Beyond PageRank: Graduating to actionable metrics

Webmaster level: Beginner

Like any curious netizen, I have a Google Alert set up to email me whenever my name is mentioned online. Usually I get a slow trickle of my forum posts, blog posts, and tweets. But by far the most popular topic of these alerts over the past couple years has been my off-handed mention that we removed PageRank distribution data from Webmaster Tools in one of our 2009 releases.

The fact that people are still writing about this almost two years later—usually in the context of “Startling news from Susan Moskwa: ...”—really drives home how much PageRank has become a go-to statistic for some webmasters. Even the most inexperienced site owners I talk with have often heard about, and want to know more about, PageRank (“PR”) and what it means for their site. However, as I said in my fateful forum post, the Webmaster Central team has been telling webmasters for years that they shouldn't focus so much on PageRank as a metric for representing the success of one’s website. Today I’d like to explain this position in more detail and give you some relevant, actionable options to fill your time once you stop tracking your PR!

Why PageRank?
In 2008 Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google, wrote on the Official Google Blog:

“The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system.”

PageRank may have distinguished Google as a search engine when it was founded in 1998; but given the rate of change Manber describes—launching “about 9 [improvements] per week on the average”—we’ve had a lot of opportunity to augment and refine our ranking systems over the last decade. PageRank is no longer—if it ever was—the be-all and end-all of ranking.

If you look at Google’s Technology Overview, you’ll notice that it calls out relevance as one of the top ingredients in our search results. So why hasn’t as much ink been spilled over relevance as has been over PageRank? I believe it’s because PageRank comes in a number, and relevance doesn’t. Both relevance and PageRank include a lot of complex factors—context, searcher intent, popularity, reliability—but it’s easy to graph your PageRank over time and present it to your CEO in five minutes; not so with relevance. I believe the succinctness of PageRank is why it’s become such a go-to metric for webmasters over the years; but just because something is easy to track doesn’t mean it accurately represents what’s going on on your website.

What do we really want?
I posit that none of us truly care about PageRank as an end goal. PageRank is just a stand-in for what we really want: for our websites to make more money, attract more readers, generate more leads, more newsletter sign-ups, etc. The focus on PageRank as a success metric only works if you assume that a higher PageRank results in better ranking, then assume that that will drive more traffic to your site, then assume that that will lead to more people doing-whatever-you-want-them-to-do on your site. On top of these assumptions, remember that we only update the PageRank displayed on the Google Toolbar a few times a year, and we may lower the PageRank displayed for some sites if we believe they’re engaging in spammy practices. So the PR you see publicly is different from the number our algorithm actually uses for ranking. Why bother with a number that’s at best three steps removed from your actual goal, when you could instead directly measure what you want to achieve? Finding metrics that are directly related to your business goals allows you to spend your time furthering those goals.

If I don’t track my PageRank, what should I be tracking?
Take a look at metrics that correspond directly to meaningful gains for your website or business, rather than just focusing on ranking signals. Also consider metrics that are updated daily or weekly, rather than numbers (like PageRank) that only change a few times a year; the latter is far too slow for you to reliably understand which of your changes resulted in the number going up or down (assuming you update your site more than a few times a year). Here are three suggestions to get you started, all of which you can track using services like Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools:

1. Conversion rate
2. Bounce rate
3. Clickthrough rate (CTR)

Conversion rate
A “conversion” is when a visitor does what you want them to do on your website. A conversion might be completing a purchase, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading a white paper. Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who convert (perform a conversion). This is a perfect example of a metric that, unlike PageRank, is directly tied to your business goals. When users convert they’re doing something that directly benefits your organization in a measurable way! Whereas your PageRank is both difficult to measure accurately (see above), and can go up or down without having any direct effect on your business.

Bounce rate
A “bounce” is when someone comes to your website and then leaves without visiting any other pages on your site. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visits to your site where the visitor bounces. A high bounce rate may indicate that users don’t find your site compelling, because they come, take a look, and leave directly. Looking at the bounce rates of different pages across your site can help you identify content that’s underperforming and point you to areas of your site that may need work. After all, it doesn’t matter how well your site ranks if most searchers are bouncing off of it as soon as they visit.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
In the context of organic search results, your clickthrough rate is how often people click on your site out of all the times your site gets shown in search results. A low CTR means that, no matter how well your site is ranking, users aren’t clicking through to it. This may indicate that they don’t think your site will meet their needs, or that some other site looks better. One way to improve your CTR is to look at your site’s titles and snippets in our search results: are they compelling? Do they accurately represent the content of each URL? Do they give searchers a reason to click on them? Here’s some advice for improving your snippets; the HTML suggestions section of Webmaster Tools can also point you to pages that may need help. Again, remember that it doesn’t matter how well your site ranks if searchers don’t want to click on it.

Entire blogs and books have been dedicated to explaining and exploring web metrics, so you’ll excuse me if my explanations just scrape the surface; analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik’s site is a great place to start if you want to dig deeper into these topics. But hopefully I’ve at least convinced you that there are more direct, effective and controllable ways to measure your site’s success than PageRank.

One final note: Some site owners are interested in their site’s PR because people won’t buy links from their site unless they have a high PageRank. Buying or selling links for the purpose of passing PageRank violates our Webmaster Guidelines and is very likely to have negative consequences for your website, so a) I strongly recommend against it, and b) don’t be surprised if we aren’t interested in helping you raise your PageRank or improve your website when this is your stated goal.

We’d love to hear what metrics you’ve found useful and actionable for your website! Feel free to share your success stories with us in the comments here or in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

GoogleServe 2011: Giving back around the world

Over the last month, more than 7,700 Googlers helped serve their communities across 400 different projects as part of GoogleServe, an employee-driven initiative organized almost entirely by volunteers. Through partnerships with nonprofits, schools and local governments, Googlers from 119 cities in 36 countries helped communities in need with projects ranging from educating youth about online bullying to cleaning up local rivers and parks.

