Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Get more from AdWords this season with improved Product Ads

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 11:47 PM PST

Inside AdWords: Get more from AdWords this season with improved Product Ads

The busiest shopping days of the holiday season are just around the corner! As you're thinking about ways to get more results from AdWords this season, consider investing in Product Listing Ads, which allow shoppers to see the exact products you offer before they even reach your site, leading to more clicks, higher quality leads, and higher ROI for your search ads.  In fact, users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location for shopping queries.

Here are a couple of recent enhancements we've made to Product Listing Ads to make them even more effective this season:
  • More featured products - Product Listing Ads (in the top ad location) can now show up to 5 products at a time, giving users more shopping choices and allowing more advertisers to promote their inventories in all countries with Product Listing Ads.

  • More traffic - Since launching Product Listing Ads in AdWords to all US advertisers, we've seen significant growth with an overall 600% increase in traffic to retailers from Product Listing Ads compared to last year.  With the holiday season approaching, we expect even more users shopping and searching for products on Google.
How can you take advantage of this opportunity?
  • Optimize bids and plan for budgets for holiday season - Bid competitively and appropriately for your expected holiday sales. Also, ensure that your budgets aren't limiting your ability to capture the growing holiday traffic.
  • Feature all of your products - Use the "All Products" product target to ensure you are running Product Listing Ads on all of your inventory.
  • Review Merchant Center data quality errors and suggestions - Check the Data Quality tab in Merchant Center to ensure you are providing us with enough information to help us match your products to more and better customer queries.
  • Use promotional messages to highlight special promotions - Messages such as "Free Shipping," coupon codes, or "Extended Warranty Special" can help your ad stand out. 
Looking for more ways to get the most out of Product Listing Ads? Visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager, Product Ads
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/get-more-from-adwords-this-season-with.html

[G] Third Party Tools To Help Manage Your Google+ Page

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 11:47 PM PST

Inside AdWords: Third Party Tools To Help Manage Your Google+ Page


Last week, we announced Google+ Pages, which provide a new way for businesses, brands, products, organizations and other entities to build a public identity on Google+. We're encouraged by the number of pages that have been created and brands' enthusiasm for building better relationships with their customers on Google+.

Businesses can create and manage their pages directly through Google+. We are committed to working on enhancements and innovative features to offer businesses more flexibility and power to run their pages. We also recognize that some businesses use social media management companies to manage their presence across multiple social networks. So today we're announcing that Google+ is enabling six companies to test Google+ functionality in their management tools -- Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue.



These companies will offer a subset of their clients the ability to manage circles, publish to Google+, and monitor usage. To learn more about their services and pricing, check out this page.

We are currently working with these companies so that we can experiment and get feedback. They were selected based on their extensive experience helping brands and businesses manage and analyze their presence on social networks. If you're a social media management company interested in working with Google+, get in touch with us.

Follow the conversation on Google+.

Posted by Sara McKinley, Product Manager, Google+ Pages
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-help-manage-your.html

[G] This Week: Google+ Webinar and Help Desk Hangouts!

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 11:47 PM PST

Inside AdWords: This Week: Google+ Webinar and Help Desk Hangouts!

As you may already know, last Monday we announced Google+ Pages for businesses, a collection of tools and products to help clients get closer to customers. Over the next two days we're offering two awesome opportunities for you to learn more about getting your business on Google+:

Tomorrow: Learn with Google Webinar: Getting Your Business on Google+
Wednesday November 16, 2pm ET. Register here.
Join our live webinar hosted by Google+ experts to learn more about how you can bring your company and customers closer together using Google+. Key topics that'll be covered include:
  • Setting up a Google+ Page for your business
  • Best practices and early use cases for using Google+
  • Promoting your Google+ Page
  • Improving the performance of your ads with +1 annotations
Thursday: Help Desk Hangouts
Thursday November 17, 12pm - 3pm ET. Visit our Google+ Your Business page.
Still have questions? Talk face-to-face with a Google+ expert using our group video chat product, Hangouts. Learn technical tips, content strategies, and potential use cases for your business.

Check out how Zen Bikes uses Google Plus in this awesome video!

