We recently unveiled the Street View trike at Taronga Zoo in Sydney - soon you'll be able to take a tour of the zoo from your own lounge room. But where to go next in a country that offers so many beautiful locations off the beaten track? We knew there was no one better to ask than those who know our country best - you guys. We called on Australians to share with us their most inspired suggestions on what the trike should photograph for the rest of the world to see on Google Maps, and we've been overwhelmed by the response. More than 3,000 destinations across the country were nominated in the categories of City Life, Cultural Areas, Natural Wonders and Hidden Gems.
Last week, thousands of Aussies voted on which of their favourite off-road attractions they want the Google Street View Trike to capture for a special Street View imagery collection on Google Maps.
Thank you to everyone who submitted ideas and voted in the Street View Special Collections Poll. From natural wonders like Hamilton Island to the Melbourne CBD Laneways, we feel proud to show-off to the world some of our most beautiful destinations that reflect our culture.
The trike will now embark on its national tour with a team of specially-selected Google riders, who have been in training to get their quads of steel in tip-top shape. We hope to add as many of these locations to Google Maps as we can over the next year.
Thousands of organisations have joined the YouTube Nonprofit Program since it first launched in the US in 2007 to raise awareness for a range of issues - from kids in need to people with disabilities, animal welfare to ending poverty. Some have even raised tens of thousands of dollars in a single day by urging the community to donate with a call-to-action overlay.
Now nonprofits in Australia can join as well! Starting today, eligible Australian organisations can apply to receive a free brand channel, increased upload capacity, placement on the Nonprofit Channels page, and the ability to add a call-to-action overlay to their videos. These organisations can also join YouTube Video Volunteers to find a skilled YouTube user to create a video for their cause.
Aussie organisations that join the YouTube Nonprofit Program by March 12 can also be eligible for the global DoGooder NonProfit Video Awards to honour the best nonprofit videos of 2009. YouTube has partnered with See3 Communications and the Nonprofit Technology conference to make these awards possible, and will feature the winning videos on the YouTube homepage, as well as award $2500 to each winner and recognise them at NTEN, the world's largest nonprofit technology conference, in the US. Visit the Nonprofit Video Awards channel to find out more.
Editor's Note: This is a cross post from the Official Google Blog. DoubleClick Ad Exchange is not yet available in Australia.
Today, we're announcing the next generation of ad serving technology for online publishers -- DoubleClick for Publishers(DFP).
For the past few years, we've been investing in a suite of solutions — AdSense, ad-serving technology and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange — to help online publishers make the most money possible from their content, whether they sell advertising directly through their own sales force, through an ad network such as AdSense, or a combination of both.
For major online publishers — including social networks and online communities, entertainment sites, e-commerce sites and news sites — managing, delivering and measuring the performance of ads on their websites can be a hugely complicated process. A publisher's ability to manage this process can have a significant impact on how much money they make from their online content.
Imagine you're a major online publisher with a popular global surfing website and an ad sales team. Every second of every day, you have difficult decisions about what ads to show and how to measure their relative performance. For example:
In the same ad space, a surfboard wax advertiser may want to run a static image ad for your Australian readers, while an airline offering flights to Hawaii may want to run an expandable interactive ad for your American readers.
A fast-food restaurant wants to run their burger ads before noon and their pizza ads in the afternoon.
You've sold 10 different surfboard makers a million ad slots at slightly different prices; now you have to allocate them across your various webpages to fulfill all these orders over the next two weeks.
One of your surfing tournament reviews is linked to by a popular news site and you have a surge in traffic. Your sales team couldn't predict this, so you're potentially left without any ads for thousands of readers. You want to fill this ad space by selling it via an ad network which has ads available.
This is really just scratching the surface. Managing ad space can involve faxes, emailed orders, the manual scheduling of different ad campaigns across multiple sites and difficult decisions about how to allocate ad space most effectively.
Major online publishers use ad serving technology to manage the complex process of how and when the ads they have sold appear on their websites. In recent years, we've invested significantly in our ad serving products — DoubleClick's DART for Publishers for large publishers and Google Ad Manager for growing publishers. Thousands of major online publishers use these products to serve billions of ad impressions every day.
But we see an opportunity to improve ad serving even further by combining Google's technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick's display advertising and ad serving experience. Since we acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, our engineering and product teams have been working with online publishers to tackle the obstacles that prevent them from maximizing revenues from their websites.
The upgraded DFP includes a wide variety of features that will help publishers to get the most value out of their online content:
A new interface that has been completely redesigned to save time and reduce errors.Far more detailed reporting and forecasting data to help publishers understand where their revenue is coming from and what ads are most valuable.
Sophisticated algorithms that automatically improve ad performance and delivery.
A new, open, public API which enables publishers to build and integrate their own apps with DFP, or integrate apps created for DFP by a growing third-party developer community (apps under development today include sales, order management and workflow tools).
Integration with the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange's "dynamic allocation" feature, which maximizes revenue by enabling publishers to open up their ad space to bids from multiple ad networks. Dynamic allocation is described in this document [pdf].
DFP comes in two flavors, tailored for different publishers' needs: DFP, for the largest online publishers, and DFP Small Business, a simple, free version designed for growing online publishers. We'll be migrating current DFP publishers to the upgraded DFP over the next year as we continue to add features and modules, and we'll be moving Google Ad Manager customers to DFP Small Business in the coming weeks.
To reflect our continued investment in DoubleClick's products; and the central role of DoubleClick's technology products within Google's display advertising business, we're also today unveiling some changes to the DoubleClick logos - including typset changes, incorporating a new "by Google" theme, and retiring the "DART" brand.
The upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers is a perfect example of our continuing innovation in this area, and we believe that it will add significant value to online publishers' content. You can read more about the features of the upgraded DFP on the DoubleClick blog and on the DFP website.
Posted by Neil Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
There has been a lot of attention around the Australian Government's mandatory ISP level filtering proposal. Google--and many of you--have argued that the proposal goes too far, with a broad-scoped filter, and a regime which takes the focus off more important areas such as online safety education and better support for policing efforts.
It would block some important content. The scope of content to be filtered ("Refused Classification" or "RC") is very wide. The report Untangling The Net: The Scope of Content Caught By Mandatory Internet Filtering has found that a wide scope of content could be prohibited including not just child pornography but also socially and politically controversial material. This raises genuine questions about restrictions on access to information, which is vital in a democracy.
It removes choices. The Government's proposal removes choices for parents as to what they and their children can access online. Moreover a filter may give a false sense of security and create a climate of complacency that someone else is managing your (or your children's) online experience.
It isn't effective in protecting kids. A large proportion of child sexual abuse content is not found on public websites, but in chat-rooms or peer-to-peer networks. The proposed filtering regime will not effectively protect children from this objectionable material.
Moreover, the filter appears to not work for high volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, as the impact of the filter on Internet access speeds would be too great.
YouTube is a platform for free expression. We have clear policies about what is allowed and not allowed on the site. For example, we do not permit hate speech or sexually explicit material, and all videos uploaded must comply with our Community Guidelines. Like all law-abiding companies, YouTube complies with the laws in the countries in which we operate. When we receive a valid legal request, like a court order, to remove content alleged to violate local laws, we first check that the request complies with the law, and we will seek to narrow it if the request is overly broad. Beyond these clearly defined parameters, we will not remove material from YouTube.
Our view is that online safety should focus on user education, individual user empowerment through technology tools (such as SafeSearch Lock, Safety Mode on YouTube), and cooperation between law enforcement and industry partners. We're partnering with some tremendous organisations in Australia towards this goal.
Posted by Iarla Flynn, Head of Policy, Google Australia
Our free Google AdWords Training has kicked off for 2010. Training sessions are hosted online by local Googlers specialised in AdWords, who present topics live and can answer your questions throughout the session via instant chat.
Join us for our next training session '5 Steps to AdWords Success' on Tuesday 16th February – 11am (Sydney time).
In this session you will learn about the following five steps to a successful AdWords account:
How to structure your account for best results;
How to select effective keywords;
How to write a good ad;
What makes a good landing page; and
Free tools you can use to track the success of your AdWords.
This session is ideal for new advertisers, or advertisers who are keen to master the basics of AdWords success. To attend, all you need is a computer with an internet connection and sound.
Register today at our webinars page. This page also includes on-demand presentations that you can watch at any time.
We're pleased to announce the launch of Maps Labs, a set of opt-in features that add useful functionality to Google Maps (and even more pleased because we developed this here in Sydney!). Labs allow us to quickly experiment with new Google Maps features, add new ways of interacting with the map, or just try out something wacky. If a Lab proves popular it may become a standard feature of Google Maps in future.
To activate individual Labs features, click on the green conical flask icon at the top right of the screen. This will bring up a list of Labs that you can enable. If you're logged in with your Google account, we will remember which Labs you have enabled when you next visit Google Maps.
To get started we have a range of useful Labs available today. You can enable the Aerial imagery that we recently launched in the Google Maps API. You can zoom in to a particular location just by dragging a box around it using the new Drag 'n' Zoom control. You can browse nearby businesses with the What's Around Here button and test your world geography with our Where in the World game. Or in case you still yearn for the days when you could turn paper maps upside down we even have Rotatable Maps.
We chose not to offer a lab that replicates the experience of struggling to fold a map back up though. If you really miss that, we can't help you.
Because they're experimental, Labs may not be quite as robust as some other features on Google Maps. In fact there's a chance they could change, break, or disappear at any time. Just in case, we've provided an escape hatch. If you discover that a Labs feature causes you problems use this link to disable all Labs and select just those you want to keep: http://maps.google.com/maps?ftr=0.
We hope Labs enhance your Google Maps experience and look forward to adding more in the future. To keep up to date with the latest Labs, get help with a particular Labs feature, or even suggest new Labs, check out the Maps Labs Google group.
Diversity of content is one of the great things about YouTube. But we know that some of you want a more controlled experience. That's why we're announcing Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don't want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube. An example of this type of content might be a newsworthy video that contains graphic violence such as a political protest or war coverage. While no filter is 100% perfect, Safety Mode is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site.
It's easy to opt in to Safety Mode: Just click on the link at the bottom of any video page. You can even lock your choice on that browser with your YouTube password. To learn more, check out the video below.
And remember, ALL content must still comply with our Community Guidelines. Safety Mode isn't fool proof, but it provides a greater degree of control over your YouTube experience.
Posted by Jamie Davidson, Associate Product Manager
We've blogged before about our thoughts on the social web, steps we've taken to add social features to our products, and efforts like OpenSocial that propose common tools for building social apps. With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you're up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today's world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it's increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations.
Our belief is that organising the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organising information can help solve. We've recently launched innovations like real-time search and social search, and today we're taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to build up an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
We're rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don't see it in your account yet, check back soon. We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organisations.
On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.
We've relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We're building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.
We really hope you enjoy the experiences we've built within Gmail and for mobile phones. If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com. We look forward to continuing to evolve and improve Google Buzz based on your feedback.
Posted by Todd Jackson, Product Manager, Gmail and Google Buzz
Safer Internet Day is a good time to reflect on the progress we've made in the last twelve months to help Australians enjoy a safer online experience.
The Internet is just like real life - we all need to know how to be street smart (or cybersmart!). We believe that online safety is all about user education, user empowerment through technology tools (such as SafeSearch Lock), and cooperation between law enforcement and industry partners.
As the debate around the Government's proposed mandatory ISP filtering regime continues, we believe that we should all retain focus on raising awareness of how to be cybersmart and safe online.
Over the past year, we have worked with Australian child safety and wellbeing organisations to educate people about cyber safety. For example:
Wendy Protheroe, General Manager Counselling Services, Kids Helpline - a service of BoysTown:
"Kids deserve to be able to enjoy the benefits the internet can give them; they deserve to have a range of safety tools available and they deserve to know that the company whose services they are using is actively committed to their safety. Kids Helpline has found Google to be such a company. Google has provided in-kind support and a great donation that enabled Kids Helpline to provide online safety tips, resources and links to our counselling services."
Madelene McGrath, NAPCAN's SOSO Project Manager:
"Google and YouTube's support for this campaign was invaluable, and by working closely with YouTube to become part of the fabric of the site, we were able to engage far more effectively with our youth audience and deliver our message in a highly impactful way. Google and YouTube went well beyond being a media publisher and acted as a strategic partner throughout, ensuring the delivery of a highly successful campaign."
Kerry Graham, CEO, Inspire:
“Our partnership with Google is critical to our mission of helping millions of young people lead happier lives. With Google’s support we can reach and connect with young people at times and in places that traditional mental health services can’t. An example is a young person who found Inspire's Reach Out.com program through Google AdWords: Just that it was there. It was 1:30am, I was desperate and had nowhere to turn. I somewhat sarcastically went to Google and typed in 'help'. This site was the first result. Thank you."
Hetty Johnston, Founder and Executive Director, Bravehearts:
“Google has been instrumental in enabling Bravehearts to reach out to the community and in particular, children and young people, with our educational messages and services to protect children. The effectiveness of the Bravehearts YouTube channel and Google Adwords as communication mediums is reflected in the growing demands on our services and the increased number of children, young people and adults that we are able to reach and help. We sincerely thank Google for helping us to empower children and adults everywhere to say no to child sexual assault."
Dr Judith Slocombe, CEO, The Alannah and Madeline Foundation:
“Google’s commitment makes a big difference: it sends a strong message to the whole community about the importance of being smart, safe and responsible when using technology. We are delighted with the support we have received from Google; it will help us deliver the Cybersafety and Wellbeing Initiative, a national framework guiding and supporting schools to implement relevant cybersafety and wellbeing policies and practices. A world-first approach to cybersafety, it provides a roadmap to the best available cybersafety resources for schools, kids and parents.”
This year, we look forward to continuing our work to help all Australians be cybersmart.
Today is Safer Internet Day, a day to reflect on the fact that, just like in the physical world, in cyberspace we all need to look out for ourselves and use our common sense.
Today's theme is Think B4 U post. The fact is, some things are better left private... as fun and as easy as it is to post stuff about yourself, your friends, or your family online, you never know who will find it and when it will come back to haunt you.
Tips to Think B4 U post:
Make sure there isn't anything in what you post that could help a stranger figure out who you are or where you live. Personal information like your telephone number or home address should NEVER be shared online with people you don't know.
Don't post things that you wouldn't want other people to know - including a future employer.
Don't post anything about a friend that you wouldn't say to his or her face. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
Cybersmart.gov.au has some great information about taking care of your digital footprint - check it out here.
Many of us have heard stories, read books and watched films which show the many impacts of WWII across the world. Today we're giving you another way to understand this period in time - by exploring a new set of historical aerial images, taken over European cities during World War II, via the historical imagery feature in Google Earth. They can now be compared directly to images from the present day.
The historical imagery feature gives people a unique perspective on the events of the past using today's latest mapping technology. We hope that this World War II imagery will enable all of us to understand our shared history in a new way and to learn more about the impact of the war on the development of our cities.
Images taken in 1943 show the effect of wartime bombing on more than 35 European towns and cities. Imagery for Warsaw, which was heavily destroyed at the time, is available from both years 1935 and 1945. They remind us all of the devastating impact of war on the people in those cities and also the remarkable way in which urban environments are reconstructed and regenerated over time.
You can explore the German city of Stuttgart, which was subject to over 50 air raids during the War. Naples was the most bombed in Italian city in WWII and the impact of these attacks can be seen here: The French city of Lyon was the center of France's resistance movement against the German occupation. See how it was damaged and rebuilt over the years: Imagery from 1935 and 1945 for Warsaw in Poland is particularly compelling. The city was amongst those most badly damaged in the war and comparisons with today are striking. Contrast can be seen for example by comparing the imagery of the Historic Centre of Warsaw, a UNESCO World Heritage site, described as an 'outstanding example of a near-total reconstruction of a span of history covering the 13th to the 20th century'. The Royal Castle was completely burned to the ground, for example, and subsequently reconstructed, between 1971-1988.
To access all the imagery for yourself, and compare to the present day cityscape, click the clock icon in the top-level toolbar to activate a time-line in the Google Earth display. Move back in forth in time by dragging the time slider from left to right or by clicking the back/forwards arrows.
Last Monday we unveiled the Street View Trike in Australia at Taronga Zoo, and called on Aussies to give us ideas of other great off-road places that we could visit and photograph.
The response has been huge! Thousands of ideas have been submitted, from every state and territory in Australia. And they've ranged from the innovative to the, well, perhaps impossible?
Take a look below at some of the suggestions we've received ...
Around the skywalk at Centrepoint Tower in Sydney (photo credit: Alex E. Proimos)
On a houseboat down the Murray River (photo credit: suburbanbloke)
Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania (photo credit: VannaGocaraRupa)
Around the Melbourne tennis centre (photo credit: jen64)
Murray Street Mall in Perth (photo credit: brogge1) Remember, the Trike likes to stay on relatively flat ground because it's very heavy, and it's 2.4 metres high and about 130cm wide.
Where do you think we should go? Get your nominations in by Monday 8 February, and then get ready to vote from February 15 to help us decide where to send the Trike next.
P.S. If you're ever looking for images to illustrate a blog, check out the search feature on Google Images that lets you find pictures that are licensed for reuse or in the public domain!
Posted by Katharina Friedrich, product marketing manager
(Editor's note: Updated on Feb 3 to clarify that these courses are run by Google authorised consultants Mangold Sengers).
"I came, I puked, I left". That's how Google's Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik describes the phenomenon of someone arriving at a site and leaving without dignifying it with just one further click! If your New Year resolution is to reduce the number of people puking and leaving your site (also known as reducing the bounce rate), then you might be interested in some upcoming seminars that will help you learn, among other things, how to conduct landing page tests to increase visitor engagement and conversions.
Here's a quote from a past attendee: Whilst I've been using GA for years and have also run AdWords campaigns I was becoming increasingly frustrated that there was newer functionality which I didn't have either the knowledge, skill or confidence to leverage in full. Above all, I've left the course hugely inspired, with a range of ideas which I'm keen to implement ASAP. - Sumi Triggs Olsen, eMarketing Executive, CPA Australia
Day one provides a complete overview of Google Analytics and all available reports. You'll learn to identify the best reports for your role and make decisions that will help you deliver results. Topics include:
Introduction to Web Analytics
Google Analytics Interface Features
Sharing and Customizing Reports
Understanding Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals
Learn how to conduct landing page testing with Google Website Optimizer to identify, measure and improve key design elements and calls to action on your website to increase engagement and conversions. You'll see how you can continually increase conversion rates with testing by setting up and running A/B and multivariate tests. Topics include:
Introduction to Landing Page Testing
Best Practices for Increasing Conversions
How to Run an Experiment
Understanding the Data and Running Follow-up Experiments
Hope to see you there.
Posted by Shyam Govardhan, Customer Solutions Engineer
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