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- [G] Reading tea leaves in the tourism industry: A Case Study in the Gulf Oil Spill
- [G] A new way to contextually target your ads on the Google Display Network
- [G] Language targeting refresher and update
- [G] An AdWords take on Search Stories
- [G] Music Tuesday: Farewell, LCD Soundsystem and more
- [G] Faces of Gmail: Manu Cornet
- [G] Mapping Hotpot Ratings in Austin, Texas, to Discover the Popular Spots
- [G] Amsterdam adds another dimension in Google Earth
| [G] Reading tea leaves in the tourism industry: A Case Study in the Gulf Oil Spill Posted: 30 Mar 2011 01:10 AM PDT Official Google Research Blog: Reading tea leaves in the tourism industry: A Case Study in the Gulf Oil SpillPosted by Hyunyoung Choi and Paul Liu, Senior EconomistsA few years ago, our in-house economists, Hal Varian and Hyunyoung Choi, demonstrated how to "predict the present" with monthly visitor arrivals to Hong Kong. We took this idea further to see if search queries could predict the future. If users start to research their travel plans some weeks or months in advance, then intuitively shouldn't we be able to extend "predicting the present" into "predicting the future?" We decided to test it out by focusing on a region whose tourism was recently severely impacted: Florida's gulf coast. With the travel industry still in the midst of recovering from a deep recession, the Gulf Oil spill had the potential to do significant economic damage. Our case study on the Gulf Oil spill helped find useful insight into people's future travel plans to Florida; in fact, we found that travel search queries actually were good predictors for trips to Florida, and destinations within Florida, about 4 weeks later. The results we saw surprised us. Google Insights for Search suggested that at least with respect to hotel bookings (using data from Smith Travel Research, Inc.), the aggregate effect of the oil spill was modest on Florida travel, since travelers tended to shift their destinations from the affected regions on the west coast to the east coast or central regions of Florida. In particular, hotel bookings for affected areas along the Gulf coast were 4.25% less than predicted, and unaffected areas along the Atlantic coast were 4.89% greater than predicted. You can read the full case study here or try your own hand at predicting the future!  URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/03/reading-tea-leaves-in-tourism-industry.html       |
| [G] A new way to contextually target your ads on the Google Display Network Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:15 PM PDT Inside AdWords: A new way to contextually target your ads on the Google Display NetworkMany of you use contextual targeting on the Google Display Network to reach potential customers as they read web content directly related to your products or services. To date, you've been able to do this by specifying keywords that work together to show your ads on relevant webpages. This week, you'll also be able to specify topics to contextually target your ads to pages in the Google Display Network. With this additional contextual targeting option, you'll be able to select from over 1,750 topics and sub-topics to target your ads, helping you quickly reach a broad audience across the web that's actively engaged with content related to your business.  Using topics versus keywords to target your ads Using topics to contextually target your ads offers broad targeting and reach and is a good way to connect with a large audience quickly and easily to generate awareness or drive sales. When using topic targeting, our system looks at all the terms on a page to determine the topic of the page and is less reliant on particular keywords. On the other hand, using keywords to contextually target allows you to target your ads to a more specific set of pages in the Display Network, since you use individual keywords to develop a theme in your ad groups. However, both targeting options can be used together to effectively reach an audience across the Google Display Network. Let's walk through a use-case. Let's say you're selling digital cameras. Here's how you might use keyword- and topic-based contextual targeting together to achieve different campaign objectives like raising awareness and driving sales.