Posted by David Weisman, The Google+ Team
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/this-week-google-webinar-and-help-desk.html

[G] Humbled by our students

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 11:47 PM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Humbled by our students





We were very excited about participating in the Google Summer of Code this year for the first time. We, the Theoretical Biophysics Groups at the Humboldt University Berlin, pursue scientific research in the field of Systems Biology by the means of computational models. Our focus is on developing techniques and tools incorporating both new and well established knowledge in order to get a better understanding of the fundamentals of life. In particular, we focus on biological processes in Yeast, Bacillus subtilis, and mammalian cells. Our goal has been to develop a web tool that produces an optimized layout for biological reaction networks.

We were overwhelmed by a large number of extraordinary applications from all over the world and had a difficult time in choosing only three students to mentor for the summer, but we were very excited with our choices. Ben Ripkins created a javascript component which can visualize biological networks dynamically in the browser, Matthias Bock created a server component which retrieves biological networks from public databases, and Wei Jing dealt with the graph layout that determines where the network nodes should be located in the final visualization. We were really surprised how far our students were able to carry their projects given the complexity of the tasks. The results of the student's work went into the biographer project. We have set up two showcases which demonstrate the interplay of the different student projects. At http://cheetah.biologie.hu-berlin.de/networkexplorer a large network compiled from the public databases Reactome and PID can be walked through and by simply clicking on the next node, the view will refocus thereby uncovering further parts of the network. At http://biographer.biologie.hu-berlin.de networks edited from scratch or loaded from several resources are visualized.


To sum it all up, this year's Google Summer of Code was a great success for all of us and we hope to be involved in future editions of the program.

By Thomas Handorf, Falko Krause, Marvin Schulz & Max Flottmann on behalf of the Theoretical Biophysics @ Humboldt University Organization


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleOpenSourceBlog/~3/Buy-AZqRsyU/humbled-by-our-students.html

[G] Video Codecs 101

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 11:47 PM PST

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Video Codecs 101


If you work in video compression, this has happened to you:

Someone asks what kind of work you do.  Maybe it's your aunt, or your dentist, or that nice girl you've started dating.  Now you're trapped.  Your only choices are (1) a long string of jargon that nobody wants to hear and makes folks sorry they asked, or (2) "I work with computers."

The problem is simple: most people don't know what video compression is, and you can't talk about it until they do.

What if you had a simple, three-minute animated video that explains the whole thing?  What if you could show it from your phone — right now, right there in the dentist's chair?  Now you can: Video Codecs 101.



Video Codecs 101



One video didn't seem like enough, so we made a second one that picks up where Video Codecs 101 leaves off.  After all, now that your dentist and your 10-year old niece are so smart about codecs, they'll want to know more.  So, how about another two minutes or so about what the WebM Project is doing to make video on the web faster, simpler and easier?



WebM: A Video Codec for the Web



We hope you find these videos fun and useful — and that they make your life a little easier, now that your girlfriend finally knows what you do. Enjoy.

You can learn more about WebM and even contribute to its success at webmproject.org.

Lou Quillio is Webmaster for the WebM Project.

URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/11/video-codecs-101.html

[G] Music Tuesday: Drake, live sessions from London and more

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 11:46 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Music Tuesday: Drake, live sessions from London and more

Last week we featured some buzz videos, celebrated the Puerto Rican hip-hop duo Calle 13's big wins at the Latin Grammy Awards, and got hip to the latest and coolest by SPIN Magazine's editors. And, oh yeah, we debuted the Red Hot Chili Peppers' newest video yesterday. But hold onto your seats: it just gets better for music on YouTube this week.



Got Drizzy?

Drake is something of an enigma -- a pop star who publicly proclaims his support for underground acts, a rapper who will admit to making "sex-driven, chauvinistic" music. (That's some kind of self-awareness.) He's also pretty talented. We asked him to curate the YouTube homepage today, and he took to the task with a list of videos that influenced (and in many cases are sampled on) his new album Take Care. The album was delayed by nearly a month so he could clear all the samples, and you'll see some of them today, including Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up," which he turned into an R&B song (!?) with help from The Weeknd. The playlist also features Jon B, who is sampled on "Cameras," and a very special mash-up cover by YouTube darlings VanJess24.







