Make your websites run faster, automatically -- try mod_pagespeed for Apache

Webmaster Level: All

Last year, as part of Google’s initiative to make the web faster, we introduced Page Speed, a tool that gives developers suggestions to speed up web pages. It’s usually pretty straightforward for developers and webmasters to implement these suggestions by updating their web server configuration, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images. But we thought we could make it even easier -- ideally these optimizations should happen with minimal developer and webmaster effort.

So today, we’re introducing a module for the Apache HTTP Server called mod_pagespeed to perform many speed optimizations automatically. We’re starting with more than 15 on-the-fly optimizations that address various aspects of web performance, including optimizing caching, minimizing client-server round trips and minimizing payload size. We’ve seen mod_pagespeed reduce page load times by up to 50% (an average across a rough sample of sites we tried) -- in other words, essentially speeding up websites by about 2x, and sometimes even faster.

Comparison of the AdSense blog site with and without mod_pagespeed

Here are a few simple optimizations that are a pain to do manually, but that mod_pagespeed excels at:

• Making changes to the pages built by the Content Management Systems (CMS) with no need to make changes to the CMS itself,
• Recompressing an image when its HTML context changes to serve only the bytes required (typically tedious to optimize manually), and
• Extending the cache lifetime of the logo and images of your website to a year, while still allowing you to update these at any time.

We’re working with Go Daddy to get mod_pagespeed running for many of its 8.5 million customers. Warren Adelman, President and COO of Go Daddy, says:

"Go Daddy is continually looking for ways to provide our customers the best user experience possible. That's the reason we partnered with Google on the 'Make the Web Faster' initiative. Go Daddy engineers are seeing a dramatic decrease in load times of customers' websites using mod_pagespeed and other technologies provided. We hope to provide the technology to our customers soon - not only for their benefit, but for their website visitors as well.”

We’re also working with Cotendo to integrate the core engine of mod_pagespeed as part of their Content Delivery Network (CDN) service.

mod_pagespeed integrates as a module for the Apache HTTP Server, and we’ve released it as open-source for Apache for many Linux distributions. Download mod_pagespeed for your platform and let us know what you think on the project’s mailing list. We hope to work with the hosting, developer and webmaster community to improve mod_pagespeed and make the web faster.

Richard Rabbat, Product Manager, ‘Make the Web Faster’ initiative

More midterm election search trends as the results come in

As Election Day went on, people continued to come to Google for information and, importantly, updates on results. Starting around 8pm PT yesterday, Nov 2, and continuing throughout the night and into the morning, more than half the terms in Hot Trends were related to the election. People searched for [live election coverage] as well as news sites like [fox news] and [drudge report]. Most of the popular searches, however, were for certain races and candidates, starting mostly with races in the Eastern time zone and gradually moving west as polls closed across the country.

The hot terms included Senators-elect [marco rubio] of Florida, [dan coats] of Indiana and [rand paul] of Kentucky, three Republicans who won yesterday, as well as incumbent Democrats Sen. [blanche lincoln] of Arkansas and [russ feingold] of Wisconsin, who lost, and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who won the special Senate election to take Robert Byrd’s former Senate seat. [joe sestak], Pennsylvania’s Democrat candidate for Senate, was also popular online, as well as [joe toomey], who defeated him. People also looked for information on the [delaware senate race] which had gained national attention largely due to Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell (she lost).

Beginning around 9pm PT, we saw interest rising in the [nevada senate race], the outcome of which would determine whether Majority Leader Harry Reid would stay in office. Searches for [harry reid polls] and [nevada election results] continued to be popular even after it was announced that he had won. California’s incumbent Democrat Sen. [barbara boxer], who also won her reelection bid, was also popular search. And the still-undecided Alaska Senate race continues to drive searches, especially for the write-in candidate there, [lisa murkowski].

