Discovering hard-to-find books
Tomorrow is the day we said we'd resume scanning in-copyright works with our library partners as part of our initiative to build a card catalog of books with Google Print. We are in the process of resuming scanning (it may take a little time), so you should soon be able to search across more books from our partner libraries at print.google.com. We've already had great success working with publishers directly to add their works to our index through our Publisher Program, and when we add books with publisher permission, we can offer more information and a much richer user experience.
As always, the focus of our library effort is on scanning books that are unique to libraries including many public domain books, orphaned works and out-of-print titles. We're starting with library stacks that mostly contain older and out-of-circulation books, but also some newer books. That said, we want to make all books easier to find, and as we get through the older parts of the libraries we'll start scanning the stacks that house newer books.
These older books are the ones most inaccessible to users, and make up the vast majority of books – a conservative estimate would be 80 percent. Our digital card catalog will let people discover these books through Google search, see their bibliographic information, view short snippets related to their queries (never the full text), and offer them links to places where they can buy the book or find it in a local library.
We think that making books easier to find will be good for authors, publishers, and our users. We're excited to get back to work making a comprehensive, free, full-text card catalog of the world's books a reality. Happy searching!
Happy Halloween
Remember when we explained how to create seasonal AdWords campaigns in advance of holidays?
Well, if you didn't set an end date for your Halloween campaign yet, here's a quick reminder to log in to your account and pause it. (You can always use it again next year.)
Oh, and happy Halloween from the Inside AdWords crew!
Well, if you didn't set an end date for your Halloween campaign yet, here's a quick reminder to log in to your account and pause it. (You can always use it again next year.)
Oh, and happy Halloween from the Inside AdWords crew!
AdWords success in 25 words or less: the saga continues...
Not long ago, we invited Inside AdWords readers to take their best shot at summarizing how to be successful with AdWords in 25 words or less.
We've received so many great responses that we can't fit them all in one post. Below you'll find a few of our favorites, listed in no particular order, with more to follow in the near future. Thanks to everyone who responded!
(And in case you're wondering, Brad G.'s entry coming first has nothing at all to do with the fact that he mentions Inside AdWords within his first three words!)
Brad G. writes:
Claudio L. writes:
Sean E. writes:
Stay tuned for part three! And, by the way, it's not too late to submit your own version either.
We've received so many great responses that we can't fit them all in one post. Below you'll find a few of our favorites, listed in no particular order, with more to follow in the near future. Thanks to everyone who responded!
(And in case you're wondering, Brad G.'s entry coming first has nothing at all to do with the fact that he mentions Inside AdWords within his first three words!)
Brad G. writes:
Here's my quick (writing on the train) 25 word list:
- Read Inside AdWords
- Map Campaigns
- Tightly Worded Ad Groups
- Compelling Ads Related to Keywords
- Use Negative Keywords
- Focused Landing Page
- Split Test Everything
- Measure All Results
Claudio L. writes:
Here's my shot at it...17 words.
- Your Keywords Equal Your Product, Your Service
- Your Keywords Hit Home!
- Your Customers Hit Your Order Pages!
Sean E. writes:
In 25 words or less...
- Keywords in Title
- Targeted Ad Groups
- Negative Keywords
- Exact and Phrase Matches
- Don't over tweak it! Wait for results
Stay tuned for part three! And, by the way, it's not too late to submit your own version either.
Saying thank you with pictures
I recently got married and wanted to send out thank-you notes together with hundreds of photos our guests took using the cameras we put on the tables. Picasa made the process super easy.
In Picasa, select the folder with your pictures. Click the "Gift CD" button and follow the instructions to set your picture size and CD name. To add a nice effect, check the "Include Slideshow" box -- this adds a slideshow presentation that plays when the CD is launched (way more fun than a boring list of files). For recipients who might enjoy saving the photos and viewing them later, check the box to include a copy of Picasa on the CD (it's only 3.9MB). Click "Burn Disc" and Picasa creates the CD.
The finishing touch: a customized photo CD cover. Select a picture and click the "Print" button. Here's what it looks like:
In the top menu, go to to Tools > Options > Printing, select CD Label Size and click OK. Set CD Label as your layout size and print.
You're done -- and now I'm done with my thank-you "work." I'm happy to report the photo CDs were a big hit.
'Dear Inside AdWords...' - where to ask questions and feeling lucky
The Inside AdWords inbox has been getting a steady stream of emails, and this week, we answer a couple more.
Nick, I’m glad you asked. Ever since we started Inside AdWords, we’ve received all sorts of different inquiries and requests in our email inbox—some AdWords related, some not. Basically, the rule of thumb is: email us at Inside AdWords if you have comments or feedback about the blog, or if you have general AdWords questions that we may be able to answer for the benefit of all Inside AdWords readers. For questions that relate specifically to your account, it's best to send them to the AdWords Support Team; they’re able to review your actual account details and give you the specific advice that you need.
Dear Mark: The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google homepage takes you directly to the most relevant website that Google found for your query. You won't see the search results page at all, but if you did, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site would be listed on top. For example, if you're looking for the AdWords homepage, just type in “AdWords” and click "I'm Feeling Lucky" instead of the Google Search button. Google will take you directly to adwords.google.com. Since no search results are shown when the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is pressed, no ads are displayed with this feature.
Do you have more AdWords questions? You know where to find us. Send them our way and we'll try our best to answer them in a future post.
Is the Inside AdWords email the proper channel for sending inquiries? –Nick A.
Nick, I’m glad you asked. Ever since we started Inside AdWords, we’ve received all sorts of different inquiries and requests in our email inbox—some AdWords related, some not. Basically, the rule of thumb is: email us at Inside AdWords if you have comments or feedback about the blog, or if you have general AdWords questions that we may be able to answer for the benefit of all Inside AdWords readers. For questions that relate specifically to your account, it's best to send them to the AdWords Support Team; they’re able to review your actual account details and give you the specific advice that you need.
What is the difference between Google Search & “I'm Feeling Lucky”? How does “I’m Feeling Lucky” affect how my ads are displayed? –Mark S.
Dear Mark: The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google homepage takes you directly to the most relevant website that Google found for your query. You won't see the search results page at all, but if you did, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site would be listed on top. For example, if you're looking for the AdWords homepage, just type in “AdWords” and click "I'm Feeling Lucky" instead of the Google Search button. Google will take you directly to adwords.google.com. Since no search results are shown when the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is pressed, no ads are displayed with this feature.
Do you have more AdWords questions? You know where to find us. Send them our way and we'll try our best to answer them in a future post.
Image ad answers
Last week, we let you know that image ads could be a valuable addition to your online advertising repertoire. Now, we'll answer some of the most frequently asked questions on the topic:
Because an image ad takes up the entire ad unit on a site in our content network, instead of being one of four text ads on a page, we use an effective CPM, or eCPM, model to rank all ads in the auction. This ensures that both CPC and CPM targeted text and image ads are evaluated in the same manner. As always, the highest ranking ad(s) will be served to our users. If this happens to be an image ad, this means that the ad has an eCPM that is greater than the sum of the next four ads that it out ranks.
Yes. Smart pricing applies to image as well as text ads that are served on the content network. For those who aren't familiar with this feature, smart pricing automatically discounts the cost of keyword-targeted content clicks if our data shows that a click is less likely to convert on that site. This helps you meet your ROI goals on the content network.