GoogleServe began in 2008 and has become an annual company tradition. Giving back to our communities not only revitalizes and strengthens our connections with the cities and towns in which we live and work, it also brings us closer together as a global team. Each year the event has grown in size and scope and this year’s GoogleServe was our largest yet. Here’s a sampling of some of the projects we participated in this time around:

• In New York, we led resume writing workshops and provided career coaching to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America members seeking employment.
• We helped Mountaineering Ireland construct drains in order to maintain a stretch of trail along the Dublin Mountains Way.
• We facilitated a strategic planning session for staff from the Post Prison Education Program in Seattle.
• We conducted an online tools workshop for NGOs in Singapore with the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre.
• We fixed up bikes with Free Ride in Pittsburgh, which will be donated to local nonprofits and residents.
• At the Punjabi Bagh Central Market area in West Delhi, we cleaned and removed old, decayed posters with the help of “Lets do it Delhi,” an organization which has taken up the initiative to minimise abuse of public property.
• We provided one-on-one consultations with high potential, low income women starting their own businesses with the Women’s Initiative for Self Employment in San Francisco.
• We ran a bookmaking workshop for elementary school children with 826LA in Venice, CA.

While GoogleServe is an annual celebration of community service, employees donate both time and money to organizations and causes throughout the year. You can find opportunities to serve your local community at All For Good.

Here are some photos of our team in action:



Posted by Seth Marbin, GoogleServe Global Director

Honestly Healthy lunches from Selfridges

We're never short of a delivery of food every now and again in the office and with all that sitting around on our bottoms at computers all day and snacking on the goodies that arrive by courier ain't great for the beach figure. So a delivery of delicious meals to promote a new and incredibly healthy range to hit the shelves in Selfridges was a really welcome delivery indeed.

Honestly Healthy provides fresh and balanced take-away foods that have been put together by organic chef Natasha Corbett and nutritional therapist Vicki Edgson. 

Honestly Healthy’s delicious, nourishing meals come fresh from the kitchen every day and are brimming in alkalizing ingredients that balance the energy-sapping components of the typically acidic Western diet. So our bodies can easily digest the food with ingredients that speed up the metabolism, clear out the system and generally make us feel much more healthy.

Chilled Salads.

As you can see from the pictures, each salad contains a mix of some of the healthiest ingredients on the planet and main ingredients to be found are bok choy, broccoli, chick peas, red peppers, fennel, tofu and pearl barley are all staples. And the prices are not bad at £3.50 - perfect for an affordable lunch.

But they don't just stop there - Honestly Healthy have also produced a range of tasty at-home meal mixes to aid your diet - all you have to do is add water and simmer. The range includes a muesli, a quinoa and lentil mix which is delicious with salad or on its own, a bean and fig tagine for a taste of Morocco, a spiced pearl barley risotto and a simple yet spicy dhal. Although I didn't try these if they are as good as the takeaway salads then I may need to stock up from Selfridges Food Hall in Oxford Street.

For further information visit their website Honestly Healthy.

Energy Saver Untuk Blog Anda.

Blog anda boleh diletakkan dalam mode energy saver jika anda mahu. Kalau dunia realiti ada Earth Hour untuk menunjukkan sokongan kepada penjimatan tenaga, blog anda pun boleh.:)



Contoh blog apabila diletakkan energy saver seperti gambar di bawah.



Tutorial untuk letakkan energy saver ini seperti berikut.


1. Dari dashboard > design > edit html.
(backup template untuk langkah berjaga²)

2. Dengan menggunakan fungsi Find (ctrl + F), cari kod </head>

3. Copy kod di bawah dan paste SEBELUM kod </head>

<script language='javascript' src='https://sites.google.com/site/unwanted86/javascript/savetheenvironment.js' type='text/javascript'/>

Contoh:



4. Save dan lihat hasilnya.

Nota: Anda perlu biarkan selama 1 minit untuk energy saver memulakan operasi.:)


p/s: Original code : www.onlineleaf.com/

Evolving the Google design and experience

Starting today, you might begin noticing that things look a little different across Google products. We’re working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you’ll continue to see more updates to our look and feel. Even our classic homepage is getting a bit of a makeover:

New Google homepage with a smaller logo and links moved to the top and bottom edges of the browser for a cleaner look

The way people use and experience the web is evolving, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and consistent online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you’re using or what device you’re using it on. The new Google experience that we’ve begun working toward is founded on three key design principles: focus, elasticity and effortlessness.

• Focus: Whether you’re searching, emailing or looking for a map, the only thing you should be concerned about is getting what you want. Our job is to provide the tools and features that will get you there quickly and easily. With the design changes in the coming weeks and months, we’re bringing forward the stuff that matters to you and getting all the other clutter out of your way. Even simple changes, like using bolder colors for actionable buttons or hiding navigation buttons until they’re actually needed, can help you better focus on only what you need at the moment.
• Elasticity: In the early days, there was pretty much just one way to use Google: on a desktop computer with an average-sized monitor. Over a decade later, all it takes is a look around one’s home or office at the various mobile devices, tablets, high-resolution monitors and TVs to see a plethora of ways to access the web. The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from one device to another and have a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness.
• Effortlessness: Our design philosophy is to combine power with simplicity. We want to keep our look simple and clean, but behind the seemingly simple design, use new technologies like HTML5, WebGL and the latest, fastest browsers to make sure you have all the power of the web behind you.

Constant revision and improvement is part of our overarching philosophy. For example, last year we introduced an updated look and feel to our search results, and if you compare the original Google homepage to today’s version, you’ll see that a makeover every so often can certainly be refreshing:

Original Google homepage in 1997

Starting today and over the course of the next few months, look for a series of design improvements across all our products, including Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail.

Posted by Chris Wiggins, Creative Director, Digital

+1 reporting in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

Webmaster level: All

It’s been a busy week for us here at the Googleplex. First we released +1 buttons to Google search sites globally, then we announced the beginning of the Google+ project.

The +1 button and the Google+ project are both about making it easier to connect with the people you trust online. For the +1 button, that means bringing advice from trusted friends and contacts right into Google search, letting the users who love your web content recommend it at the moment of decision.

