WebProNews - Google

Google Chrome OS May Be Here Very Soon

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:57:49 +0000

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch claims to have heard from "a reliable source" that Google will be launching the much-anticipated Chrome OS within a week. The tech industry media has been punked on Chrome OS in the past, but as Arrington notes, Google has said to expect it in the fall, and fall is running out.

Chrome OS is Google's attempt to "rethink what operating systems should be." It's an open source, "lightweight" operating system to be initially targeted at netbooks.

"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS," Google said upon the Chrome OS announcement. "We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform," the company continued. "All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

Arrington says he thinks driver support will be an issue with Chrome OS. "...Having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS’s success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work," he says. "We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one."

If Arrington's source truly is reliable, then we should see how the launch of Chrome OS pans out very soon. It's going to be very interesting to see how Google competes with Microsoft in the operating system space, as it is doing in both search and web browsers.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Chrome OS Challenge Windows?

> Fake Chrome OS Screenshots Punk Tech Media

> Steve Ballmer Skeptical Of Chrome OS

Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:19:25 +0000

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?

Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews, Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor.

"Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much."

>> Site speed ranking comments starts at the 02:35 point in the video...

"I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about 'how do I have my site be fast,' how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?'" he says.

I would say that based on Matt's comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn't come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings.

Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site, which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well.

If you're serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven't given much thought to load times and such, it's time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn't it make sense if your site helped the process along?

Have you given much thought to site speed? Is your site up to snuff? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Google Wants the Web to Function Like a Magazine

> Google Provides Tool for Speeding Up Web Pages

> Google Lets Businesses Speed Up Videos

New Details on Google Caffeine Update

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:05:32 +0000

Update 2: Matt Cutts gave WebProNews another exclusive interview, in which he gave some more details about Caffeine (among other things. It's only hitting one data center before the holidays, and it isn't even live quite yet. Google will roll it out to more data centers in January.

Update: Out at PubCon in Las Vegas, Mike McDonald of WebProNews discussed the rolling out of the Caffeine update further with popular search enthusiast Barry Schwartz:

Original Article: It appears that the effects of Google's Caffeine update may be felt sooner rather than later. That is if you really do feel the effects at all.

What are your thoughts on Google's Caffeine update? Discuss here.

If you are unfamiliar with Caffeine, it is an algorithm update that Google announced in the summer. Upon the announcement, Google's Matt Cutts said, "The Caffeine update isn't about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won't notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we're rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure." Cutts told WebProNews about Caffeine in the following interview:

When Caffeine was introduced, so was a sandbox, where people could play around with Caffeine based search results, and get a look at how rankings were altered (if at all), and try to get a feel for how it was going to go. Now that sandbox has closed up shop, it looks like the Caffeine update will be live in Google search before too long. It will start after the holidays at least though.

"I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays," says Cutts on his blog. "Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over. Most searchers wouldn’t immediately notice any changes with Caffeine, but going slowly not only gives us time to collect feedback and improve, but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays."

The announcement at what used to be the Caffeine sandbox reads:

We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

Of course as people tested Caffeine via the sandbox, many of them blogged about their results and findings. The general consensus seemed to be that Caffeine is fast and utilizes real-time search a great deal. Given Google's frequent announcements related to speed, and a recently announced deal with Twitter, speed and real-time search seem like logical updates to Google search results.

When SEOBook's Aaron Wall tested Caffeine, he said he thought there was:

- an increased weighting on domain authority & some authoritative tag type pages ranking (like Technorati tag pages + Facebook tag pages), as well as pages on sites like Scribd ranking for some long tail queries based mostly on domain authority and sorta spammy on page text

- perhaps slightly more weight on exact match domain names

- perhaps a bit better understanding of related words / synonyms

- tuning down some of the exposure for video & some universal search results

This stuff should not necessarily be taken as gospel. These are just the results and speculations of individuals from tests of a product that was only introduced (for testing purposes), let alone finalized. It is what it is.

As the Caffeine update rolls out, there will no doubt be more and more mystery unraveled as search industry professionals scramble to stay ahead of the game, and Google drops subtle hints from time to time. It's going to be interesting to see where Caffeine takes the world's most popular search engine.

Have you tested Caffeine? What do you think about the update? Share your findings here.

Related Articles:

> Matt Cutts Talks Google Caffeine Update

> Where's Bing's Real-Time Search?

> Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

Google Integrates AdSense For Feeds, FeedBurner, Analytics

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:27:54 +0000

The desire to integrate products is strong at Google; it’s not hard to imagine that the company would eventually like to offer one great, big search/video/email/advertising ball. And today, it took a tiny step along that path by rolling together some analytics products.

A post on the AdSense for Feeds blog announced, “If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.”

The post then continued, “Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as ‘feedburner,’ the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as ‘feed’ or ‘email,’ and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Yahoo! Mail.’”

More distribution endpoint labels are on the way, too.

