built the Villa Zdroj Bed and Breakfast in 2002 to share Poland's beauty with weary travelers. Located in Miedzyzdroje, a city on the coast of Polish island Wolin, Villa Zdroj is one of the island's first modern bed and breakfasts.

Sebastian's parents handle reservations, property development and sometimes breakfast. Sebastian runs the advertising efforts for his parents' Villa, including Google AdWords. "When we first started our AdWords campaigns, we focused on Poland but we soon realized that there was increasing interest from our neighboring countries," says Sebastian. When he noticed an upward trend in drop-in visitors from other countries, he decided to launch campaigns across Poland's borders as well.


Villa Zdroj

According to Sebastian, the variety of outdoor activities combined with the relatively inexpensive cost of Polish tourism make Wolin a vacation paradise for Germans and Scandinavians. "Germans and Scandinavians were coming to Miedzyzdroje, but mostly staying in expensive five-star hotels," says Sebastian. "B&B's were never an option since they didn't know where to find them." So Sebastian made Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden his first international targets. The strategy proved correct: "We were one of the first Polish B&B's to create a website in English. When we targeted an AdWords campaign to these people, they started calling and booking reservations."

As time went on, Sebastian noticed that Poland had become more and more accessible to Europeans due to an increase in flights to the area. To capitalize on this trend, Sebastian expanded his AdWords campaigns even beyond bordering countries. "With time we extended the campaign to the Great Britain and the Netherlands." says Sebastian. "Europeans tend to explore new places and travel extensively."


Sebastian with his family
click for full size image

Today, foreigners account for more than half of Villa Zdroj's guests. And Sebastian estimates that up to 60% of those international guests book Villa Zdroj because they found his AdWords ads.

Thanks to his effective targeting, Sebastian now sells out all of the villa's rooms during peak summer travel season. He adjusts his ad campaigns to reflect availability: "In summer, we track vacancies and adjust our campaigns accordingly. We pause the campaigns if we're booked a few weeks out."

In 2012, Poland will host the Euro Cup and Sebastian's dad is already getting ready for an influx of visitors. "My father is considering buying a big projector so everyone can watch the games together in the communal room," says Sebastian. "We're already excited to share the Polish seaside with more out of town visitors!"

Learn more about Villa Zdroj Bed and Breakfast and Sebastian's successes online in this short video (it's in Polish, but you can view captions).

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/international-tourists-find-polish.html

[G] X = G / (C*H*R*O*M - 3)

Posted: 11 Dec 2010 08:20 PM PST

Google Chrome Blog: X = G / (C*H*R*O*M - 3)

Yesterday, we posted a demo video with a secret challenge where the first clever person to crack the code would receive a Cr-48. Just 20 hours later, the puzzle was solved correctly by the team at Jamendo. Congratulations!

Here's how you can find the puzzle and the solution.
First, around 2:24 in the video, you see the following equations on the board:


The constants solve out as follows:
G = 900.91
C = 8335727
H = 269462689
R = 222647
O = 694079
M = 552
The final equation is written as:
X = G / (C*H*R*O*M - 3)
Plugging in the previous answers gets you to:
900.91 / 191605050401140404051920181525
At that point, the puzzle changes from math to code where the numbers represent letters. It hints to that by the final equation spelling CHROM3, but we expected people to get stuck here and have to play around for a bit. The first mental leap is that you have to visually identify 900.91 as goo.gl (just like spelling words on a calculator: 9=g,0=o,0=o,9=g,1=l). The division sign is a slash ( / ), so this pretty clearly points to the Google URL shortener. From there, you need to figure out the shortened URL.

The number 191605050401140404051920181525 may confuse people for a bit, but the large number of zeros and the repeated "04" and "05" sequences in it visually allude to pairs within the string. Once you see that, it can be broken up into:
19 16 05 05 04 01 14 04 04 05 19 20 18 15 25
If you've gotten this far, you've probably noticed that all of those numbers are between 1 and 26. From here, it's just a straight mapping to letters of the alphabet (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc). Decoding the full string gives you:
s p e e d a n d d e s t r o y
Putting everything together, the end result is:
That URL points to a page where you can fill out a form to request a shiny new Chrome notebook (the form is closed now, of course).

Posted by Chris Lyon, Hardware Engineer, Chrome OS Team
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/12/x-g-chrom-3.html

[G] Keep calm and carry on: Chrome notebook

Posted: 11 Dec 2010 08:20 PM PST

Google Chrome Blog: Keep calm and carry on: Chrome notebook

At our Chrome event on Tuesday, we showed how Chrome notebooks can make computing simpler.

Thanks to the cloud, your Chrome notebook might be how you do everything, but losing it means you lose nothing. No matter what crazy things happen to your laptop, your work stays safe online. Check out our demonstration video below.



Posted by Glen Murphy, UX Designer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/12/keep-calm-and-carry-on-chrome-notebook.html

[G] Now available with Google Apps: Google Custom Search

Posted: 11 Dec 2010 07:02 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Now available with Google Apps: Google Custom Search



Editor's note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what's new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Custom Search
These days, content is being created faster than ever. In fact, the data equivalent of 250,000 years of DVD-quality video is created every two days, which is more than the entire amount of digital information that was created from the birth of the world up to 2003. Users are faced with the challenge of wading through all of this data to find the information they are looking for, and businesses are faced with the challenge of making this easy to do for their customers and employees. Most businesses consolidate their information on a public-facing website, internal micro-sites, product blogs and customer portals to help visitors surface relevant content. But even with this type of organization and structure, information can still be difficult to locate. That's why we are pleased to introduce Google Apps customers to a product that will make finding easy for their employees and for their customers: Google Custom Search.

Google Custom Search brings the power, speed and relevance of Google.com to any website through a hosted search bar.


Custom Search allows visitors to your site to scour your web pages in fractions of a second with the same speed and familiarity that they are used to when performing a search on Google.com. The technology behind Google Custom Search powers the built-in search capabilities of Google Sites and Blogger, so if you organize your web content using these tools then you're already using it. For other websites you create, set-up takes only a few minutes and adding the search box is as easy as pasting a few lines of pre-generated code to the HTML of the page where you want the search box to appear. Just like Google Apps, with Google Custom Search there's no hardware or software to maintain or upgrade - it gets better as Google gets better.

Google Custom Search will automatically display advertisements and allows you to monetize them using AdSense for search. If you prefer that ads not be displayed you can upgrade to Google Site Search.

Learn more and get started
Google Custom Search can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn't using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more detailed information, you can take a look at our Help Center or follow the latest news and updates on the Google Custom Search blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Custom Search at your organization, or plan to now that it's available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Google Enterprise Search Team

Note: Google Custom Search may not be available in all areas.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/now-available-with-google-apps-google_10.html
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