The Mahogany Sessions

We recently re-discovered the UK channel The Mahogany Sessions, which records intimate a cappella performances in and around London. Yes, rather like an English La Blogotheque -- and they're similarly devoted to introducing you only to music they absolutely love. They also get some pretty rousing spectacles going: you need to see Swedish House Mafia performing "Killa Kela" a cappella while strolling in a London park.







Simian Ghost: Bicycle Theme

Is there room for yet another chillwave act in the world? We sincerely hope so, because Sweden's Simian Ghost sure make some pretty videos (and songs).







Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched "Redoles: 'El Espejo.'"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/1bnIu2p3CJs/music-tuesday-drake-live-sessions-from.html

[G] Orabrush: How the YouTube community built a brand

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Orabrush: How the YouTube community built a brand

Today one of our channel partners, Orabrush, hit a major milestone. After trying unsuccessfully to sell their tongue cleaners going the traditional route, Orabrush let the YouTube community decide what products they want to see on store shelves. Nearly 100 videos later, Orabrush tongue cleaners will now be sold at more than 7,000 CVS/pharmacy locations nationwide.



Jeffrey Harmon, the brains behind their videos, says of their success:



The YouTube community has helped a couple of college kids take an idea, put it in front of people and get an honest response. We didn't do this on our own - all of our fans on YouTube have helped us turn Orabrush into a well-loved brand.



Hear more about their story on the Official Google Blog.



Lane Shackleton, Product Manager, YouTube recently watched, "Notorious B.I.G. calms down crying baby - original."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/rMgGJOYsl-g/orabrush-how-youtube-community-built.html

[G] Policy Tips - Creating unique and valuable content

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Inside AdSense: Policy Tips - Creating unique and valuable content


We enjoyed reading all your comments from our blog post on family-safe content. Today we'd like to shed some light on how to expand your business and attract more visitors by creating sites with unique and valuable content. This topic is one of our most asked about policies from publishers, and is often misunderstood because of the varying perspectives on what is considered unique and relevant content.



Creating a useful and information-rich site is essential to the AdSense business model to generate long-term revenue growth for publishers and to maintain a quality network. Not only does this enhance the user experience so your visitors stay longer to browse and possibly click on a relevant ad, but it also helps keep your account in good standing. Webmasters who clearly and accurately describe their content provide a much better user experience, and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit in the quality guidelines.



Copying content from other sites, auto-generating content, or rewriting content from other publications and monetizing these types of pages without permission or the necessary legal rights to do so is considered a violation of our program policies. If you see an article with content that you think would be interesting to share, or that you're particularly passionate about, don't copy it. Instead, write your own opinion regarding the issue. We love seeing the original and valuable content you come up with and we've found that our most successful partners are the ones that have developed a unique voice.



Some other things to keep in mind are to structure the layout of your site as intuitively as possible and to avoid confusing implementations that may unnaturally lead users to click on your ads or artificially inflate your impressions. Our policies around unique content also do not allow filling a page with keywords that are designed only to manipulate the targeting system and have no relation to the content or audience of the page. This practice results in badly matched ads, as well as a poor user experience. By adding unique content and services to your site, users will remember the added value and be more likely to visit again.



When creating a site, make the focal point about your users, not about search engine rankings or generating more clicks on ads. At Google, we grow our business with the notion "Focus on the users, and all else will follow," and we hope you can also grow your business with us by following the same principle. Let's make the AdSense network a clean and balanced environment, where you, the publishers, can grow together with users and advertisers.



Posted by Arudea Mahartianto, AdSense Policy Team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tuAm/~3/8_ntqaLdE8k/policy-tips-creating-unique-and.html

[G] The Orabrush story: How a Utah man used YouTube to build a multi-million dollar business

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Official Google Blog: The Orabrush story: How a Utah man used YouTube to build a multi-million dollar business

From time to time, we post about how entrepreneurs have used Google tools to build successful businesses—both on and offline. In this post, you'll read the story of how a Utah entrepreneur used YouTube to build a market for his tongue cleaner product, the Orabrush. Starting this month, CVS/pharmacy will begin carrying the product in stores across the United States. - Ed.