Hopefully this update will help people earn a little extra money heading into the holidays. At the least, it may simplify FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds users’ lives a little, which would also represent a nice treat this time of year.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches Analytics For Mobile Apps

> Correcting Your Web Analytics Mistakes

> FeedBurner/Google Alum Goes To Twitter

Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:38:18 +0000

Dave Girouard, the president of Google's enterprise division, made an interesting admission earlier today, acknowledging that Google Docs isn't right for the average person. But Girouard also made an interesting prediction, putting Google Docs about a year away from seriously challenging Microsoft Office.

Let's look at the current state of things first. According to Victoria Ho, Girouard said that Google Docs is "much less mature" than other Google products, and he later continued, "We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet."

You can almost imagine a marketing team trying to tackle Girouard right then; such honesty probably won't do Google Docs much good in the short term.

Still, the fact that Girouard (who's spent almost six years with Google) was willing to face reality makes his forecast more noteworthy. And Girouard indicated that a number of Google Docs updates will land next year, at which point businesses should be able to "get rid of Office if they chose to."

That's more the sort of message Google's marketing team could (and quite possibly will) get behind.

Related Articles:

> Google Adds Google Docs Previews To Gmail

> Google Docs Gets New And Old Features

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Dell To Launch Android-Based Smartphone

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:26:06 +0000

Dell said today it plans to introduce smartphones based on Google's Android platform in Brazil and China.

The company said it plans to sell its new Mini 3 smartphones through China Mobile, the largest telecommunications firm in the world with more than 500 million customers, and Claro, which has more than 42 million customers in Brazil as part of the America Movil network.

"Our entry into the smart phone category is a logical extension of Dell's consumer product evolution over the past two years," said Ron Garriques, President, Dell Global Consumer Group.

"We are developing smaller and smarter mobile products that enable our customers to take their internet experience out of the home and do the things they want to do whenever and wherever they want."

Details of the phone models will be released when the devices are available in store, which will be late November for China Mobile and around the end of the year for Claro.

The move by Dell will help Google's Android platform become more widely available. Other companies that are backing the Android platform include Motorola, HTC, Verizon, Garmin, LG and Samsung.

Related Articles:

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Google Eases Retrieval of Sidewiki Entries for Entire Sites

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:36:30 +0000

Google has announced the release of a new feature for the Sidewiki API, which the company says makes it easier to retrieve all Sidewiki entries for an entire domain. It allows you to look for new entries created on any page of a site, and subscribe to them via RSS.

If you are unfamiliar with Sidewiki, it is available as part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer or as a bookmarklet for Chrome, Safari, or other browsers that don't support the Google Toolbar.

When using Sidewiki, an expandable window can be viewed on the left-hand side of the web page. When expanded, you can see comments by users or contribute your own. This works for any web page. There is a good chance that your site has been commented on via Sidewiki, and you don't even know about it.

This actually brings up a pretty good reputation management point. If you are a webmaster, you may want to at least install the bookmarklet in your browser if you don't use the Google Toolbar. This will allow you to keep tabs on what is being written about your site.

These comments are out there for other Sidewiki users to view. More information about how Sidewiki works can be found here. Google has created a top ten list of ways that people are already using Sidewiki. It may give you some ideas:

Jason Young speaks from personal experience and gives detailed insight into tuning a bass guitar on EMG's Bass Tips site.
Antony Carthy, a programmer in South Africa, wrote tips on how to find latitude and longitude coordinates on Google Maps.
Google's own Matt Cutts warns visitors about a deceptive website.
Shalin Gala of PETA calls on readers to sign a petition next to an article about animal mistreatment.
Ron Burk suggests a missing reference for a medical article.
The Mayo Clinic uses Sidewiki to welcome visitors with a special webmaster entry on its homepage (this one requires Sidewiki to view).
Jesse Poe from New York offers up great insights in a review of an iPhone app by Daniel Johnston, one of his favorite musicians.
Alfonso Grandis from Italy talks about his eye-witness account of a recent earthquake.
David Davis, a software engineer from California, improves a snippet of code in a programming tutorial.
Michael Roizen from the Cleveland clinic adds his advice about H1N1 vaccinations.

Google recommends commenters contribute expert insight, helpful tips, background information, and added perspective when using SideWiki. The company has said in the past that it uses "multiple signals" based on the "quality of the entry," what they know about the author, and other user-contributed signals like voting and flagging. They say they want to only keep the most relevant entries appearing in the sidebar.

Related Articles:

> Google Turning the Web Into an Exclusive Social Network?

> You No Longer Need the Google Toolbar to Use Sidewiki

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Google Headed To Swiss Court Over Street View

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:05:37 +0000

The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner of Switzerland, Hanspeter Thür , still isn't happy with Google. Thür has argued that the Street View program doesn't do enough to protect individuals' identities, and despite receiving a concession or two, is now taking Google to court.