You can upload Flash ads in the same manner that you upload all image ads, but make sure you're aware of the following requirements. Flash ads must be 50K or smaller in size and utilize Flash versions 4 - 6. All Flash creatives should also support the clickTAG variable. The clickTAG is the tracking code assigned by Google to an individual ad. It allows Google to register where the ad was displayed when it was clicked, and helps advertisers determine the effectiveness of their campaign. On any click, Flash creatives should redirect to the URL specified in the clickTAG argument; there should be no other redirection in between.
The variable name must be spelled "clickTAG" (upper-case TAG; no space between click and TAG) and not "click tag," "Click Tag," or any other form. This is the proper code for the clickTAG parameter.
on (release) {
if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {
getURL(clickTAG, "_top");
}
}
Remember, Flash ads must follow the same Editorial Guidelines that apply to all image ads, with one exception: Flash ads may not be resized before submission.
So now that you have some more facts about image ads, have some fun outside of the text box ;)
How do image ads compete with text ads?
Because an image ad takes up the entire ad unit on a site in our content network, instead of being one of four text ads on a page, we use an effective CPM, or eCPM, model to rank all ads in the auction. This ensures that both CPC and CPM targeted text and image ads are evaluated in the same manner. As always, the highest ranking ad(s) will be served to our users. If this happens to be an image ad, this means that the ad has an eCPM that is greater than the sum of the next four ads that it out ranks.
I've heard that smart pricing can reduce the price of clicks on content. Does this also apply to image ads?
Yes. Smart pricing applies to image as well as text ads that are served on the content network. For those who aren't familiar with this feature, smart pricing automatically discounts the cost of keyword-targeted content clicks if our data shows that a click is less likely to convert on that site. This helps you meet your ROI goals on the content network.
I'd like to use flash ads, but how do I upload them?
You can upload Flash ads in the same manner that you upload all image ads, but make sure you're aware of the following requirements. Flash ads must be 50K or smaller in size and utilize Flash versions 4 - 6. All Flash creatives should also support the clickTAG variable. The clickTAG is the tracking code assigned by Google to an individual ad. It allows Google to register where the ad was displayed when it was clicked, and helps advertisers determine the effectiveness of their campaign. On any click, Flash creatives should redirect to the URL specified in the clickTAG argument; there should be no other redirection in between.
The variable name must be spelled "clickTAG" (upper-case TAG; no space between click and TAG) and not "click tag," "Click Tag," or any other form. This is the proper code for the clickTAG parameter.
on (release) {
if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {
getURL(clickTAG, "_top");
}
}
Remember, Flash ads must follow the same Editorial Guidelines that apply to all image ads, with one exception: Flash ads may not be resized before submission.
So now that you have some more facts about image ads, have some fun outside of the text box ;)
A must-see TV archive
One of the things that absolutely blew me away when I came on board last year as chairman of the Television Academy Foundation was the Archive of American Television, which is an unequaled collection of videotaped interviews with TV legends.
It's a fantastic resource, and so it drove me crazy that the Archive had over 450 interviews -- but no one could view them if they weren’t actually in Southern California. If a student at a school in Cincinnati or Bangkok wanted to learn more about the history of creative or business aspects of the American television industry, these interviews were just not accessible. So I made it a personal goal to find a way to get the Archive online.
And starting today, anyone in the world can go to Google Video and watch complete and uncut Archive interviews and learn directly from the legends and pioneers on how it all happened. How cool is that?
It’s been 30 years since I was in college, but I can honestly say that if I were just starting out in this business, I would be all over the Archive. I’m such a fan of television that I can’t wait to be able to watch some of the interviews on Google Video – with the men and women who inspired me, and continue to inspire me. One of the Archive legends now online is former NBC head Grant Tinker. Grant helped create “Must See TV” on Thursday nights! There’s also Norman Lear, Ted Turner, Steven Bochco, and so many more. The Archive was created to educate, entertain, and inspire future generations. I challenge you to look up your favorite TV show, learn about a favorite star, or discover more about some of the most important news events of the 20th century. I’m thrilled that the Foundation is finally able to introduce some of these interviews to the world, using the world’s most powerful delivery system – Google. Enjoy!
Update: added URL
Rumor of the day
You may have seen stories today reporting on a new product that we're testing, and speculating about our plans. Here's what's really going on. We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps. We think it's an exciting product, and we'll let you know when there's more news.
Supporting open source
School is a fantastic place to learn, but what if you could introduce students to open source projects, with real problems to solve, and fantastic developers to work with? We thought that would be a pretty terrific way of spending the summer, and with the help of 40 open source, free software and technology-related groups, that is exactly what we did. We call this project the Summer of Code.
Organizations like Apache and Samba and projects such as Nmap, Gaim and Internet2 took part in this program.
Together with these partners, we chose 400 students from 49 countries to take part - and this from a pool of 8,744 applicants, so clearly there's no shortage of talent. We contributed nearly $2 million to this effort via $4,500 grants to each of the participants (and a $500 donation per student to the participating organizations).
Nmap's lead developer, Fyodor Vaskovich, told us that Summer of Code developers "made major improvements to the Nmap Security Scanner, including a more powerful graphical interface and a next-generation remote operating system detection framework." To that we say: excellent. Here's a partial list of participants and projects, and we even threw together a map so people can see how global this program was.
Now that summer is over, we've got a new thing going. Today at the Oregon Governor's office in Salem, we're announcing our support of an open source initiative which two men, Bart Massey and Scott Kveton, at two schools, Oregon State University and Portland State University, have worked very hard to create. Over the last few years, they have collaborated to encourage open source software and hardware development, develop academic curricula and provide computing infrastructure to open source projects worldwide. We're pleased to be able to support their efforts with a donation of $350,000. Here's the official press release about this fantastic project.
More on Google Accounts for AdWords
After our post about how we're updating the AdWords login system to Google Accounts, we received a few more questions from our readers. We want to ensure that you make it through the update process smoothly, so we're back to answer your questions and provide some best practices.
In order for your Google Accounts login to work for AdWords, you first need to go through the Google Accounts wizard. We'll be asking advertisers to do this over the next couple of weeks. You'll know you're being asked to update when instead of going to your account upon login to AdWords, you see the first step of the Google Accounts updating wizard.
If you have an account for Google Sitemaps, Google Groups, or Gmail, you already have a Google Account. When you update your AdWords login to Google Accounts, you can opt to use this same login email and password to access AdWords, so that you can move from AdWords to these other services without having to log in and out. You don't have to create a new Google Account to be able to access AdWords and other Google products; however, if you want to keep these two accounts separate, you can opt to create a new login email and password to access AdWords separately.
If you are a Client Manager and only use your My Client Center login to access your accounts, you just need to update your My Client Center login; you don't have to worry about updating the login to each individual account.
If, however, you work with a Bid Manager or other partner who accesses one of the accounts directly, then they will need to separately update their login to Google Accounts, and you would use your own updated Google Accounts login to access all accounts.
If you are an AdWords API user, or your AdWords account is accessed via the API or managed by a Bid Manager, check out these detailed tips and best practices.
Yes! Whether you are the only person who accesses your account, manage a team of users that access the same account, or use My Client Center to manage multiple accounts, you'll find the scenario that relates to you right here.
I tried logging into AdWords with the email and password I use for Sitemaps, but it doesn't work. What should I do?
In order for your Google Accounts login to work for AdWords, you first need to go through the Google Accounts wizard. We'll be asking advertisers to do this over the next couple of weeks. You'll know you're being asked to update when instead of going to your account upon login to AdWords, you see the first step of the Google Accounts updating wizard.
If I already have an account set up for Google Sitemaps, do I need to create a new Google Account to be able to access AdWords, Sitemaps, and all the other fun Google stuff?
