Google Has Code Snippets?
Mar 29, 2009 business, marketing, sem, seo
I just ran across this search results page on Google and happened to notice the “Code Snippet” section. Has that always been there? I know Google has been testing some new “Search Refinement Features” lately, is this one of them, or have I just never noticed it before?
Have Google always included "Code Snippets" in their SERPs?
UPDATE: Yes, Danny Sullivan notified me that Google has included Code Snippets since at least last year.
NASA / Google’s Singularity University Has Been Suspended
Feb 3, 2009 Uncategorized
NASA / Google recently announced their new Singularity University project. It looks pretty cool except for one little thing. Their site (hosted at BlueHost) seems to have been suspended. (All these brilliant people and they can’t keep their site up.)
Tags: google, nasa, singularity, singularity u, singularity university, university
Google Shuts Down Notebook, Jaiku, and More
Jan 15, 2009 business
I just read that Google has decided to shut down a handful of unpopular (or unprofitable) services. These include Jaiku, Notebook, Google Video, Dodgeball and Mashup Editor.
Jaiku will is already in the process of being ported over to the Google App Engine and will live on as an open source project (though it will no longer be managed by Google).
Google Notebook will continue to function (though it’s unclear how long) for current users but the browser bookmarklet will be disabled. New users will not be able to create accounts.
Google Video has long taken a back seat to YouTube (another Google property). I don’t think too many people will be sad to see it go.
Google Dodgeball was intended as a “mobile social networking service that lets you share your location with friends via text message”. (Why you can’t just text your friends directly, I don’t know.) It will be completely shut down though a timeframe has yet to be established.
Google Mashup Editor, similar in functionality and purpose to Yahoo! Tubes, will be shut down in 6 months. Authors are encouraged to move their projects over to the Google App Engine.
The closing of all of these projects/services begs the question, what will be the fate of other less popular, less profitable Google services such as Knol (a Wikipedia clone)or GrandCentral (a universal phone number and voicemail system)?
How do you feel about these services being shut down? Do you use any of them? Will you miss them?
Tags: google, google app engine, google notebook, google video, grand central, jaiku, knol, mashup editor
Google Wishlist?
Dec 26, 2008 Uncategorized
I just stumbled across Google Wishlist, a type of universal wishlist based around Google Product Search. Is this something new, or have I simply never noticed it before? Basically you start by finding a product through Google’s product search (originally called “Froogle”) which itself is based on Google Base. If it has been around for any significant period of time, then adoption is apparently really low. If it is something new, interest is apparently quite low because I don’t hear anyone else talking about it. I guess we’ll see. Personally, I’m still a huge fan of Amazon’s Universal Wishlist.
Has you used (or even heard of) Google Wishlist?
Tags: britney spears, froogle, google, google product search, product search, wish list, wishlist
Google Analytics gets an Enterprise Upgrade
Google has announced several upgrades to their popular Analytics application. On Tuesday, they announced a fresh new look for the program. It’s nothing drastic, but rather a bit of a clean-up job. It also seems to be a bit faster although I’m not sure if this was intentional or a happy side-effect of the redesign (or ‘realign‘ if you will).
On Wednesday – that’s today – they announced several additional functionality improvements including advanced segmentation, “motion charts”, adsense reporting, custom reporting. and an API.
Motion Charts
Google’s new “Motion Charts” tool allows you to observe a particular keyword’s (or group of keywords’) performance over time. You have full control segmentation dimensions that are displayed as x- and y-axis, bubble size, bubble color, and motion over time. This gives the user unprecedented insight into a campaign’s performance and will be very useful to webmasters.
Advanced Segmentation
Segmentation has always been possible within Google Analytics, but you were limited to the slices that were already prepared. With their new Advanced Segmentation tools, you can choose a nearly infinite number of segments, filters, values, etc. And my favorite feature? You can save your segmentations for future use. Over the course of time, that will save hours of work and make it infinitely easier to draw useful insights from the data.
Custom Reporting
Have you ever wanted to see a particular report in Google Analytics but couldn’t figure out how to make Analytics show it to you? Me too. But the new Custom Reporting feature lets you create reports that contain only the metrics you want to see. Just define the metrics you want to analyze along with the dimensions you want to see. (If you want, you can even define sub-dimensions.) And like “Advanced Segmentation”, you can save all your custom reports for future use. See the video below for an example.
AdSense Integration
If you use Google’s AdSense program, today is a great day. Analytics now contains (or will soon contain… it’s rolling out slowly) new reporting just for you. Using the new functionality, you’ll have insight into a wealth of new data such as: AdSense revenue, AdSense revenue per 1000 visitors, # of AdSense ads clicked, # of AdSense ads clicked per visitor, AdSense CTR, and much more. You’ll be able to see which of your content generates the most AdSense revenue, and which of your referrers pushes the most profitable traffic. Combine all that with the new segmentation and reporting features, and you’re well on your way to optimizing your site for profitability.
API
For those of you who don’t know what an API is, it’s a way of extracting data out of a program (in this case, Google Analytics) for use in another program. By offering an API, Google is making it easier for developers to write programs that can extend the functionality of Google Analytics but providing additional services using the data from Analytics. This is great news for you. It means that soon, there will be even more ways to slice & dice your site’s information using data from Analytics.
What do you think of the new functionality (and more importantly, the new look 
)
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Tags: analytics, google, google analytics, redesign, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web design, web development, website redesign
