Google - Part 5

Santa Google has limited gifts for 2008 Christmas!

One of the thread answered by AdsenseAdvisor says:- “We really appreciate the work you all put into building great sites. However, we feel that gift-giving is not the most appropriate gesture this year given the current global economic climate. I know you may be disappointed, but I hope you can understand our efforts to be fiscally responsible in these times.”

With all these, some publishers are reporting that they have received gifts from Google.
Here are some of the pictures posted in that same forum.
T-shirt-mug-pen-mousepad-sticker

The gift package are said to be arrived via UPS and included Shirt, a Mug, a Pen, a Mouse Pad and Paper with Google Logo.
But some of them got only the Mug(Better then nothing!).
Google-Mug
Mug-Google-Closer-look

Each Christmas Google use to send such gifts to some of its selected publishers and advertiser(maybe for those who earn them a lot), but for this(2008) Christmas Google thinks not to spend more(to cut down its budget, due to global economic crisis!). So we think it will limit the gifts only to its top most publishers and advertisers. At the most it may send some greetings to other selective publishers and advertisers.
Above gift images look great. It may be lot cheaper in terms of cost, but gifts are gifts and are usually priceless.
If you want to get something from Google, then get GMail stickers by sending them stamped, self addressed envelops.

Use two Search forms to increase the pageviews

We have been experimenting with the Google Custom Search Engine, and we had put two CSE on our blog. As you can see, we have placed one at the top and one at the footer of this blog.

We could see that the number of search almost tripled and the page views were four to five(fluctuating) times more than before.

This is because, when people read the entire article, they will reach to the end of the page. Now they can see the “Related Articles”. And if they do not want to read those things and want something else, then they obviously need to search for it, and showing a search form at the end of the blog reminds them to search for the things they want.

People are lazy and they will not always scroll up and do a search on your blog. They may just think that the information isn’t available on your blog. And its frustrating to search for the required article from any achieve page manually!

So a search form at the footer helps a lot.

Now what about the page views?

Google Custom search engine and most other search engines which you can put on your blog, has the feature to select the websites from where it should search for the keywords. So each time someone uses your Search engine, he is likely to visit some other article of your own blog. This will just repeat and result in the increase of your page views.

There are many other benefits:-

1. You can know, what people are searching.

2. Earn a bit of revenue(if you want– Optional).

3. Increase page views.

4. Very useful for visitors.

Now to add Google Custom Search Engine to your website, just follow this article- “Add Custom Search Engine to your wordpress blog easily“.

After adding the Google Custom Search Engine to your blog, make sure that your articles are indexed..

Watch this video to know more about indexing, in Google Custom Search Engine:

Having two Adsense for Search or Google Custom Search Engine on a single page is allowed. But having more than two forms is against TOS and will also annoy the visitors!

Adding 2 search engine to this blog showed some positive results, but you need not take this as a rule. Every blog is different and results vary, so do some research and experiments on your blog and analyze the results and then decide whether to keep one or two search engine forms on your blog.

While placing the Search Engine forms, just keep in mind that, their placement also play a major role.

And also keep in mind that, you need to have more articles on your blog. If you have just 10 to 25 articles, then you cannot relay on the results. If that is the case with you, then stop the experiment and concentrate more on blogging and do further research when you have more articles.

Auto Translate Now Available For Videos With Captions + Search Bar – YouTube

Ever got frustrated by watching your favorite celebrate interview video where they are speaking in some language that you don’t know and which is having captions too in some other language ?

Now Google has taken another step, where your videos can reach wider audience. Google Translate adds real-time machine translation to any caption tracks you upload. Now you can enjoy this video spoken in Italian, even if you don’t understand Italian.

To get a translation for your preferred language, move the mouse over the bottom-right arrow, and then over the small triangle next to the CC (or subtitle) icon, to see the captions menu. Click on the “Translate…” button and then you will be given a choice of many different languages.

When you add captions to your video in one language, it will be readable to almost everybody through auto translate. While machine translation is not perfect, but still this will help creators to offer a better understanding of their videos.

Search bar at the top of video:
As Google has started – “To help its video content partners earn more money, YouTube will
begin running overlay ads in YouTube partner videos embedded on other websites”.

So now youtube generates revenue whenever someone uses its content partners video, anywhere in the internet. So now youtube has added this search bar within the video player, and now we can search for any video from within the player and watch it wherever we are!

Voice and Video chat – right inside Gmail

Today Google released the Voice and Video chat feature to its Gmail. Switching from email to chat as needed, all within the same app, is really great for productivity.
video-voice-chat-gmail
From Gmail Blog:

All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and you are ready. And in the spirit of open communications, Google has designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

Source: GmailBlog

This feature is available both in Gmail and Apps account. Seems like Google will soon steal the market share of Email Service. Presently Yahoo tops the list – Comscore figures.
The problem with Google not listing in the top might be, many people with a domain will be using Google Apps google.com/a/domain.com instead of the default gmail.com.

Google Docs improved: Now with instant templates

Google Docs was/is of great help from the day it launched, but today we have a speacial reason to thank Google Docs Team. That is, they have launced a new template gallery for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Now, whether you need business cards, letterhead, or employee time sheets, you don’t have to start from a blank slate. Find the template that’s right for you and start customizing it with your information – you’ll save time on formatting and formulas.

To access the template gallery:

1. Log in to your Google Apps account at http://docs.google.com/a/example.com (Be sure to replace ‘example.com’ with your actual domain name.)
2. Click ‘New’
3. Select ‘From template…’

or click here and login with your Google account.

Many templates leverage the collaborative aspect of Google Docs so that several people can work on a single document online without having to email attachments back and forth. To hear the story behind two templates, watch these videos:

Add Refinements/Labels to your Custom Search Engine

Log into CSE and click on Control panel –> Refinements –> Add refinement.

Refinements are labels that you apply to websites. They appear as a list of links above search results, offering users a way to narrow their search. When a user clicks a refinement label, the sites that you have labeled are given priority in the results. In addition to labeling sites, you can also specify additional words that are added to users’ queries when they click a label, providing even more targeted results.

Google maintains a list of existing refinement labels. If you create a label with the same name as one of these, or with the same name as a label in another search engine that you or someone who is collaborating with you has created, users will also have the benefit of seeing relevant sites from these sources in their search results also.

Here refinements acts like the key word help for finding the relevant articles in our blog.

Add Custom Search Engine to your wordpress blog easily

Replace your default wordpress theme search engine with Google Custom Search Engine.
There are 3 option’s to show the result page:-

If you want to have results within your own site, then you need to create another page similar to your blog pages(to make it look more professional), and add the codes from Adsense account. This requires one to have some knowledge about html and some other basic Internet programming knowledge.
If you are using a magazine style theme and if you are showing additional advertisements on the sidebar, then remove it from your result page. Because its an violation of adsense policy.

There is another easy option, which doesn’t require any programming knowledge.
1. Open results on Google in the same window.
2. Open results on Google in a new window.

Now you decide about opening results page in new window or in the same window(Its considered user friendly, if all links open in same window, so we recommend selecting the 1st option. i.e., Open Results in the same window.)

Goto your Adsense account or Google Custom Search Engine page and get the codes to paste in your wordpress blog.

Now login to your wordpress and click on the “Design” tab –> Click on “Theme Editor”. Now search for “searchform.php” or similar file and click on it.
Now look for <div class="search"> </div> tags and delete everything inbetween them and paste the CSE codes from your adsense or Google CSE account and save it.

For Example:- Look at my Custom Search Engine[Top right corner — near navigation bar] and search for any keyword and see the result page.

If you are good at HTML and PHP, you can integrate the CSE into your own site and you can make the results to be shown in your own site. This looks even more professional.
But having any type of Custom Search Engine is better than not having one, so follow any method and integrate CSE to your blog.

Know This Before Using Google Custom Search Engine

There are many advantages of adding Google Custom Search Engine to your wordpress blog.
Some are listed below..
1. People are used to search in Google.com and they will not find it difficult to do the same in your blog.
2. You can monetize the search results using Google Ads. [Optional]
3. Ability to give options for users, to search only our blog or the entire web.
4. We can know exactly what people are searching in our blog using the search engine.
5. Looks more professional. SERP can be hosted on our own site or Google.
6. Easy to integrate and use.
7. More features. We can include Refinements/Labels at the top of the result page.
8. Highly Customizable. We can customize the look and feel of the result page. We can put our logo instead of Google logo and link it back to our main site/blog. Font colour and the placement of ads can be controlled by ourselves.
9. We can control the type of ads appearing on our search result page, by including Search engine keywords, Site description etc. The ads will match to the keyword of search as well as to the keywords that we have included. We can even block competitors advertisements.
10. Can include the results from multiple sites/blogs.

Caution:-
We have seen many bloggers using CSE(Custom Search Engine) and their SERP(Search Engine Result Page) is violating the Adsense policy, by showing additional ads on the SERP.
Here is what Google has to say about it..

Can I show ads on AdSense for search results pages in my own site?

We ask that you don’t place any additional ads on pages with framed search results. However, you’re welcome to place an AdSense for search box on the page so your users can continue to search if they haven’t found what they’re looking for.

Now without wasting much of time, Create a CSE and put it on to your blog, if you haven’t done yet.
There are two ways to do this.
1. Login to your adsense account and goto “AdSense Setup” tab and click on “AdSense for Search”. Further instruction are self explanatory.
2. Goto Google Custom Search Engine and click on “Create a Custom Search Engine”.

The advantage of using the 2nd option is, we get “Advance setup features” and more customization options. So we recommend using CSE.

To connect your Custom Search Engine account with Google AdSense, visit the Make money tab in your search engine’s control panel.

Fill in the form with the email address that you use with your AdSense account, your zip code, and the last 5 digits of your phone number. Google will use this information to connect your Custom Search Engine account to your AdSense account and you can start making money immediately.

Now you make money by monetizing the search result page and your readers will be comfortable searching what they are looking for. So its a win-win situation 🙂