Googland |
- [G] 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your AdWords Performance
- [G] Join other AdWords users as they share their tips on the Help Forum
- [G] Make your website work! Learn how to improve online conversions in a live webinar
- [G] Automatic Personalization and Recommended Sections in Google News
- [G] Beyond Telegrams: Congratulations, Pulitzer Prize winners
- [G] Long label names in Gmail
- [G] Life in a Day - coming to theaters this summer
- [G] Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain
- [G] In Search of Romance
- [G] Former student pays it forward as a mentor for Google Code-in
- [G] Google Earth Builder supports NGA geospatial efforts
- [G] Bringing 100% web to the world of Google Earth and Google Maps
- [G] Security First: Google at the CAIT Information Security Roundtable.
| [G] 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your AdWords Performance Posted: 22 Apr 2011 03:11 AM PDT Inside AdWords: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your AdWords PerformanceWith the recent international launches of the Ad Innovations site, we want to take a minute to call out a few simple things you can do to quickly improve the performance of your AdWords ads. Give the tips below a try and see how our Ad Innovations can improve your performance.
Ad Sitelinks allow you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your site. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to four additional destination URLs for users to choose from. On average, advertisers see a 30% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) for the same ads with Ad Sitelinks.  We recently made a change to top ads that allows you to display more information where it's most likely to be noticed--in the headline. By taking information from the first description line and moving it to the headline, we found that we're able to create a better user experience and improve advertiser performance. In fact, ads with longer headlines receive a 6% average increase in CTR compared to the same ads with a standard headline and description. To increase the chances that your ad will appear with the longer headline, make sure that description line 1 is a complete phrase or sentence and ends in punctuation (e.g., a period or question mark). Before:  After:  Location extensions allow you to extend your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. In addition to the description lines and URL that appear in your ad text, your ad can also display your business name, address, and phone number. This helps promote your business brand, products, and services and associates your business with a specific location of interest to the user. By linking a Google Places account to your AdWords ads, you can quickly and easily make sure all your location information is available when it's most relevant.  Seller rating extensions make it easier for potential customers to identify highly-rated merchants when they're searching on Google.com by attaching your merchant star rating from Google Product Search to your AdWords ads. These star ratings, aggregated from review sites all around the web, allow people to find merchants that are highly recommended by online shoppers like them. On average, ads with Seller Ratings get a 17% higher CTR than the same ads without ratings. If your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have four or more stars, and you have at least thirty reviews, you'll automatically get seller ratings with your ads. If you have high customer satisfaction, then make sure we know about it:  Product extensions are a way for you to enrich your existing AdWords ads with more relevant and specific information about your retail merchandise. Product extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads. With product extensions, you're charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) whether a user clicks on your main text ad or any of the offers within the product extensions plusbox.  Of course, you can always learn about the many additional AdWords innovations by visiting the Ad Innovations website and subscribing for the latest updates. Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew  URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-adwords.html       |
| [G] Join other AdWords users as they share their tips on the Help Forum Posted: 22 Apr 2011 03:11 AM PDT Inside AdWords: Join other AdWords users as they share their tips on the Help ForumAre you a part of the Google AdWords Help Forum community yet? If not, you're missing out! It's a great place to get help and advice from AdWords experts, Top Contributors, and Google employees. Recently, we held a "Share Your Best Practices Week" from March 28, 2011, to April 1, 2011, to encourage users to exchange AdWords tips and learnings that have worked well for them. Over five days, we chose five different topics on which we gathered expert knowledge from our users:
We were excited to see the level of enthusiasm from around the world. A good number of AdWords experts provided great contributions, and some spent a considerable amount of time sharing their tips via detailed posts! We've selected the best of the best practices, and we're proud to share the results with all of you. So hearty congratulations to Calin, Dave, Katie, Kim, and Shweta for their excellent contributions and knowledge of AdWords! Here are some excerpts from what they shared:
