I Heart Paper {Diva's}!

Recently, we had a chance to work with Wedding Paper Diva's - and their work is really beautiful and very affordable. One of the many reasons to work with Wedding Paper Diva's is that they offer a Free Proof of your order, which is fantastic, because seeing really is believing.



They have a new LetterPress Invitations which is out-of-this-world-beautiful, if you haven't had an opportunity to take a peek, there are so many options and it's really gorgeous!

They also have a new Cultural Wedding Invitations, which adds to their already expansive line of beautiful stationary!

When you have a moment, head on over and take a peek.

Mariana Torres

Fotos:

TV Azteca

Hello from A2

We set up shop in Ann Arbor, Mich. nearly two years ago. And we’ve been so busy, we’ve barely had time to say hi. But before we tell you about the interesting things we're doing in our new location, we figure you might want to know a little bit more about our state and our town.

Sandwiched between two Great Lakes, peppered with forestry, and teeming with kindhearted Midwesterners, Michigan is the kind of place you'd be lucky to visit and we get to live here. Not only that, but we’re located in Ann Arbor, a town with a great progressive story:

• Popular Science magazine ranked Ann Arbor in the top 25 greenest cities in America.Some 50,000 trees grow along Ann Arbor streets, and city parks boast another 50,000. And while no trees actually grow in the Google office, our cheeks do seem to be turning a nice leafy shade of green — probably from walking and biking to work as part of Ann Arbor’s Commuter Challenge, swapping paper for reusable dishes in our cafeteria, and educating ourselves on composting and recycling.
  
• On Oct. 14, 1960, President John F. Kennedy announced his proposal for the Peace Corps on the front steps of the Michigan Union, in downtown Ann Arbor. Nearly 50 years later, we "A2ooglers" feel a similar sense of urgency — but this time, it’s a desire to work with our very own state, from soup kitchens to river cleanups. We’re also connecting local schools and businesses with Google products.
• In the first Rose Bowl Game in 1902, University of Michigan (located in Ann Arbor) defeated Stanford 49 - 0. Like our Wolverine neighbors, we're burning with competitive spirit — one that’s given birth to office teams for kickball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, basketball, skiing, ultimate Frisbee and trivia.

Forgive us our moment of boosterism, but there's more:

• AARP Magazine recently named Ann Arbor the healthiest hometown in America, based on 20 factors ranging from the community's water purity to the eating habits of its citizens.
• According to Forbes.com, Ann Arbor is America's 4th Smartest City.
• Oprah Winfrey included a brisket sandwich from our own Zingerman's Deli on her Top Sandwiches in America.
• Ann Arbor ranks in the top 21 cities for cyclists, says Bicycling magazine.
• And even more...
  

Inside our walls, you’ll find a team that's committed to our AdWords advertisers — from identifying potential advertisers, to assisting current ones with day-to-day challenges, to strategizing with others for the future. That’s who we are. We’d love to have you join us.

Posted by Eileen Duffy, AdWords Associate

(Ad)Word of the Day: Keyword Insertion

For today's installment of (Ad)Word of the Day, we're looking at keyword insertion from the AdWords Glossary:

Keyword insertion is an advanced feature used to dynamically update your ad text with your chosen keywords. You insert a special modification tag into your ad text to enable this feature for your ads.

Keyword insertion is a powerful feature that can save you time and also help make your ad text more relevant. This feature will automatically customize your ad to a user's query, which means your ad is more likely to attract a user's attention. And, since ad text that matches a user's search terms is shown in bold, your ads will stand out even more.