But when you’re managing a website, it's usually not real until you can measure it. So we’re happy to say we’ve got one more announcement to make -- today we’re releasing reports that show you the value +1 buttons bring to your site.

First, +1 metrics in Google Webmaster Tools can show you how the +1 button affects the traffic coming to your pages:

• The Search Impact report gives you an idea of how +1‘s affect your organic search traffic. You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.
  
• The Activity report shows you how many times your pages have been +1’d, from buttons both on your site and on other pages (such as Google search).
  
• Finally, the Audience report shows you aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who’ve +1’d your pages. To protect privacy, we’ll only show audience information when a significant number of users have +1’d pages from your site.
  

Use the +1 Metrics menu on the side of the page to view your reports. If you haven’t yet verified your site on Google Webmaster Tools, you can follow these instructions to get access.

Finally, you can also see how users share your content using other buttons besides +1 by using Social Plugin Analytics in Google Analytics. Once you configure the JavaScript for Analytics, the Social Engagement reports help you compare the various types of sharing actions that occur on your pages.

• The Social Engagement report lets you see how site behavior changes for visits that include clicks on +1 buttons or other social actions. This allows you to determine, for example, whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than people who don’t.
  
• The Social Actions report lets you track the number of social actions (+1 clicks, Tweets, etc) taken on your site, all in one place.
  
• The Social Pages report allows you to compare the pages on your site to see which are driving the highest the number of social actions.
  

If you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code, when you add +1 buttons to your site, we automatically enable Social Plugin Analytics for +1 in your account. You can enable analytics for other social plugins in just a few simple steps.

Social reporting is just getting started. As people continue to find new ways to interact across the web, we look forward to new reports that help business owners understand the value that social actions are providing to their business. So +1 to data!

UPDATE: 7/11/11 1:44pm PST, corrected references to the social plugin analytics feature.

Written by Dan Rodney, Software Engineer

Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web

Update: For our international readers, this post is also available in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. - Ed.

Among the most basic of human needs is the need to connect with others. With a smile, a laugh, a whisper or a cheer, we connect with others every single day.

Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools.

In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.

We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project:




+Circles: share what matters, with the people who matter most
Not all relationships are created equal. So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss. The problem is that today’s online services turn friendship into fast food—wrapping everyone in “friend” paper—and sharing really suffers:

• It’s sloppy. We only want to connect with certain people at certain times, but online we hear from everyone all the time.
• It’s scary. Every online conversation (with over 100 “friends”) is a public performance, so we often share less because of stage fright.
• It’s insensitive. We all define “friend” and “family” differently—in our own way, on our own terms—but we lose this nuance online.

In light of these shortcomings we asked ourselves, “What do people actually do?” And we didn’t have to search far for the answer. People in fact share selectively all the time—with their circles.

From close family to foodies, we found that people already use real-life circles to express themselves, and to share with precisely the right folks. So we did the only thing that made sense: we brought Circles to software. Just make a circle, add your people, and share what’s new—just like any other day:




+Sparks: strike up a conversation, about pretty much anything
Healthy obsessions inspire sharing, and we’ve all got one (or two, or three...). Maybe it’s muscle cars, or comic books, or fashion, but the attraction is always the same: it comes up in conversation, we immediately jump in, and we share back and forth with other fans. Often for hours. The trick is getting things started, and getting over that initial hump. Fortunately, the web is the ultimate icebreaker.

The web, of course, is filled with great content—from timely articles to vibrant photos to funny videos. And great content can lead to great conversations. We noticed, however, that it’s still too hard to find and share the things we care about—not without lots of work, and lots of noise. So, we built an online sharing engine called Sparks.

Thanks to Google’s web expertise, Sparks delivers a feed of highly contagious content from across the Internet. On any topic you want, in over 40 languages. Simply add your interests, and you’ll always have something to watch, read and share—with just the right circle of friends:




+Hangouts: stop by and say hello, face-to-face-to-face
Whether it's inside a pub or on a front porch, human beings have always enjoyed hanging out. And why not? It's how we unwind, recharge, and spend unscheduled time with old and new friends alike. Hanging out is deceptively simple though, and the nuance gets lost online.

Just think: when you walk into the pub or step onto your front porch, you're in fact signaling to everyone around, “Hey, I've got some time, so feel free to stop by." Further, it’s this unspoken understanding that puts people at ease, and encourages conversation. But today’s online communication tools (like instant messaging and video-calling) don’t understand this subtlety:

• They’re annoying, for starters. You can ping everyone that’s “available,” but you’re bound to interrupt someone’s plans.
• They’re also really awkward. When someone doesn't respond, you don't know if they’re just not there, or just not interested.

With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts. By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you're free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face:




+Mobile: share what’s around, right now, without any hassle
These days a phone is the perfect sharing accessory: it's always with you, it's always online, and it's how we stay close with our closest friends. We didn’t want “just” a mobile experience, however, so with Google+ we focused on things (like GPS, cameras, and messaging) to make your pocket computer even more personal.

+Location, location, location
In life, the places we visit shape conversations in lots of meaningful ways. If we call John from the airport, he’ll likely ask about our trip. Or if Jane texts from a nearby restaurant, we might join her for dessert. With Google+ you can add your location to every post. (Or not. It’s always up to you.)

+Instant Upload
Getting photos off your phone is a huge pain, so most of us don't even bother. Of course pictures are meant to be shared, not stranded, so we created Instant Upload to help you never leave a photo behind. While you're snapping pictures, and with your permission, Google+ adds your photos to a private album in the cloud. This way they're always available across your devices—ready to share as you see fit.




+Messenger
Coordinating with friends and family in real-time is really hard in real life. After all, everyone's on different schedules, in different places, and plans can change at any moment. Phone calls and text messages can work in a pinch, but they're not quite right for getting the gang together. So Google+ includes Messenger, a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know what's going on, right this second.




Starting today Google+ is available on Android Market and the mobile web, and it’s coming soon to the App Store.

+You: putting you first, all across Google
That’s the Google+ project so far: Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and mobile. We’re beginning in Field Trial, so you may find some rough edges, and the project is by invitation only. But online sharing needs a serious re-think, so it’s time we got started. There’s just one more thing—really the only thing: You.