Street View was introduced in Switzerland about three months ago. Roughly one week later, Thür complained that certain faces and license plates weren't indistinct enough. He met with Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, Google agreed to make portions of its photos blurrier, and the problem was resolved. Or so we thought.

It turns out that Thür also objected to the height from which images had been taken, arguing that a normal person wouldn't have the same vantage point. He felt that people in more rural areas could be identified even if their faces weren't visible, too.

So, as announced in a formal statement, Thür "has decided to take the matter further and to take legal action before the Federal Administrative Court." According to the BBC, Thür wants a tribunal to make Google immediately take down all Swiss Street View images, as well (since the case won't start or end soon).

This situation could have a big impact on how other countries respond to Street View in the future.

Related Articles:

> Google Street View Hits Hawaii, Mexico

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> Street View: Soon With More Blurriness

Google Voice Gets New Free VoIP Service

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:03:08 +0000

Earlier this week, reports surfaced indicating that Google had bought Gizmo5, a VoIP firm. The news came just on the heels of Google's AdMob acquisition. Google has now officially announced that it has indeed acquired Gizmo5.

"While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience," Google says. "Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number."

"We've acquired a number of small companies over the past five years, and the people and technology that have come to Google from other places have contributed in many ways, large and small, to all kinds of Google products," the company adds. "Since the GrandCentral team joined Google in 2007, they've done incredible things with Google's technology and resources to launch and improve Google Voice."

In a previous report, Doug Caverly of WebProNews noted that Gizmo5 is a good fit for Google. For one, Gizmo5 is free, and Google offers a great deal of free services as it is. It is also available in nine languages, and Google is frequently expanding its reach in this regard with most of its products.

A couple weeks ago Google announced that Google Voice users can now use their own existing mobile numbers. They no longer have to have a separate Google number. This should be a great way to attract new users. However, at this point, Google Voice is still only available on an invitation basis.

Related Articles:

> Report Indicates Google Bought Gizmo5

> You Don't Need a Google Number to Use Google Voice

> AT&T Goes On The Offensive Against Google Voice

Google Ad Planner Gets Several New Enhancements

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:39:59 +0000

Google has released several new features for Google Ad Planner. Google says these are aimed at providing a more granular view of where your audience can be found. Features include subdomain data, ad placements, and reach and relevance at a glance.

When Google says reach and relevance at a glance, it is referring to a new interactive graph feature, which lets advertisers see which sites in their plan provide the best reach and relevance.

"In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index," explains Google's Katrina Kurnit. "Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance."

Users can customize the graph in a number of different ways. The feature is discussed in more detail on this page.

Google has added subdomain data that gives you more detailed views of sites. It can help users refine their media plan by providing more info on specific pages. It lets usres search for subdomains, view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site, view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself, and add subdomains to their media plan.

The Ad Placements feature consists of specific sections of a site where advertising can be purchased. This feature allows advertisers to review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Google says more placement data will be coming soon.

Google says publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share more Google Analytics data points like page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site.

Related Articles:

> New Google Tool Benefits Both AdWords and AdSense Users

> Google Improves Traffic Estimation with Ad Planner

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Google Wave Gets a Feature for "Following"

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:50:09 +0000

Google has added a "follow" feature to Google Wave. The feature is designed to let users stay up to date on public waves of interest. In other words, if there are waves out there that are available to everybody, and you want to follow it, simply click the follow button for that particular wave.

When a user adds you to a Wave, or if you contribute to one, you will automatically be "following" that wave. You can remove waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but they will come back when they are updated. Users can switch between unfollowing and following waves as often as they like.

"Public waves that are in your inbox simply because you opened them at some point in the past will start to leave your inbox as they get updated," says Google Wave engineering tech lead Casey Whitelaw. "You can also manually remove them with the 'archive' feature, and they will no longer return. We hope this will help with clearing a backlog of unwanted waves."

The "unfollow" feature takes the place of the "mute" feature, which has been part of Google Wave. If you don't want a Wave anymore, just unfollow it. If you need to find a particular wave in the future, you can still search for it, even if you aren't following it.

"Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox," says Whitelaw. "In the future, there will be more control over what kinds of changes will cause a wave to appear in your inbox, and we will soon introduce better support for groups of wave users. We're also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches."

If you have not yet had an opportunity to use Google Wave, there is a good chance that none of this makes much sense to you. However, you can get an idea of how Wave basically works by reading this.

Related Articles:

> Google Wave Simplified: How it Basically Works

> Will Google Wave Shape the Future of Online Communication?

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Google Announces SPDY Application-Layer Protocol

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:13:31 +0000

Except, perhaps, for multitasking techies and the last few people using dialup connections, load times aren't a huge deal from a user perspective; the average page appears before most folks think to click on anything else. Still, Google looks set to make a lot of friends with the introduction of a research project dubbed SPDY ("speedy").

A post on Google's Research Blog gave a little background by stating, "SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression."

As for how that translates into a measurable effect, the post later tied in the "speedy" name and relayed a key point by adding, "[W]hen we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster."