When Dr. Bob Wagstaff invented the Orabrush tongue cleaner, he tried all the traditional business strategies to sell his product. He invested $40,000 into a TV infomercial, approached retail shops to carry the Orabrush in stores and offered to sell his patent to other oral hygiene companies. None of it worked. The infomercial yielded only 100 orders, and people walked past the product in stores without a second glance.

As a final attempt to get his business off the ground, Dr. Wagstaff took the advice of Jeffrey Harmon, a local college student, and started marketing the tongue cleaners on YouTube. With a $500 budget, they produced and posted their first video introducing the Orabrush and offering the product for purchase online.



The quirky, commercial-style video explained that 90 percent of bad breath comes from bacteria on the tongue—hence the solution, the Orabrush tongue cleaner. Shot in a makeshift studio in the neighborhood pool hall (listen closely and you can hear the balls cracking in the background), the video went viral, rocketing to 16 million views.

Building a brand on YouTube
After the explosive reaction to their first video, Harmon took on the role as Chief Marketing Officer and began creating regular webisodes, introducing new characters like Morgan, the dirty tongue. Harmon then used YouTube video ads to reach more people and grow their fan base. The "Cure Bad Breath" videos built a loyal following, and their YouTube channel grew to nearly 40 million views.

After two years, Orabrush had sold more than a million tongue cleaners to people in 40+ countries. The Orabrush brand became so popular that local pharmacy store managers began contacting Orabrush directly, citing requests from customers who had heard about the brand online. This fall, Walmart began carrying the Orabrush tongue cleaners in its 3,500+ stores across the United States. And this week, CVS/pharmacy has added the Orabrush tongue cleaner to more than 7,000 stores across the country. That's a lot of tongue cleaners!


These days Orabrush is taking a new approach to drive even more sales in stores. One of the first businesses to use YouTube TrueView video ads, Orabrush has created tailored endings to their videos that direct the viewer to the closest CVS/pharmacy carrying the Orabrush.

Elbow grease and a clever mascot
While Orabrush may have taken an unorthodox approach, their success came from old-fashioned elbow grease, perseverance and a bit of ingenuity.

"YouTube has helped normal people like Dr. Bob and a couple of college kids to take an idea, put it in front of people and get an honest response," Harmon, now chief marketing officer at Orabrush, told us. "We can now play on the same terms as huge companies—and be successful."

Hear more about Orabrush's journey to success in this video:



Posted by Lane Shackleton, Product Manager, YouTube
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/orabrush-story-how-utah-man-used.html

[G] Google BigQuery Service: Big data analytics at Google speed

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google BigQuery Service: Big data analytics at Google speed

Posted by Ju-kay Kwek, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google App Engine Blog and the Google Code Blog.)

Rapidly crunching terabytes of big data can lead to better business decisions, but this has traditionally required tremendous IT investments. Imagine a large online retailer that wants to provide better product recommendations by analyzing website usage and purchase patterns from millions of website visits. Or consider a car manufacturer that wants to maximize its advertising impact by learning how its last global campaign performed across billions of multimedia impressions. Fortune 500 companies struggle to unlock the potential of data, so it's no surprise that it's been even harder for smaller businesses.

We developed Google BigQuery Service for large-scale internal data analytics. At Google I/O last year, we opened a preview of the service to a limited number of enterprises and developers. Today we're releasing some big improvements, and putting one of Google's most powerful data analysis systems into the hands of more companies of all sizes.
  • We've added a graphical user interface for analysts and developers to rapidly explore massive data through a web application.
  • We've made big improvements for customers accessing the service programmatically through the API. The new REST API lets you run multiple jobs in the background and manage tables and permissions with more granularity.
  • Whether you use the BigQuery web application or API, you can now write even more powerful queries with JOIN statements. This lets you run queries across multiple data tables, linked by data that tables have in common.
  • It's also now easy to manage, secure, and share access to your data tables in BigQuery, and export query results to the desktop or to Google Cloud Storage.


