Google India Blog

Google Search by voice now on Nokia S60 phones

2009-11-02T06:00:00.010+05:30

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Do you use a Nokia S60 phone (most N and E series phones) to search on Google? Isn't typing queries difficult with the 12-digit keypad?

We've received a lot of requests to develop our search by voice feature for these phones. We're happy to announce a new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 that includes the search by voice feature for queries spoken in English.

Downloading the Google Mobile App places a shortcut to Google search on your Nokia phone's home screen. It's now fast and easy to search for anything on the Internet. Holding down the call button activates voice search so you can speak your query. Search by voice is not limited to simple queries. Try complex queries like -- "pictures of gateway of India", "what is the length of a cricket pitch", or even something very Indian like "makki ki roti and sarson ka saag recipe".

You can also type queries quickly thanks to Google Suggest, which provides search suggestions for common queries. You can search for anything — from "kebab corner" to "coffee shop".
Whether you're in Bangalore or Gurgaon, you can turn on the My Location feature to give you the most relevant results nearby.

Check out the video to see search by voice and other cool features in action.

If you've got a Nokia S60 phone and want to download the new version of Google Mobile App, visit m.google.co.in from your phone's browser.

Posted by Karthik B, Software Engineer

* All trademarks belong to their original owners.

Fast, simple and now stylish: Google Chrome with Artist Themes

2009-10-07T17:17:00.008+05:30

We're always keen to share updates about our browser Google Chrome. This past month, we launched a new stable release with speed improvements and updates to key features, as well as a little something extra to make your browser pop: themes. Today, we're excited to build on this initial splash of color. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from around the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser.

The result? Artist Themes for Google Chrome, a fusion of art and technology, with a hundred Artist Themes that we hope will enrich and personalize your web browsing experience.

We're honored to have had the opportunity to work with artists including Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Casey Reas, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Mariah Carey (and that's just to name a few!). For a taste of India, we have Bollywood themes based on much-loved blockbusters and new releases. We would like to extend our thanks to all the artists for lending their vision, imagination and hard work to this collaboration.

For a behind-the-scenes look at one illustrator's unique creative process, check out the Google Chrome Blog. And for a preview of these themes, here's a video flipbook we've compiled to showcase some of the artistry behind this project:

If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, download the latest version and give the Artist Themes a whirl.

Posted by Saurabh Chandra, Product Marketing Manager

Google India Women in Engineering Award, 2010

2009-09-15T19:57:00.038+05:30

Diversity at Google means having a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customers' perspectives, ideas and cultures - one that thinks and acts inclusively, and fundamentally values people's similarities and differences.

As part of our ongoing commitment to encourage excellence in computing and technology, we instituted the Google India Women in Engineering Award in 2008, with the objective of recognizing and rewarding deserving women students in the field of Computer Science and Engineering.

With two successful editions behind us, we are pleased to announce the Google India Women in Engineering Award, 2010. This year we will be accepting applications from September 15, 2009 to October 31, 2009. The award is open to any woman student of Computer Science in an under-graduate, post-graduate or doctoral program that meets the application criteria.

Aspirants to the award will be assessed on their academic excellence, passion for Computer Science and demonstrated leadership.

Winners will be announced in 2010 and will take home a sum of INR 1,00,000 each. The winners will also be invited to join a conclave at the Google India engineering office, comprising a technical discussion with Google engineers, workshops, break out sessions, panel discussions and the award ceremony.

See highlights from previous years here.

Posted by Jayashri Ramamurti, Human Resources Manager, India

Orkut helps advertisers to engage with their customers

2009-09-10T22:49:00.011+05:30

As the #1 social networking site^* in India, orkut helps over 17 million people stay connected - whether it’s uploading photos, videos or simply leaving a message. orkut is home to hundreds and thousands of communities and applications. Users talk about food, sports, travel, gadgets, movies, art, automobiles, schools.. almost everything.

orkut now offers an opportunity for marketeers to use the power of this social medium to engage with their audience. All kinds of businesses, from large brands to a local small enterprise, can now drive awareness and engagement for their products and services on orkut using Google Adwords.