A savings of 55 percent is huge, of course - something that every user would notice. And site owners might be able to take advantage of the SPDY boost by packing more interesting stuff onto every page.

So, per the SPDY team's request, look its documentation, inspect its code, and provide feedback if you can. SPDY's not ready to make a mainstream debut, but bringing it to that point is almost certainly in everybody's best interest.

Related Articles:

> Google Makes Improvements To Movie Showtime Searches

> Google Chrome For Mac May Hit Beta In December

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Google Makes Improvements to Movie Showtime Searches

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:02:43 +0000

Google has launched some new improvements to its movie showtimes search feature. These include more movie pages, genre filters, and a new map view.

If you search for a movie and click the "more theaters" link in the showtimes listing, you will be taken to a more thorough page about that movie, including more showtimes, reviews, trailers, photos, etc. You can also see a list of new genre filters to search by on the left-hand side of the screen.

If you go to google.com/movies, you can find a list of all the theaters and showtimes in your area. The map view feature lets you see nearby theaters playing specific films.

It is worth noting that Microsoft's Bing search engine already has very similar features when you search for movies on there. It utilizes MSN movies, and has movie pages with trailers, reviews, photos, etc. It also has a map view feature. Google appears to have it beat on the genre listings feature, however.

Do you use Google (or Bing) to find movie showtimes when you go out? Do you find the new features helpful? Comment here.

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Google Chrome For Mac May Hit Beta In December

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:47:09 +0000

Mac users who've been feeling left out since the introduction of Google Chrome (which occurred way back in September of 2008) may finally be set to receive a sort of nod of inclusion. A Mountain View-based product manager has indicated that a beta version of Chrome for Mac will launch in December.

Nick Baum wrote yesterday in a Google Groups post, "The extensions team has been working hard to get BrowserActions ready, and they're already working great on Windows and Linux. We've noticed that many of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We'd like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well!"

Then Baum got to the Mac-related heart of the matter, continuing, "Why make the switch now? The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December. We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that. If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we'll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"

And since it took Google about three months to remove the beta tag from the first version of Chrome, that may mean that a finalized Chrome for Mac will available before February.

This isn't a firm timeline, of course, but it at least looks almost certain that Google is going to ramp up its efforts. Hat tip goes to Stephen Shankland.

Related Articles:

> New Google Chrome Release Includes Bookmark Sync

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Google Announces Details of New Product Listing Ads

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:12:10 +0000

Google product listing ads have been spotted every now and then for a while now. The company has been testing them, but now the they have announced that US users will start seeing them more frequently on shopping related queries.

"Each day we see many users come to Google.com to research products and find where to buy them," says Google's Dan Friedman. "To better serve these users, we've been testing a new feature of AdWords called Product Listing Ads. Product Listing Ads works with an advertiser's Google Merchant Center account to serve highly targeted ads that include richer product information directly in the ad itself - including product image, price, and merchant name."

Friedman highlights the following features of Product Listing Ads:

- Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for you to reach a larger audience on Google.com.

- List your entire inventory: Product Listing Ads requires no keywords or additional ad text. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in your Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name. Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.

These ads could go a long way for increasing interest in using Google's Merchant Center. When they show up for any given product-related search, they are going to be highly coveted spots for anyone selling those products online.

Currently, the ads are still considered a beta feature, and are only available to a limited number of retail advertisers. In time, however, they will be opened up to more merchants, and the number of Google users who will see the ads will be increased.

Related Articles:

> Google Gives AdWords Advertisers New Comparison Option

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Google Tries To Save You From Swine Flu

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:27:45 +0000

The media frenzy over swine flu may have died down a little since earlier this year; it's no longer a top headline on every other news site, at least. But people remain extremely concerned about it (anyone care to guess how many tons of hand sanitizer have been sold?), and Google's trying to help out by pointing them towards flu shots.

A post on the Official Google Blog announced this afternoon, "We've been working with [the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services], the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine . . . . At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting."

The post then added, "We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you'll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle."

The new feature seems to work quite well. If you intend to follow through on its suggestions and receive a shot, just call ahead to play it safe. Unless you need to buy some more hand sanitizer, anyway, that is, or perhaps want to pick up a few surgical masks from the corner market.

Related Articles:

> Google India Closes Office Due To Swine Flu

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Holiday Shoppers Want Deals Even More Than They Did Last Year

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:23:18 +0000

Google has used its Insights for Search tool to provide some data about consumers' searching behavior when it comes to things like discounts, free shipping for the holidays, coupons, and promotional codes.

Unsurprisingly, there is an uptick in searches for all of these things, indicating that this is the stuff consumers are after for their holiday shopping. Such data serves as a great indicator that e-commerce businesses should be providing this stuff if at all possible. Without such deals, online businesses stand to lose out on sales to competitors that do offer them.

According to Google, 87% of consumers plan to take advantage of price discounts or sales this holiday season and 73% plan to take advantage of free shipping.