Even with these benefits, keyword insertion shouldn't be used all the time. We recommend reading this article and going through this tutorial before you start using keyword insertion.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Back to school with more than 1 million users worldwide

Google Apps is rapidly gaining momentum in education. We now have more than a million people on campuses worldwide actively using Google's suite of email, calendar and docs to share information and study. This makes perfect sense. Schools have always been a proving ground for innovative ideas. And as we prepare for the new school year, we are happy to welcome more than a dozen universities across the U.S., joining the thousands of other schools that have already embraced cloud computing in education. Here are the new additions:

• Collin County Community College District
• Francis Marion University
• George Washington University
• Indiana University
• Kean University
• Kent State University
• Kishwaukee College
• Loyola Marymount University
• Montgomery County Community College
• New Jersey Institute of Technology
• University of Florida
• University of San Diego
• University of Virginia

This is really just the beginning. As we continue working to make it easier to communicate and collaborate online, we are going to meet with some of the top technology experts -- the students themselves. For the entire month of September, we are heading "App to School" by embarking on a cross-country bus tour to visit campuses, listen to students and learn more about how cloud computing is helping education. Please check out our Enterprise blog for more info.

Posted by Jeff Keltner, Business Development Manager, Google Apps

More transparency in customized search results

As we continue to refine our search algorithms to deliver more relevant results, we strive to be as open as possible about how we use data to improve your search experience. Today, we're rolling out a new feature in Google Web Search that will help you better understand how your search results are already customized. Over the next few days, you may start to see messages like this in the upper right corner of your search results page (click on the image to view larger):

You can click the "More details" link to get to a page like this:

You'll see these new messages whenever your search results have been customized based on one or more of the following types of information:

• Location. By default, we identify your approximate city location based on your computer's IP address and use it to customize your search results. If you'd like Google to use a different location, you can sign into or create a Google Account and provide a city or street address. Your specific location will be used not only for customizing search results, but also to improve your experience in Google Maps and other Google products.

• Recent searches. We take into account whether a particular query followed on the heels of another query. Because recent search activity provides such valuable context for understanding the meaning behind your searches, we use it to customize your results whenever possible, regardless of whether you're signed in or signed out. In order to customize your results and show you the customization details, we keep the most recent query on your browser for a limited time. After that, the information is removed from your browser and disappears immediately if you close your browser.

• Web History. If you're signed in and have Web History enabled, we customize your search results based on what you've searched for in the past on Google, and what web sites you've visited. One important note about Web History: it belongs to you and you have complete control over it. You can remove specific items or pause the service at any time. And if there's a particular search that you'd rather not have personalized based on your Web History, you can also just temporarily sign out of your Google Account.

This new feature doesn't change anything at all about how you search on Google and the results you get; it just gives you more of a behind-the-scenes look at how we customize your search experience. We consider this to be an important step in our commitment to transparency, and we hope you find it informative and useful.

Posted by Rachel Garb, Product Manager

Can you Feel The Love!

Today I found that I was mention on two seperate and unrelated blogs! If you are looking for some new fun reads, check out LCI Paper and Top 100 Wedding Blogs {and it also lists the Top Dating Sites too}.



And I had a fantastic talk with Monica Rae over at The White Box earlier this week! She is soooo sweet! And we could have talked for ever!!! It's so funny how close we become to one another over our blogs, it's like we've known each other all of our lives!



Thanks for the mention!!!

Our Big Fat Greek Wedding {Magazine}!

This summer, my bossy intern had the opportunity to travel the world with her family for her {early} graduation present! She went to Athens and Santorini in Greece and then hopped over to Italy for Rome and Positano!



I had Bossy Intern Assistant (it's hard to get used to that) write up a post for us on Europe, plus she brought back a fun Greek Wedding Mag!!!  So here's Bossy Assistant!!!!



I had such a blast traveling Europe with my family, it was absolutely incredible! I was blessed to rent a home from a future bride while we were in Oia, Santorini (which is in the Greeks Islands). Her name was Effie and she gave me a lot of insight into the wedding customs and traditions that the Greeks practice. The biggest difference in her wedding was that it will be a b.i.g. party! I mean, big party! The whole community becomes involved in the wedding and the celebrations last throughout the week! She showed me a place where I could buy wedding magazines and that is where I got these amazing images. No, you cannot read what it says, you know the saying “It’s all Greek to me” became very literal when we were there…but the images were SO fun to browse through. The ones featured here were some of Melissa’s favorites.