You and over a billion others trust Google, and we don’t take this lightly. In fact we’ve focused on the user for over a decade: liberating data, working for an open Internet, and respecting people’s freedom to be who they want to be. We realize, however, that Google+ is a different kind of project, requiring a different kind of focus—on you. That’s why we’re giving you more ways to stay private or go public; more meaningful choices around your friends and your data; and more ways to let us know how we’re doing. All across Google.

When your invite arrives we hope you’ll join the project. But it’s entirely up to +You.

Update Sept 20: Made changes to reflect the new name for group messaging (Messenger).

Posted by Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Engineering

Celebrating Pride 2011

More than a thousand Googlers participated in Pride celebrations in a dozen cities to support equality and remember the sacrifices of those who have made life better for members of the LGBT* community today. While we celebrated the legalization of marriage equality in New York, the state where the gay rights movement in the United States began more than 40 years ago, our participation was especially global this year: we were at Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia for the first time and supported Pink Dot in Singapore. From San Francisco to Dublin to Tel Aviv to Boston, we stepped out in large numbers for Pride parades around the world in a colorful swirl of Gaygler and Android Pride t-shirts. As in years past, we featured a month-long easter egg in our search results worldwide to celebrate Pride, adding a rainbow next to the search box for a number of Pride-related queries including [lgbt], [marriage equality] and [pride 2011].

But it’s not just during Pride week that we celebrate and promote equality and diversity. We’ve partnered with various organizations and earlier this year employees contributed their stories to the It Gets Better project.

In addition to our external efforts, we’re also working from within. Recently, we extended domestic partner benefits in regions such as China and Hong Kong. Last year, Google adopted a policy promoting benefits equality through a gross-up on imputed taxes for health insurance. We provided the equivalent of the Family and Medical Leave Act for same-sex domestic partners and updated the definition of infertility. Happily, over the last year we’ve been approached by many organizations looking to do the same.

Gayglers around the globe created this video to increase awareness about the LGBT community at Google, and we're happy to share it with you today.

Posted by Cynthia Yeung, Strategic Partner Development Team

*LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender but, without letting the acronym get too unwieldy, is also intended to include people who identify as queer, asexual or intersex, amongst others.

Examining the impact of clean energy innovation

At Google, we’re committed to using technology to solve one of the greatest challenges we face as a country: building a clean energy future. That’s why we’ve worked hard to be carbon neutral as a company, launched our renewable energy cheaper than coal initiative and have invested in several clean energy companies and projects around the world.

But what if we knew the value of innovation in clean energy technologies? How much could new technologies contribute to our economic growth, enhance our energy security or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? Robust data can help us understand these important questions, and the role innovation in clean energy could play in addressing our future economic, security and climate challenges.

Through Google.org, our energy team set out to answer some of these questions. Using McKinsey’s Low Carbon Economics Tool (LCET), we assessed the long-term economic impacts for the U.S. assuming breakthroughs were made in several different clean energy technologies, like wind, geothermal and electric vehicles. McKinsey’s LCET is a neutral, analytic set of interlinked models that estimates the potential economic and technology implications of various policy and technology assumptions.

The analysis is based on a model and includes assumptions and conclusions that Google.org developed, so it isn’t a prediction of the future. We’ve decided to make the analysis and associated data available everywhere because we believe it could provide a new perspective on the economic value of public and private investment in energy innovation. Here are just some of the most compelling findings:

• Energy innovation pays off big: We compared “business as usual” (BAU) to scenarios with breakthroughs in clean energy technologies. On top of those, we layered a series of possible clean energy policies (more details in the report). We found that by 2030, when compared to BAU, breakthroughs could help the U.S.:
• Grow GDP by over $155 billion/year ($244 billion in our Clean Policy scenario)
• Create over 1.1 million new full-time jobs/year (1.9 million with Clean Policy)
• Reduce household energy costs by over $942/year ($995 with Clean Policy)
• Reduce U.S. oil consumption by over 1.1 billion barrels/year
• Reduce U.S. total carbon emissions by 13% in 2030 (21% with Clean Policy)
• Speed matters and delay is costly: Our model found a mere five year delay (2010-2015) in accelerating technology innovation led to $2.3-3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP, an aggregate 1.2-1.4 million net unrealized jobs and 8-28 more gigatons of potential GHG emissions by 2050.
• Policy and innovation can enhance each other: Combining clean energy policies with technological breakthroughs increased the economic, security and pollution benefits for either innovation or policy alone. Take GHG emissions: the model showed that combining policy and innovation led to 59% GHG reductions by 2050 (vs. 2005 levels), while maintaining economic growth.

This analysis assumed that breakthroughs in clean energy happened and that policies were put in place, and then tried to understand the impact. The data here allows us to imagine a world in which the U.S. captures the potential benefits of some clean energy technologies: economic growth, job generation and a reduction in harmful emissions. We haven’t developed the roadmap, and getting there will take the right mix of policies, sustained investment in technological innovation by public and private institutions and mobilization of the private sector’s entrepreneurial energies. We hope this analysis encourages further discussion and debate on these important issues.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar, and Charles Baron, Google.org, Clean Energy Team

Barbie of the Day - I shouldn't have favourites but...

Working for a collective of bloggers I know I shouldn't have favourites - everyone who comes on board comes on board because of their merits and before this turns into a plug for Handpicked Media and you all click away I would like to say that yes, there are certain blogs that I visit because on a personal and private level they give me an enormous amount of pleasure.

One such blog is Barbie of the Day purely because it's genius mixed with a bit of British bonkers. I had Sindy as a child - Barbie was far too brash and American (and probably too expensive as well) and I think my parents were really into their 'buying British' kick as early as the sixties. So Barbie didn't really feature in my consciousness as a child really. But boy did I love my Sindy - favourite outfit that I can remember? A mock leopard coat and black knee-length boots and... well that's all I can remember actually so my Sindy probably grew up to be a right little madam (in all senses of the word).
Sindy 1960's - what's not to love?