"Though not all retailers offer free shipping, discounts, or other rebates, know that these value propositions resonate with consumers so begin thinking about how your company or product is providing value and incorporate that messaging into your online marketing campaigns," says Eric Lopez of Google's Retail team. "Consumers are eagerly looking for a reason to buy from you."

Searches for coupons have been growing this year, even more so than last year when the recession was at its worst level. According to Google, 68% of consumers report that they plan on taking advantage of coupons this season. The same goes for promotional codes, which has increased (as a query) by as much as 55% year-over-year.

"With growing interest, ensure you are advertising your coupons, coupon codes, and promo codes to capture increased search volume," says Lopez.

Google's data reflects that of Deloitte's, which found that about a quarter of consumers will shop primarily online this year and many are using the Internet to find special offers, with 44% expecting to use a coupon they get online.

In fact, that study had a lot of interesting statistics that online retailers may want to consider before it's too late. Read here.

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> Holiday Shoppers Turning To Social Media And Internet

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Google May Change Your Page Titles

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:43:52 +0000

In case you were not aware, Google "reserves the right" to change the titles of your pages in search results. Google's Matt Cutts has released a video discussing why and how they go about doing this.

Cutts says Google wants to show the titles that it thinks are most useful. "For example, suppose the title of your page is 'Untitled' or if there is no title. If that's the case, we try to show a relevant, useful title."

"We reserve the right to try to figure out what's a better title, what's a more descriptive title or snippet to show the users," he continues.

According to Cutts, if you have a title that's really long, they may still use that in their scoring, but in the snippet, they might try to find a "better title." This is presumably based on what the user is looking for.

As Cutts has said in the past, sometimes Google will use snippets right from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Sometimes, they'll simply use snippets from the page or the meta description tag. "We do a bunch of different things to find the best description that we can," he says.

"If you have a bad title or a title that we don't think helps users as much, we can try to find a better title, and one we think will be an informative result so that users will know whether that's a good result for them to click on," he says.

Have you noticed Google changing your titles? Did they find better ones? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Why Your Email Address May Show up in Google Search Results

> Why Your Robots.txt Blocked URLs May Show up in Google

> Does Google Recognize the Name of Your Business?

Google Integrates World Bank Data

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:18:36 +0000

Students and statistics hounds now have even more reason to love Google. Today, the search giant announced that it's made information related to 17 World Development Indicators available through standard search results pages.

The stats come courtesy of the World Bank, and a post on the Official Google Blog explained, "Search should be intuitive, so we've done the work to think through queries where public data will be most relevant to you. To see the new data, try queries like [gdp of indonesia], [children per woman in brazil], [rwanda's population growth], [energy use of iceland], [co2 emissions of iceland] and [gdp growth rate argentina]."

At that point, you'll get something like the screenshot below:

Then, if you click on the graph, Google will take you to an interactive page where you can put together a more informative diagram.

Have fun finding out a little bit more about our world. And here's one last dollop of info so that you don't waste a bunch of time: the available World Development Indicators are CO2 emissions per capita, Electricity consumption per capita, Energy use per capita, Exports as percentage of GDP, Fertility rate, GDP deflator change, GDP growth rate, GNI per capita in PPP dollars, Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Income in PPP dollars, Imports as percentage of GDP, Internet users as percentage of population, Life expectancy, Military expenditure as percentage of GDP, Mortality rate (under 5), Population, and Population growth rate.

Related Articles:

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Google Seeking Not To Cross The Creepy Line

Rich Ord — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:26:05 +0000

Google CEO Eric Schmidt while appearing on Fox Business made some interesting comments about Google's emergence as a huge Microsoft-like business power. I thought most interesting was Schmidt's statement about Google becoming like Microsoft, "Hopefully, we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsot made ten years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened with them".

Schmidt elaborated:

"In our case we see ourselves as a disruptor, and a disruptor because we are using new technology to solve real consumer problems, that in some cases people didn't even realize could be solved. We are also a company that operates at scale using computers globally. And of course, we are in the information business and people have a lot of opinions on how information should be organized."

Fox Business' Neil Cavuto asked Schmidt in reference to Google's new Dashboard product how we really knew if Google deleted our personal data when we pressed delete via Dashboard. Schmidt's response:

"Because we say so and we would be sued (if we didn't)."

Cavuto joked: "It's like ... come in peace to serve man."

Watch the whole interview below:

Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:26:35 +0000

In a recent interview we wrote about this morning, Rupert Murdoch indicated that News Corp. may block search engines from indexing its sites. Now, it doesn't exactly look like Google's going to offer money to him (or throw a fit) in response, as the search giant's more or less replied by saying "fine."

Actually, depending on what sort of tone you attribute to them, some of the comments made to Emma Barnett came closer to "it's your funeral." A spokesman told her, "Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute."

And later, there was something approaching "make my day." The spokesman said, "If publishers want their content to be removed from Google News specifically all they need to do is tell us."