Michael J. Franklin, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, remarked that BigQuery (internally known as Dremel) leverages "thousands of machines to process data at a scale that is simply jaw-dropping given the current state of the art." We're looking forward to helping businesses innovate faster by harnessing their own large data sets. BigQuery is available free of charge for now, and we'll let customers know at least 30 days before the free period ends. We're bringing on a new batch of pilot customers, so let us know if your business wants to test-drive BigQuery Service.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-bigquery-service-big-data.html

[G] More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

Posted by Hong Zhang, Software Engineer

These days it's commonplace for employees to bring personal mobile devices to work, expecting to get all kinds of business done on-the-go, and this can be both a blessing and a challenge to IT managers. The importance of keeping mobile devices and data secure is as essential as ever.

Starting today, comprehensive mobile device management is available at no extra charge to Google Apps for Business, Government and Education users. Organizations large and small can manage Android, iOS and Windows Mobile devices right from the Google Apps control panel, with no special hardware or software to manage.

In addition to our existing mobile management capabilities, IT administrators can now see a holistic overview of all mobile devices that are syncing with Google Apps, and revoke access to individual devices as needed.


Organizations can also now define mobile policies such as password requirements and roaming sync preferences on a granular basis by user group.


Also available today, administrators have the ability to gain insights into mobile productivity within their organizations, complete with trends and analytics.


Finally, we're also updating the Google Apps Device Policy app for Android. The new version provides users with more transparency about information available to administrators, and includes support for Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.These new mobile management features will roll out for customers on the Rapid Release track starting today, and will be coming to Scheduled Release customers in a matter of weeks. We invite you to explore our help center for more details.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-flexible-mobile-device-management.html

[G] 24 x 7 phone support for all issues and all business customers

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: 24 x 7 phone support for all issues and all business customers

Posted by Jocelyn Ding, Vice President, Google Enterprise Operations

Since we launched Google Apps for Business in 2007, we've been working hard to build a global support offering that's responsive to the needs of our business customers. In the early days, our customers reached us mainly through email, and our 24 x 7 phone support was limited to critical issues.

To improve the experience of our customers, we now provide 24 x 7 phone support to small, medium, and large Google Apps for Business customers for all issues affecting the core services. Our customers may also receive support through our web-based support portal, online help forms, and online help center. All support cases are handled directly by trained Google Apps experts.

A support metric that we're especially passionate about is customer satisfaction. We measure customer satisfaction by asking for feedback on a seven point scale at the time we close a support case. As measured on this scale, 80% of our business customers and 90% of our large business customers indicate that they're more than satisfied with their support experience. While we're proud of these ratings, we want to do even better. Our goal is to achieve an overall satisfaction rating of 95%.

One of our core values is delivering products that just work for our customers, so in addition to serving customers directly, our support team provides our product and engineering teams with input regarding the usability and quality of our products. This effort has led to SLA and uptime improvements, as well as enhancements such as unthreaded email and read receipts in Gmail, and a scheduled release process.

Brad Feld, Managing Director of Foundry Group recently said, "My firm has gone Google, but I encountered a problem with the Contacts feature. I reached out to Google Enterprise support and am very impressed with how they responded. They explained to me that they were working to address the issue, and when they were getting ready to roll out the solution, they circled back to tell me about it. Are they perfect? No, but they're very good, and I certainly got a positive impression when I interacted with the support team. I'm confident that they know what they're doing and that they'll keep getting better."

To all our Google Apps for Business customers, thank you for your feedback. We take your input very seriously, so please continue to let us know how we're doing. If you need help, please don't hesitate to contact Google Apps for Business support.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/11/24-x-7-phone-support-for-all-issues-and_14.html

[G] Putting Your Search Results on the Map Instantly

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Putting Your Search Results on the Map Instantly

Guest Posted by Eliot Danner from Reperio Concepts


From large Government departments through to small local realty companies, geographic information can be extremely valuable to organizations. However, this useful information often ends up trapped in files or databases, inaccessible to the average employee or user.Many organizations make use of a geospatial tool that presents information in a geographical context. 


Behind the scenes, it can be an expensive process to get to this stage because the data needs to be found and "geocoded." Geocoding is the process of examining a piece of information containing geographic references and adding information about the map coordinates within the document. Once geocoded, a piece of data is available to be shown in a geospatial tool. To put it simply, it is the connection made between address information and map coordinates. This is often a manual process which can be expensive and time consuming. 