Side Note: We asked one of the people we met if they had heard of the saying “It’s all Greek to me” and they laughed and said of course, but they use “It’s all Chinese to me” in Greece! How funny!



After a bit of research when I got home, I learned that in Ancient Greek times, the brides wore traditional veils in either yellow or red, representing fire. These veils protected the bride from evil spirits and demons. Most ancient wedding history tends to have a way to ward off evil in some form. However, they have (for the most part) done away with this tradition and now they have new traditions. Now they have the Greek circle dance which is led by the koumbaros, or best man as we know them. The koumbaros is also responsible for helping with the crowning of the couple with crowns made of long-lasting flowers such as orange blossoms or “twigs of love and cine” wrapped in silver and gold paper. At the reception, they throw plates for good luck while shouting Opa! A neat tradition that we were able to experience while we were there is that when the musicians are well liked, fresh flowers are thrown towards the stage as a sign of gratitude.



Candy coated almonds, known to us as Jordan Almonds, are given as favors at all Greek Weddings. There are many other religious Greek Orthodox Wedding Traditions that can be found on the internet, but these were some of my favorites! I loved learning about the culture and tradition in the countries I visited…and it didn’t hurt that they were absolutely stunningly beautiful!



{Melissa sidenote: Okay seriously, how beautiful are those centerpieces!!!}

Luz Elena Gonzalez (Galeria 3)

Fotos:

Revista H para Hombres

Otras Fotos:

Luz Elena González (Galeria 1)

Luz Elena González (Galeria 2)

Luz Elena González (Galeria 4)

Common questions: Impressions past page 1

From time to time we like to address common questions that many of our advertisers have. Here's a frequent one about how ad impressions are calculated:

Q: If my ad appears on the third page of a search result, does it count as an impression if a user does not go to the third page of search results?

A: No; impressions are only counted when a user visits a page that the ad appears on.

For more information about impressions and other important terms, check out our Help Center.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

How to care for a large keyword list

Companies that offer many different products or services have one thing in common - the potential for large keywords lists. If your clients fit this description, here are a few tips on how to manage a keyword list when you find it's getting, well, too hard to manage.

First: Focus on the big players

To break down a massive keyword list into more manageable pieces, consider starting with the keywords that receive the most traffic or represent your client's most popular products. Create ad groups with customized ad text for these top keywords, rather than writing specific ads for every product your client offers.

For example, let's say your client sells DVDs. You can create ad groups for the top ten movie titles per genre and write specific ads relating to those keywords.

Second: Organize the rest

What about the rest of the keywords that are more obscure or aren't as popular? Here are some options to effectively manage those:

• If you have keywords that are very specific, such as product model numbers or small-town names, group them together and use keyword insertion in the ad text. Remember to continue to organize your keywords into ad groups with closely-knit themes so that your ad text is as relevant as possible.
  

• Use AdWords Editor when making large-scale changes to your clients' accounts. By importing account statistics directly into AdWords Editor, you can easily make changes based on account performance. For example, you can locate and delete keywords that haven't received any traffic in the past.
  

Lastly, be sure to test various approaches to keyword management to find the optimal method for you. For more tips on managing your keyword lists, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Sarah Hobbs, Optimization Specialist, Agency Team

Let's Eat Cake Update!

Did you know that you can now contribute to Let's Eat Cake! safely online!  There is an icon on the right side of the blog - Chip In! - and you can safely donate to St. Jude's right there! It is done through PayPal, so it's super easy!



Thanks so very much for all of your support for our event!



{You can also mail checks or donations to our office}

The Library by Elizabeth Ann Designs

In case you haven't heard, take a peek at the best new resource for the bride who needs everything, or just one more piece of the puzzle! The Library will help every bride, no matter her location, find the vendors and inspiration she needs for a beautiful event.

Check out The Library brought to you by, the amazing women of Elizabeth Ann Designs.