If you have an account for Google Sitemaps, Google Groups, or Gmail, you already have a Google Account. When you update your AdWords login to Google Accounts, you can opt to use this same login email and password to access AdWords, so that you can move from AdWords to these other services without having to log in and out. You don't have to create a new Google Account to be able to access AdWords and other Google products; however, if you want to keep these two accounts separate, you can opt to create a new login email and password to access AdWords separately.
How will this impact people who are using My Client Center to manage multiple accounts? Are we going to have to update each account or just the Client Center login?
If you are a Client Manager and only use your My Client Center login to access your accounts, you just need to update your My Client Center login; you don't have to worry about updating the login to each individual account.
If, however, you work with a Bid Manager or other partner who accesses one of the accounts directly, then they will need to separately update their login to Google Accounts, and you would use your own updated Google Accounts login to access all accounts.
Do you have tips on updating my login if I work with API developers or Bid Managers to help manage my account?
If you are an AdWords API user, or your AdWords account is accessed via the API or managed by a Bid Manager, check out these detailed tips and best practices.
So, do you have a step-by-step guide or additional tips on how best to update my AdWords login to a Google Account?
Yes! Whether you are the only person who accesses your account, manage a team of users that access the same account, or use My Client Center to manage multiple accounts, you'll find the scenario that relates to you right here.
AdWords advertisers and Blogger: A perfect match?
We've heard from several of you that the Inside AdWords blog has come to serve as an important source of up-to-date information, communicated directly from the team behind AdWords. Similarly, the blog has provided an effective (and even fun) means for us to reach you, our valued customers. In fact, we've come to think of it as an online AdWords newsletter, and it functions rather nicely in that capacity.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That, just maybe, a blog might prove to be an effective newsletter for your customers as well?
Imagine it: A place where you could easily tell your customers what's new and interesting about your business, and where you could even show them photos of your latest collection of high fashion widgets from Paris. Perhaps you'd also like to get some useful feedback from your customers? Yep, you can do that too.
A blog is surprisingly easy to create and maintain - and we just happen to know a great place for you to start. In case you're wondering, you'll find lots of ready-made blog templates, so you don't have to be a designer to create a pleasing blog. And, to make it even more interesting, you'll find that it's entirely free.
AdWords advertisers and Blogger. A perfect match? Give it a try, and see what you think.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That, just maybe, a blog might prove to be an effective newsletter for your customers as well?
Imagine it: A place where you could easily tell your customers what's new and interesting about your business, and where you could even show them photos of your latest collection of high fashion widgets from Paris. Perhaps you'd also like to get some useful feedback from your customers? Yep, you can do that too.
A blog is surprisingly easy to create and maintain - and we just happen to know a great place for you to start. In case you're wondering, you'll find lots of ready-made blog templates, so you don't have to be a designer to create a pleasing blog. And, to make it even more interesting, you'll find that it's entirely free.
AdWords advertisers and Blogger. A perfect match? Give it a try, and see what you think.
Guess what just turned 34?
It's difficult to pin down the exact origin of email, but in October 1971, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson chose the '@' symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send the first network email.
At the time, it must not have seemed very important – nobody bothered to save that first message or even record the exact date. I've always thought that it would be fun to witness a little bit of history like that – to be there when something important happened. That's part of what drove me to join a little no-name startup named Google, and it's why I was excited when I was given a chance to create a new email product, now called Gmail.
Of course that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to build Gmail. I rely on email, a lot, but it just wasn't working for me. My email was a mess. Important messages were hopelessly buried, and conversations were a jumble; sometimes four different people would all reply to the same message with the same answer because they didn't notice the earlier replies. I couldn't always get to my email because it was stuck on one computer, and web interfaces were unbearably clunky. And I had spam. A lot of it. With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email – to build something that would work for me, not against me.
We had a lot of ideas, but first we spent a lot of time talking to all kinds of people about their email. They let us watch over their shoulders and helped us really understand how they use email and what they need from it. We didn't want to simply bolt new features onto old interfaces. We needed to rethink email, but at the same time we needed to respect that email already had over 30 years of history, thousands of existing programs, and nearly a billion users. So we started by learning which features were most important, and which problems were most aggravating. We also realized that solving everyone's problems was too big of a challenge for the first release. It would be better to build a product that a lot of people love, than one that everyone tolerates, and so that was our goal.
On April 1, 2004, we rolled out the first release of Gmail. It immediately became known for giving away 1000 MB of storage, while the others only offered 4 MB, as they had for many years. We didn't do that just for the attention (although we certainly got our share). It's just part of our philosophy. We always want to do as much as we can for our users, and so if we can make something free, we will.
But storage was only the most obvious difference, and our other improvements were just as important. Gmail included a quick and accurate search. It introduced powerful new concepts to organize email, such as the conversation view (so now I can finally see all those replies at once). It provided a fast and dynamic interface from web browsers everywhere, popularizing the techniques that have since become known as AJAX.
This interface included many important features not commonly found on the web at that time, such as email address auto-completion, a slick spell-checker, keyboard shortcuts, and pages that update instantly. It included a smart spam filter to get rid of junk mail. Finally, we made an important new promise: you can keep your Gmail address and all of your email, even if you someday decide that Gmail is not for you. Cell phone owners already have the right to keep their old phone number when switching to a new provider, and you should have that same freedom with email. To ensure this freedom, Gmail provides, for free, both email forwarding and POP download of all your mail. Many services are now beginning to include other Gmail innovations; we hope that some day they will also be willing to include this one.
Of course, the launch was just the beginning, and we're still busy improving Gmail. We keep increasing free storage (2656 MB and counting), we offer the interface in 38 languages, and we now have features such as auto-save drafts, so that you don't accidentally lose that half-written message. We know that Gmail isn’t quite right for everyone yet. We’re working on that too – there’s still more we can do for the folder-lovers and devout-deleters out there. But wait, there’s more! :) We also have a new batch of exciting innovations on the way that we hope will shake things up again and make Gmail even better for even more people.
I'm proud of what we've done so far, and am excited about our future plans for Gmail. So celebrate how far email has come by joining its fun future.
A quick heads up
Once again, straight from our tech team:
We'll be performing routine maintenance on the AdWords system from 9pm to 11pm PDT [?] today, Friday, October 21, 2005. While your ads will continue to run as normal, you won't be able to log into your accounts during this maintenance period.
Why we believe in Google Print
We've been asked recently why we're so determined to pursue Google Print, even though it has drawn industry opposition in the form of two lawsuits, the most recent coming today from several members of the American Association of Publishers. The answer is that this program, which will make millions of books easier for everyone in the world to find, is crucial to our company's mission. We're dedicated to helping the world find information, and there's too much information in books that cannot yet be found online. We think you should be able to search through every word of every book ever written, and come away with a list of relevant books to buy or find at your local library. We aim to make that happen, but to do so we'll need to build and maintain an index containing all this information.
It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous, even though they can easily remove their books from the program at any time. The history of technology is replete with advances that first met wide opposition, later found wide acceptance, and finally were widely regarded as having been inevitable all along. In 1982, for instance, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America famously told a Congressional panel that "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." But Sony, makers of the original Betamax, stood its ground, the Supreme Court ruled that copying a TV show to watch it later was legal, and today videotapes and DVDs produce the lion's share of the film industry's revenue.
We expect Google Print will follow a similar storyline. We believe that our product is legal (see Eric Schmidt's recent op-ed), that the courts will vindicate this position, and that the industry will come to embrace Google Print's considerable benefits. Even today, despite its lawsuit, the AAP itself recognizes this potential. The Google Print Library Program, AAP president Pat Schroeder said this morning, "could help many authors get more exposure and maybe even sell more books.” We look forward to the day that the program's opponents marvel at the fact that they actually tried to stop an innovation that, by making books as easy to find as web pages, brought their works to the attention of a vast new global audience.