For us, automating the search and geocoding process was the next logical step, so we developed a tool called GeoFind, which enables an end-user to easily find geospatially relevant data and show it on a map. GeoFind offers an on-the-fly geocoder combined with the Google Search Appliance (GSA) to locate and present information through Google Earth or Maps. The GSA can connect to multiple large document stores and securely crawl all of the content. GeoFind uses the GSA to process a search query and sends the results to the geocoding engine to look for geographic clues, such as addresses, city references, or landmarks. After it identifies the clue, GeoFind displays the search results via the Google Earth Globe or to Google Maps. 




This is all done automatically without an administrator having to do manual data processing.For example:Imagine a police department wanting to make police reports accessible to the public on a map. The traditional approach would be to individually read and geocode the reports. Using GeoFind, it isn't necessary to perform this expensive and time consuming data preparation. Instead, they can point their Google Search Appliance at the reports and have them immediately displayed on the map. 


You can find out more about GeoFind at ReperioConcepts.com or contact me, Eliot Danner edanner@reperioconcepts.com
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/11/putting-your-search-results-on-map.html

[G] Ten recent algorithm changes

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Ten recent algorithm changes

Posted by Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer

Starting today, we'll begin cross-posting some entries from our Inside Search blog to help pull back the curtain even further on how Google search works. We hope to provide greater transparency by posting regular updates about our major search ranking changes.

Today we're continuing our long-standing series of blog posts to share the methodology and process behind our search ranking, evaluation and algorithmic changes. This summer we published a video that gives a glimpse into our overall process, and today we want to give you a flavor of specific algorithm changes by publishing a highlight list of many of the improvements we've made over the past couple weeks.

We've published hundreds of blog posts about search over the years on this blog, our Official Google Blog, and even on my personal blog. But we're always looking for ways to give you even deeper insight into the over 500 changes we make to search in a given year. In that spirit, here's a list of ten improvements from the past couple weeks:
  • Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.
  • Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
  • Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page's title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page's content.
  • Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.
  • Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.
  • Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
  • Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we've made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
  • Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
  • Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.
  • Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.
If you're a site owner, before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes we make to our search algorithms in a given year, and even these changes may not work precisely as you'd imagine. We've decided to publish these descriptions in part because these specific changes are less susceptible to gaming.

For those of us working in search every day, we think this stuff is incredibly exciting -- but then again, we're big search geeks. Let us know what you think and we'll consider publishing more posts like this in the future.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html

[G] Greater choice for wireless access point owners

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 10:22 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Greater choice for wireless access point owners

From tagging a post with your location, to checking in to a restaurant, to simply finding out where you are, location-based services have become some of the most popular features of today's Internet. One of the key ways technology companies are able to determine a location for these services is through a location database, which matches publicly broadcast information about local wireless networks with their approximate geographic location. By looking for wireless access points that are close to a user's phone, location providers can return the approximate location you need. In addition, this method is a good alternative to other approaches, like GPS, because it's faster, it works indoors, and it's more battery-efficient.

The wireless access point information we use in our location database, the Google Location Server, doesn't identify people. But as first mentioned in September, we can do more to address privacy concerns.

We're introducing a method that lets you opt out of having your wireless access point included in the Google Location Server. To opt out, visit your access point's settings and change the wireless network name (or SSID) so that it ends with "_nomap." For example, if your SSID is "Network," you'd need to change it to "Network_nomap."

To get started, visit this Help Center article to learn more about the process and to find links with specific instructions on how to change an access point's SSID for various wireless access point manufacturers.

As we explored different approaches for opting-out access points from the Google Location Server, we found that a method based on wireless network names provides the right balance of simplicity as well as protection against abuse. Specifically, this approach helps protect against others opting out your access point without your permission.

Finally, because other location providers will also be able to observe these opt-outs, we hope that over time the "_nomap" string will be adopted universally. This would help benefit all users by providing everyone with a unified opt-out process regardless of location provider.

Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel

(Cross posted on the European Public Policy Blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/greater-choice-for-wireless-access.html
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