Improve your website’s performance with the new Speed Suggestions report
November 5th, 2013 | by Adam Singer | published in Google Analytics
November 5th, 2013 | by Adam Singer | published in Google Analytics
November 5th, 2013 | by Jane Smith | published in Google Apps, Google Enterprise
Life is full of changes, especially at work. As some people retire or move on to new jobs, other people arrive to take their place. Even within a company, people often switch teams and take on new roles, which can dramatically change how they spend their time or who they need to meet with at work.
Google Calendar should make it easy to manage your schedule at work, especially if you’re switching teams and trying to attend a new set of meetings. Starting today when Google Calendar invitations are sent to members of a Google Group, the attendee list will automatically update as people join or leave the group.
When you join a Google Group, you will be added to all of its meetings. And if you leave a group, those meetings will be removed from your calendar. Now you don’t have to worry about missing your new team’s meetings or having your calendar overrun by events that no longer matter.
This update will roll out to Rapid Release customers today and to Scheduled Release customers in the coming weeks. It will only apply to new calendar events created after the roll out is complete, but you can apply it to existing meetings by re-inviting the group.
November 5th, 2013 | by Emily Wood | published in Google Blog
What if getting help for a computer glitch, a leaky pipe, or a homework problem was as easy as clicking a button? What if you could connect via real-time video to a music teacher or a yoga instructor from the comfort of your home? What if you could get someone knowledgeable to get you “unstuck” when you really need it?
Today, we’re announcing Helpouts—a new way to get and give help over live video. Our goal is simple: help people help each other. We want to use the convenience and efficiency of the web to enable everyone, no matter where they are or what time it is, to easily connect with someone who can help.
Help might be a quick answer to a problem you’re having right now, like how to fix your garage door, or how to remove a computer virus; or it might be guidance completing a project, like building a deck. It might be learning a new skill, like how to speak conversational French or how to draw cartoons; or it might be general advice on how to improve your fitness or your writing (I could use this right now).
With Helpouts, you can choose who you get help from based on their qualifications, their availability, their price, their ratings and reviews. You can connect instantly or book in advance. You can get help from individuals or from brands you already know and trust, like Sephora, One Medical, Weight Watchers, Redbeacon (a Home Depot company), and Rosetta Stone. Once you’re in a Helpout, you can do more than just talk—you can share your computer screen, collaboratively edit a presentation, or record your Helpout. And if the experience doesn’t meet your expectations, we offer a full money back guarantee.
Today is just the beginning. We’re starting small and in a few categories. The number of people giving help on Helpouts and the type of help available will grow over time. Helpouts may not be suitable for every occasion, and it will take time to get used to interactions via real time video. We hope that the efficiency, convenience and global reach of Helpouts will make people’s lives easier in the long term.
We hope you’ll give Helpouts a try and give us your feedback through ratings and reviews, or talk to us on Google+, Twitter or Facebook. And if you’re interested in giving help on Helpouts yourself, let us know.
It’s time to make getting good help a whole lot easier.
Posted by Udi Manber, VP Engineering
November 4th, 2013 | by Adam Singer | published in Google Analytics
November 4th, 2013 | by Rob Newton | published in Google Adwords
Search Network with Display Select extends the reach of your search campaigns to the Google Display Network (GDN). The GDN reaches 90% of the global online audience (Comscore September 2013) and includes 2 million publisher sites, like weather.com. Upgrading existing search campaigns to Search Network with Display Select is easy. In a few steps and without extra work, you could gain 15% more customers* by showing your ads at the right moments across search and the web.
How is this different from the old campaign type?
In addition to extending the reach of search campaigns, this new campaign type offers better results on the display network than the old Search & Display Networks campaign type.
Search Network with Display Select uses improved signals and methods of predicting when and where your ads are likely to perform best, and sets a higher bar for when to show them. That means your ads are more likely to be shown to a smaller number of prospective customers, who are more likely to be interested in your offerings. Compared to the old campaign type, initial tests show that advertisers, on average, could see a 35% higher click-through-rate, and a 35% lower cost-per-customer purchase on the display portion of their Search Network with Display Select campaigns.*
When to use the new Search Network with Display Select campaign type:
If you currently run Search and Display campaigns separately, we recommend you keep them separate for greater bidding, budgeting and targeting flexibility.
Upgrading to Search Network with Display Select
Search Network with Display Select is now the best option for advertisers running ads across search and display within a single campaign. So starting today and over the next few weeks, we’ll be removing the current Search & Display Networks campaign type in the AdWords interface, and we’re encouraging advertisers to switch existing campaigns to Search Network with Display Select. We’ve created a quick workflow in the AdWords interface that makes switching easy. Step-by-step instructions are also available in the AdWords Help Center. Please visit here to learn more.
Posted by Ahmad Anvari, Product Manager
*Based on initial test results, the average customer could see a 35% higher click-thru-rate and 35% lower CPA on the display portion of their new Search Networks with Display Select campaigns compared to existing Search & Display Networks campaigns. Based on initial test results, the average customer could also see 10-15% incremental conversions compared with Search Network only campaigns. Individual campaign performance may vary.