The point of Google Print
You may have read about the AAP's lawsuit announced today which objects to Google Print. We'll post our comments about that soon. Meanwhile, we offer this commentary from Eric Schmidt. It ran on the op-ed page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and we are reprinting it in full with that paper's permission.
Books of Revelation
By Eric Schmidt
The Wall Street Journal
October 18, 2005
Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written. Imagine an historian being able to instantly find every book that mentions the Battle of Algiers. Imagine a high school student in Bangladesh discovering an out-of-print author held only in a library in Ann Arbor. Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world's books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
That's the vision behind Google Print, a program we introduced last fall to help users search through the oceans of information contained in the world's books. Recently, some members of the publishing industry who believe this program violates copyright law have been fighting to stop it. We respectfully disagree with their conclusions, on both the meaning of the law and the spirit of a program which, in fact, will enhance the value of each copyright. Here's why.
Google's job is to help people find information. Google Print's job is to make it easier for people to find books. When you do a Google search, your results now include pointers to those books whose contents, stored in the Google Print index, contain your search terms. For many books, these results will, like an ordinary card catalog, contain basic bibliographic information and, at most, a few lines of text where your search terms appear.
We show more than this basic information only if a book is in the public domain, or if the copyright owner has explicitly allowed it by adding this title to the Publisher Program (most major U.S. and U.K. publishers have signed up). We refer people who discover books through Google Print to online retailers, but we don't make a penny on referrals. We also don't place ads on Google Print pages for books from our Library Project, and we do so for books in our Publishing Program only with the permission of publishers, who receive the majority of the resulting revenue. Any copyright holder can easily exclude their titles from Google Print -- no lawsuit is required.
This policy is entirely in keeping with our main Web search engine. In order to guide users to the information they're looking for, we copy and index all the Web sites we find. If we didn't, a useful search engine would be impossible, and the same dynamic applies to the Google Print Library Project. By most estimates, less than 20% of books are in print, and only around 20% of titles, according to the Online Computer Library Center, are in the public domain. This leaves a startling 60% of all books that publishers are unlikely to be able to add to our program and readers are unlikely to find. Only by physically scanning and indexing every word of the extraordinary collections of our partner libraries at Michigan, Stanford, Oxford, the New York Public Library and Harvard can we make all these lost titles discoverable with the level of comprehensiveness that will make Google Print a world-changing resource. But just as any Web site owner who doesn't want to be included in our main search index is welcome to exclude pages from his site, copyright-holders are free to send us a list of titles that they don't want included in the Google Print index.
For some, this isn't enough. The program's critics maintain that any use of their books requires their permission. We have the utmost respect for the intellectual and creative effort that lies behind every grant of copyright. Copyright law, however, is all about which uses require permission and which don't; and we believe (and have structured Google Print to ensure) that the use we make of books we scan through the Library Project is consistent with the Copyright Act, whose "fair use" balancing of the rights of copyright-holders with the public benefits of free expression and innovation allows a wide range of activity, from book quotations in reviews to parodies of pop songs -- all without copyright-holder permission.
Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use. If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages. The aim of the Copyright Act is to protect and enhance the value of creative works in order to encourage more of them -- in this case, to ensure that authors write and publishers publish. We find it difficult to believe that authors will stop writing books because Google Print makes them easier to find, or that publishers will stop selling books because Google Print might increase their sales.
Indeed, some of Google Print's primary beneficiaries will be publishers and authors themselves. Backlist titles comprise the vast majority of books in print and a large portion of many publishers' profits, but just a fraction of their marketing budgets. Google Print will allow those titles to live forever, just one search away from being found and purchased. Some authors are already seeing the benefits. When Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, millions of people who searched his name saw the Google Print listing for his book "In the Beginning" (Wm. B. Eerdmans) in their results. Thousands of them looked at a page or two from the book; clicks on the title's "Buy this Book" links increased tenfold.
That's the heart of the Google Print mission. Imagine the cultural impact of putting tens of millions of previously inaccessible volumes into one vast index, every word of which is searchable by anyone, rich and poor, urban and rural, First World and Third, en toute langue -- and all, of course, entirely for free. How many users will find, and then buy, books they never could have discovered any other way? How many out-of-print and backlist titles will find new and renewed sales life? How many future authors will make a living through their words solely because the Internet has made it so much easier for a scattered audience to find them? This egalitarianism of information dispersal is precisely what the Web is best at; precisely what leads to powerful new business models for the creative community; precisely what copyright law is ultimately intended to support; and, together with our partners, precisely what we hope, and expect, to accomplish with Google Print.
Mr. Schmidt is CEO of Google.
Google Accounts for AdWords
You may have seen a message in your account recently about how we're updating the AdWords login system to Google Accounts. To give you more information straight from the source, we asked Ann-Lee, from the Google Accounts team, to answer several questions we thought our advertisers might have.
What is a Google Account?
Do you have to have a Gmail account to update to Google Accounts?
What if advertisers prefer to keep personal and business accounts separate?
So, what should advertisers do now?
What is a Google Account?
A Google Account is a single email and password that gives you a simple and secure way to sign in to multiple Google services, without having to log in and out each time. Your login information is the only thing that will change. All your account information -- such as billing and campaign details -- will remain the same.
Do you have to have a Gmail account to update to Google Accounts?
No, you can use any of your email addresses as your Google Accounts login.
What if advertisers prefer to keep personal and business accounts separate?
You can opt to create multiple Google Accounts, and in this way, separate your personal from your business accounts.
So, what should advertisers do now?
Over the next few weeks, we'll be asking you to update your AdWords login to a Google Account when you first login to AdWords.
Though updating to Google Accounts will remain optional from October 19, 2005 until January 15, 2006, we advise you to complete the process and begin using your new Google Accounts login as soon as possible. After January 15, 2006, you'll need to update before you can access your account.
Reaching local prospects
A lot of advertisers – everyone from realtors to dog walkers, florists to dentists – take advantage of local targeting to specify the cities or regions (or even latitude and longitude coordinates!) where their ads should show.
For businesses which serve particular states, cities, or regions, this is an effective way of focusing your AdWords campaign on your target audience. So how does it work? If a San Francisco dog walking company creates a campaign targeted to the San Francisco area with keywords such as ‘dog walking’ and ‘dog walkers,’ their ad will show when a user, whose Internet Protocol (IP) address identifies her as being located in San Francisco, searches for those keywords.
Google can usually identify the IP address of the searcher to determine their location, then show ads targeted to the relevant area. However, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use a relatively small number of shared IP addresses for a large number of users. In these cases, since we can’t always determine the user’s regional location, we show national and global ads only.
But don’t despair! There’s a way to help ensure that your ads reach as many people as possible in your target area, including users whose location can’t be identified from their IP addresses. Here’s how: in addition to your locally targeted campaign, create another nationally targeted campaign with region-specific ad text and keywords. Our San Francisco dog walkers would target the entire United States, but use keywords like “san francisco dog walker” and “sf dog walking company.” Their ad text for this campaign would make it clear that their business was located in San Francisco as well.
For more information about creating local and national campaigns, check out this quick guide.
For businesses which serve particular states, cities, or regions, this is an effective way of focusing your AdWords campaign on your target audience. So how does it work? If a San Francisco dog walking company creates a campaign targeted to the San Francisco area with keywords such as ‘dog walking’ and ‘dog walkers,’ their ad will show when a user, whose Internet Protocol (IP) address identifies her as being located in San Francisco, searches for those keywords.