Anyway back to Barbie of the Day. This blog is written - or should I say, written, photographed and all the clothes are made by a Yorkshire boy who has the enviable lifestyle of living in the South of France. Here Barbie and Ken frolic and live out their A-list lives in the sunshine and wear the most fantastic outfits. These are some of my favourites...

To quote 'Clean, crisp and fresh. Nope, not the picnic, but today’s BOTD beach chic. We’re keeping cool and taking Halloween for a stroll around the cap. A touch of sparkle brightens up our simple tennis whites and a handsome hunk is the perfect finishing touch.' What's not to love....


But Barbie does Diva too...
'Beyoncé has arrived at Glastonbury with her flunkies in tow. Big gay stylist, big gay bouncer and big gay personal trainer/dog walker. Who run the world?'

But my favourites are those outfits shot on location that really conjure up that A-list lifestyle and working it on the Cap D'Azur...

'There is no such thing as a day off at BOTD Towers so it must be an off day. Never mind. Whatever is to be thrown at us this week, at least we will be looking great. Two minutes of peace by the pool before the madness begins.'


Barbie of the Day makes me smile, keeps me on my toes fashion-wise and is a daily dose of glamour and glitz - put her in your favourites or follow her on Twitter for the perfect antidote to working days in London.

The J. Paul Getty Museum collection comes alive with Google Goggles

The Google Goggles team has worked with The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to “Goggles-enable” their permanent collection of paintings. Now you can use the Google Goggles app on your phone to take a photo of any of the paintings in the Getty’s permanent collection and instantly access information about the work from both the Getty’s mobile-optimized webpage about the painting and from around the web. Instead of being limited to the amount of information that fits on the wall next to a painting, Getty museum staff can now share a fuller story that all visitors can enjoy online.

From your phone you can read and hear commentary from artists, curators, conservators or the works of art themselves, such as the anthropomorphic voice of the pig in the Adoration of the Magi. Snap a quick shot of the artwork and have an interactive experience with what is on the wall in front of you—all in in the palm of your hand (just remember to respect museum photography rules and to turn off your flash).

 

Google Goggles results and the Getty webpage for Portrait of the Sisters Bonaparte

If you want to take your art history lesson home with you, you can store a record of the art you captured by enabling Search History on your Android phone. In fact, anytime you stumble across a piece of art, whether it be a reproduction on a poster or a print in a book, you can take a photo with your phone and Goggles will recognize it and supply you with rich info.

Download Google Goggles for your Android or iOS device as part of the Google Search app, and give it a try if you stop by the Getty. You can also view the J. Paul Getty Museum collection online at http://www.getty.edu/art. For more information about the Getty-Goggles project, visit mobile.getty.edu/gettygoggles or scan the QR code below.

Posted by Shailesh Nalawadi, Product Manager

+1 around the world

Webmaster Level: all

A few months ago we released the +1 button on English search results on google.com. More recently, we’ve made the +1 button available to sites across the web, making it easy for the people who love your content to recommend it on Google search.

Today, +1’s will start appearing on Google search pages globally. We'll be starting off with sites like google.co.uk, google.de, google.jp and google.fr, then expanding quickly to most other Google search sites soon after.

We’ve partnered with a few more sites where you’ll see +1 buttons over the coming days.

If you’re a publisher based outside of the US, and you’ve been waiting to put +1 buttons on your site, now’s a good time to get started. Visit the +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central where the +1 button is already available in 44 languages.

Adding the +1 button could help your site to stand out by putting personal recommendations right at the moment of decision, on Google search. So if you have users who are fans of your content, encourage them to add their voice with +1!

Posted by Kari Wilson, Product Marketing Manager

Webbing the gap between science and the public

We recently held an Innovation Workshop for the 2011 Google Science Communication Fellows, a group of early to mid-career PhD scientists chosen for their leadership in climate change research and communication. The Fellows spent three days together alongside Googlers and external experts at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. exploring the potential of information technology and social media to spur public engagement.

All 21 of the 2011 Fellows are experienced science communicators, trained in using traditional media to bridge the gap between complex science and the general public. This workshop was an opportunity for them to explore new media communications optimized for the age of the web; or, as as I like to say, learning how to “web” the gap between the science community and the larger world in the digital age.
We organized the workshop around three themes:

1. Understanding the public. This session introduced trending tools— like search, Google Trends and Correlate—that can be used to gather data from search queries and online discussions. If you’re curious, watch Google user experience researcher, Dan Russel, give the Fellows a 101 on how people search, and what they’re looking for.
2. Documenting your science story. Here, the Fellows played around with Google Earth, Fusion Tables and YouTube to learn how to create interactive and engaging stories with science data, which could then be shared with a broad audience. For more on this, visit the Science Communications Fellows talks page on YouTube.
3. Joining the conversation. In this session, Googler Chris Messina, a developer advocate, took the Fellows on a journey into the social web, illustrating by examples the power of the crowd in shaping ideas and building understanding across diverse social networks. You can view Chris’s outstanding talk here.

Several external experts participated in the workshop as well, including Andy Revkin, Dot Earth blogger and senior fellow of environmental understanding at Pace University. Andy gave a thought-provoking keynote the first evening, which also included a self-composed ditty about the fossil age (look out Schoolhouse Rock!).

Armed with new knowledge on “webbing the gap,” the Fellows are now developing project proposals to put what they learned into practice. Proposal selections will be made later this summer. You can learn more about tools for science communication in the digital age and the innovation workshop at our site here. Stay tuned for future opportunities for participating in this program.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Google.org

Updated and more detailed Transparency Report

Our Transparency Report discloses the information that governments have asked for over the past six months. For our latest batch of data, covering July through December 2010, we wanted to improve the way we give you the information, so we’ve updated the look of the report and added more details.

We've highlighted some significant changes in the data and provided context about why those changes may have occurred during this reporting period. We’ve also made it easier for you to spot trends in the data yourself. For example, we’ve changed the format so you can now see data on a country-by-country basis. We’re also clearly disclosing the reasons why we’ve been asked to remove content—such as an allegation of defamation or hate speech.