November 4th, 2013 | by Emily Wood | published in Google Blog
We all remember the days when we’d arrive at school, permission slips and bag lunches in tow, ready to venture forth on a field trip. Those were the days we waited for all year. Yet most field trips cost money, require lots of planning, and can only go as far as a school bus can take you.
If you’re a K-12 teacher, head over to the Connected Classrooms site and learn how your classroom can participate.
Posted by Lisa Jiang, Google+ Education Partnerships Lead
November 3rd, 2013 | by Jane Smith | published in Google Enterprise
Every year, tens of thousands of runners from around the world descend on the five boroughs to participate in the ING New York City Marathon.
This year’s ESPN coverage of the event changes the way we experience the big race from our living rooms. To track the progress of the race, ESPN and IMG Productions have teamed up with Google Maps to bring fans real-time locations of leading runners. We’re equipping ESPN and IMG Media’s film crew traveling by bike with Nexus smartphones displaying runner locations on a live map.
ESPN’s map broadcast is made possible by Google Maps Coordinate, a tool that gives organizations real-time visibility into the location of mobile teams. To see the map, tune in to ESPN today and follow all 26.2 miles of the race. And good luck to everyone participating in this year’s marathon!
November 1st, 2013 | by Aditi Rajaram | published in Google Analytics
To make it easy to navigate all the 270+ data points the Core Reporting API exposes, today we launched version 2 of the Dimensions and Metrics Explorer.
Click to see the list view.
This tool makes it easy to browse all of the dimensions and metrics, identify valid combinations, and get comprehensive definitions and descriptions.
Click to see the description view.
No wonder it’s the third most visited page on the Analytics Developer site.
Today’s update to the tool added:
Visit the Dimensions and Metrics Explorer and tell us what you think.
This tool is built completely using the Metadata API. If you’re thinking about developing your own tools with this data, get started here!
Posted by Pete Frisella, Developer Advocate, Developer Relations Team
November 1st, 2013 | by Becky C. | published in Google DoubleClick
November 1st, 2013 | by Stephanie Taylor | published in Google Open Source
We are pleased to announce the 10 open source organizations that will be providing tasks for young students to work on during the Google Code-in 2013 contest starting later this month. The contest is designed to introduce 13-17 year old pre-university students to open source software development. These open source organizations are all experienced at mentoring students, having all participated in Google Summer of Code in the past; many have also participated in previous years of Google Code-in as well.
Apertium – platform for making rule-based machine translation systems
BRL-CAD – a 3D computer graphics modeling system
Copyleft Games Group – promotes players rights to create, play, mod, and share games
Drupal – content management platform
Haiku – an operating system, fast and simple, inspired by the BeOS
KDE – develops desktop software (desktop globe, music player, office suite and more)
RTEMS – open source real-time operating system for embedded applications
Sahana Software Foundation – humanitarian open source disaster management software
Sugar Labs – a learning platform that reinvents how computers are used for primary education
Wikimedia Foundation – MediaWiki and extensions, powering Wikipedia and thousands of collaborative websites
Organizations will provide a list of tasks for students to work on during the contest in categories such as coding, documentation, user interface, quality assurance and outreach. Each task has a mentor assigned to it to help students should they have questions as they are completing the tasks.
The mentoring organizations are now all busy working on their extensive task lists to have them ready by the start of the contest on November 18th.
Starting on Monday, November 18th at 17:00 UTC, students that meet the eligibility requirements can register on the Google Code-in contest site and start claiming tasks and earning prizes.
For more important contest information please check out the contest site for Contest Rules, Frequently Asked Questions and Important Dates. We have a screencast and a short video about the contest available to view as well. You can also join our announcement and discussion lists to talk with other students, mentors and organization administrators.
Students, join in the fun – Google Code-in starts Monday, November 18th!
By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs
November 1st, 2013 | by A Googler | published in iGoogle
Gadgets provided by third party developers will continue to be served. Google Sites, and other third party sites that have installed these gadgets will not be affected.
November 1st, 2013 | by Maps Devel | published in Google Maps
A new version of Google Play services is currently rolling out to devices. You can start developing for it now using the latest Google Play services SDK along with the new Android 4.4 (KitKat) emulator. Read on to find out about the new features added for the Google Maps Android API v2.
Whether your app tracks ghost sightings, shows witch flight paths, or guides users to the nearest zombie-proof safehold, sometimes the best way to highlight important information is to de-emphasise some elements of your app. The new alpha
property for Markers allows you to fade markers in and out as they become more or less important.
You can further tailor the map to your use case using the new setBuildingsEnabled()
method to control the visibility of 3D buildings. This is especially useful when you want to highlight your own content. We’ve also made it possible to easily change ground overlay images with the new setImage()
method.
Lastly, we’ve added an OnMapLoadedCallback
callback interface to notify you when the map has finished rendering. The following example code shows how this callback can be combined with the snapshot feature to ensure the snapshot captures the fully rendered map:
We’re always interested to hear how you’re using the Maps APIs, so let us know if you’ve got something cool to show by tagging +Google Maps API on your posts (or comment right here!). For technical questions that aren’t answered in the developer documentation, check out the Google Maps developer community on Stack Overflow. Don’t forget to tell us what you’d like to see in the next release using the Google Maps API issue tracker.
Posted by Daniel Schramm, Associate Product Manager, Google Maps Mobile APIs