So it should be interesting to see what happens. Judging solely by the comments on our earlier piece and Barnett's article, it seems that Murdoch might wind up missing "search people" (as he referred to them) a lot more than searchers would miss News Corp.'s content.

Pay walls have worked in some specific instances, though, and since any disappearing act News Corp. pulled would almost certainly receive tons of mainstream media coverage, the publicity-generating value of the unprecedented move is interesting to consider.

Related Articles:

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Google Gives Users a Way to Lock SafeSearch

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:03:49 +0000

Google has launched a new way to lock SafeSearch. What this accomplishes is, users will have to enter their password to change the setting, and Google Search results will be visibly different than when SafeSearch is not locked.

Google demonstrates how to to lock SafeSearch with the following short clip:

When SafeSearch is locked, there is a big image in the top right-hand corner of Google that shows colored balls. This makes it easy to tell whether or not SafeSearch is locked. "Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked," Google says. "And if you don't see them, it's quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch."

You can lock SafeSearch by simply going to Search Settings from the Google home page. There is a "SafeSearch filtering" section there, where you can adjust the settings and lock them if you choose. When you lock SafeSearch, you are automatically choosing the "strict" setting (as opposed to moderate).

Can Certain Words Get My Content Blocked?

People have often wondered if their content is being blocked in SafeSearch if they have certain words on an otherwise family-friendly site. In fact, Google's Matt Cutts recently addressed such concerns in a video at Google's Webmaster Central YouTube channel.

"We try to write our algorithm such that just having a single word mentioned here or there really won't have that much of an impact," says Cutts. "Now, of course some words are worse than others. If you've got some slang or something that's misspelled and really is not a word that you can repeat in polite company, that makes it more likely that that page will get flagged. But in most cases you should be in relatively good shape as long as most of your content or most of the words on your page are family-friendly."

It stands to reason that if you are producing content that you are hoping that families and children will view, it's in your best interest to keep your language family-friendly. That's pretty much common sense, but Google has put it into a search engine visibility light as well.

Related Articles:

> Google's Safe Search Filters

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10 Reasons Social Media isn't Replacing Email

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:54:53 +0000

Update: VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick has written a separate piece adding 10 more reasons.

Original Article: The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about the evolution of communication technology, chronicling the rise and alleged fall of email to social media. "Email no longer rules," the title reads.

Do you agree that email no longer rules? Tell us why or why not.

"We all still use email, of course," says Jessica E. Vascellaro, the author of the piece. "But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all social networks also require logging on to use? Sure, you can set them up to remember your info so you don't have to log-in every time, but the same could be said for most email services. That's beside the point though.

It's fun to look at how communication has evolved, and it's easy to declare the old medium dead (although to be fair, Vascellaro didn't exactly go that far). It's just not the case.

WebProNews recently ran an article about how social media will not replace search, despite plenty of mutterings to the contrary. I will go ahead and declare the same thing about email. Social media will not replace email. Just as it did with search, it may replace it in some (even many) instances, but there is room for both forms of communication. In fact, they do a pretty good job of complimenting each other (for better or for worse).

Reasons Email Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon

1. People still send hand-written letters via snail mail, even though they could instead make a phone call, send an email, text message, or status update.

2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address. Some are starting to integrate social media into this process (through things like Facebook Connect), but that is still a very small fraction, and they typically still allow for email information as well.

3. Email notifies you of updates from all social networks you are a part of (provided your settings are set up that way).

4. We haven't seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really is the next big thing and will catch on on a large scale.

5. Email is universal, and social networks are not. Nearly everybody on the web (while there are no doubt some exceptions) has an email address. Many places of employment give employees email addresses when they begin working there. Meanwhile, a great deal of them are banning workers from even accessing social networks.

6. There are plenty of people who have no interest in joining social networks. Frequent news stories about security, privacy, and reputation issues do not help convince them.

7. Email is still improving. It hasn't screeched to a halt with the rise of social media. There is still innovation going on, and integration with social media. Look at how Google is constantly adding new features to Gmail. Look at the new Yahoo Mail.

8. Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email. Never mind that they update users about community-driven happenings via email. MySpace (still one of the biggest social networks) even launched its own email service recently.

9. More social media use means more email use. Look at these recent findings from Nielsen. The people consuming the largest amount of social media are also the people consuming the largest amount of email.

10. As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well, as many companies continue to struggle to find the right social media strategy to suit their needs.

Email Marketing

Let's expand on that last one a bit. There have been a significant number of studies released in recent memory, indicating that email marketing is doing quite well. Epsilon shared some findings about how email marketing is driving offline purchases. The same firm also found that email open rates increased for the fourth quarter in a row (up 18% YoY according to the most recent study). Forrester Consulting and ExactTarget found that email marketing is the most popular channel for consumers. Earlier this year, Forrester Research reported that email marketing in the U.S. alone was expected to reach $2 billion by 2014.