Google can usually identify the IP address of the searcher to determine their location, then show ads targeted to the relevant area. However, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use a relatively small number of shared IP addresses for a large number of users. In these cases, since we can’t always determine the user’s regional location, we show national and global ads only.
But don’t despair! There’s a way to help ensure that your ads reach as many people as possible in your target area, including users whose location can’t be identified from their IP addresses. Here’s how: in addition to your locally targeted campaign, create another nationally targeted campaign with region-specific ad text and keywords. Our San Francisco dog walkers would target the entire United States, but use keywords like “san francisco dog walker” and “sf dog walking company.” Their ad text for this campaign would make it clear that their business was located in San Francisco as well.
For more information about creating local and national campaigns, check out this quick guide.
We get letters (3)
This just in: Walid Elias Kai, a Ph.D. in search engine marketing, is, it must be said, an avid fan of our company. Dr. Kai, who is Lebanese, and his Swedish wife Carol live in Kalmar, Sweden, where their son was born on September 12. His name? Oliver Google Kai.
About this choice, Dr. Kai writes, "When we first knew that my wife Carol is pregnant, I said, 'we will name our child Google.' Everyone laughed and did not take me seriously. My brother said, 'Yeah, name the next one yahoo fuji nikon." And then, says Dr. Kai, the day came to make the baby official in the Swedish Registry. "I was with my friend Magnus Foss and my wife Carol, and I said yes, GOOGLE KAI. Carol knew how serious I am – she knows how much I adore Google services."
Clearly not one to shy away from a unique moniker, Dr. Kai also tells us that in the Lebanese tradition both parents have a name related to the child. "All our friends and families are calling us Abou Google (Google's father) and Emm Google (Google's mother)."
Of course, there's a website devoted to young Mr. Kai. We wish him long life and good health, and hope his schoolmates aren't too hard on him.
Our ongoing privacy efforts
We updated our privacy policy today. We know privacy is important to our users, and it's important to us, too. That's why we work hard to let people know how we collect and use personal information to provide our services. A clearly written privacy policy is part of this effort. In this update, most of the terms are the same, but there are two important differences:
First, we created a short, one-page "highlights" notice summarizing our privacy practices. We hope this is easy to digest and understand at a glance. Second, we provided even more detail about our privacy practices in the full-text privacy policy and lots more detail in the accompanying FAQs. The goal of both is to help you make informed choices about using our services.
Designing privacy protection and user choice into Google products is an ongoing effort. Please let us know how we're doing.
AdWords success in 25 words or less
Long ago, in the misty past, someone challenged me to sum up how to be successful with AdWords in 25 words or less. My best effort at the time is shown below, and I think it still serves as a pretty good summary.
However, I'm betting that one of our readers might do an even better job, so I invite you to put my version to shame. Send us your best effort, and sometime soon we'll publish the top results.
I can't wait to see what you all come up with! In the meantime, here's mine:
However, I'm betting that one of our readers might do an even better job, so I invite you to put my version to shame. Send us your best effort, and sometime soon we'll publish the top results.
I can't wait to see what you all come up with! In the meantime, here's mine:
- Targeted Ad Groups!
- Specific keywords describing your products
- Ads about same thing as the keywords
- Send user to a highly related page on your site
More Firefox-Toolbar synchronicity
If you’ve been holding off on upgrading to Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 because you’d miss out on great toolbar features like Suggest and Spell Check, then wait no more! The latest version of the Google Toolbar is fully compatible with the newest rev of Firefox.
Advertising outside of the (text) box
All AdWords advertisers are familiar with the text ads that show alongside the Google search results and across the Google Network. After all, each one of you has created at least one. However, not everyone is aware of the power of image ads. These graphical AdWords ads are served on content sites in the Google Network and allow you to reach your customers in a whole new way.
You can create image ads in both keyword and site-targeted campaigns, so you have control over the reach and placement of your ads. Creating a keyword-targeted campaign will allow your image ad to be placed on relevant content sites across our network, while you are able to choose the specific sites where you'd like your ad to show with a site-targeted campaign.
Whatever you decide, and we do suggest that you test and track your results, you can take advantage of both static and animated image ads. We accept image ads (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF), as well as Flash (.SWF), which is a new addition.
Before you add a little image ad flair to your advertising campaign, make sure you review our Editorial Guidelines for this type of ad. These specify the do's and don'ts of image ad creation and steer you down the path to image ad success. Once you're comfortable with these guideliens, you can create an image ad using one of the five ad sizes accepted. Remember, you can create multiple image ads per Ad Group, and it's always best to test until you find what works best for you. Questions? Let us know, and we'll help clear them up.
You can create image ads in both keyword and site-targeted campaigns, so you have control over the reach and placement of your ads. Creating a keyword-targeted campaign will allow your image ad to be placed on relevant content sites across our network, while you are able to choose the specific sites where you'd like your ad to show with a site-targeted campaign.
Whatever you decide, and we do suggest that you test and track your results, you can take advantage of both static and animated image ads. We accept image ads (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF), as well as Flash (.SWF), which is a new addition.
Before you add a little image ad flair to your advertising campaign, make sure you review our Editorial Guidelines for this type of ad. These specify the do's and don'ts of image ad creation and steer you down the path to image ad success. Once you're comfortable with these guideliens, you can create an image ad using one of the five ad sizes accepted. Remember, you can create multiple image ads per Ad Group, and it's always best to test until you find what works best for you. Questions? Let us know, and we'll help clear them up.
Financial reporting: the alphabet soup
Warning: Financial reporting minutiae below. Proceed with caution.
We're going to provide a bit more information with our October 20 earnings announcement. In this and future announcements, we're going to include a so-called pro-forma, or non-GAAP, diluted earnings per share (EPS) number as a supplement to our GAAP EPS number.
In the past, we've only provided GAAP EPS. But because Wall Street analysts typically estimate and describe our results with non-GAAP EPS numbers, that resulted in some confusing apples-to-oranges analyses of our results. (By the way, we review non-GAAP results when we analyze our own performance.) By providing both, we hope it will be easier to understand our results.
Now, if you’ve got your green eyeshade handy, read on. What follows is in accountant-speak.
Earnings per share is calculated by dividing profit (net income) by the number of outstanding shares. That's GAAP. To compute our non-GAAP EPS, we’ll add back to our net income things such as charges for stock-based compensation. (Before adding back stock-based compensation – or other certain charges – we’ll factor in related taxes. What does that mean? When we add back a charge, we subtract the tax benefit related to it that we would get under GAAP accounting. In other words, in the non-GAAP calculation we don't want to include the GAAP tax benefit.) After tax-affecting the charges and then adding them back to net income, we'll take that sum, divide it by outstanding shares and come up with our non-GAAP EPS number.
To illustrate all of this with a fictitious example, let's assume these imaginary data points:
- GAAP net income - $300 million
- Stock-based compensation charge - $100 million (note that other charges in addition to stock-based compensation may be excluded from the computation and presentation of our non-GAAP results as appropriate in the future)
- Tax affect of stock based compensation charge - $35 million
- Shares outstanding for Google - 600 million
$300,000,000 / 600,000,000 = $0.50Now, to get the non-GAAP EPS, we would:
- Subtract the $35 million tax affect from the $100 million stock-based compensation charge to arrive at $65 million
- Add that $65 million to the $300 million GAAP net income for a new, non-GAAP net income of $365 million
- Divide $365 million by 600 million shares outstanding and get a non-GAAP EPS of $0.61.