In the House of Representatives, we’ve seen searches spike for Rep. [nancy pelosi], who won her California district last night but lost her position as Speaker of the House when the Republicans gained the majority in the house. Her successor as Speaker, [john boehner], was also popular. And there was interest in reelected candidates from both sides of the aisle, from Democrat [barney frank] of Massachusetts to Republican [michele bachmann] of Minnesota.

Popular Governors’ races include Ohio, Florida (people are also looking for info about its winner as of this morning, [rick scott]), Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, South Carolina (which elected its first female governor last night, [nikki haley]) and Minnesota, where the winner has yet to be decided as of this moment. [emmer], the Republican candidate there, is in the top 20 list on Hot Trends as of 8am PT this morning.

California’s prop 19, which lost by an estimated 10 percentage points, continued to be popular online, as people checked for [prop 19 results] [prop 19 status] and [prop 19 poll numbers], asking [did prop 19 pass in california].

Some East Coast residents seem to have gone to bed before the results came out last night, and are catching up on the news this morning. Searches for New England newspapers [portland press herald], [hartford courant], [burlington free press] and [bangor daily news] took up a fifth of the Hot Trends list at 8am PT today, along with searches for [tallahassee democrat] and [columbus dispatch].

Finally, it wasn’t just current candidates who made news last night. Former vice presidential candidate [geraldine ferraro] was popular online; Ferraro appeared on TV last night with her fellow VP candidate Sarah Palin, and the former made some comments about female candidates for president in 2012 that had some people raising eyebrows. People were also interested in [obama trip to india], the President’s trip planned for this weekend.

That’s it for now, but we’ll keep an eye on the search trends—and on the news—and see if we have any more interesting tidbits to share.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor

Rich snippets for shopping sites

Webmaster Level: All

In time for the holiday season, we now support rich snippets for shopping (e-commerce) sites! As many of you know, rich snippets are search results that have been enhanced using structured data from your web pages. Our new format shows price, availability, and product reviews on pages offering a product for sale. Here’s a result for [office lava lamp]:

As a webmaster, there are two ways that you can provide the information needed for product rich snippets to show up for your site, both described on the Product rich snippets help page:

Option 1: Provide a Merchant Center feed.

Many sites already provide Merchant Center feeds for use in Google Product Search, which means that most of the work needed for rich snippets is already done. For Google to make use of Merchant Center feeds for rich snippets, you should also use the rel=”canonical” link element on your product pages. By adding rel=”canonical” to your pages, Google can match the URLs in your feed to the pages found by our crawler.

Update on November 4, 2010: In order to have your product review information in your rich snippets, you can submit your product ratings directly in your feed, or you can work with one of our reviews partners to submit this information. If you work with a partner, your reviews information will appear in rich snippets, and shoppers on Google Product Search will be able to see your full-length reviews on relevant product pages, branded with your logo.

Option 2: Add markup to your site.

If prices for your products tend to change only infrequently, then adding markup is an alternative method to provide product data for rich snippets. We’ve updated our product markup format to allow a variety of different types of shopping sites to participate. In addition to the Google format, we support two other standards: the hProduct microformat and GoodRelations. You can use the rich snippets testing tool to test your markup and make sure it’s being parsed correctly.

This feature is currently available to merchants located in the US, but we will be rolling it out in more markets soon. Additionally, there are a number of rich snippets formats that can be used world-wide in various languages—make your snippets compelling and useful! Should you have any questions about the use of rich snippets, check out our FAQs and feel free to post in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Q&A

Which should I provide -- a Merchant Center feed or markup?

For most merchants, providing a Merchant Center feed is the best bet. That way your product prices and availability are updated quickly, and the data can be shown in rich snippets as well as in other applications like Google Shopping and Product Ads. If prices and availability change only infrequently, and you don’t want to set up a feed, then adding markup is also a valid option.

If I add markup to my site, will Google show product rich snippets for my pages?