This is just one example of how you can use topic- and keyword-based contextual targeting together to build awareness, increase consideration, and drive sales. You can also exclude topics and sub-topics to refine your targeting. As with other targeting options on our Display Network, contextual targeting by topic supports all ad formats, such as text, display, video, and rich media, as well as all our bidding options, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). In addition, you still have access to URL-level reporting and other tools such as the Conversion Optimizer. To find out if this targeting option is right for you, you can read our best practices. Then learn more by watching this video and reading our Help Center articles.  URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-way-to-contextually-target-your-ads.html   |
| [G] Language targeting refresher and update Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:15 PM PDT Inside AdWords: Language targeting refresher and updateYou may have noticed when creating a new AdWords campaign that we sometimes suggest targeting multiple languages based on the location that you've targeted. To help you understand why we make those recommendations, here's a refresher in how language targeting works today. Refresher Campaigns that target a language are targeting the interface language that a user has set as the language in which they'd like the Google interface to be displayed. A Spanish-speaker living in the United States, for instance, may want to perform searches on www.google.com but change the interface language setting to Spanish. Alternatively, an English-speaker living in Japan may want to perform searches on www.google.co.jp but see an English interface. Currently, your ad appears only when the user's interface language matches the targeted language. This means that your ad won't necessarily appear when a user searches for a keyword in the language that you're targeting, if the user's interface is in another language. For example, if you sell motorcycles in the United States using the keyword motorcycles, and you target only the English language, your ads won't appear to bilingual users who search for motorcycles but do so within a Spanish interface. Especially when targeting a geographic area with bilingual residents, targeting multiple interface languages can help your ad appear in front of as many potential customers as possible. New improvement Determining the language of the search from the query itself can sometimes be difficult, since some words are common to more than one language. However, there are five languages in AdWords that can be uniquely identified by their characters: Greek, Hebrew, portions of Japanese, Korean, and Thai. Therefore, starting in late April, if you're targeting any of these five languages, your ad will be eligible to show for all queries in that language that match your keywords, regardless of the user's interface language (your location targeting settings will still apply). For example, if you have the keyword λουλούδια (Greek for flowers) in a campaign that targets the Greek language, your ad will be eligible to appear whenever a user searches for λουλούδια, even if the user's interface is in English. While targeting multiple interface languages will continue to be the best way for many of you to maximize the amount of traffic that your campaigns receive, we'll continue to look for new opportunities to improve our language targeting offering. To learn more about targeting interface languages, please read this FAQ.  URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/language-targeting-refresher-and-update.html   |
| [G] An AdWords take on Search Stories Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:15 PM PDT Inside AdWords: An AdWords take on Search StoriesDuring last year's Super Bowl, we did something unprecedented for Google--we aired our first Super Bowl commercial. Our television commercial, Parisian Love, is what we now call a "search story," since it tells a user's story through the eyes of the Google.com search box.Since the first airing of Parisian Love, many new search stories have been created. While each story is unique, they all highlight the ways in which users are searching, whether it's on Google.com, Google Maps, or mobile--and whether users are clicking on a search result or an ad. We believe that ads are information and can be a vital part of the search process. As AdWords advertisers, we know you feel that way too, and we wanted to share with you three of our favorite search stories. These stories are all very different, but they all feature ads! As you watch the videos, can you spot them all?  A sweet ending to missed connections in the big city.  A hesitant traveler discovers he's born to cruise. Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew  URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/adwords-take-on-search-stories.html   |