1. Orkut allows advertisers to reach the largest online audience^* in India

Over 17 million active users. That’s more than 45% of the Indian online population

Over 6 billion pageviews in India each month

Average user visits the site 10 times each month, spending 12 minutes per visit

2. Orkut allows advertisers to focus on the users they care most about

With the highly-specific targeting options that orkut allows advertisers, they can now choose to show their ads to groups or individuals based on their age, gender, interests, geography and keywords

3. Orkut allows advertisers to get high visibility for their budget and goals

Ads appear on prominent positions on users' homepages, community pages and search results within orkut.

With only one ad position per page, the ad is guaranteed high visibility and increased user recall.

Advertisers can choose to pay on a ‘per click’ basis or on a ‘per impression’ basis depending on their campaign goals

4. Orkut allows advertisers to be creative

Advertisers can use an ad format that best suits their promotion.

Orkut supports text, static images, animated images and flash ads. We would continue to add more formats for advertisers to make the ads interesting and useful for orkut users

5. Orkut allows advertisers to tap into the power of AdWords

Google AdWords brings performance and measurement to marketing campaigns on orkut.

Advertisers get the best value for their marketing spends in an auction-based model. They can start, pause and modify campaigns at any time. They can also track performance with real-time reporting and gain insights about user's reactions.

Ad campaigns for orkut can be setup on Google AdWords by selecting social networks and online communities in the placement tool

6. Orkut allows advertisers to create custom solutions for brand building

For advertisers who require very high visibility and for those are sensitive to campaign time slots, orkut offers a 'custom branding' solution. With this option, advertisers can run targeted display ads in orkut communities and on users' homepages.

The custom solution allows advertisers to purchase and reserve ad impressions in advance. They can also block an entire day’s traffic for their ads to increase the impact of their brand campaign.

For personalized support to build the best brand campaign, advertisers can contact the Google sales team by mailing orkut-india-sales@google.com

* source: comScore, Media Metrix, July 2009

Posted by: Srikanth Belwadi, Kushagra Shrivastava & Savio Barretto

Location extensions, a new way to run local ads

2009-08-17T09:41:00.008+05:30

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We’re announcing a new way to run local ads in the new AdWords interface – location extensions. Location extensions allow you to "extend" your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching relevant business addresses to your ads.

If you're a primary business owner, you can set up extensions by linking an AdWords campaign to your Local Business Center (LBC) account. If you're not the primary business owner of the locations you're advertising, you can manually enter addresses directly into AdWords. For example, a clothing brand that distributes to a number of different stores might want to associate their ads with various store locations through extensions, even though their official business address doesn't correspond to those addresses.

Once extensions are set up, Google will dynamically match your locations to the user's location or search terms and show relevant addresses with your text ads. If we're unable to determine a user's location or if there are no relevant addresses to show, we'll simply show your ad without an address. If you don't want to dynamically match addresses to your ads and prefer to choose one particular address to show with one particular ad, you can do so by setting up specific location extensions for individual ads. Your ads can show on Google and Google maps with their relevant extensions and as regular text ads on search and content partner sites.

Location extensions will be rolled out over the course of a few weeks, so this feature will be available to some advertisers starting today and will become visible to everyone in the coming weeks. To learn more about location extensions, read the location extensions overview section of the Help Center.

Posted by Kushagra Shrivastava, Product Specialist

Google Transliteration now Available in Urdu and Punjabi

2009-07-30T13:33:00.003+05:30

We firmly believe that users deserve a great online experience regardless of the language they speak. This belief is what inspired us to build our transliteration service to provide an easy and intuitive way to type in languages for which keyboard support was not available or not widely used. We are happy to announce the launch of transliteration support for Urdu and Punjabi. Transliteration allows users to type words phonetically using their english keyboard. For example, in Urdu, you can type "shukriya" to get شکریہ and in Punjabi, you can type "duniya"to get ਦੁਨਿਯਾ . If a word did not get transliterated correctly, hit the backspace key or select the word to see list of alternatives to select from. Typing Control + G allows you to switch between english and local language typing.

Launching Urdu and Punjabi has been a true labour of love for our team. Urdu brought with it some unique challenges: since it is written right to left, we needed to ensure that editing functions such as backspace, tab, etc all work as expected. Urdu diacriticals, or 'Aerabs', also needed special attention as they map the vowel sounds but are not necessarily visible in the word. For Punjabi, the 'addak', 'tippi' and 'bindi' posed its own challenge as they change the intonation of the previous character. We hope that Urdu and Punjabi speakers in India, Pakistan and elsewhere in the world find this tool useful to type in their native language.