Is the email landscape changing? Yes, without a doubt. Social media has become a very large part of the online lives for many Internet users. Earlier this year, social sites were even said to have surpassed email in usage. That said, Facebook has come significantly close to matching Google in terms of unique visitors, but that doesn't make Google any less important does it? The two can co-exist, and so can email and social media. They are co-existing.

Email marketers are facing new challenges with an increasingly social and mobile web. For tips on embracing this, check out our coverage of a related session from the recent Shop.org summit.

Related Articles:

> People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email

> Social Networks Blamed For $2.25B In Lost Productivity

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Do you think social networks will replace email? Share your thoughts here.

Has YouTube Found the Right Ad Solution?

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:07:25 +0000

YouTube has begun testing a new kind of ad format on some of its videos - skippable pre-rolls. These ads let users choose whether or not they want to watch the ad as it appears at the beginning of a video.

YouTube says that when it first began testing in-stream ads a couple years ago, abandonment rates on videos were as high as 70%. They found that users were much more likely to view and engage with overlay ads.

"But over time we found that different kinds of content provide different experiences for viewers, and that in-stream ads work pretty well on certain videos, like clips from TV shows or full-length movies," says YouTube. "We first launched in-stream ads last year, and we've continued to innovate and test different in-stream formats on YouTube (like user-choice pre-rolls)."

Users may find the skippable pre-rolls slightly annoying but tolerable, since they are still in control of whether they have to watch it or not. They may come off as a bit intrusive, similar to pop-up ads, but if they are easy to skip, people will probably be willing to continue on with the video.

Chances are, they will see enough of the ad to begin with to at least gain some kind of brand awareness. That's really going to be all up to the ad though. Advertisers looking at this kind of spot may want to strongly consider getting the meat of the message in as early as possible.

"We know what you're thinking: who would choose to watch an ad when they can skip it?" says YouTube. "Well, that's what we're trying to find out. In our previous research, we've actually seen that lots of users will watch pre-rolls. Abandonment rates are affected by several factors, notably length and creative. When a pre-roll is only 15 seconds, we see completion rates as high as 85%. Also, creative matters a lot: the quality and relevance of the ad itself seems to have 3x the influence on abandonment online as it does on TV. Viewers online tend to be much more active in making choices about what they watch."

Remember that these new ads are only being tested at this point, but YouTube seems quite optimistic that it may have found its best advertising solution yet. We'll see if the tests confirm this, and if this becomes a normal ad-type for the world's most popular video site (and 2nd largest search engine).

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Google Latitude Introduces Location History, Smart Alerts

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:00:57 +0000

A quick, but important, note: the stuff we're about to discuss is only available on an opt-in basis. So there's no need to stop halfway through this article and drown your phone or tape it to a neighbor's car. Now, with that out of the way, let's move on to the news that Google Latitude's gained two features called Google Location History and Google Location Alerts (which is in beta).

Google Location History may be either the less cool or the less creepy offering, depending on one's point of view. A post on the Google Mobile Blog explained that, with it, you can "store, view, and manage your past Latitude locations." Then, "You can visualize your history on Google Maps and Earth or play back a recent trip in order."

In another nod to personal privacy, it's possible to delete part or all of your location history, too.

As for the second feature, it builds on the first and tries to intelligently connect you with acquaintances. According to the post, "Location Alerts can recognize your regular, routine locations and not create alerts when you're at places like home or work. Alerts will only be sent to you and any nearby friends when you're either at an unusual place or at a routine place at an unusual time."

You can enable these offerings here if they suit your style. And should you later change your mind, Google promises that you can disable them rather than head for the nearest sink or roll of duct tape.

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Google Programming Language on the "Go"

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:53:26 +0000

Update: Philipp Lenssen notes that someone has already developed a language called Go! (with an exclamation point). There is a book on it here. The author wants Google to change the name. This could get confusing for developers looking to use Go, although, it could also help sales of the Go! book. It wouldn't make for very happy customers, however.

Original Article: Google has open sourced its own programming language, which it simply calls "Go." The company still calls Go experimental. Google's Go Team describes the language:

Go combines the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. Typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go lets you move fast.

Go is a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing, a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, plus some cool features like true closures and reflection.

Go comes with built-in support for concurrency, what Google calls a "novel" type system, and as mentioned above, it is apparently really fast. Google says most builds take well under a second.

The following clip provides some more info about the language:

The Go site offers a number of documents, such as a tutorial, a FAQ page, a tech talk, language specification, memory model, and more. There are how-tos for installing Go and contributing code. There is command documentation, package documentation, and source files. If you're a developer itching to mess around with a new language, go dig in.

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Google Wave Simplified: How it Basically Works

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:46:53 +0000

As you may know, Google has been sending out Google Wave invitations for a little while now. Many people are still finding these hard to come by, but others have been lucky enough to be selected and get their hands dirty.

Those who have been granted access to Google Wave have the ability to nominate people for invitation, but not directly invite people themselves. So in other words, you're not getting in unless Google wants you to. They have to approve your nomination.