We can’t guarantee that providing a feed or adding markup will result in rich snippets being shown. Note also that it may take a few weeks after providing data for rich snippets to be shown. If you mark up your pages, we encourage you to make sure that the data is parsed correctly by Google by using the rich snippets testing tool. The testing tool updates are rolling out over the next few days, so in this interim period the testing tool may not show previews for some types of markup.

I’ve already done reviews markup for my product offer pages. Should I add product/offer markup as well?

Yes, absolutely. Rich snippets are shown if the information provided accurately represents the main focus of the page. Therefore, for product pages you should add markup using the relevant offer/product fields which can include nested reviews.

Written by Nitin Shetti and Mircea Ciurumelea, Search Quality team

More midterm election search trends

Election Day is finally here in the U.S., and many people are turning to the web to get information before heading out to vote. On Hot Trends at 1pm PT today, 13 of the top 20 searches were election-related, most of which had to do with figuring out where to vote. Terms like [polling place locator], [voting locations by zip code] and [where do i vote] have been popular all day, as well as state-specific searches like [nc board of elections] and [where to vote in minnesota]. Others are turning to the Internet to ask how long they have to vote, with searches like [what time do the polls close]. And earlier today, we even saw a handful of hot searches like [am i registered to vote in texas] and [voter registration]—apparently some well-meaning citizens have left one important part of the process until the last minute!

Of course, many people are also looking to make decisions about how to vote. The terms [vote smart] and [voters guide] have been popular today, indicating that people are trying to squeeze in some research before heading to the polls. Naturally, searches for various candidates, from [bill white] of Texas to [charlie baker] of Massachusetts, have increased today as well. Other searches like [massachusetts ballot questions 2010], [oklahoma state questions] and [amendment 4 florida] spiked this morning as people look for information about statewide measures. And at 1pm PT, three of the top 20 terms on Hot Trends had to do with California's proposition 19.

People are also already looking to get information about returns—searching for [exit polls 2010], [gallup poll], [voter turnout], [2010 election results] and [voting results], even though polls don’t close on the East Coast for several more hours.

Looking back over this past weekend, we saw a steady stream of political searches coming in. Search volume for California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina spiked last Friday when news broke that she had entered the hospital for an infection, but searches for Fiorina have since dropped below those for her opponent, Sen. Barbara Boxer. And amidst growing speculation about the possibility of his becoming Speaker of the House (and back-and-forth barbs with President Obama over the weekend), searches for Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner rose steadily across the country. Finally, last weekend was the culmination of nearly two months of national interest in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. On Saturday, October 30, more than half the terms on Hot Trends were related to the rally, and related searches like [comedy central rally] and [keep fear alive] have exploded, increasing by more than 5,000% in several cases.

We’ll be back later on with the latest on our election search trends. Until then, go find your polling place and vote!

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor

Announcing the Panoramio Photo Contest

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

The Panoramio community enables you to share your photos and explore them on Google Earth, Google Maps and other places. If you’ve never geo-tagged a photo, watch this video to learn how easy it is to add photos to the Panoramio layer in Google Earth.

Now you can add some excitement to your photo project and enter your photos to the monthly Panoramio Geotagged Photo Contest! Starting this month, we’ll be giving away the new Casio Hybrid-GPS camera EX-H20G to the winner of each category (Scenery, Heritage, Travel and Unusual Location). The Panoramio community reviews all of the submissions and votes for what they consider to be the best each month.


Casio’s new Hybrid-GPS camera combines a GPS engine with autonomic positioning made possible by a motion sensor. This makes geotagging easy—both outdoors and indoors.


If you haven’t joined the Panoramio community yet, try it out and don’t forget to participate in our monthly contest. To enter your photo, click on “Submit to the contest” and choose a category. Good luck and we can’t wait to see your photos!

Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Community Manager

Best practices for running multiple sites

Webmaster Level: All

Running a single compelling, high quality site can be time- and resource-consuming, not to mention the creativity it requires to make the site a great one. At times–particularly when it comes to rather commercial topics like foreign currency exchange or online gambling–we see that some webmasters try to compete for visibility in Google search results with a large

number of sites on the same topic. There are a few things to keep in mind when considering a strategy like this for sites that you want to have listed in our search results.

Some less creative webmasters, or those short on time but with substantial resources on their hands, might be tempted to create a multitude of similar sites without necessarily adding unique information to any of these. From a user’s perspective, these sorts of repetitive sites can constitute a poor user experience when visible in search results. Luckily, over time our algorithms have gotten pretty good at recognizing similar content so as to serve users with a diverse range of information. We don’t recommend creating similar sites like that; it’s not a good use of your time and resources.

If all of your sites offer essentially the same content, additional sites are not contributing much to the Internet.

While you’re free to run as many sites as you want, keep in mind that users prefer to see unique and compelling content. It is a good idea to give each site its own content, personality and function. This is true of any website, regardless of whether it’s a single-page hobby-site or part of a large portfolio. When you create a website, try to add something new or some value to the Internet; make something your users have never seen before, something that inspires and fascinates them, something they can’t wait to recommend to their friends.

When coming up with an idea for a website, scan the web first. There are many websites dealing with common and popular services like holiday planning, price comparisons or foreign exchange currency trading. It frequently doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel and compete with existing broad topic sites. It’s often more practical and rewarding to focus on smaller or niche topics where your expertise is best and where competition for user attention might be less fierce.

A few webmasters choose to focus their resources on one domain but make use of their domain portfolio by creating a multitude of smaller sites linking to it. In some situations these sites may be perceived as doorways. Without value of their own, these doorway sites are unlikely to stand the test of time in our search results. If you registered several domains but only want to focus on one topic, we recommend you create unique and compelling content on each domain or simply 301 redirect all users to your preferred domain. Think of your web endeavour as if it were a restaurant: You want each dish to reflect the high quality of the service you provide; repeat the same item over and over on your menu and your restaurant might not do so well. Identify and promote your strength or uniqueness. Ask yourself the following questions: What makes you better than the competition? What new service do you provide that others don’t? What makes your sites unique and compelling enough to make users want to revisit them, link to them or even recommend them to their friends?

We suggest not spreading out your efforts too broadly, though. It can be difficult to maintain multiple sites while keeping the content fresh and engaging. It’s better to have one or a few good sites than a multitude of shallow, low value-add sites. As always, we encourage you to share your thoughts via comments as well as by contributing to the Google Webmaster community.

Posted by Tomer Honen & Kaspar Szymanski, Search Quality Team

Passing the torch to the cloud: NYU is going Google

(Cross-posted on the Google Enterprise Blog)

The weather report may predict sun today in New York City, but it’s beginning to look more like a city that’s in the “cloud.” Today, NYU announced that it’s moving to Google Apps for Education, providing cloud-based email and collaboration tools to the entire university community. This announcement comes just weeks after New York State created an initiative to bring Google Apps for Education to their K-12 schools. With students and faculty across New York now using Google Apps, it looks like the Empire State has fully embraced the cloud.

This move to Google Apps will provide more than 60,000 students, staff and faculty at NYU with Google tools like Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Sites and will bring all 18 schools of NYU—including medical, dental and law schools—together on one uniform system. This project is estimated to save the University around $400,000 annually by eliminating the need to purchase, upgrade, and maintain in-house mail servers and software licenses.

Marilyn McMillan, NYU’s Chief Information Officer says the move is “...a win-win: in one stroke, we are able to provide better email services to members of the NYU community, offer a new set of tools for academic collaboration, and achieve savings for the University.”

The community of NYU joins more than 10 million users from thousands of schools across the globe who have gone Google, and we’re proud to welcome them to the family.

To learn more about how you can bring your campus to the cloud, visit www.google.com/a/edu.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Apps for Education team