It is set up in such an easy to read and understand fashion! No matter what you are looking for, from Event Planners to Photography and everything inbetween - you will be sure to find it at The Library.

{on a side note, I was honored and thrilled to see our name, MasterPiece Weddings, amongst these incredible folks!- Thanks Elizabeth Ann Designs for including widdle ole' us!}

Goodbye to Randy Pausch, a great teacher

Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and a good friend of Google, passed away last night. In addition to being recognized as a pioneer in virtual reality research, he became widely known as a gifted teacher and a mentor to many. Millions of people saw his inspiring "Last Lecture" on YouTube. Read more about Randy and his contributions on our Research Blog.

Posted by Kevin McCurley, Research Scientist

Vanessa Guzman (Galeria 2)

Fotos:

Revista H Para Hombres, TVyNovelas y EsMas.com

Otras fotos:
Vanessa Guzmán (Galeria 1)

Vanessa Guzmán (Galeria 3)

Ragogmakan (Google) goes to the Amazon

Last month, a group of Googlers traveled to Brazil, to conduct our first-ever project in the Amazon. Organized by our Google Earth Outreach team, we went at the special invitation of Amazon Chief Almir Naramayoga Surui, who'd invited us down to train his people on using Google Earth, YouTube, blogs and other Internet tools in order to preserve their history and culture, protect their rainforest, and create a sustainable future for their tribe.

This was an unusual request, especially because until recently, the Surui Indians used stone tools and hunted and fished with bows and arrows. But as we considered this request, we realized that it was very much within the mission of Google Earth Outreach, which helps people around the world learn how to use Google Earth and Maps for public benefit. We had previously collaborated with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to map destroyed villages in Darfur, with UNHCR to show "A Refugee's Life", with Appalachian Voices to illustrate mountaintop removal coal-mining, and with the Jane Goodall Institute to follow chimpanzees in Tanzania. Maybe, we thought, it was time to go to the Amazon.

"New Technologies and Indigenous Peoples" - the logo
created by the Surui for our partnership

We learned from Chief Almir that just as the Amazon rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate, so too are the indigenous peoples who live there. This loss of biological and cultural diversity, of natural resources, habitats and human beings, has profound consequences both locally and globally. Al Gore has called the Amazon rainforest "the lungs of the planet" for the vital role it plays in consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen for all of us to breathe. Chief Almir explained that his tribe had already begun replanting thousands of hectares of their forest which had been illegally logged by outsiders. He hopes that through this project, they will be able to participate in the emerging carbon offset marketplace. And he wants to use Google Earth, YouTube and blogs to give the world a virtual tour of these projects, to raise awareness, and educate other tribes in how to do the same thing.

So we spent several months preparing special training materials. We partnered closely with the Amazon Conservation Team, who'd previously taught the Surui how to GPS-locate their significant sites that the Surui now wanted to map in full 3D, in Google Earth. Along the way, we found that many people asked us these questions: "So why is Google going to the Amazon?" "Why are you trying to train Indians?" "Won't technology harm their culture?" "Are Amazon Indians even capable of learning to use the Internet?"

Without giving away too much of the story, the answer to the last question is YES. During the trainings, we were moved to see how committed the young Surui students were to learning everything they possibly could. Their first two web searches were "Povos Indigenas do Brasil" (Indigenous peoples of Brazil) and "Desmatamento Amazonia" (Deforestation of the Amazon). They succeeded in importing their cultural map into Google Earth (see image), as the starting point for their virtual tour. They showed their warrior spirit in their very first YouTube video. They began building a Google Site. All of these are now works in progress, and when they are ready to release to the world, we expect that they will be unlike anything anyone has seen before.

The Surui call Google "ragogmakan", or "messenger", because they are using our tools to get their message out. Although we traveled to the Amazon rain forest expecting to be the teachers, there are lessons for all of us in the story of the Surui. As they engage with the modern world, they are making choices about what to adopt, adapt or reject. If we pay attention, we may have as much to learn from them as they from us.