Unfortunately, that means those outside of the tech-savvy developer crowd and those who can actually access Google Wave, there is still a lot of mystery around the service. People want to know how it works.

The preview comes with a wave featuring a video from "Dr. Wave," or Product Manager Greg. The video is embedded below, but he points to different features within the interface, so imagine that it is placed as it is in the above screenshot.

Google Wave brings its own terminology to the table. For one, a wave itself is a collection of messages. Those messages within a wave are "blips." Blips can be edited and replied to. Anyone that is in the wave at the same time can see replies and blips being typed live in real time. That's live. You can see the characters appear as they are typed.

If you really want to see how Google Wave works, watch this series of videos that Google provides in the preview (they're all very short):

There are other videos that appear in the preview, but these are probably the most useful ones for showing how Wave works.

Now the version of Google Wave that people have access to is just a "preview." It doesn't even come with a beta tag. It's still quite early. Even parts within the preview version are clearly marked as under construction (things like key settings).

The videos provided do not begin to scratch the surface of the potential of Google Wave. With Google allowing developers to create apps or "gadgets" for it, the possibilities will likely be limitless. But as a general "getting to know you" for the common user, the videos provided pretty much explain the core of Google Wave.

Have you used Google Wave yet? Share your thoughts.

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Google Makes the Cloud Cheaper

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:11:03 +0000

Gmail used to offer a gigabyte of storage to new users, but now it offers at least seven gigs. Picasa comes with a gig. Sometimes that's not enough. While Google has offered the ability to pay for additional storage, the company has now reduced the prices for it.

"You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year — that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera," says Google Software Engineer Elvin Lee. "Since most people have less than 10 GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha. If you need more than 20 GB, plans range all the way up to 16 TB, which is enough room for 8 million full resolution photos! And Google paid storage offers an extra level of security, protection and accessibility that you can't get with an external drive — at a similar cost per gigabyte."

The entire price list is as follows:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)

80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)

200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)

400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)

1 TB ($256.00 USD per year)

2 TB ($512.00 USD per year)

4 TB ($1,024.00 USD per year)

8 TB ($2,048.00 USD per year)

16 TB ($4,096.00 USD per year)

"While today's announcement is exciting from a practical standpoint, it's also indicative of one of the strongest computing trends of the year: cloud computing going mainstream," a Google representative tells WebProNews. "A number of factors are helping the average user move to 'the cloud.' First, the technology continually increases in efficiency, so that, as in this case, we can store data ever more cheaply and pass on those savings to our users. Second, a new breed of net-centric hardware is giving consumers faster, easier, more comprehensive access to the cloud --netbooks and smartphones are among the hottest gadgets this holiday season."

When a user purchases an additional storage plan, that plan will be automatically renewed each year. However, if a user wants to, they can disable auto-renewal by going to the purchase page and choosing the free plan. Google will contact users 30 days before renewal. It takes about 24 hours for new storage to appear.

Related Articles:

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Google Maps Adds NYC Subway Layer

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:26:39 +0000

Last night on "30 Rock," Alec Baldwin's character got lost within New York's subway system, and due to being covered in bedbugs, received no help from his fellow passengers. But if the same thing happened to him (or a non-fictional person) today, Google Maps could have come to the rescue.

A post on the LatLong Blog announced this afternoon, "[Y]ou can now see New York's subway lines drawn out directly on Google Maps as part of the transit layer. To turn it on, just point Google Maps to somewhere in New York, click on the 'More...' button at top-right, and select 'Transit.'"

Then, "When you click on any station name, a bubble pops up with the names of the line that service the station, and all the other lines on the screen fade out."

And the transit layer is accessible through Google Maps for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian S60, by the way, so people should be able to take advantage of it while they're on the go.

Lots of New York tourists - and/or GE execs who have been barred from using company cars - are likely to wind up being quite grateful for this offering.

Related Articles:

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Google Street View Hits Hawaii, Mexico

Doug Caverly — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:21:32 +0000

Attention all Street View fans: another update's been announced, and this one could be considered especially significant. Images of Hawaii were released, meaning Street View now has coverage of all 50 U.S. states.

Street View's come a long way since its early days of functioning as a fun little distraction/curiosity. It's now a useful resource for travelers, an advertising aid for businesses, and even a friend of some tourist agencies (the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau worked with Google on this latest update).

Street View remains a nifty way to glimpse cool locations, too, of course. Waimea Bay, which you can see below, is one such spot. On the Official Google Blog, Laura Melahn also recommended Iolani Palace.

And the new Street View update actually includes images originating from a place other than Hawaii; Mexico, our neighbor to the south, was covered for the first time. Shots of Cancun, Cozumel, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, Playa del Carmen, Puebla, and Puerto Vallarta are all available now.

So if you're more a fan of warm temperatures and sea breezes than snow-covered pine trees, this is definitely the update for you. Have fun exploring from your office chair.

Related Articles:

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