($300,000,000 + ($100,000,000 - $35,000,000)) / 600,000,000 = $0.61As if this weren't complicated enough, we should note that most, if not all, analysts have historically computed our non-GAAP earnings by adding stock-based compensation to net income without tax-affecting the charge. As a result, when we provide our non-GAAP EPS number, we may be adding back less to compute our non-GAAP earnings than will most of the analysts.
Using the same set of imaginary numbers, analysts might, for example:
- Add the full $100 million stock-based compensation charge to the GAAP net income of $300 million and arrive at their non-GAAP net income of $400 million
- Divide that by outstanding shares and arrive at non-GAAP EPS (for the fictitious example, $0.67 per share)
($300,000,000 + $100,000,000) / 600,000,000 = $0.67Congratulations to those of you who were able to make it this far. We're sorry for the density, but this is dense stuff and we've got to be comprehensive in our explanation of it.
Target with even more precision
As we've mentioned, site targeting allows you to hand pick sites from our content network where you'd like to show your ads. Now, we're taking it to the next level. Last week, we introduced site sections, a feature that allows you to target a specific section or page of a site.
So, why are site sections useful? Many sites contain diverse content including only a limited number of pages that are relevant to your business interests. With site sections, you can choose to show your ads only on those pages. For example, imagine that an advertiser is selling soccer cleats and would like to target the site www.SportsExample.com, which contains a large volume of information about different sports. However, this advertiser doesn't want her ads for soccer cleats to show up next to articles about ice hockey or football. Instead of showing her ads across the entire 'SportsExample.com' site, she can limit them to 'SportsExample.com/soccer', the section of the site that contains relevant content.
If this sounds like something you'd like to try, you can add a site section when creating a new site-targeted campaign, or by clicking on the 'Edit Sites and CPMs' link in your existing site targeted campaign. Once you've added your site section and clicked 'Save,' your ads will be eligible to start showing on the pages that you listed.
So, why are site sections useful? Many sites contain diverse content including only a limited number of pages that are relevant to your business interests. With site sections, you can choose to show your ads only on those pages. For example, imagine that an advertiser is selling soccer cleats and would like to target the site www.SportsExample.com, which contains a large volume of information about different sports. However, this advertiser doesn't want her ads for soccer cleats to show up next to articles about ice hockey or football. Instead of showing her ads across the entire 'SportsExample.com' site, she can limit them to 'SportsExample.com/soccer', the section of the site that contains relevant content.
If this sounds like something you'd like to try, you can add a site section when creating a new site-targeted campaign, or by clicking on the 'Edit Sites and CPMs' link in your existing site targeted campaign. Once you've added your site section and clicked 'Save,' your ads will be eligible to start showing on the pages that you listed.
About Google.org
When we told prospective shareholders about Google and how we wanted to do business, we said that we hoped our philanthropic efforts could some day have a greater impact than Google itself. We committed one percent of our profits and equity toward that vision. We’ve looked closely at how those resources can have the greatest impact and found that there are many creative and effective ways to make a difference. So we’ve taken time to investigate, learn and imagine. And while we are still actively engaged in the learning process, we’ve made enough progress that we thought it was a good time to give an update on our plans.
As our founders said in our 2004 annual report, we’re taking a broad approach. We’re calling the umbrella under which we’re putting all of these efforts Google.org. It will include the work of the Google Foundation, some of Google’s own projects, as well as partnerships and contributions to for-profit and non-profit entities. Here are some things we're already working on:
We established the Google Foundation, funded it with $90 million and have made a few initial commitments. We've contributed $5 million to support Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund that invests in market-based solutions to global poverty. Acumen Fund supports entrepreneurial approaches to delivering affordable goods and services for the 4 billion people in the world who live on less than $4 a day.
We’re also working with TechnoServe to build small businesses that create jobs and promote economic growth in the developing world. With TechnoServe, we are funding an entrepreneurship development program in Ghana that includes a business plan competition and seed capital for the winners to build their businesses.
In addition, we are working with Alix Zwane and Edward Miguel of UC Berkeley and Michael Kremer of Harvard University to support research in western Kenya to identify ways to prevent child deaths caused by poor water quality.
Google.org also includes projects we manage on our own, using Google talent, technology and other resources. An example is the Google Grants program, which gives free advertising to selected nonprofits. To date, Google Grants has donated $33 million in advertising to more than 850 nonprofit organizations in 10 countries.
Current Google Grants participants include:
Make-a-Wish Foundation - grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions. More than 25 percent of their online donations are made as a result of their Google ads.
Doctors Without Borders - delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, disasters, and exclusion from health care in nearly 70 countries. Google Grants has assisted them with recruiting experienced doctors and nurses for their field programs, which has helped them increase applications by 30 percent this year.
Grameen Foundation USA - uses microfinance and innovative technology to help the world's poorest people escape poverty. Google Grants has helped them attract donors and broaden their newsletter subscriber base.
With Google.org, we’ll also support entities with strong social missions which use market-based solutions for sustainable economic development. One example is our recent donation of $2 million to the One Laptop Per Child program.
While the results we get are more important than the amount of money we give, we want to be clear about how we’re going to keep our “one percent” commitments. There are two parts: equity and profit. For the one percent of equity, we have committed one percent of the outstanding shares that resulted from our initial public offering – 3 million shares. We’re going to donate and invest this amount over a period of as much as 20 years. Because it is based on stock, the dollar value of this commitment will rise and fall with our stock price
We’ll follow through on the other commitment – one percent of profit – by taking one percent of each year’s profits and donating and investing that too. Our first step in meeting these commitments includes a $90 million cash donation to the Google Foundation and a commitment of up to $175 million over three years across our other Google.org efforts. We don’t expect to make further donations to the Foundation for the foreseeable future.
As Larry and Sergey said in their Founders’ Letter, “We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the world's problems."
We feel fortunate to have the opportunity to contribute our resources, talent, energy, and passion helping to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. We will provide you with updates as our work progresses.
Bird flu basics
As flu season approaches, there's been a lot of talk about bird flu. I thought I'd try to clarify some of the issues and misconceptions around this illness. I keep up with news on this and other emerging diseases in a number of ways, including Pro-MED, which is produced by the Federation of American Scientists, and the World Health Organization site. You can also read lots more at the CDC site, especially here.
Bird (avian) flu is an influenza virus type A that normally infects birds, but can also infect pigs and other animals. Wild birds, the natural hosts, normally don't get sick from this virus, but domestic animals such as chickens and turkeys can be severely affected severely. Humans, meanwhile, can be infected with influenza types A, B, and C.
Genetic changes and sharing (the closest thing viruses have to sex) can occur under certain circumstances such as in crowded conditions where poultry, pigs, and people live in close quarters. This change can allow a virus to become much more infectious to humans and more easily transmitted from person to person. And this is where a "pandemic" comes in: it's a worldwide outbreak of a new influenza A virus between humans, while epidemics tend to be seasonal, involving viruses that already exist.
For you history buffs, previous pandemics include:
1918-19: Spanish flu. Caused more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S., and 50 million worldwide.
1957-58: Asian flu. 70,000 deaths in the U.S.
1968-69. Hong Kong flu. 34,000 deaths in the U.S.
Both the 1957-58 and 1968-69 pandemics were caused by viruses containing a combination of genes from a human and an avian influenza virus. It may be reassuring to note that the number of deaths has decreased with each pandemic, possibly due to better supportive medical care.
The avian flu's jump to humans was first detected in 1997, although all the human deaths reported so far (about 60 since 2003) have been due to transmission from animals to humans. There has been more concern recently because the virus has been detected in migratory birds which can't be caught and killed - and which may carry the virus to Europe and Africa within the next two migratory seasons.