Does this make you compelled to learn more about ad text optimization, keyword lists, keyword statuses, the Display Network, and managed placements? If the answer is yes, your time would be well spent on the AdWords Help Forum! By the way, we're planning another event for May 2011, so if you want a chance to showcase your AdWords expertise, stay tuned!  URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/join-other-adwords-users-as-they-share.html   |
| [G] Make your website work! Learn how to improve online conversions in a live webinar Posted: 22 Apr 2011 03:11 AM PDT Inside AdWords: Make your website work! Learn how to improve online conversions in a live webinarOn Wednesday, April 20th, we'll be holding a live and interactive webinar to discuss the top tips for improving your website's ability to convert visitors into sales. We'll highlight common areas for you to examine in order to improve website performance. We'll also identify some free tools that can help you diagnose what causes visitors to leave your site and test changes that will drive better results. This webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, April 20th from 3 pm to 4 pm (BST/GMT+1), so if you want to make your website work for you, make sure to sign up now!  URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/make-your-website-work-learn-how-to.html   |
| [G] Automatic Personalization and Recommended Sections in Google News Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:16 PM PDT Google News Blog: Automatic Personalization and Recommended Sections in Google NewsPosted by Lucian Cionca, Software EngineerLast summer we redesigned Google News with new personalization features that let you tell us which subjects and sources you'd like to see more or less often. Starting today -- if you're logged in -- you may also find stories based on articles you've clicked on before. For signed-in users in the Personalized U.S. Edition, "News for You" will now include stories based on your news-related web history. For example, if you click on a lot of articles about baseball, we'll make sure that you get a chance to see breaking baseball stories. We found in testing that more users clicked on more stories when we added this automatic personalization, sending more traffic to publishers.  Also for signed-in users, we've introduced "Recommended Sections" in the side column that suggests topics you can add to your news page as custom sections, based on stories you've clicked on before.  If you don't want to see personalized news based on your Web History, you have a few options:
 URL: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/automatic-personalization-and.html   |
| [G] Beyond Telegrams: Congratulations, Pulitzer Prize winners Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:16 PM PDT Google News Blog: Beyond Telegrams: Congratulations, Pulitzer Prize winnersPosted by Dan Hirsch, Google News Support TeamYesterday, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced an impressive list of 13 prize winners and 29 finalists for excellent work in journalism and storytelling. These winners represent a wide array of incredible stories, such as The Los Angeles Times's multi-part series about government corruption in the small town of Bell, California, or The New Jersey Star Ledger's gripping tale of a mysterious boat wreck. We on the Google News team have nothing but respect and admiration for their fine work. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists. The winners also reflect the rapidly changing and evolving world of journalism itself. Almost all the awards went to stories accompanied by a rich presentation of content beyond just the printed words. ProPublica's series "The Wall Street Money Machine" includes detailed timelines and succinct data visualization to better illustrate the troublesome financial practices that led to the economic meltdown. To tell the story of one family's struggle to find a cure for their son's rare medical condition, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel produced numerous videos and an interactive graphics detailing the mysterious disease's physiology. This year, prize rules explicitly encouraged the use of visual information, multimedia or databases. In fact, for the first time in the Prize's history, jurors were mandated to bring laptops to the judging. This isn't the first rule update in the prizes' 95 years of history. For instance, nobody has won the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting since 1947. One recipient of the short-lived award was James Reston of The New York Times for his reporting from the 1945 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, a meeting between Allied Forces that laid the initial groundwork for the UN. Much of his reporting came from the acquisition of leaked cables from unsuspecting diplomats. Though reporting technology certainly has changed, this incident doesn't sound so antiquated these days. You can read one part of Reston's series here in Google News Archives as it appeared in The Montreal Gazette. In expanding the short-lived category of Telegraphic Reporting to National Reporting and International Reporting, the Pulitzer Board must have suspected that technology for communicating over long distances would inevitably evolve. This year's prizes better reflect our current media environment, but it makes me wonder what the best in journalism will look like fifty years from now.  [Reporting from the age of the telegram c. 1940, from Life Photo Archive] To search for the recent work of this year's Pulitizer Prize winner, you can use the Advanced News Search feature. Enter the name of the journalist whose work you're looking for in the "Author" field of our Advanced News Search page, or use the [author:] search operator in the News search bar. For an example of an [author:] search and to see the recent work of this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for distinguished criticism, click here.  URL: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/beyond-telegrams-congratulations.html   |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2011 04:37 PM PDT Official Gmail Blog: Long label names in GmailMaciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager, Gmail Enterprise TeamToday we're making a small change that makes it easier to handle long label names: you can now add and edit label names up to 225 characters. The old limit was 40 characters, which wasn't enough for some people who had switched from Outlook or accessed Gmail through IMAP.  Label names can get really long, especially when you use Nested Labels. When that happens, Gmail will shorten them if necessary to avoid cluttering your view.  You can always mouse over to see the full label name and use colors to better distinguish your labels from each other.  URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/long-label-names-in-gmail.html   |
| [G] Life in a Day - coming to theaters this summer Posted: 21 Apr 2011 02:08 PM PDT YouTube Blog: Life in a Day - coming to theaters this summerOn July 24, 2010, thousands of people around the world uploaded videos of their day to YouTube to take part in Life in a Day, a historic cinematic experiment to create a documentary film about a single day on earth. From over 80,000 submissions, executive producer Ridley Scott and Oscar winning director Kevin Macdonald have crafted a 90-minute feature film that paints a surprising, moving and entertaining portrait of the world today.The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and was simultaneously live streamed here on YouTube. However if you missed it, or want to see it again on the big screen, worry not. National Geographic will be bringing 'Life in a Day' to theaters around the US on July 24th, 2011 - the first anniversary of the day the movie was shot. To whet your appetite, the official trailer for 'Life in a Day' has just gone live. For those outside the US, stay tuned for information about international releases in the coming months, and remember, you can subscribe to the official 'Life in a Day' channel to be the first to hear news and updates from the team. Tim Partridge, Marketing Manager, just watched "The 'Life in a Day' trailer"     URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/-rGjvx11BsA/life-in-day-coming-to-theaters-this.html   |
| [G] Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain Posted: 21 Apr 2011 08:47 AM PDT Official Google Blog: Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plainRodgers and Hammerstein weren't kidding when they wrote what is now Oklahoma's official state song. The gusts on the plains are fierce, which makes the Sooner State a great place to harness clean, renewable wind energy. Our commitment to greening our energy supply is also strong, which is why we've just signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for wind energy—our second in less than a year—in Oklahoma.The purchase is similar in size and structure to the agreement we signed last July for wind energy in Iowa, but this time we will be applying the power to our Mayes County, Okla. data center, which will be fully operational later this year. We've agreed to purchase all of the energy from NextEra Energy Resources' Minco II wind facility in Oklahoma for the next 20 years, through Google Energy LLC, an entity that enables us to participate in the wholesale energy market. This 100.8 megawatt facility will be built as a direct result of our financial commitment and should be operational in late 2011. We've made the commitment to be a carbon neutral company, and this purchase is part of our effort to minimize our impact on the environment. We've managed to reduce our energy consumption by over 50 percent by building highly energy-efficient facilities, but we know that efficiency alone isn't enough to eliminate our carbon footprint. We've been exploring ways, such as this PPA, to reduce emissions further by increasing the amount of renewable energy we use to power our operations; we purchase high-quality carbon offsets for any remaining emissions. If you're interested in learning more about the whys and wherefores of our renewable energy purchases, we've just published a white paper (PDF) on the topic. Our hope is that by laying out our reasoning and methods we'll make it easier for others in the industry to explore similar arrangements. These purchases represent long-term, meaningful actions to reduce our carbon footprint and power our operations with clean electricity. Our infrastructure team will continue to seek similar opportunities globally as Google's businesses continue to grow. As a company we hope that purchases like these, plus the additional $350 million we've invested in renewable energy projects, support the market and drive down the cost of clean energy. This will enable even more companies to invest in sustainable energy solutions. Posted by Gary Demasi, Global