| [G] Music Tuesday: Farewell, LCD Soundsystem and more Posted: 29 Mar 2011 04:06 PM PDT YouTube Blog: Music Tuesday: Farewell, LCD Soundsystem and moreWelcome back to Music Tuesday, the weekly blog feature that lets you know what music we're featuring on YouTube -- and why! Dig in and discover some new -- and old -- music with us this week.Album Mania! The cat's out of the bag by now: Radiohead made their entire new album available on YouTube yesterday. (Let the wild rumpus start!) But this week we aren't just saluting those deities of indie rock's Mt. Olympus; we're also swooning for up-and-coming Swedish alterna-folk act Fredrik. The group crafted a dreamy, album-length video premiere for the soon-to-be-released "Flora." The video follows a toy wolf named Ylva as she wanders through the small Swedish town of Malmo, and the visuals are almost as hypnotic as the delicately rendered, space-engendering music that accompanies it. Farewell, LCD Soundsystem Led by mastermind James Murphy (who only put together a group for live performances), LCD Soundsystem married rock's edge with electronica's love for the dance. It was an unlikely experiment which Murphy himself reportedly didn't take seriously at first, and which saw Murphy vocally aping his inspiration, Mark E. Smith of The Fall. But three Grammy nominations (and one win) later -- and after seeing last year's release "This Is Happening" hailed on many critics' end-of-year lists -- Murphy is hanging up the microphone on this particular project. We salute the band the only way we know how: with a playlist. Aloe Blacc "Loving You Is Killing Me" Every so often, a video comes along that simply brings joy to your heart. The song is great, and the video just begs to be watched over and over. American soul singer and rapper Aloe Blacc uploaded one of those just a few weeks ago, and we haven't stopped watching since. Blacc is a compelling figure all on his own, but check out the amazing kid he dances with! Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched "Married In Berdichev @ Bocumast Records SXSW 2010."     URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/8DAy8iWsftw/music-tuesday-farewell-lcd-soundsystem.html   |
| [G] Faces of Gmail: Manu Cornet Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:58 AM PDT Official Gmail Blog: Faces of Gmail: Manu CornetPosted by Kathleen Chen, Consumer OperationsI'm a big theater buff, and I always wonder about all the unseen people hard at work backstage, grabbing props, making sure the microphones work, and moving set pieces. Whether you're into theater or not, we figured you might be interested in hearing about what goes on "behind the scenes" of Gmail. With this in mind, we're excited to bring you a new series over the coming months called "Faces of Gmail," which will spotlight the engineers, designers, and other folks who help make Gmail what it is. So here's our first interviewee: Manu Cornet, the Parisian engineer behind many of your favorite Gmail themes.  What do you do on the Gmail team and what did you do before joining Google? I've worked on the Gmail frontend team for most of my four years at Google. I mostly work on things I can't really talk about just yet :-). But on the side I do many small user interface-related things such as labs (e.g. I worked on Nested Labels, Message Sneak Peek, and the Unread Message Icon), themes, and various interface improvements. Before Google, I got a master's in physics (plus some biology) and one in computer science. Then I started a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, but after a year I felt I needed to work on things that would be useful to more people in a shorter time range. How did themes get started and how did you help develop them? The idea of making Gmail theme-able had been around for nearly as long as Gmail existed. When I joined the Gmail team, they asked me if I wanted to be part of the first themes team. I said "yes" immediately! Working at Google is already a thrill, but talk about a dream job within a dream job! Making themes may sound easy, but it proved pretty challenging: Gmail has a huge amount of code, this was long before recent evolutions like CSS3, and we obviously had to support all major browsers. Especially for the crazy themes that involved custom borders, drop shadows, and customizations everywhere, like Ninjas, Desk, Shiny, etc. To this day I don't believe any email client (web-based or not) provides that level of styling and customization. Anyway, people obviously like themes, so I've continued to work on more like Marker, High Score, and the ability to choose your own colors. On my personal Gmail account I use Zoozimps — it's my baby, I drew all these big-nosed characters (they're kind of self-caricatures).  What are the three Gmail features you wouldn't be able to live without? I'm an "inbox zero" kind of guy, so I would say archive (to move things out of my inbox), filters (everything that isn't addressed to me directly or cc'd to me doesn't make it to my inbox, but I do take a glance at all unread emails once every day), and conversation view (gathering all messages in a conversation in one place). With so many emails a day I'd go crazy without those. What do you do when you're not working on Gmail? I like to write (I published a few books in France), draw (illustrations and comic strips), and play music (mostly jazz — I published an album back in 2004 but I don't have as much time as I'd like for that these days). What would your last meal be? I think it would be a meal with only desserts: crème brûlée, molten chocolate cake, red fruit tiramisu, floating island, ice cream, etc. Alright I'm hungry now... Photos by Cody Bratt, Google Talk team  URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/faces-of-gmail-manu-cornet.html   |
