Posted by Winter Casey, Senior Policy AnalystThanks to the Internet, trade has never been easier. The ability to trade goods and services online has helped companies large and small to reach a global marketplace. And the web has also enabled another im…
Posted by Margo Georgiadis, VP, Americas SalesThe web is where we go to find things—that somewhere special to eat tonight, the directions to guide us there and suggestions for that one-of-a-kind present for the birthday girl. Ninety-seven percent of …
Back in April, we introduced Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, a gadget that can help you earn money by adding an ad for a relevant product to a blog post and earning a commission when someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase. We’ve received positive feedback from Blogger users and the advertisers who have made their products available through the gadget, and wanted to let you know about a couple of recent enhancements we’ve made to this gadget:
Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger is easy to use, and is a great solution for those users interested in choosing the products and brands they want to promote in their blog posts.
Here are two examples of a Blogger user finding a relevant affiliate ad:
Cross-posted from the Blogger in Draft blog
In 2007, we introduced Blogger In Draft, a special version of Blogger where new features could reach users early and let people try new things. We also introduced the Blogger In Draft blog, and for the past five years, we’ve introduced new updates and options here, often before we told the rest of the world on our official blog, Buzz.
With the recent launch of our Google+ page, we have another great way to keep you updated on new features, both for everyone and those of you who love seeing things early. To simplify the many places you can get updates, we will be retiring the Blogger in Draft blog, with this being the final post. Going forward, we’d like to invite you to follow our official blog and our Google+ page to find out what’s new with Blogger.
This doesn’t mean the Blogger In Draft service is going anywhere, so don’t fret! You’ll still get all the shiny goodness as fast as we can bring it to you. But we’ll be talking about it somewhere else.
(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog)
Wherever you are, Google Maps for Android helps you get around and discover new places. Today with the 6.7 release we will help you find offers from nearby businesses in the U.S. — everything from restaurants, to salons, to city tours. Also, we’ve added indoor walking directions in the U.S. and Japan, plus 360-degree interior photos of businesses, to help you intrepidly make your way indoors and out.
Discover great offers near you
Today, in the U.S. only, we’re launching a way to discover nearby Google Offers in Google Maps for Android. To see great deals near you, tap on “Maps” to open the dropdown menu and then tap on “Offers.” If you see something you like you can click on it to learn more. Some Google Offers can be purchased and saved for later while others are immediately available for free. With free Google Offers, press “Use now” to redeem instantly or “Save for later” for future use. You can also opt-in to receive notifications in the app when there are offers near you.
Explore the great indoors with walking directions and Business Photos.
Since we launched indoor maps in the U.S. and Japan in Google Maps for Android last November, business owners have been adding their floor plans to our maps with Google Maps Floor Plans. Today, we are launching indoor walking directions for participating venues in these countries. This will help you get directions not only to a building’s front door, but also through those doors to the places where you want to go inside.
With Google Business Photos you can explore panoramic photos of the inside of a business from the palm of your hand. Now you can get a feel for a restaurant or store inside as well as outside using Street View technologies. To access these 360-degree panoramic views, look for the “See Inside” section on the Place page of select businesses.
Download Google Maps 6.7 for Android from Google Play, and use it as your trusted guide to help you find and discover places to eat, shop and play! You can also learn more about other great features on the Google Maps YouTube channel.
Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager for Google Maps for Android
With the Google Translate gadget, visitors to your blog can select their preferred language from the drop-down menu, and using Google’s free translation service, it will display your posts in any of the 50+ languages Google Translate supports.
Posted by Scott Lininger, SketchUp API Team
As has been announced on the official SketchUp blog, SketchUp is moving to a new home: Trimble.
I’m here to assure you that Trimble is committed to preserving the vitality of SketchUp’s developer community. You guys have made SketchUp great, and we have every expectation that opportunities will grow for you as we continue to develop SketchUp at Trimble.
It’s often said that people building plugins have more to do with SketchUp’s success than anyone else, and I couldn’t agree more. In the years I’ve been at Google, the most rewarding part of my job has been interacting with all of you and seeing the amazing features you’ve created.
In the short term, this change will have zero impact on your plugins and businesses. Everything will work exactly as it does today. In the longer term, I expect it to improve the state of our APIs and developer resources. Trimble wants to invest strongly in SketchUp as a platform, and advance its mission of “3D for Everyone.”
I’m very excited to be joining in this next stage of SketchUp’s journey. See you all on the other side!
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.
If you’re wondering what a +1 means, think of it as a public stamp of approval from your readers. As soon as someone clicks on the +1 button next to your blog, they’ll also have the option to share it with their friends, contacts, or the rest of the web.
+1s from your readers will appear to people in their circles whenever your blog shows up in Google search results. Here’s an example:
We’re also introducing the Google+ badge gadget, which allows you to connect your blog to your personal profile or your Google+ page on Google+. Adding the badge to your blog helps you connect with friends, fans, and customers. It enables your readers to add you, or your blog to their circles and follow your blog posts on Google+.
If you are happy to blog under your real name, people can follow your stream on Google+. If you prefer to blog under a nickname or an established pseudonym, you can create a Google+ Page to represent your blog. Bloggers who wish to remain anonymous should continue to blog as usual.
To add these gadgets to your blog, select “Add a Gadget” from the “Layout” tab of Blogger, and select them from the list of gadgets under “Basics”. You’ll need to copy your Google+ ID (personal or Page) to configure the brand badge gadget for your blog.
Add the +1 and Google+ brand badge gadgets to your blog today to grow and engage your audience.
Bora Toska, Product Marketing Manager
Hi Bloggers.
Ensuring that your blog, posts, and images are accurately indexed so they appear correctly in search results is valuable. Today we introduced a suite of new features that enable you to more effectively customize your search preferences. Managing how your blog is viewed by search engines is an important aspect of maintaining a healthy blog, regardless of whether you’re new to blogging, or a seasoned veteran.
Here’s an overview of what we added:
The first thing you’ll notice is a new “Search preferences” option under the “Settings” tab.
Clicking it will display three sub-sections: Meta Tags, Errors and Redirections, and Crawlers and Indexing. When enabled, some of these features, such as Search Description and Custom robots header tags will also appear in the “Post settings” area of Blogger’s post editor as well. For example, if you elect to create a Search Description, you may do so for your blog, and/or individual posts.
Also available is the ability to add a custom “Page Not Found” (eg. a “404”) message, and Custom Redirects for pages on your blog.
While most of the new features are located in the Settings tab, a few others can be found in the post editor. For example, we’ve introduced the ability to incorporate “alt” and “title” tags to images in your post.
Last but not least, you’ll also find a “rel=nofollow” link attribute in the link tool. Checking this box means that you don’t want this link to be considered when web crawlers are searching for information they’ll use to index your page.
While most of these features are easy to understand and use, others, such as custom robots header tags are geared toward advanced users only, hence the warning message:
Before diving in, I would encourage a quick read through the Help Center articles. They’re comprehensive, and do a great job translating some technical concepts to the layperson.
We hope you enjoy the new features. It’s all part of our effort to bring you a much improved and modernized Blogger. Next week, we’ll be holding a Hangout on our Google+ page to talk with you about your experience with these features and answer your questions. Follow us on +Blogger for details.
Happy blogging!
Bruce Polderman, Product Manager
Hi Bloggers.
Have you been contemplating a new design for your blog? Are you ready to spruce up your pages with a fresh, modern, and new look? Then you may want to check out Dynamic Views – which now include gadget support.
Dynamic Views are a set of templates that make it easy and fun to explore a blog. As you might expect, we’ve made the gadgets interactive too. Instead of appearing in a panel that consumes valuable real estate on your blog, gadgets now appear in a dock that slides in and out as you move your cursor over them.
Gadgets supported in Dynamic Views currently include: Blog Archive, Followers, Labels, Profile, Subscribe (a new gadget – automatically present if either Follow By Email or Subscription installed), and Link List. These gadgets make it easier for your readers to navigate your blog (archive, labels), and to follow it (followers and RSS).
If you are currently using a traditional template and change to Dynamic Views, supported gadgets will automatically appear on your blog. Gadgets can be added, removed, or customized from the Layouts tab the same as with any other template.
If you’re one of the millions of people who have adopted Dynamic Views since we launched them in September 2011, we encourage you to head on over to our Google+ page and tell us what you like about them!
Happy blogging.
Bruce Polderman, Product Manager
In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we’re introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.
SpeedWith Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.
SimplicityChrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web. 
One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier. And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, ‘Settings,’ and then ‘Privacy’).
Sign inYou can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:
Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We’re eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.
Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and Apps
(Cross-posted from the Chrome blog and the Official Google blog)
As we mentioned in our Connect to Google+ post a few weeks ago, we’ve been hard at work to bring you new ways to grow your blog and engage with your readers using Google+.
Today we’re happy to introduce the +1 counter, which allows you to quickly scan your dashboard to see which posts are most popular on your blog. Each time a reader clicks the +1 button on a post, a +1 gets added to that post’s counter and their profile photo and name will appear.
The +1 button is available on all Dynamic Views posts by default, and can be enabled on most other template types by clicking on the Layout tab in your dashboard, clicking Edit in the Blog posts section, and checking the Show Share Buttons box.
If you don’t have a Google+ account yet, don’t fret. It’s easy to join Google+ here.
Happy blogging!
Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager
You may have noticed that we’ve rolled out a number of improvements to Blogger recently. The folks over at Technorati referred to it as a “rampage”. Call it what you like, we’re definitely having fun giving Blogger the makeover it’s long deserved, and we appreciate all the positive feedback we received at the recent BlogWorld expo.
If you follow us on our Buzz blog, you’re aware that we publish surveys from time to time. They are one of several methods that we use to collect your feedback about what we can do to make your blogging experience better. A top request on the wishlist is improving Blogger’s commenting system, so we’re happy to announce that we’ve done just that.
Blogger now supports threaded commenting, which means that it is now much easier to differentiate between whether someone is making a general comment on the thread, or responding to another comment on the thread.
What do you have to do to enable this on your blog? Nothing! If you have Blogger’s commenting feature enabled, “Blog Feed” set to “Full”, and are using “Embedded” comments, then you’re ready to start a discussion with your readers. To check, or change your feed settings, select: “Settings > Other >, and then “Full” from the “Allow Blog Feed” dropdown:
To check your current form setting, select: “Settings > Posts and Comments, and select “Embedded” from the “Comment Location” dropdown:
Visit the Blogger Help Center for additional information.
Posted by Pat Coleman, Software Engineer