Infrastructure team  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/oklahoma-where-wind-comes-sweepin-down.html   |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2011 08:42 AM PDT Inside Google Books: In Search of RomancePosted by Archi Sarkar, Books and Online News AssociateOn the occasion of National Poetry Month, we thought it would be a good time to walk down memory lane recollecting a few stellar contributions to English poetry over the ages. Great poetry endures the test of time and is ever-fresh in the mind, like Wordsworth's famed "Daffodils." Oftentimes one unknowingly quotes from it in everyday conversation, like Shelley's renowned line — "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" The dawn of the Romantic movement was among the glorious periods in the history of English poetry. It spanned generations of exceptional poets, whose profound literary influences (in both lyric and thought) reverberated even years later through the works of literary stalwarts like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, T.S. Eliot, George Bernard Shaw and William Butler Yeats. In the late 18th century, scholarship in ancient Greek and Roman literature was highly revered across Europe. During this Neo-classical period, poets were trained to be well-versed with the "Western canon." They had been schooled to create pieces that were richly steeped in tradition — a social attempt to regain a glorious era of poetry that had once been. Ironically, it was also during this time that six passionate men altered the historical fabric of English poetry forever. In an age where poets were expected to steer clear of subjective originality within their compositions, these Romantic poets indulged in self-expression that at times even bordered on the mystical or supernatural. Here's a celebration of their search for defining the meaning of life that in turn inspired their masterpieces.  William Blake (Source: LIFE Magazine) William BlakeAn unsung poet-painter during his own lifetime, William Blake became the seminal artistic consciousness behind the pre-Raphaelite movement years after his death. Blake's masterpiece "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is a symbolic expression of his search for the perfect union, which he aspired to create by combining two equal yet opposing concepts within one impression. |
| [G] Former student pays it forward as a mentor for Google Code-in Posted: 21 Apr 2011 06:40 AM PDT Google Open Source Blog: Former student pays it forward as a mentor for Google Code-in Charlie Gordon was a student participant in the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, an earlier version of Google Code-in that pairs high school students with mentors in open source projects. Here he discusses his recent experience as a Mentor for the 2010-2011 Google Code-in. There were so many great stories from Google Code-in that it's hard to pick out just a few. I'm always so excited to get young people involved in open source - I remember how excited I was when I participated in the Google Highly Open Participation Contest myself back in 2007-2008. The program opened many exciting doors for me, including going to Drupal conferences, becoming involved in Drupal core development, and even eventually going to college at MIT, where I am now. It brings me great joy to be able to help open the same doors for the next generation of bright young open source enthusiasts. We always hope that the students who participate in programs like Google Code-in and Google Summer of Code develop a bond with the open source community they work with during the program and continue to contribute to the community long after the contest ends. Charlie Gordon is a prime example; he not only continues to be actively involved in the Drupal community but he is also sharing his experience and wisdom with younger developers and helping them become contributors to open source. Great job, Charlie! By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs Office  URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/04/former-student-pays-it-forward-as.html   |
| [G] Google Earth Builder supports NGA geospatial efforts Posted: 21 Apr 2011 05:56 AM PDT Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Earth Builder supports NGA geospatial effortsGoogle has a contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for the first instance of Google Earth Builder. Google Earth Builder will enable NGA to use Google's vast geospatial processing power to enhance its ability to provide timely, relevant and accurate geospatial intelligence to its customers, who span a broad range of U.S. federal government departments and agencies.Google's work with NGA marks one of the first major government geospatial cloud initiatives, which will enable NGA to use Google Earth Builder to host its geospatial data and information. This allows NGA to customize Google Earth & Maps to provide maps and globes to support U.S. government activities, including: U.S. national security; homeland security; environmental impact and monitoring; and humanitarian assistance, disaster response and preparedness efforts. This is particularly critical to provide damage and mobility assessments after natural disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan or Hurricane Katrina. NGA has been a long-time user of Google Earth Enterprise. As part of NGA's Geospatial Visualization- Enterprise Services, Google and NGA have teamed up