With this launch our transliteration service now supports twelve languages, including: Hindi,Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati,Marathi, Nepali and Arabic

As always, we would love to hear from you; let us know what you think.

Posted by Sridatta Chegu and Anupama Dutta, Software Engineers

Internet Bus arrives in Andhra Pradesh

2009-07-21T18:20:00.010+05:30

Google India is continuing it's efforts to increase awareness about benefits of the Internet in India. Google Internet Bus is an initiative to reach out to people with limited knowledge and exposure to Internet. After an overwhelming response from people in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, we are excited to announce the arrival of the bus in Andhra Pradesh. The bus will visit educational institutes and public places in 16 towns of Andhra Pradesh in the next 48 days. The campaign will focus on four themes – education, information, communication and entertainment. Interactive content - in English and Telugu - will be used to highlight benefits of Internet in people's daily lives.

The Internet bus has traveled across 35 towns so far, reaching thousands of first-time Internet users in each town. The interest we have seen has surpassed our expectations. It has been very exciting to see people from different walks of life, visit the bus and learn about what Internet could do for them. The Bus has helped introduce the Internet to many people, such as a group of farmers in Karnataka, who explored the Internet for agro-development, and a local artist, who learned how tools like Picasa can be used to showcase his work to a global audience.

Mobile based products have been a big hit. In Andhra Pradesh, we will lay special emphasis on this medium and showcase how people can access Internet even on low cost data plans and handsets. We will also engage cyber café owners with an aim to build local advocacy for this powerful medium.

Users across India can follow the bus through its journey, see pictures & videos,

and join online communities by simply visiting http://www.google.co.in/internetbus.

They can also subscribe to receive SMS alerts in Telugu and English with useful

tips on the Internet.

Posted by Srikanth Belwadi and Nishant Nair

Get Google Analytics Ready!

2009-07-17T08:53:00.007+05:30

Most customers do not make purchases in their first visit to an e-commerce website. Most clients do not make potentially multi-million dollar RFP submissions on their first visit to a corporate website. And very few visitors become staunch followers of a website immediately after their first visit. These facts reflect a trend that suggests an evolution of the way in which we interpret data and website-metrics. Stand-alone metrics such as visit volume and average time spent on the site may often not paint a complete picture of website performance.

So how does one identify the best metrics to understand how long it takes to complete a sales cycle, or improve customer loyalty? To help marketers make smarter business decisions, the Google Analytics team brings to you Google Analytics Conversion University - a one-day live event in Gurgaon.

Polish your Google Analytics skills and better understand your website visitors, and what they want.

Marketers new to the online analytics can get an overview here of what makes Google Analytics a must-have. And for the more seasoned Analytics users we have incorporated an eclectic variety of experts in the field including in-house Analytics product experts and GA partners (Google Analytics Authorized Consultants). In addition, we also have our resident analytics celebrity Jesse Nichols, a Google Analytics guru involved in increasing awareness and adoption of Google Analytics among online marketers, presenting at the event.

Ready to slice and dice your web analytics data? Join us for the marathon on August 8, 2009.

Venue and Time: The Google Gurgaon Office on August 8, 2009

For registration and more details, please visit: www.getGAready.in

Posted by Diana Vincent and Akanksha Shukla for the Google Analytics Team

Top tips for webmasters in India

2009-06-24T07:54:00.004+05:30

Ever wondered how duplicate content is handled or how to report a hacked site? Are you a beginner webmaster or owner of a small business wanting to get online?

We got Adam Lasnik, Google's Search Evangelist to answer many such questions for you. Jayan, our webmaster forum guide from India, interviewed Adam recently.

Below is an excerpt from the interview.

Watch the complete interview by visiting this playlist on our Youtube webmaster channel.

And here are the top ten tips from Adam to all the webmasters in India:

1. Focus on original and compelling content as the foundation of your site.
2. Put the core content and navigation of your site in text rather than graphics or Flash.
3. Link thoughtfully. Link to sites you trust and respect.
4. Test your site on multiple browsers, including on mobile phones.
5. Don't be fooled into paying for guaranteed Google rankings.
6. Take advantage of the free online resources at Google Webmaster Central.
7. Get attention and respect for your site by responsibly participating in online communities.
8. Protect your site and its visitors. Update your blog/site software to prevent hacking.
9. Use succinct and distinct title tags and image "alt attributes" to help users and Google understand your site's content
10. Focus on your passions and your users - then traffic and revenue should follow.