The consensus is that although it's possible an avian flu epidemic may occur, no one can predict if it will take place in weeks or years. It all depends on when that genetic shift (from birds to humans) takes place.
There has been no detection of this virus in the U.S. It is possible for travelers to be infected, but most of the cases in humans have been in those with closer contact to birds than a casual traveler has. Since the infection occurs via fecal-oral route, to reduce your risk while traveling, avoid bird markets, zoos, and areas in parks, etc. with high concentrations of bird feces.
Countries that are the most vulnerable to this flu are Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia, due to their high concentration of bird markets. Other areas involved are Thailand, China (south and north), Tibet, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. For an update on outbreaks before you travel, check the CDC info for southeast Asia and east Asia.
Symptoms of bird flu in humans have ranged from typical flu-like symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches) to eye infections and pneumonia. If you feel you've been exposed, there are a couple of treatment recommendations available today that you may want to discuss with your doctor. Until these are tested in a pandemic, however, their true efficacy is unknown. There are currently no vaccines available, but many companies are working on them.
Bottom line: For now, avian flu is just a "virus of interest" to medical researchers. Of course, you should always consult with your own doctor about any medical conditions or risks that concern you.
The Green Goddess beckons
Another of our chef candidates has come, cooked, and left us with this tangy offering. (Previous recipes are here.)
Green Goddess Dressing
1 bunch green onion, ends trimmed
10 sprigs parsley, stems removed
6 sprigs fresh thyme
2 tsp. dry tarragon
5 sprigs fresh dill
5 anchovy fillets
1 c. mayo
3/4 c. sour cream
3/4 c. white or red wine vinegar
1 T. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
2-3 cloves garlic
Throw all ingredients in a blender (preferably rinsed of margarita residue), and blend, blend, blend. If you've got time, let it sit overnight - this helps marry the flavors and enhances the tarragon.
Transfer the dressing, rinse blender well and resume margaritas while waiting to serve Green Goddess on your favorite salad, as a veggie dip, or as a sauce for fish or chicken. If refrigerated it will last up to a week or more.
Setting (y)our Q4 goals
In case you’re wondering why we’ve been a bit quiet in the first half of this week, our team was taking some time to sit down and review our blog statistics and set new goals for this quarter. In the graph below, we’ve plotted out the number of Inside AdWords readers since we launched in May. As you can see, the graph is a nice “up and to the right”, as they say, but we’re still a bit short of our goal of having lots of Inside AdWords readers (see the shaded yellow region for more information). We’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that even if you don’t want to come visit the blog everyday, you can still take advantage of our site feed, or our posts-by-email in order to keep up with all the AdWords tips and updates we have to offer.
As we approach the busy holiday season, be sure to take a step back and think about your own goals as well. Whether you want to promote sales of your seasonal merchandise or to continue your trend of “up and to the right” performance, we hope that AdWords can help you attain your goals—in Q4 and beyond.
[Figure 1. Graph of Inside AdWords readership (October 2005)]
As we approach the busy holiday season, be sure to take a step back and think about your own goals as well. Whether you want to promote sales of your seasonal merchandise or to continue your trend of “up and to the right” performance, we hope that AdWords can help you attain your goals—in Q4 and beyond.
Feed the world
So we've added a new experiment to Google Labs: Google Reader, a service we hope helps you spend more time reading what's important to you (or is, if you'd prefer, nicely diverting). The Reader team is excited to begin iterating in public, and now that Jason Shellen's announced it at Web 2.0 we're excited to get your feedback on this early-stage effort.
We often get asked how anyone's supposed to keep up with the firehose of stuff launched from the web's spigot, so we're offering Reader as a way to help. Like the Personalized Homepage, it's a part of Google's ongoing effort to bring together personalized web content to make information more relevant to users.
And, because I rarely get a forum like this, I'd personally like to thank Google for being able to participate in building Reader with the sorts of accomplished engineers who help keep these web bits pretty interesting. (Waves to Search, Gmail, Maps, Print, News, Suggest, etc.) Thankfully, we're not alone -- everyone involved from corporate entities to thousands of independent developers seem to be focused on lowering the barrier to entry for actually making feeds useful.
For a quick intro to Reader, take the tour, or just get started. I'd make recommendations from my starred items, but a quick scan reveals "still waters running deep" isn't me - I keep my item pool filled with snark (Gawker) or techno-fetishism (Engadget, I'm looking at you).
So go to Google Labs and give it a try. If you're interested in making Reader better, please let us know, as we plan on keeping the experiment alive and kicking as long as there is stuff being syndicated.
'Dear Inside AdWords...' - a couple of follow-ups
In my personal opinion, the best part of 'Dear Inside AdWords...' is having the opportunity to engage readers and advertisers to share their AdWords tips and to let us know when we’re not providing enough information. In the past, we've provided some solutions to your questions, and today, I've gathered a couple of follow-up emails that we've received in response to our posts.
Nice catch, Assaf. Thanks for sharing that tip!
With pleasure! There are two potential places where the served percentage will be displayed. Log in to your AdWords account, and go to the Ad Group of your choice. If your Ad Group contains only one ad, the served percentage will be shown to the right of the ad text as "Served - X %" under the number of clicks, CTR, and CPC information. If you have more than one ad in your Ad Group, click the "View all below" link to the right of the first ad (see first screenshot below), and you'll be taken to the bottom of the same page. Under each of the ads, you'll see the same "Served - X %" figure (see second screenshot below).
Thanks again to Assaf and Nelson for writing in to share their insight and ask for clarification. We'd love to be all-knowing, but sometimes we need a little prodding from you in order to provide all the information you may need.
Regarding your answer to Brandon H.'s question on searching for URLs that did not contain specific terms: you actually can do this, using the Find and Edit Ad Text Tool. If you go to Tools > Find and Edit Ad Text, check "Destination URL", choose "does not contain" in the drop-down menu, input in the box the tracking code, and then choose "Just show me these ads", you'll get all the ads that do not contain that term. -- Assaf G.
Nice catch, Assaf. Thanks for sharing that tip!
One of your posts mentioned that the 'served percentage' is located under the ad statistics in each Ad Group. I can't seem to find it. Can you point me in the right direction? -- Nelson W.
With pleasure! There are two potential places where the served percentage will be displayed. Log in to your AdWords account, and go to the Ad Group of your choice. If your Ad Group contains only one ad, the served percentage will be shown to the right of the ad text as "Served - X %" under the number of clicks, CTR, and CPC information. If you have more than one ad in your Ad Group, click the "View all below" link to the right of the first ad (see first screenshot below), and you'll be taken to the bottom of the same page. Under each of the ads, you'll see the same "Served - X %" figure (see second screenshot below).
Thanks again to Assaf and Nelson for writing in to share their insight and ask for clarification. We'd love to be all-knowing, but sometimes we need a little prodding from you in order to provide all the information you may need.
Google goes to Washington
It seems that policymaking and regulatory activity in Washington, D.C. affect Google and our users more every day. It’s important to be involved - to participate in the policy process and contribute to the debates that inform it. So we’ve opened up a shop there. The first member of our Washington team is Alan Davidson, a veteran thinker and advocate for issues we care about.