For the first time, we’re also revealing the percentage of user data requests we’ve complied with in whole or in part. This gives you a better idea of how we’ve dealt with the requests we receive from government agencies—like local and federal police—for data about users of our services and products.

Our goal is to provide our users access to information and to protect the privacy of our users. Whenever we receive a request, we first check to make sure it meets both the letter and spirit of the law before complying. When possible, we notify affected users about requests for user data that may affect them. And, if we believe a request is overly broad, we will seek to narrow it.

We hope that our website improvements help you to see more clearly how the web is shaped by government influence and how Google responds to requests for information and removals.

Posted by Matt Braithwaite, Transparency Engineering

Hadiah Istimewa dari Google: PageRank Update! (Juni 2011)

Sore tadi (27/6/2011) setelah membuat dan mempublish artikel Cara Membuat Menu Pulldown Plus Tombol/Button, saya menyempatkan ngobrol lewat YM dengan seorang teman Blogger dari US. Dalam percakapan itu, dia sempat menyinggung bahwa pada hari ini (di US masih pagi banget , 27/6/2011) Google melakukan update, yaitu Panda Update (yang dilakukan secara diam-diam sebelumnya) dan juga Google PageRank

Cara Membuat Menu Pulldown Plus Tombol/Button

Pull down menu seringkali juga disebut sebagai dropdown menu atau jump menu. Disebut pull down karena list menu akan muncul setelah bagian atas menu diklik/ditekan, dan disebut pula dropdown menu karena setelah di-klik sederet list menu akan muncul secara berurutan ke bawah. Pull down menu/drop down menu sangat bermanfaat untuk menampilkan list pilihan yang sangat panjang karena dapat

My summer Sunday lunch - straight from the Mediterranean

Obviously living in a North London suburb which has a very large Greek Cypriot community has rubbed off on me because when I want to make something delicious at the weekend I often turn to Greek dishes that bring rich flavours yet are simple to make.

I had the in-laws coming to lunch and as the weather forecast was set for extemely hot I decided to cook a Stifado on Saturday so that the flavours really came out over-night in the fridge. Stifado is a rich beef stew cooked with onions, red wine, red wine vinegar and spices. It's found throughout Cyprus and on the menu of nearly all our local Greek restaurants as is a traditional staple. Here is my recipe...

Beef Stifado for 6-7 people

1.5kilos of braising or stewing steak
1kilo of small onions or ordinary onions cut into largish slices
Olive oil for frying
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
200ml red wine
1 teaspoon sugar
2 bay leaves

Fry the chunks of beef in batches to brown all over. Fry the onions separately and remove for later. Replace all in a heavy casserole and add garlic and vinegar - bring to boil. Add all the other ingredients except the onions and add water so that the juices cover the meat. Cook in a low oven for two hours at least. Add the onions and cook for a further half an hour. Towards the end remove the lid of the casserole so the sauce reduces down and becomes rich and thick.

As you can see from the picture I served this with Cyprus potatoes roasted, roasted red pepper and onion which had been tossed in olive oil and fennel seeds, a green salad with lettuce fresh from the garden, assorted olives from our local Turkish deli, bread and pickled garlic. Nothing was left over!

Tutorial Buat Tab Menu / Navbar Menu

Mempunyai tab menu ataupun navbar menu dalam sesebuah blog boleh digunakan oleh pemilik blog untuk meletakkan link yang penting atau link yang ingin diberi perhatian oleh pengunjung blog. Anda boleh lihat contoh tab menu yang ringkas di sini







Tutorial untuk membuat tab menu / navbar menu adalah seperti berikut.







1. Dari dashboard > design > edit html

(backup template untuk langkah berjaga²)



2. Menggunakan fungsi find (ctrl + F), cari kod ]]></b:skin>

2.1 Jika tidak jumpa, cari kod </head>



3. Copy dan paste kod di bawah SEBELUM kod yang anda jumpa di langkah 2 @ 2.1

ul#list-nav {

list-style:none;

margin:20px;

padding:0;

width:525px

}



ul#list-nav li {

display:inline

}



ul#list-nav li a {

text-decoration:none;

padding:5px 0;

width:100px;

background:#FF0099;

color:#eee;

float:left;

text-align:center;

border-left:1px solid #fff;

-moz-border-radius: 5px;

}



ul#list-nav li a:hover {

background:#FF6699;

color:#000

-moz-border-radius: 5px;

}

Contoh.:







4. Save template anda.



5. Kemudian, kembali ke dashboard, pergi ke design > page element > add a gadget > HTML/javascript



6. Copy dan paste kod di bawah di dalam HTML/javascript kemudian tukarkan 'Link' dengan link yang anda mahu letak di tab menu.

Contoh : <li><a href='http://ohbest.blogspot.com'>Home</a></li>



Selepas selesai masukkan link yang dikehendaki,

save.

<div>

<ul id='list-nav'>

<li><a href='Link'>Home</a></li>

<li><a href='Link'>About Us</a></li>

<li><a href='Link'>Services</a></li>

<li><a href='Link'>Products</a></li>

<li><a href='Link'>Contact</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

7. Drag ke bawah element header, save dan lihat hasilnya.:)









Nota 1: Untuk langkah 3, anda boleh ubah beberapa kod seperti warna background, border, dan radius. Bergantung kepada bagaimana tab menu yang anda mahukan.



Nota 2: Jika anda hendak tambah tab menu, copy paste barisan di langkah 6.





Happy blogging.:)

Tips Menaip Entri Dalam Blog : Part 2

Sambungan daripada tips menaip entri dalam blog part 1, entri kali ini akan memberikan 3 lagi point yang boleh dititikberatkan jika anda menaip entri di dalam blog. Bagi yang belum membaca part 1, anda boleh baca dahulu sebelum sambung entri ini. Atau mana-mana dahulu pun boleh.:)



Untuk kali ini, 3 lagi point yang anda perlu pertimbangkan untuk menaip adalah seperti berikut.