Read more on the Lat Long blog, and experience the story of our trip on the Google Earth Outreach site.

Surui cultural map

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach

We knew the web was big...

We've known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

How do we find all those pages? We start at a set of well-connected initial pages and follow each of their links to new pages. Then we follow the links on those new pages to even more pages and so on, until we have a huge list of links. In fact, we found even more than 1 trillion individual links, but not all of them lead to unique web pages. Many pages have multiple URLs with exactly the same content or URLs that are auto-generated copies of each other. Even after removing those exact duplicates, we saw a trillion unique URLs, and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day.

So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don't know; we don't have time to look at them all! :-) Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite -- for example, web calendars may have a "next day" link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a "new" page. We're not doing that, obviously, since there would be little benefit to you. But this example shows that the size of the web really depends on your definition of what's a useful page, and there is no exact answer.

We don't index every one of those trillion pages -- many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content similar to the calendar example that isn't very useful to searchers. But we're proud to have the most comprehensive index of any search engine, and our goal always has been to index all the world's data.

To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google's index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-link graph several times per day. This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it'd be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

As you can see, our distributed infrastructure allows applications to efficiently traverse a link graph with many trillions of connections, or quickly sort petabytes of data, just to prepare to answer the most important question: your next Google search.

Posted by Jesse Alpert & Nissan Hajaj, Software Engineers, Web Search Infrastructure Team

Lucky Me! Guest Blogs!!

I feel honored to have Erin from Lucky Me! and Lucky Designs! guest blogging for us today! Her designs and creativity are second to none! And this idea is just as creative, I love it! So without further ado, here's Erin!!!! {applause can being now....}

My thoughtful husband surprised me recently with a Sony Handycam. It is so wonderful to be able to capture the fun we are having with Lucky Baby. The Handycam is very easy to use and produces high quality video. While getting to know our camcorder, it occurred to me that it would have been terrific to roam around our "town" and record some of the great places to visit and eat for the out of town guests that attended our wedding. Since hotel accommodations may not included DVD viewing, it might be nice to send your DVD with a rehearsal dinner invitation.

We included all of our out of town guests in our rehearsal dinner so that we would have more time to spend with them. Our guests roamed all over Cincinnati while they were in town and took full advantage of their long weekend here. A personal, enthusiastic DVD introduction may have helped them choose what they wanted to see and do while in Cincinnati. Also, having our family and friends visit that weekend, meant so much to my husband and I. The time and thought put into a DVD would have been another way for us to let everyone know that! So, shoot away and let people know how much you look forward to them being at your wedding and getting to know your hometown!


Thank you for including me on your blog!

Colt PeaceMaker

Oficialmente conocido como revólver “Colt Single Action Army” (SAA), el Colt Peacemaker (o Pacificador) es un arma corta de cilindro giratorio y acción sencilla (SA) con capacidad de seis cartuchos que fue muy popular en el Viejo Oeste norteamericano a finales del siglo XIX. Colt's Manufacturing Company lo diseño para el ejército norteamericano en 1873, que lo adoptó como arma de cargo. El Peacemaker estaba originalmente recamarado en calibre .45 Colt, el cual es un cartucho de fuego central con una carga de pólvora negra de 40 granos (2.6 gramos) y una ojiva de 255 granos (16.5 gramos). Se trataba de un cartucho bastante eficiente para los estándares de la época, con una velocidad inicial de 970 pies por segundo (300 m/s), proporcionando una energía de 429 libras/pie (582 J). El Peacemaker reemplazó al Colt 1860 y permaneció como arma de cargo oficial del ejército hasta 1892, cuando fue reemplazado por el revólver Colt de doble acción (DA).