| [G] Mapping Hotpot Ratings in Austin, Texas, to Discover the Popular Spots Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:07 AM PDT Google LatLong: Mapping Hotpot Ratings in Austin, Texas, to Discover the Popular Spots(Cross-posted on the Hotpot Blog.) For a lot of attendees at SXSW this month, including myself, it was our first trip to Austin, Texas. We've all heard stories about the great restaurants and bars found throughout the city, but I didn't know where to start looking. Luckily for us, on February 11, Google launched a campaign in Austin to promote Hotpot, a new tool to help you find the places you'll love. Rate and review the places you know using Hotpot, and Google will personalize your search results based on your preferences and recommendations from friends. To help newcomers identify great places in Austin, we began importing anonymous rating signals into Google Fusion Tables in near real-time. When a new rating came in, it was directly inserted into Fusion Tables using the Fusion Tables API. In the examples below we used a FusionTablesLayer with the heat map option enabled. We used Styled Maps to tone down the background colors to make the heat map stand out more. After the first day of collecting anonymous Austin ratings, using the heat map function in Fusion Tables, we were able to see a few patterns start to emerge: Austin, Texas - 24hrs of Hotpot ratings heat map starting on March 1, 2011 Just 24 hours of rating data was able to provide a good idea of where to target my Hotpot search in Austin, but I wanted to see what the concentration would be like after a few days. With just 12 days of Hotpot data, the heat map generated in Fusion Tables really starts to show much more concentrated patterns: Austin, Texas — Hotpot ratings heat map March 1, 2011, to March 12 Having never been to Austin, I could tell by looking at the heat map that the hottest places in the city are along 6th Street, between Lamar Avenue and the I-35. Additionally, Guadalupe Street near the University of Texas at Austin campus also has a lot of activity. Based on the high activity, those areas would be a good place to start exploring the city. If you'd like to watch Hotpot trends as they shape over the coming days, you can view more Hotpot ratings in near real-time on google.com/austin. Posted by Carlos Cuesta, Geo APIs Product Marketing Manager  URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/03/mapping-hotpot-ratings-in-austin-texas.html   |
| [G] Amsterdam adds another dimension in Google Earth Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:07 AM PDT Google LatLong: Amsterdam adds another dimension in Google EarthFor those of you who have not had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful city of Amsterdam for yourself, I'm happy to say that Google Earth now offers the next best thing: Amsterdam in 3D.Recently, several thousand buildings have been added to the capital city of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. Using Google Maps with Earth view or Google Earth's "3D Buildings" layer, you can now travel the city's charming streets and canals to experience its rich architectural history. Download this KML tour from the Google Earth Gallery to take a virtual tour of the 3D landmarks for yourself. Navigate in Google Earth to visit one of Amsterdam's famous museums like the Rijksmuseum or the van Gogh Museum. And with the Google Art Project, take a peek inside the museum to see high-definition renditions of many famous paintings.  Since you're at the Museum Square already, take a look at the Concertgebouw (Concert Hall). Turn around and go along one of the three most famous canals in Amsterdam: the Herengracht, the Keizersgracht and the Prinsengracht. Don't forget to stand still at number 263, where Anne Frank wrote her unforgettable diary during the Second World War. Continue through the lovely small canals to the city's major square: the Dam, where you'll find the impressive 350-year old Royal Palace and the National Monument. Not far from the Dam, you can admire the Beurs van Berlage, the old Amsterdam Stock Exchange.  You'll find modern Amsterdam in 3D as well: next to the Central Station is the NEMO Science Center, which looks like a Flying Dutchman's ship rising from the water. Then fly south to the futuristic Amsterdam Arena football stadium.  When you're finished touring Amsterdam in Google Earth, head south to The Hague, where citizens are actively modeling their city with free 3D tools from Google.  If you'd like to get started modeling your town, you can get started quickly with Google Building Maker (where available). Veel plezier! Posted by Jules van de Ven, Consumer Operations Dutch Market  URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/03/amsterdam-adds-another-dimension-in.html   |
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