1. Gambar

Meletakkan gambar adalah penting untuk sesebuah entri. Kewujudan gambar akan lebih mencorakkan lagi apa yang anda taip di dalam blog. Jadi gambar sememangnya mempengaruhi minat pengunjung untuk membaca kandungan entri anda.


Kalau anda baca buku, kan best kalau ada diselitkan gambar. Begitu juga entri blog. Paling kurang gambar yang ada adalah sekeping atau berapa banyak yang dirasakan perlu. Tetapi pastikan juga jangan letak terlalu banyak gambar dalam entri melainkan entri yang memang berbentuk penerangan bergambar.


2. Provokasi

Adakah bagus untuk melakukan provokasi semasa menaip blog.?. Jawapannya adalah YA. Menaip entri yang berbentuk provokasi sememangnya salah satu teknik menaip yang mampu menarik lebih ramai pengunjung untuk membaca dan komen.


Tetapi harus diingatkan, jangan melakukan provokasi yang bersifat keras. Lakukan provokasi yang lebih bersifat lembut dan menarik orang untuk membaca dan komen yang bernas, bukannya membaca dan di balas dengan cacian. Dan jika anda hendak tahu, entri yang melakukan provokasi pada jantina yang berlainan lagi bagus.:)

Provokasi akan membuatkan pembaca berasa 'geram' untuk baca dan komen..:). Contoh provokasi 'lembut' untuk lelaki, Lelaki memang banyak bagi alasan macam ni eh.?, dan contoh provokasi 'lembut' terhadap perempuan yang pernah ditaip sebelum ini.,Perempuan memang selalu macam ni eh. So entri ini akan membuatkan pembaca akan berasa relax untuk membaca dan rasa hendak komen je berbanding entri berbentuk fakta.:)


3. Persoalan.

Tinggalkan persoalan untuk entri anda. Persoalan juga boleh memacu pembaca untuk ingin selalu mengikuti setiap entri anda. Selain itu, persoalan juga membolehkan pembaca lebih berminat untuk menghantar komen.



Contoh, jika anda buat persoalan, "Hendak tahu apa yang terjadi lepas tu.? Nanti aku cerita dalam entri akan datang ye.". Apabila membaca, pembaca ingin tahu apa yang berlaku dan kemungkinan akan datang lagi untuk membaca. Kerana entri anda menimbulkan pertanyaan di pikiran mereka.

Juga boleh tinggalkan persoalan di akhir entri untuk pendapat, seperti " Apa yang korang rasa, perlu tak aku teruskan hubungan ini?"..(psst:tetapi janganla setiap entri ada persoalan pula.:)

Entri sebegini akan membentuk satu pembacaan yang bercorak pelbagai, bukan entri yang berbentuk mendatar sahaja.:)

------------------------------------------

Kebiasaaannya, untuk menghasilkan entri yang menarik, ianya lebih kepada pendekatan psikologi dan pengetahuan anda kepada sifat dan perlakuan manusia. Sebab jika anda menaip entri sebenarnya banyak pandangan orang dari perspektif yang berbeza. So ianya bergantung bagaimana anda tackle emosi pengunjung blog anda. Dan cara untuk tackle adalah hasilkan entri yang menarik perhatian mahkluk bernama manusia.:)

Cara Membuat List HTML & Menu Sederhana (Basic of Unordered List)

Pada dasarnya, hampir semua menu menggunakan struktur HTML list, dalam hal ini adalah unordered list (tag ul) atau daftar tak berurutan yang merangkum keseluruhan list (tag li). Segala bentuk navigasi yang berupa menu menggunakan struktur dari tag-tag tersebut dan kemudian ditambahi dengan aturan-aturan yang membentuk tampilan, fungsi, serta efek yang menarik (CSS dan Javascript).Unordered list

Google Apps highlights – 6/24/2011

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

There’s no slowing down as we head into summer. In the last couple weeks, we made improvements to Google Sync for iOS devices, streamlined collaboration in Microsoft® Office files, added mobile display options for Google Sites and welcomed many big organizations, including the state of Wyoming, onto Google Apps.

Search all email from iOS devices, and more
Google Sync brings your email, calendar and contacts to four popular phone platforms. Last Wednesday, we improved Google Sync for iOS devices in three ways. One, you can now search all of your Gmail from your iPhone or iPad, beyond just the messages stored on your phone. Two, you can accept, decline and edit calendar events from your device, and three, you can send email from a custom email address if you use Gmail’s “Send mail as” feature. This is useful if you like to manage email in Gmail, but want emails you sent to look like they’re coming from a school or business email address.

Paste images into Gmail messages
As of Monday, if you use the latest version of Chrome, you can now paste images into Gmail’s compose window right from your clipboard. If you copy an image from the web or another email, it’s a cinch to paste it directly into a message.

Improvements to Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office
With Google Cloud Connect, you can collaborate with others simultaneously through Google’s cloud in Word, Excel and PowerPoint files without sending attachments back and forth. People told us they wanted a faster way to open files with Google Cloud Connect so on Tuesday we streamlined that process. Now you can open native Office files saved in Google Docs right from Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Mobile rendering for Google Sites
It’s important that you can be just as productive on your phone’s small screen as on a full computer display, so yesterday we made Google Sites work even better on mobile devices. You can now configure your sites to automatically render for smaller screens on Android and iOS devices, making the content much easier to read and navigate. In addition, you can also browse and search the sites that you manage through an interface that’s also been optimized for a mobile device’s smaller screen.

Who’s gone Google?

It’s been another bumper couple weeks with tens of thousands more organizations moving to Google Apps. This week, the State of Wyoming became the first to move all state government employees to Google Apps. Matt Mead, Governor of Wyoming, was on-hand for a “cable cutting” ceremony to celebrate the 10,000 user transition to the cloud, which was managed smoothly by deployment partner Tempus Nova.

In the private sector, all 8,400 employees at The McClatchy Company are “going Google” across the business’ 30 newspapers. The company is anticipating a stack of benefits from Google Apps, including standardization on a single email solution, simpler shared calendaring, improved collaboration even when mobile, significant cost savings and a level of service that they weren’t seeing from their historical provider, not to mention great employee enthusiasm for the IT group’s decision.