Our mission in Washington boils down to this: Defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation. OK, that sounds a little high and mighty, so let me break it down into something a bit wonkier with a sampling of the U.S. policy issues we’re working on:
Net neutrality. As voice, video, and data rapidly converge, Congress is rewriting U.S. telecommunications laws and deregulating broadband connectivity, which is largely a good thing. But in a country where most citizens have only one or two viable broadband options, there are real dangers for the Internet: Should network operators be able to block their customers from reaching competing websites and services (such as Internet voice calls and video-on-demand)? Should they be able to speed up their own sites and services, while degrading those offered by competitors? Should an innovator with a new online service or application be forced to get permission from each broadband cable and DSL provider before rolling it out? Or, if that’s not blunt enough for you, what’s better: [a] Centralized control by network operators, or [b] free user choice on the decentralized, open, and astoundingly successful end-to-end Internet? (Hint: It’s not [a].)
Copyrights and fair use. Google believes in protecting copyrights while maintaining strong, viable fair use rights in this new digital age. We support efforts by the U.S. Copyright Office to facilitate the use of orphan works (works whose rights-holders can’t be found), while fully respecting the interests of creators. We applauded the Supreme Court’s carefully calibrated decision in the Grokster case, but worked to defeat legislation that would have created new forms of liability for neutral technologies and services like Google.
Intermediary liability. As a search engine, Google crawls the Internet, gathering information everywhere we can find it. We’re a neutral tool that allows users to find information posted by others – like a continuously updated table of contents for the Internet. Not surprisingly, we don’t believe the Internet works well if intermediaries and ISPs are held liable for things created by others but made searchable through us. That’s why Google will continue to oppose efforts to force us to block or limit lawful speech; instead, we focus on providing users the information, tools, and features (such as SafeSearch) they need to protect themselves online.
This is just a taste. We’re also engaged in policy debates over privacy and spyware, trademark dilution, patent law reform, voice-over-Internet-protocol (VOIP) regulation, and more. The Internet policy world is fluid, so our priorities will surely morph over time. And, of course, Google is a global company. In a future post, we’ll introduce you to some of the policy issues we’re confronting outside the U.S.
25 cent CPMs for Site Targeting!
In June, we launched site targeting, a feature that allows you to select specific sites in our content network where you'd like your ads to show. Now, we're lowering the minimum CPM bid required to target these sites to $0.25. You don't have to make any changes to your currently running site-targeted campaigns, but if you'd like to adjust your bids or create a new campaign, you can now bid as low as $0.25.
Remember, with site-targeted campaigns, you'll still compete with keyword-targeted ads for placement on the content network. Therefore, make sure you experiment to find the CPM that works for you. If you're looking to show up consistently on a highly popular website, you'll still need to bid competitively; however, the lower minimum bid will allow you to more accurately price your ad placements on a wider variety of sites.
Remember, with site-targeted campaigns, you'll still compete with keyword-targeted ads for placement on the content network. Therefore, make sure you experiment to find the CPM that works for you. If you're looking to show up consistently on a highly popular website, you'll still need to bid competitively; however, the lower minimum bid will allow you to more accurately price your ad placements on a wider variety of sites.
How I got to Google, ch. 1
-- via craigslist, and thanks for asking. Our engineers, though, tend to come by more varied, and occasionally odder, routes. Some get recruited out of grad school, or by friends or former colleagues. Others just send their resumes to jobs@google.com. For a few engineers, though, the path has been more interesting. Peter Bradshaw, for instance, built “a music playing system based on printed cards with barcodes and webcams. Includes lego!” (No, I don’t know what that means, either.) Over the next few weeks, we’re going to post some of their stories.
Like this one, from Systems Administrator Aaron Joyner:
My story started when I came into work one morning and was unable to look up something on Google. Being the sysadmin for my company at the time, it was my responsibility to resolve the problem, so I started poking around. It turned out that our DNS server [ed: all the jargony stuff you'll hear in this anecdote refers to the software that websites use to connect and talk to each other] was returning an error when trying to look up google.com, specifically a server failure error. Just as I’d convinced myself that it wasn't our problem but Google’s, the problem suddenly resolved itself. I promptly forgot about it and went back to my regular work.
But then I came in the next morning and had exactly the same problem, so I started looking at Google's DNS responses very closely. It became clear that the specific combination of delegations and glue records they were returning [ed: see note above] would result in an eventual error approximately once per day, and this would then take it about five minutes to give up and try again. Not entirely convinced that I should point the finger at Google yet, I posted a message to my local Linux Users Group asking if anyone had had problems with resolving google.com addresses and got a couple "Yeah, I did have a problem like that once recently" responses.
Thus reinforced, I headed over to Google.com, found the "Contact Us" page and the "Report a problem" link, chunked in a brief problem description and a link to the archived copy of the long technical description from that same mailing list thread, and thought to myself, "Gee, I'll never hear about that again." But then one afternoon a week later I get an email that said, basically, "We've received your problem report, and forwarded it on to the appropriate department, if they need any further information they’ll contact you. Thanks." Again, I thought, "Gee, how nice. I'll never hear about that again."
But that evening I got an email from Dave Presotto (the guy who wrote the DNS server for Plan9) saying that he was looking into it and would get back to me. Forty-five minutes later I got another email, this one describing how he believed they had accidentally fixed the problem earlier in the week due to general code cleanup, and asking what I thought of the solution. After I recovered my senses and stopped bouncing around the room, I had a few email exchanges with Dave, in the course of which I asked casually if they needed any good sysadmins out in Mountain View. He referred me, and the rest is history.
A Friday visit to the database of intentions
Over the past few years I’ve made at least a dozen 90-minute treks from my forested perch at the north end of San Francisco Bay down to the Googleplex, which sits at the heart of Silicon Valley. The reason? I was writing a book, and Google was a major part of the story. I always enjoyed the drive, I’d go down to interview the founders, early product managers, recent hires and advisors, and I’d drive up with a full tape recorder and plenty to think about.
But last Friday I drove down for another reason. My book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, has just come out, and much to my astonishment, Google invited me down to give a talk. While Google staffers were extremely generous with their time, the fact remained that the book told the story as I heard it from many different sources, inside and outside the company. And on my own Searchblog, where I cover search and its implications, I've been known to call Google out as often as I offer praise.
As I drove down, I fretted over any number of things. Who might show up for the talk (what if no one did?!). What mistakes might be pointed out - flaws in my reporting, my writing, or my conclusions? What if the famously combative Google culture turned on me?
I needn’t have worried. My host Karen Wickre, whom I’ve known since my days as a cub reporter at MacWeek, met me at the door, and before I could make my way to the lecture hall, a clutch of friendly folks had surrounded me. Once there I saw Louis Monier, founder of Alta Vista and the star of Chapter Three, who had recently left eBay to join Google. And Peter Norvig, Google’s director of search quality, who helped me understand Google’s core search service and even presented at my Web 2.0 conference last year. And many more, many of whom I had spoken to, but most of whom I had never met.
I began by explaining how I came to write the book, a three-year odyssey which started with a link, back in late 2001, to Google’s first Zeitgeist. I read how I came to the idea of the Database of Intentions, and I read some funny emails from webmasters who had encountered the early BackRub crawler. And because it was clear the audience wanted to ponder the future of the company they had joined, I read from the chapter entitled “Google Today, Google Tomorrow.”
The best part, by far, was the Q&A that followed. Googlers are some of the most sincere questioners I've ever encountered. The exchange felt very much like conversations I've had with graduate students when I was teaching at Berkeley - no agendas, just a desire to challenge and to learn. Afterward folks lined up to have me sign their books. As the line dwindled, I looked behind me and there was Eric Schmidt, who more than any other source went out of his way to lend me his time and insights. He shook my hand and thanked me for coming, and I have to say, I was honored by the gesture. I did my best to be fair in the book, but it's never easy to read about yourself, to be the subject of someone else's conclusions. The same could be said of the entire Google team who came to listen and to converse, and I'm truly grateful for the experience.
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