These tips are simple and will help you in the long run. Take it from Adam.

Posted by Paul and Manasa , Search Quality Team

Google Mobile App for BlackBerry goes Indian

2009-06-11T12:40:00.029+05:30

In March, we introduced Google Mobile App for BlackBerry to make search easier and faster. We are excited to announce the availability of Google Mobile App in India with My Location and voice search.

With this app you get local business suggestions even before you click the search button if My Location is enabled. Suppose you are craving for some caffeine. You can just type "coffee" and get the closest cafe near you. With a single click on the suggestion you can call them or look it up onGoogle Maps for mobile.

Get the latest version of Google Mobile App at http://m.google.co.in/

Do you miss the ICC World Twenty20 matches? Do you find typing on the tiny mobile keyboard cumbersome? Just speak "cricket scores" into your Blackberry to get the latest updates. Google Mobile App is truly Indian now, all you need to do is select Indian English from the options menu.

Isn't search by voice easier than typing?

Ever confused about the right way to spell Indian names? Say, you were interested in finding out more about our Lok Sabha speaker, Meira Kumar but you are not sure how her name is spelled. Just speak her name and we show you the correct web results for "Meira Kumar". However, if you said "Meera bai" we would give you the alternative spelling even though "Meira" and "Meera" have identical pronunciations.

To install the the app, visit m.google.co.in on your BlackBerry browser. The app is free to download and use, although your mobile provider's regular data charges will apply. We encourage you to try out the app and leave feedback about your mobile experience in the help forum. For more details check out our help center.

Posted by Pankaj Risbood and Rutvik Doshi, Google Speech Team

Translating the world's information into Indian languages.

2009-06-09T15:12:00.014+05:30

In the offline world, most Indians prefer to read, interact, and communicate in their native language rather than English. However, in the online world, Indian language usage remains a small fraction of English usage. One of the primary reasons for this difference is the lack of high quality online content in these languages. At Google, we believe that language is a key for universally accessible information and people should be able to consume information in their preferred language. Google Translate, our automatic translation system, is pretty handy when it comes to quickly translating and understanding a web page, but to create a more polished and professional looking page, it could use a human touch.

Today, we launched Google Translator Toolkit, a powerful but easy-to-use editor that enables translators to bring that human touch to machine translation and create high quality content in their native language. With the large number of Indians who are proficient in English and are passionate about their native language, we hope that this will catalyze the process of making the internet more relevant to Indian users. For example, if you would like to translate a Wikipedia™ article about your city into Hindi, you can simply upload the corresponding English article into Translator Toolkit, review and correct the automatic translation, and click publish. By using Translator Toolkit's bag of tools – translation search, bilingual dictionaries, and ratings – you can translate the article faster, better into Hindi. With the transliteration support integrated in the toolkit, you can create content by typing phonetically using the English keyboard. Best of all, our automatic translation system can learn from your corrections, creating a virtuous cycle that helps translate into local languages faster

Besides Wikipedia, we've also integrated with Knol, and we support common document types including Word and HTML. For translation professionals, we provide advanced features such as terminology and translation memory management.

For more information, check out our introductory video below. And if you're a professional translator or just a linguaphile, try Google Translator Toolkit for easier and faster translations. Be sure and let us know what you think. Thank you for your help in making information more accessible to Indian language users.

Posted by Sanjay Bhansali & Sunil Chandra, Google Translator Toolkit Team

What's your IQ ?

2009-06-04T15:39:00.003+05:30

In today's market, it's more important than ever to understand market trends, customer behavior, and maximize ROI. However large or small your website may be and whichever way you drive traffic to it - organic, partner sites, or paid marketing channels - Google Analytics can track it, from click to conversion.

Have you found yourself struggling with measuring the amount of time visitors spend on your website, tracking conversions, or implementing tracking across multiple domains? So, here's your chance! We are now offering a free, online course to increase your knowledge about Google Analytics. The curriculum consists of over 20 self-paced online lessons. It covers everything ranging from Google Analytics implementation, account administration, and data analysis to web analytics techniques and best practices.