Even though it’s summer vacation, we saw many schools keeping busy by moving to Google’s cloud. A warm welcome goes out to the Wisconsin K-12 school system (900,000 users), CSU Monterey Bay (10,000 users) and the Indian Youth Congress (28,000 users). Schools will be able to enjoy even more Gmail storage now too; we’re bumping up the quota to 25GB for all education accounts!

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

An update on Google Health and Google PowerMeter

In the coming months, we’re going to retire two products that didn’t catch on the way we would have hoped, but did serve as influential models: Google Health (retiring January 1, 2012; data available for download through January 1, 2013) and Google PowerMeter (retiring September 16, 2011). Both were based on the idea that with more and better information, people can make smarter choices, whether in regard to managing personal health and wellness, or saving money and conserving energy at home. While they didn't scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult.

We’re making this announcement well in advance to give you plenty of time to download the information you might have stored in either product or to transfer it to another service, and we’re making it easy for you to do it in a variety of formats. More on how that works below.

More broadly, we remain committed as always to helping people around the world access and use information pertinent to them. We’ll continue to pursue this goal and to encourage government and industry to do the same.

Google Health
When we launched Google Health, our goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information. We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users.

Now, with a few years of experience, we’ve observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people. That’s why we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue the Google Health service. We’ll continue to operate the Google Health site as usual through January 1, 2012, and we’ll provide an ongoing way for people to download their health data for an additional year beyond that, through January 1, 2013. Any data that remains in Google Health after that point will be permanently deleted.

If you’re a Google Health user, we’ve made it easy for you to retrieve your data from Google Health any time before January 1, 2013. Just go to the site to download your information in any of several formats: you can print and save it, or transfer it to other services that support industry-standard data formats. Available formats include:

• Printable PDF including all the records in your Google Health profile
• Industry-standard Continuity of Care Record (CCR) XML that can be imported into other personal health tools such as Microsoft® HealthVault™
• Comma-separated value (CSV) files that can be imported into spreadsheets and database programs for ongoing tracking and graphing
• HTML and XML versions of the original “data notices” sent to your Google Health profile by linked data providers
• A unified ZIP archive that includes all files you’ve uploaded to your profile, plus all of the formats above

Over the coming weeks we’ll also be adding the ability to directly transfer your health data to other services that support the Direct Project protocol, an emerging open standard for efficient health data exchange. And while we’ll discontinue the Google Health service at the beginning of 2012, we’ll keep these download options available for one more year, through the start of 2013. This approach to download and transfer capability is part of Google’s strong commitment to data liberation principles: providing free and easy ways for users to maintain control of their data and move it out of Google’s services at any time.

In the end, while we weren’t able to create the impact we wanted with Google Health, we hope it has raised the visibility of the role of the empowered consumer in their own care. We continue to be strong believers in the role information plays in healthcare and in improving the way people manage their health, and we’re always working to improve our search quality for the millions of users who come to Google every day to get answers to their health and wellness queries.

Google PowerMeter
We first launched Google PowerMeter as a Google.org project to raise awareness about the importance of giving people access to data surrounding their energy usage. Studies show that having simple access to such information helps consumers reduce their energy use by up to 15%; of course, even broader access to this information could help reduce energy use worldwide.

Since our launch, there’s been more attention given to this notion of people easily accessing their energy data. The installation of smart meters and other home energy devices is picking up steam, and states like California and Texas are moving forward to finalize policies and programs in this area. Earlier this month, the White House announced a goal of giving all consumers access to their energy usage in computer-friendly formats as part of a national plan for modernizing the electricity grid.

We’re pleased that PowerMeter has helped demonstrate the importance of this access and created something of a model. However, our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like, so we are retiring the service. PowerMeter users will have access to the tool until September 16, 2011. We have made it easy for you to download your data: simply log in to your account and go to "Account Settings” to export to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. We will be contacting users directly with more information on this process.

Momentum is building toward making energy information more readily accessible, and it’s exciting to see others drive innovation and pursue opportunities in this important new market. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished with PowerMeter and look forward to what will develop next in this space.

By helping people make more informed decisions through greater access to more information, we believe Google Health and PowerMeter have been trailblazers in their respective categories. Ultimately though, we want to satisfy the most pressing needs for the greatest number of people. In the case of these two products, our inability to scale has led us to focus our priorities elsewhere.

As always, we welcome your feedback; please share your thoughts and opinions with us at health-feedback@google.com or powermeter-feedback@google.com. We won’t be able to respond to every email, but we promise we’ll listen.

Update 7/15/11: We've now added the ability to directly transfer your health data out of Google Health via the Direct Project protocol.

Posted by Aaron Brown, Senior Product Manager, Google Health and Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Supporting choice, ensuring economic opportunity

At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible—and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services.

It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand. Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow. No matter what you’re looking for—buying a movie ticket, finding the best burger nearby, or watching a royal wedding—we want to get you the information you want as quickly as possible. Sometimes the best result is a link to another website. Other times it’s a news article, sports score, stock quote, a video or a map.

Instant answers. New sources of knowledge. Powerful tools—all for free. In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers.

Search helps you go anywhere and discover anything, on an open Internet. Using Google is a choice—and there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information: other general-interest search engines, specialized search engines, direct navigation to websites, mobile applications, social networks, and more.

Because of the many choices available to you, we work constantly on making search better, and will continue to follow the principles that have guided us from the beginning:

• Do what’s best for the user. We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results.

• Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. Today, when you type “weather in Chicago” or “how many feet in a mile” into our search box, you get the answers directly—often before you hit “enter”. And we’re always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you.

• Label advertisements clearly. Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn’t.

• Be transparent. We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We’ve recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules.

• Loyalty, not lock-in. We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we’re innovating and making our products better—not because you’re locked in.

These are the principles that guide us, and we know they’ll stand up to scrutiny. We’re committed to giving you choices, ensuring that businesses can grow and create jobs, and, ultimately, fostering an Internet that benefits us all.

To learn more about our business, please visit google.com/press/competition.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow