Google Wants .google, .youtube and .lol Domain Extensions

As you might remember, a couple of years ago ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced that it would allow companies to apply to and register whatever domain extension they wanted.

It seems that Google figured this might actually be a good idea, as they are applying to register a bunch of new extensions, including .google, .docs, .youtube, and even Internet’s favorite slang .lol. Here’s a quote from a post on Google’s official blog:

In 2008, ICANN announced a program to expand the number of generic TLDs (think .com, .org, .edu), developed through its bottom-up, multi-stakeholder process, in which we participate. Given this expansion process, we decided to submit applications for new TLDs, which generally fall into four categories:

-Our trademarks, like .google
-Domains related to our core business, like .docs
-Domains that will improve user experience, such as .youtube, which can increase the ease with which YouTube channels and genres can be identified
-Domains we think have interesting and creative potential, such as .lol

I still think allowing those weird domain extensions is a terrible idea. It will only confuse users and create a lot of fragmentation online. Hopefully the whole thing will backfire, making established extensions like .com and .net even more valuable and credible.

That all being said trying to grab Cats.lol shouldn’t be a bad idea when it comes out…

Daniel Scocco

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Monetize your blog with Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger

When you share your words, thoughts and photos on Blogger, you are sharing your passions with the world. Sometimes, you’re passionate about brands or products. Starting today, you can make money by promoting relevant products in your posts, gaining income for each new customer you introduce to your favorite brands.

This is a new way for you to monetize your blog, giving you control over the advertisers and products you promote, and better connecting your readers with the things you love.

To get started, go to the Earnings tab on Blogger, and click “Get Started”. If you have an existing AdSense account and the content of your blog matches available ad categories, you're already set. Select an affiliate ad from the “Advertiser Products” widget that appears in the Post Settings panel in the post editor. If you don’t already have an AdSense account, sign up.

When you post about a brand or product from a featured advertiser, the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogged widget will help you to display an affiliate ad in your blog, which can be a text link, a product image, or a banner. You may earn commissions when someone clicks on your ads and makes a purchase on the advertiser’s site, going beyond “payment per click” to “payment per action” and extending the influential relationship you have with your audience.

Get started with Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger today to monetize your blog and bring your readers to the products you love.

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6 SEO Tips from Google Itself

If you are new to SEO Google just released a video with some basics mistakes you should avoid and six tips you should apply on your website if you want better rankings. If you have been working with SEO for some time you won’t find anything new here, but it might be a refresher and remind you about the factors that Google considers to be important. You can watch the video below:

If you are in a hurry here are the 6 tips:

1. Do something cool: Make sure your site stands out from the competition.

2. Include relevant words in your copy: Try to put yourself in the shoes of searchers.

3. Be smart about your tags and site architecture.

4. Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools to get notified by Google if anything is wrong.

5. Attract buzz: Natural links, +1s, likes, follows… all these can help.

6. Stay fresh and relevant: Keep content up-to-date on your site to keep receiving organic traffic.

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Google Translate Widget with Flags for Blogger

Google translation for your blog is now made easy with the use of flags. Add a Google Translator widget with mini flags to Blogger.

With the help of Google Translate and by adding flags to it, this widget in HTML, allows your visitors to translate your site and blog in their own languages.

Features:

• Translate widget with mini Flags for Blogger
• Coded in HTML, no JavaScript used so that it can also be viewed with Lynx based browsers which are unable to load script files.
• This Widget can translate any language to readers preferred language that are supported by Google Translate.
• I have included 10 languages in this widget. They are: Chinese(Simplified), Portuguese, English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish.
• Available for both English and Non-English blogs.
• Animation effects for modern browsers. (New)

Tested on a French language blog.

Demo

How to add this widget! Just click any one of the "Add to Blogger" Button.

Translator Widget with Mini Flags for English blogs

Translator Widget with Mini Flags for Non English blogs

Let me know if it helped you or if you have any problems or bugs with it.

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Google Testing New Email Subscription Ad Format

Google is experimenting with its Google Adwords offerings, attempting to go beyond regular text ads with Google Email Subscription Ads, allowing companies to buy ads that automatically fill in a “Subscribe to newsletter (or whatever, I’m assuming)” slot with a given searcher’s Google email address during a search.

Emailblog pointed out earlier this month that the ads were running with automaker Honda (ads which I still can’t see), and it seems like those offerings have expanded to results for email marketing services AWeber and Constant Contact (ads which I can see). Clicking on the “Privacy” button next to the subscription button lets you know that your email will be sent to the advertiser — In case that wasn’t clear(?).