Think you're already good at it? Mastered the art of Analytics? It's then time to test your IQ! You can take the Google Analytics Individual Qualiﬁcation (IQ) test.

While Google Analytics is easy to use for beginners, it is also a very powerful tool in the hands of knowledgeable users. Qualified users will be effective at leveraging the tool’s capabilities and deriving the greatest insights from the data, be it for business or personal websites. If you score 75% or above in the test, you will be awarded a Google Analytics Individual Qualification Certificate, which means that you will also have a Google qualification to spice up your resume.

For course details, visit ConversionUniversity.com. This includes details on how you can purchase the test, as well as all the FAQs and the link to the Google Analytics IQ test .

All the best!

Posted by Neha Jain and Dinesh Jain for the Google Analytics Team

Type in your language on any website

2009-05-28T11:35:00.006+05:30

We launched our first transliteration application on Google India Labs two years ago: it let users type in Hindi using an english keyboard. Since then we've expanded our coverage to nine Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Tamil, and Telugu). We have also added the transliteration feature to several Google products such as Blogger, Knol, Orkut, Gmail and iGoogle. For other products, we released an API that lets 3rd party sites embed this technology at no charge. However, the most common user feedback we still receive is requests to add transliteration to even more products. We are actively working on simplifying the use of Indian languages on more websites.

With that in mind, we are happy to announce the launch of a new feature, Transliteration Bookmarklets, that will let you use transliteration on a website that does not support it currently. Transliteration Bookmarklets is a browser-based application that lets you type in your language in any text box on any website and gets added to your browser much like a regular bookmark.

For example, you can use them to:

Chat with your friends in your language using Gmail chat.
Search for Google news articles.
Send messages in your language on your favorite social networks.
Create or edit wikipedia pages in your language.

Once you install the bookmarklet on your favorite browser (we support Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari), you can simply turn transliteration on/off in the browser itself.

To get started, click on the links for one of our supported languages and follow the instructions on the page: Arabic, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. Alternatively, you can follow the links at http://code.google.com/p/t13n/.

Type away, and let us know what you think.

Posted by Sarveshwar Duddu, Software Engineer

Webinar for new publishers in India

2009-05-20T08:45:00.011+05:30

If you're new to AdSense and would like help with getting started with your account, you may find an answer to your questions during a webinar that we are hosting this Friday evening just for you. In this webinar, we'll walk you through the basics of your account, show you how to start displaying ads, and also answer your questions via chat.

Highlights:-
- Learn how to make the most of your AdSense account.
- Get an opportunity to chat with some AdSense specialists.
- Get detailed insight into different account features.

Here are the details you'll need before registering :
Date: Friday, May 22, 2009
Time: 5:00pm - 6:00 pm IST
Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=570623736

We're only able to accommodate a maximum of 250 people, so we encourage you to register early if you're interested in this session.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by - Soumya Rao - The AdSense India Team

Google Transliteration now available for Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Nepali

2009-05-14T10:01:00.021+05:30

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India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with several hundred languages and dialects in active use. The 2001 Indian census estimates that there are 29 languages with more than one million native speakers each. Unfortunately, this wonderful variety is not reflected in the online world. While the amount of content available online in Indian languages is growing, it is still relatively small; most online content is still in English. To make it easier to create content in local languages, we launched a transliteration service that allows users to type words phonetically using an English keyboard. We are pleased to announce that our transliteration service is available in four additional languages: Bengali, Gujarati,Marathi and Nepali (it was already available in Hindi,Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam).

You can try this service at our transliteration labs page and in the transliteration iGoogle gadget. Type "aami" to get আমি, "aapane" to get આપણે, "aahe" to get आहे or "chan" to get छन् in Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Nepali respectively. We would love to hear from you; let us know what you think.

Posted By Sridatta Chegu, Software Engineer

The Great Indian SearchMasters

2009-05-08T09:37:00.000+05:30

Webmasters, the wait is finally over!

Videos of all the sessions from the Google India SearchMasters '09 Conference are now live on our Google WebmasterHelp Youtube Channel. If you really wanted to be at the event but couldn't, this is the perfect resource for you to catch all the talks on video.

Follow this playlist to view all the sessions.

Here are a few highlights:

Watch Adam Lasnik and Koti Ivaturi's talks on Google Webmaster Central and our Help Forum for an excellent insight into Google's webmaster resources. In his Q & A session , Adam answers several questions that many webmasters in India have on their mind.