Para 1875 Colt fabricó 15,000 unidades en calibre .45 Colt para el ejército, con longitudes de cañón de 4 ¾ (modelo civil o “gunfighter”), 5 ½ (modelo de artillería) y 7 ½ pulgadas (modelo de caballería). Para 1892 llevaba fabricados 144,000 revólveres Peacemaker. Alrededor de 1900 se comenzaron a fabricar las versiones para pólvora sin humo (a partir del número de serie 192,000). Colt cesó la producción de los Peacemaker hasta inicios de la Segunda Guerra Mundial (Primera Generación) aunque reanudó la producción posteriormente con fines de colección, con la denominada Segunda Generación (1956-1974); la Tercera Generación abarcó de 1976 hasta 1982 (producción limitada), mientras que la Cuarta Generación inició en 1994. No sólo fueron fabricados los Peacemaker en calibre .45 Colt, sino también en.44-40 Winchester Center Fire o WCF (a partir de 1878 para permitir la compatibilidad de cartuchos con el rifle de palanca Winchester '73). Otros calibres fueron el .38-40 Winchester (38 WCF) y 32-20 Winchester (32 WCF) desde 1884 y en 41 Colt en el año 1885. Actualmente existen versions para .357 Magnum, .38 spl, .44 spl e incluso .22 LR. El Colt peacemaker es uno de los revólveres mas afamados del Viejo Oeste, siendo utilizados por personajes como Wyatt Earp y William “Bat Masterson” Barclay e incluso Lawrence de Arabia.

Sitios Web recomendados:

http://www.thewildwest.org/

http://www.sixguns.com/

http://www.allworldwars.com/

New Health & Wellness Industry Newsletter

We've added a brand-new industry newsletter to our line-up: the AdWords Health & Wellness Industry Newsletter.

This resource is designed for advertisers who market products and services related to medicine, health, fitness and wellness. If you have clients in the health and wellness industry, check out the newsletter for useful information such as a study of the vitamins and supplements market, and tips on how to think holistically about your clients' healthcare businesses. If you'd like to receive this newsletter in the future, please let us know at health-newsletter@google.com.

Remember: If you or your clients would like additional tips to help your AdWords campaigns maintain a clean bill of health, pay a visit to the AdWords Health & Wellness Industry Knowledge Center.

Posted by Ashley Kibler, Creative Team

(Ad)Word of the Day: Conversion

We all know the importance of measuring the impact of your ad campaigns. That's why, today, we're discussing the term conversion from the AdWords Glossary, which is defined as follows:

When a user completes an action on your site, such as buying something or requesting more information.

In AdWords, a conversion occurs when a user clicks on your ad, then proceeds to complete an action on your web site that you deem valuable, like a purchase, registration, or sign-up. You can track actions like this on your web site by using one (or both) of the tools we offer:

1. Conversion tracking: A tool for measuring conversion metrics for your campaigns.
2. Google Analytics: A more robust tool that tracks not just conversions, but also gives insight into how your web site visitors found your site, how they navigated through it and how you can improve their user experience -- all things that ultimately help you improve the ROI of your web site.

Both conversion tracking and Google Analytics are free tools and are great ways of ensuring advertising accountability and making smarter online advertising decisions.

Learn more about setting up conversion tracking for your AdWords ads, and signing up for Google Analytics. 

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Bossy Intern.... Not Anymore!!

MasterPiece Wedding is proud to announce that Bossy Intern {Kristin} is no more! That's right - Bossy Intern must now be officially be regarded as Bossy Associate!!!!



MasterPiece Weddings is so Happy/Proud/Pleased/Joyful/over the moon {aka out of my mind excited} to welcome Kristin aboard as an official member of the MasterPiece Weddings Team!!



Any of you who know me, have worked with me, or have talked with me in the last month know that Kristin has become an integral part of the MasterPiece Weddings team, and I am blessed to have had worked with her over the past 7 months, and I think I've realized that I just can't live or work without her! She has just become such an important part of the team so much so that I offered her the job, and I am so pleased to announce that Bossy Intern Kristin accepted the job!!!



Please help us in welcoming her aboard!



{Image courtesy of Powers Photography}

Yadhira Carrillo

Fotos:

Revistas Max, TVyMas y TVyNovelas