When asked to explain what exactly was going on, a Google representative gave me the following statement (which is basically a more official sounding version I just said):

“We’re currently running a small experiment of a new ad format that helps users sign up more easily for email subscriptions or other free newsletters. This new ad format contains a box within the ad that displays a user’s Google email address (if logged in). If a user chooses to click ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ then the email address is sent to the advertiser directly, which is clearly disclosed within the ad itself.”

Something tells me TONS of email marketing companies will be using this once it’s actually official. My requests about whether or not (and when, if so) this will become a permanent feature have as of yet gone unanswered by Google.

From Techcrunch

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Google Changed Its Search Algorithm Again

First of all keep in mind that when we talk about “changes in Google’s algorithm” we are talking about big ones, like the latest Panda update. Small changes are implemented almost daily and you never notice them.

So over the past weeks Google rolled out a new algorithm change. According to Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land the main aspects affecting search rankings are:

Better “Official” Page Detection & Boosting: This means that official pages will now be detected more effectively and will also show up higher in search queries. For example, it will not be pretty much impossible to outrank an official brand with an affiliate website (in this past this could happen).

Image Search Loses A Ranking Signal: The ranking signal are references from different pages around the web. So even if multiple websites link to a certain image this won’t push its rankings up.

Fresher Results: Newer content will be pushed up no. Google said this change will affect around 35% of the search queries (which is quite a lot compared to previous algorithm changes).

Check the full article on Search Engine Land if you want to check all the changes. There were some design-related ones as well (e.g., related to snippets and page titles).

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Google Analytics support in Blogger

Having a solid understanding of the traffic and visitor engagement statistics of your blog is one of the best ways to help it grow, and that’s why today we’re excited to announce that you can now easily connect your Google Analytics account with your blog.

Adding Google Analytics to your blog will give you more insight into where your visitors are coming from and help you determine which content they engage with the most. It's an easy to use, powerful, free product that is used internationally by businesses large & small.

If you already have a Google Analytics account, simply navigate to your blog’s Settings > Other tab and enter your blog's Google Analytics Web Property ID. Blogger will then insert Google Analytics code into your blog automatically, regardless of which template you're using, including mobile.

For more details and troubleshooting tips, check out this post on the Blogger Developers Network blog.

A few notes:

• Google Analytics is supported on blogs using Dynamic Views, Layouts templates, and mobile templates, but notClassic templates.
• Because of the technical differences in how Blogger’s stats and Google Analytics collect data, you are likely to see some minor discrepancies between the two.

Posted by Muthu Kannan, Software Engineer

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Making search more secure

We’ve worked hard over the past few years to increase our services’ use of an encryption protocol called SSL, as well as encouraging the industry to adopt stronger security standards. For example, we made SSL the default setting in Gmail in January 2010 and introduced an encrypted search service located at https://encrypted.google.com four months later. Other prominent web companies have also added SSL support in recent months.

As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users. Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page. This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe. You can also navigate tohttps://www.google.com directly if you’re signed out or if you don’t have a Google Account.

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won't receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic. If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.

As we continue to add more support for SSL across our products and services, we hope to see similar action from other websites. That’s why our researchers publish information about SSL and provide advice to help facilitate broader use of the protocol. We hope that today’s move to increase the privacy and security of your web searches is only the next step in a broader industry effort to employ SSL encryption more widely and effectively.

Posted by Evelyn Kao, Product Manager

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New Google Panda Update Strikes Websites Traffic

A new Google Panda Update labelled Google Panda 2.5 has rolled across the web in last few days reranking top websites and changing search engine rankings of some top websites. This is in line with changing Google algorithms to remove content farms and scrapping sites from Google search results for a cleaner search experience.

Google Panda Update

Till now the following Google Panda updates have gone live.
Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about 4 week gap)
Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011 (about 7 week gap)

In fact Google changes its algorithm everyday!

Searchmetrics which has become famous for releasing lists of sites with severe traffic loss over the last few Panda updates, has again compiled a list of the latest Google Panda 2.5  updates victims. Some of the very popular sites like TheNextWeb, Technorati, PRNewsWire, have been hit.

Not all were losers – there were many gainers too like Youtube, Metacafe, AOL, IGN, Zappos etc. Check your analytics software and see how Google Panda has affected your site.

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