Watch the other talks which have some great takeaways for webmasters who want to try Google Custom Search ^TM, better understand Google Analytics ^TM and really want to know how to build a mobile friendly version of their site.

Happy viewing!

Posted by - Manasa and Paul, Search Quality Team

Internet Bus journey continues in Karnataka

2009-05-05T20:41:00.007+05:30

Google India is continuing it's efforts to increase awareness of the benefits of Internet in India. Our goal is to take the Internet "straight to the people", therefore kick-starting adoption.

Along with the recent product launches of driving directions on India Maps, SMS Search, Gmail in Indian Languages, we are directly engaging with the Indian users through the Internet Bus program. After a successful tour in Tamil Nadu, we are launching the program in the South Indian state of Karnataka.

Tamil Nadu was a big learning for us and it was inspiring to see that people wanted to know about the internet and share their needs with us. This experience has reinforced our belief that awareness is a key challenge in the growth of the Internet in India and we are excited about bringing this campaign to yet another state. The bus will travel through 15 towns in the next 50 days.

Inside the bus, we make the learning hands-on. Along with interactive "learning booths", showing custom videos , we have "explore booths" to let visitors try out what they have just learned. The Internet Bus will focus on four themes – information, communication, entertainment and education. The content will provide familiarization on using services like search, email, social networking, online maps and mobile. All this information will be available in English and Kannada.

Users across India will be able to follow the bus through its journey, see pictures and videos and join online communities by simply visiting http://www.google.co.in/internetbus.

Posted by Srikanth Belwadi & Nishant Nair

Plan your journey with Google Maps!

2009-05-01T08:17:00.003+05:30

Navigating the myriad road network of Indian cities is a challenge that all of us face everyday. One often wonders whether there is a better, maybe off-beat, way to get to the destination and ease the daily commute.

With the launch of driving directions for India on Google Maps^TM on desktop and mobile, you now have an option to explore ways to get from point A to point B anywhere in India. If you don't like the suggested route, you can just click and drag the blue route line to navigate through your favorite route. Even better, on your cell phone, just see where your friends are on Latitude, get directions to them and catch-up.

So, the next time you want to travel between cities like Bangalore to Mysore, or even within a city like Connaught Place to Vasant Vihar, you can use Google Maps to find your way around. Simply search for driving directions by typing "source to destination" like "Mumbai to Pune" in the search box. Or, right click on any location on the map and get directions to/from the location. You can also click on "Get Directions" and type the start and end addresses. e.g. Wilson College, Mumbai to Bandra Railway Station, Mumbai.

How about planning a multi-stop journey? Just click "Add Destinations" or drag the blue line and enter another stop on your journey.

Also, if you are a local expert, and see that there are some things that might need to be updated, such as old road names, unmarked one-ways or no-longer-in-use turns you can head over to Google Map Maker where you can edit them.

You can get more information on directions on our help pages for desktop and mobile .

Go ahead and take some of the hassle out of planning your next journey with Google Maps. Happy driving!

Posted by - Anand Srinivasan, Software Engineer, Zareer K'Maneck, Strategist Online Operations (Geo), Manik Gupta, Product Manager

IPL scores, commodity prices, local time and richer train info - more power in your hands with Google SMS Search !

2009-04-24T00:18:00.022+05:30

Looking for live IPL scores, current time in New York, today’s gold price, availability of seats or fares for trains from Bangalore to Mumbai ?

We have recently enhanced our SMS Search offering to bring you all that and more. A simple SMS to 9-77-33-00000 gives you instant access to Google SMS Search and that too at the cost of a normal SMS.

SMS ‘cri’ to 9-77-33-00000 to get much more than just international match scores; send 'cri ipl' for instant IPL scores, 'cri ipl ' (for example 'cri ipl knight riders') for your favorite team score and 'cri ranji' for domestic match updates.

Apart from stock prices, we now provides commodity prices as well. Just SMS 'price gold', 'price oil', or 'price cotton' to know the MCX spot prices for these commodities. To learn more, sms 'help commodity' to 9-77-33-00000.

