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French Google blog Zorgloob has what they say are screenshots from a Google employee showing a certain “GG Score” value in action. Apparently, this value and others are displayed when a Google engineer internally looks at search results, perhaps through a certain special tool.

The full line below the snippet for www.ffp.asso.fr for instance reads (my line breaks and formatting):GG Score:
$11.68
Adv: Yes
Vertical: /Local/Regional Content
PVs: 11,088

Update:
Tom in the comments explains that he photoshopped the screenshot info lines (perhaps in order to protect each site’s privacy); in other words, e.g. the number “$11.68” isn’t really the one from www.ffp.asso.fr, but it was shown below another domain.

What exactly the GG Score in dollar is, the Zorgloob blog doesn’t know either, but they do add that the screenshot was sent by someone working in connection with the AdWords department. Other GG Scores shown include $30.73 and $34.33. Commenting on the meaning of the “Adv” value, Zorgloob’s TomHTML says “We did not find a correlation between this value and the presence or absence of AdWords advertising for these sites”* (during a brief scan I didn’t spot any AdSense on e.g. www.ffp.asso.fr either). “PVs” on the other hand, TomHTML ponders could be short for “page views.”

The screenshot Zorgloob presents also includes a navigation entry that reads “Moma” – the name of Google’s intranet.

By: Philipp Lenssen Source: http://blogoscoped.com/

 

Google is missing out to celebrate US patriotic holidays with their special logo doodles, some think, and created a Google Memorial Day Logo Design Contest earlier this year. You can find the collected creations that will now be suggested to Google. The latest “controversy”: Google put Sputnik into their logo… a (gasp) communist satellite*! “Google consistently has ignored patriotic American holidays such as Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day,” WorldNetDaily writes, continuing that now “it acknowledged an accomplishment of the communist

Soviet Union, which launched the Sputnik space satellite 50 years ago. … Besides overlooking Veterans Day and Memorial Day since the company’s inception in 1999, it also has ignored Christmas.”

The neat Google Alert service lets you subscribe to certain search queries to get updates emailed to you. For instance, you can subscribe to mentions of your website name in Google News. The newest member in the Alerts family is Video. I subscribed to the query “google” to give this a try, setting the alert schedule to “as it happens,” and found several videos thumbnails + links in my inbox this morning.
The alerted videos come from all kinds of sources, not just Google-owned properties; along with YouTube, there’s e.g. German Clipfish.de, or Metacafe.com. However, the link will always point to the Google Video frame wrapper for displaying the actual video. Google – framing the web for outgoing links so you’ll always bookmark their site? Let’s hope this doesn’t catch on with other services of theirs, like web search.

…more on blogoscoped

With the start of the Twenty20 world championship, cricket fever is upon legions of enthusiasts. To make it easier for you to indulge your interest in a game John Fowles characterized as “chess made flesh,” we’ve simplified your search for cricket scores. Just type [cricket] in a Google search box and you’ll see a brief score of all the current cricket matches. A single click will also give you access to a detailed cricket score card.

If you’re a diehard India fan, then type [cricket india] or [cricket score India England] to get results for Indian matches. Of course, feel free to replace India with the country of your choice for country-specific results.

Posted by: Sadeesh Duraisamy

Google Spreadsheets just got a bit more powerful. There are four new cell functions to automatically import external data: importXml, importData, importHtml and googleReader.

For instance, importXML has two parameters, URL and an XPath query. Entering =importXML(”http://waxy.org/links/”, “//a/@href”)into a Google Spreadsheets cell and hitting return will load all links from the Waxy.org link blog in the subsequent cells. (I’m not sure if this data is automatically updated or if it’s a one-time fill, though it seems to be auto-updating.) A similar feature had been around in online spreadsheets competitor EditGrid, and so far set EditGrid apart from Spreadsheets in that regard.

Another new feature in Spreadsheets is auto-filling of cells. Enter “Monday” and “Tuesday” in two cells, select them, and click the blue dot on the cell edge to drag it over subsequent cells. They will now read “Wednesday”, “Thursday” and so on. You might know this from other spreadsheet applications, but what’s more, if you hold down Ctrl when you perform this auto-fill, Google will poll data from Google Sets to automatically complete almost anything (at least that’s the theory).

I think auto-filling based on Google Sets is a really cool idea, though during my tests that feature was very unstable, didn’t show a load bar (so you won’t know if there’s something still being polled from Google Sets), and mostly didn’t work at all… or returned results much less relevant than what Google Sets returns, incidentally.

Full source: blogoscoped.com

On January 7 2006 Google announced a video store service on top of Google Video. You were able to purchase videos such as NBA games, Charlie Rose interviews, or shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (in the US at least). You were also able to set a purchase price for videos you uploaded yourself. Today, Google started sending out mails like the following, announcing the end of this program:

As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.

To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $2.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days, and you can use it at the stores listed here: http://www.google.com/checkout/signupwelcome.html. The minimum purchase amount must be equal to or greater than your bonus amount, before shipping and tax.

After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

As this case shows, “download-to-own” is a lie when it comes to DRM content. Digital Rights Management is an euphemism for copy-protection services that (mostly) treat consumers like criminals, and deprive them of their fair use of acquired content; in this case, Google indicates you won’t own the movies you purchased after all. When a DRM-based service ceases to exist, so may your purchases.

Jennifer Feikin in May this year was reported to have resigned from her job as Google Video chief. Google by now is using YouTube for much of the officially released Google content, like videos posted in their blogs. An internal Google goal from 2006 ordered to count the “total number of Google products and reduce by 20%”. I wonder if the technically superior but less community-oriented YouTube alternative by YouTube-owner Google ended up on the 20% list – or at least parts of it?

Source : http://blogoscoped.com/

There’s nothing I like better than when Google AdWords decides to make our lives as search marketers just a bit easier. If you’re interested in working smarter and improving campaign results, be sure to check out two of the more recent reporting roll-outs – Google’s new Placement Performance Reports and Search Query Reports.

Google Placement Performance Reports — Finally… We now have visibility and CONTROL over where our ads display in the Content Network given Google AdWords’ relatively new Placement Performance Reports.

For the sake of providing some historical context, there definitely has been an evolution in terms of Google’s Content Network offerings. We were granted some control years back when Google decided to let us set separate bids for Content v. Search (and by the way, if you aren’t bidding separately for the Content and Search Networks, you really need to make this change – these really should be viewed and managed separately, as they are entirely different beasts).

The ability to bid separately for Content and Search was definitely a big step towards more control.

Then, another not-so-small victory came about when Google decided to let us exclude sites – nice feature, and another step towards more control. But given that most account managers don’t take the time to dive into their log files, this didn’t help much for those who were clueless as to the source of their traffic in the first place.

But now with Google’s new Placement Performance report, we’ve got quick and easy visibility coupled with control. These reports allow you to see exactly which Content sites are sending you traffic and conversions, and therefore make the right decisions to improve your campaign’s ROI from the Content Network (as opposed to throwing your hands up in the air in frustration and pausing the Content Network all together as many of us did in the past).

Full Source :http://blogoscoped.com/

Get more from your Google Base listings by using Google Checkout
By Stephen Salinas, Google Base Support

As a Base user, you’re probably well aware of the increase in traffic that Base listings can deliver to your online business. Now you can convert more of that traffic into sales with Google Checkout, a fast and convenient checkout process that allows customers to buy from you quickly and easily with a single username and password.

If you currently list individual products on Base-hosted pages, you can now place a Google Checkout “buy” button on each of your listings. Customers who use Checkout can buy from you quickly and securely – and you’ll be able to use Checkout to process their orders and charge their credit or debit cards. Learn how to add Google Checkout to your Base listings.

Checkout can also be integrated into your own website alongside your existing process. Google Base merchants that accept Google Checkout on their sites get their product listings and AdWords ads badged with the Google Checkout logo in Google search results, which set them apart from competitors and lets customers know that buying from those sites will be quick and easy. And until 2008, Checkout merchants pay no transaction processing fees. Learn how to offer Google Checkout on your site.

For more information about using Google Checkout with Google Base, visit the Help Discussion Group for tips from other Google Base users.

Source: http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=25396&topic=8288

The latest company to join Google is on-demand communications security and compliance solutions Postini. The deal was sealed today with Google purchasing Postini for a hefty sum of $625 million according to a Google official press release. Postini is currently serving 35,000 business and 10 million users worldwide. None other than Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt explains the reason for the acquisition of Postini:With this transaction, we’re reinforcing our commitment to delivering compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes. With the addition of Postini, our apps are not just simple and appealing to users — they can also streamline the complex information security mandates within these organizations.

On Postini’s side, President and CEO Quentin Gallivan explain that:As the market leader in on-demand secure communications and compliance solutions, Postini complements Google perfectly. We share a commitment to providing enterprise customers with compelling technology alternatives. This is an exciting milestone, one that will certainly lead to the next level of rapid innovation.With the acquisition of Postini, Google is hoping to strengthen its

Enterprise suite Google Apps to effectively serve the needs of its enterprise clients. Especially since, corporate customers are very concern about enterprise network security when utilizing enterprise wide applications on their corporate servers. Postini would certainly enhance the effectivity and integrity of Google Apps as an enterprise solutions for office networking and computing.

Source: Search Engine Journal

When you log in to Google Docs & Spreadsheets today, you might be in for a bit of a surprise: we’ve completed a pretty significant redesign. Since we launched Google Docs & Spreadsheets less than a year ago, we’ve made dozens of updates to enable better collaboration. As more and more documents accumulated, users asked for an even easier way to manage them. With this latest refresh, you’ll see that we have been listening to feedback and spending time thinking about the best ways to stay organized.

Some highlights of the clean new look:

• Sidebar with folders: For those who used tags, all your tags have been converted into folders, and you can now drag and drop your documents into any folder. Just like tags, docs can live in multiple folders.
• Documents sorted by collaborator: Sometimes you can’t think of the title or even the content of a document, but you remember whom you shared it with or who shared it with you. To make sorting easier, we’ve added new “created by me” and “shared with…” folders.
• Better search: With autocomplete, all relevant documents, folders, and collaborators are displayed as soon as you begin typing your search query.

The redesign also includes new icons, chronological sorting, and an easier way to save documents in alternate formats.

These features and other improvements are now available to anybody using Google Docs & Spreadsheets at http://docs.google.com or through Google Apps.