to make it easier for the government to get useful and current geospatial content to federal employees who need it to execute their respective missions. Once an individual has been authorized on one of the government's secure networks, he or she will be able to access maps customized to his or her specific department or role using Google Earth, Google Maps or via widely-used Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services. Behind the scenes, Google Earth Builder will host and serve NGA geospatial content to its mission partners and customers, equipping them with timely information using the user's tool of choice. NGA will have the ability to use the vast number of cloud resources for rapid processing of the ever-growing quantities of geospatial data and then provide the GEOINT in an online, on-demand environment. We've been excited to work with NGA as one of the early adopters of Google Earth Builder, and are pleased to make the product available to other organizations who want to take advantage of Google's vast processing power to manage and publish their own geospatial data. Posted by Sean Wohltman and Phil Dixon, Google Federal Team  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/google-earth-builder-supports-nga.html   |
| [G] Bringing 100% web to the world of Google Earth and Google Maps Posted: 21 Apr 2011 05:56 AM PDT Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing 100% web to the world of Google Earth and Google MapsAt Google we're committed to opening up our cloud infrastructure so that others can benefit from our enormous computational power. Today I'm going to share some exciting details on our plans to make our cloud technology available for processing and serving geospatial data.Over the past six years, the way we explore the world has changed dramatically. Online tools like Google Earth and Google Maps have given people the ability to easily view rich geographic information from desktop or mobile devices. Google Earth helps us understand the effects of climate change on our ecosystem, Street View provides a panorama of our neighborhoods, and Google Maps Navigation guides us home. However, in the enterprise a lot of geospatial data remains trapped on costly servers and inaccessible to those who need it. We'd like to help free that data and bring the same benefits that consumers have enjoyed for years to businesses and government agencies. So we created Google Earth Builder. It lets you upload, process and store your geospatial data in our cloud. Your employees can use familiar tools - Google Maps and Google Earth - to easily and securely share and publish mapping data. No technical expertise or GIS training is required. The benefits of Earth Builder's 100% web approach include:
Whether you have terabytes of imagery or just a few basemap layers, now you can create multiple map layers from your data, such as shapefiles of demographic data, spreadsheets of worldwide customer locations and files of your recently acquired imagery for a new development. You can also integrate the map layers with our own imagery basemap, road data, Google Street View, Terrain View, or Directions in order to find your next best store location. Geo has been a big area of investment for us. The Google Maps API delivers more maps to more people every day than any other service, and Google Earth has more than 700 million downloads. We hope that more people can use Google Earth Builder to make better location-related decisions within business and government. Ergon Energy, based in Australia, has already signed up to be a Google Earth Builder customer in order to manage and share geospatial data. With Google Earth Builder, Ergon Energy's 4600 employees will be able to view maps anytime, anywhere. If you're interested in learning more today, you can find more information here. Posted by Tarun Bhatnagar, Head of Geo Enterprise Sales  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/bringing-100-web-to-world-of-google.html   |
| [G] Security First: Google at the CAIT Information Security Roundtable. Posted: 21 Apr 2011 05:56 AM PDT Official Google Enterprise Blog: Security First: Google at the CAIT Information Security Roundtable.This week the Google Enterprise team is excited to be participating in the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) Information Security Roundtable. CAIT is a non-profit organization within Washington University in St. Louis that serves as the center for information technology leaders in the St. Louis region. The Information Security Roundtable is an ongoing series of events and the next one, focused on cloud computing, will be held on April 21.At this roundtable, I'll be presenting "Working in the Cloud: How Cloud Computing is Reshaping Enterprise Technology", where I will discuss how cloud computing is influencing enterprise IT and what this means for businesses. The session will provide insight into how Google works to protect the data that is stored in our cloud, and it will also describe how businesses and organizations can start to leverage low-risk cloud computing solutions. If you're not able to attend the roundtable, you can visit our Google Apps Trust page and find more information on security and data protection in Google Apps. Posted by Adam Swidler, Sr. Manager – Google Enterprise  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/security-first-google-at-cait.html   |
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