Trying to call a friend in New York and wondering what time it is for him ? For an instant update on local time in any city or country in the world, simply sms 'time ' to 9-77-33-00000. For example 'time new york'

Didn't you wish you could do more than just getting your PNR status and train schedule on SMS ? We now provide seat availability and fare information as well. For ex. to check seat availability for 24th April on train #1018, going from Bangalore to Mumbai, simply sms 'train avail 1018 Bangalore to Mumbai on 24-04' or if you want to know the fare for sleeper class, sms 'train fare 1018 Bangalore to Mumbai for SL'. To learn more, sms 'help train' to 9-77-33-00000.

To learn more about various interesting features, please visit http://www.google.co.in/sms or SMS 'help' to 9-77-33-00000.

Posted by Deepali Singla and Naga Naresh, Software Engineers, SMS Search Team

Share your passion for Indian food through the Indian Cooking Knol-edge Contest!

2009-04-22T15:19:00.006+05:30

Are you tempted to preserve your family recipes when you spot "Just like mother used to make" next to a delicious curry on a roadside dhaba menu? Do you have a unique take on chai or biryani that you want to share with the rest of the world? Here's your chance! Google is launching the Indian Cooking Knol-edge Contest to find the best recipe in five Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam) based on the recent launch of Indic Transliteration on Knol. Indic Transliteration helps you type in Indian languages using an English keyboard. For example, you type Hindi words with English alphabets and the Hindi word that you've written with English alphabets will be converted into Hindi characters after you hit Space or Enter. For example, typing "aloo" in English transliterates into Hindi as आलू . Similarly, "urulakizhangu" becomes உருளைகிழங்கு in Tamil and ഉരുളകിഴങ്ങ് in Malayalam while "bangaladumpa" becomes ಬಂಗಳದುಮ್ಪ in Telugu and "aalugadde" becomes ಆಲುಗಡ್ಡೆ in Kannada.

Master Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, one of the most well-recognized faces of Indian cuisine, will be the judge of the contest. As the host of Khana Khazana, one of the longest running TV shows in the history of Indian television, he continues to share his love for cooking with millions. This contest is being run on Knol, which is a powerful new Google product that enables users to share their expert knowledge in a well-organized, easy manner and highlight their authorship of this content. Knol was born out of the recognition that we need a tool to unlock the incredible knowledge of millions of people that is not readily available on the web today. The launch of Indic Transliteration on Knol has further opened doors for more users to share high-quality content in Indian languages. By bringing both Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Knol together through this contest, we are offering users a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share their passion for Indian food and a chance at showcasing their culinary genius to the world. Prizes worth 150 USD for each winner and Google goodies for the next 40 shortlisted entrants won't hurt either!

For everything else you need to know about the contest from the steps for writing a Knol in Indian languages to the detailed rules and regulations, please visit the Indian Cooking Knol-edge Contest now.

Jayadev Vadakkanmarveettil, Consumer Operations Strategist and Rahul Roy-chowdhury, Product Manager

Google Latitude on orkut- share your live location with friends

2009-04-16T12:24:00.001+05:30

Some of you may have heard about the recent launch of Google Latitude, a fun new way to share your live location with friends. For those of you who aren't familiar, Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that lets you (if you choose to opt-in) share your whereabouts and receive updates about your friends' approximate locations.

While we've already launched an iGoogle gadget, we knew that our launch couldn't be complete without bringing this to orkut. That's why a group of us on the Google Mobile team have created a Google Latitude application.

With this app, you can share your location and see your friends' locations on a map inside of orkut. Notice that an old friend is back in your hometown? Just click on her photo and send a scrap or head to her profile page and see what she's up to.

If you use Google Latitude from your mobile phone, you can even send your friends updates on your location while you're out and about, making it easier to bump into the people you care about.

Of course, none of this would be very much fun at all if you didn't have control over what and when you share and who you share it with. We've taken Latitude's privacy features very seriously and invite you to learn more about them in either the Help Center or by watching this privacy video.

Excited? Add the app and let your friends know where you are!

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Team

India's 15th general election: tools for citizen empowerment

2009-04-06T17:19:00.007+05:30

At Google, we believe information is fundamentally empowering. While all of our technologies demonstrate a commitment to this guiding principle, information is especially important when a society comes together to participate in democratic elections. Beginning ten days from today, more than 700 million eligible voters in India will over the course of four weeks have the opportunity to participate in the largest democratic event in human history — India's 15th general election.

Today, along with a wide range of partners, we are happy to announce the launch of the Google India Elections Centre - available in English and in Hindi.

People from across India can use the centre to do the following:

Confirm their voter registration status
Discover their polling location
View their constituency on a map
Consume relevant election-related news, blogs, videos, and quotations
Evaluate the status of development in their constituency across a range of indicators
Learn about the background of their Member of Parliament and this year's candidates

With still more features to be added during the election, we hope the site will be an ongoing resource for analysis, governance, and democracy in India after the election.

This project would not have been possible without the shared vision of a broad coalition of partners: the Association for Democratic Reforms, HT Media Limited, Indicus Analytics, the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, the Liberty Institute, and PRS Legislative Services. These groups are the true champions of promoting a more transparent democracy, and we're privileged to be able to shine a light on their work on the occasion of India's 15th Lok Sabha polls.

We're hopeful not only that the elections centre will further a culture that seeks access to information, but that it will also yield positive changes in voting patterns during the upcoming polls.

Please visit the site, select your constituency, and get started! Spread the word about what you learn and, of course, don't forget to visit the polls.

Posted by Rishi Jaitly, Senior Policy Analyst, and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager

Change to the Minimum Pre-payment Amount and Activation Fee in India

2009-04-03T13:00:00.004+05:30

Two important billing changes have come into effect for advertisers in India:
- The minimum amount of a pre-payment has increased from INR 120 to INR 500.
- The activation fee for creating a new account has increased from INR 60 to INR 250.
Read on for more information about these changes:

I. Minimum Prepayment Amount
The minimum pre-payment amount has increased from INR 120 to INR 500 for AdWords accounts with billing addresses in India and a selected currency of the Indian Rupee (INR). All cheque or demand draft payments must be at least INR 500, or we'll be unable to process the payment.

If you make a net banking payment, you'll be unable to enter an amount less than INR 500 on your Make Payments page.

We have increased the minimum pre-payment amount to alleviate the common problem of small payments being used up very quickly. This results in unwanted ad down-time until the advertiser can replenish his or her account balance. With a higher minimum pre-payment amount, advertisers will have to make pre-payments less frequently, which will help keep their ads running continuously. The increased minimum amount will be adjusted against the customer's total budgeted amount.

See a list of frequently asked questions about prepay.

II. Activation Fee
Advertisers creating a fresh AdWords account on the Indian Rupee (INR) will be charged an activation fee of INR 250 rather than the current activation fee of INR 60. The purpose of this increase is to bring the India activation fee in line with that of other countries.

Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google

Schools get the "App"titude in India

2009-03-31T11:28:00.003+05:30

Many schools and universities across the world have been going online to increase the efficiency of their day-to-day operations through Google Apps Education Edition. The increased adoption of schools moving to Apps has been particularly significant in India, especially as a result of our recent Got the "App"titude Challenge. This challenge encouraged students, faculty members, and alumni from engineering and management schools throughout India to move their institutions to Google Apps.

The challenge created quite a stir, and after launching in August, more than 6,000 teams signed up consisting of students, faculty, and alumni. Each team worked with their own IT staff to identify challenges and limitations with their existing email and collaboration systems, and then, working with a Googler, demonstrated the ways in which Google Apps could mitigate these issues.

As a result of the challenge, more than 100 colleges across India are now in the process of implementing Apps on their campuses. Some of these schools include National Institute of Technology - Calicut, Zakir Husain College of Engineering & Technology- Aligarh Muslim University, and Jaypee Business School.

The performance of each team was evaluated by measuring product usage after their deployment. We'd like to extend our congratulations to the XL CONNECT team from Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) - Jamshedpur, who won the challenge by demonstrating the highest usage of Google Apps products. This team ran a pilot and implemented Google Apps within less than a month from the day they secured approval from their college's decision makers. They also conducted marketing campaigns to inspire students to find innovative ways to use Google Apps tools. Chintan Agarwal, secretary of the Systems Society at XLRI says, "Considering the need for a networked manager and the high reliability and usability of Google Apps, we have rolled-out Apps services for all XLers, including international students at Singapore and Dubai."

Below is a map of all the schools across India who will be rolling out Apps on campus after participating in the challenge. We look forward to continuing to fill up the map as more schools across the globe get the "App"titude.

Posted by Preethi and Shashank, Google Apps India Team