Girl Guides Go Google

Today’s guest post is by Wendy Lewis, CEO of Girl Guides Victoria. The Girl Guides is a global movement, and in Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that supports girls from five years of age, equipping them with skills, confidence and friendships to help them to succeed throughout their lives.


Girl Guides Victoria celebrated its centenary anniversary last year, a significant milestone appreciated by over so many women who have been Girl Guides since 1911. The growth of the organisation continues and today, Girl Guides Victoria has 1,200 members and volunteers, 400 supporters and 5000 girls involved in programs right across the state.

Our centenary has also prompted us to reflect on how to ensure that the next 100 years are just as successful and part of staying relevant and up-to-date means being equipped with the right technology that can future-proof us as we move forward. We wanted to keep our connection to the grassroots of the organisation while still allowing advanced functionality and productivity in our administration. Going Google was the first step in streamlining our operations and creating a more efficient communication platform across the organisation.

So far, we’ve transitioned 100 Girl Guide leaders to Google Apps in locations across our 79 Victorian districts. With an older demographic of volunteers, it was essential that we had a solution that was intuitive to learn and easy to use. After a little bit of instruction we were all using it proficiently and since then discovering a new trick always proves exciting.

We use Google Apps as an email service as well as for sharing and collaborating on documents that help run the organisation across the state. It has transformed the way our geographically disparate organisation can share education programs and essential safety information. For example, we use Google Talk for instant communication. This means that our volunteers are able to access information or contact details for a girl’s family in the event of an emergency, or keep up to date with planned activities and contingency plans instantly. The fact that they can access this information from any of their personal devices like phones and tablets is vital for their roles which are often in the field, literally!

For Girl Guides Victoria, the girls are our top priority, so having the best technology to support what we do seamlessly has been most beneficial for us. We are now looking to expand on our initial success with Google Apps, finding simple and cost effective ways to extend what we do, for example, by offering online learning and promoting the involvement of parents through online portals.

Going Google has given us the tools to strengthen our commitment to push, challenge and grow the girls in our program.

Posted by Wendy Lewis, CEO of Girl Guides Victoria.

Seven Days of Searching

In the last seven days, one of the busiest news week of the year, the fastest rising search term on Google worldwide has been “bin laden”. Osama-related searches have rated as the fastest rising search term this year.

Australia and New Zealand have followed this trend, with Osama bin Laden rating as the fastest rising search, followed by the Royal Wedding. In Australia, the Logies made it into the top ten list, and in New Zealand. Auckland’s Albany tornado activity came in a no. 7.



Pippa Middleton is clearly an Aussie and Kiwi favourite, with searches for the Duchess’s sister also coming in above Kate Middleton!



Times have definitely changed: while the only viewing platform for the wedding of Charles and Diana was television back in 1981, last week’s royal wedding had us watching the live stream of the service and procession on YouTube - with the British Monarchy’s official YouTube channel TheRoyalChannel receiving almost 28 million views.



The week leading up to the wedding saw an abundance of royal wedding-related searches including everything from Kate’s dress to Prince Harry. Now, amidst the flurry of post-game analysis, people are focusing on highlights from the day - with the Middleton sisters being a standout in search even a week after the event.



Osama bin Laden and tornado coverage, both being breaking news, have immediately gone straight to the list of breakout searches. The three biggest news stories of the last week have certainly dominated search engine and newsrooms alike.



Fastest rising searches in Australia over the last seven days:

1. bin laden

2. bin laden dead

3. osama

4. osama bid laden

5. osama dead

6. pippa middleton

7. logies

8. royal wedding

9. kate middleton

10. biggest loser



Fastest rising searches in New Zealand over the last seven days:

1. bin laden

2. bin laden dead

3. osama

4. osama bin laden

5. osama dead

6. pippa middleton

7. tornado auckland

8. tornado

9. kate middleton

10. royal wedding

Posted by Kate Mason, Google Australia

Google Maps Navigation comes to Australia

With the summer holidays coming up, I’m looking forward to picnics, visiting cafes and of course, road trips. My family and I will be enjoying a scenic drive from Sydney to Hobart. It’s a nice, long distance trip and of course, getting there is half the fun. Along the way, there are all sorts of places to explore: parks, restaurants and hotels in Melbourne. And of course everyone needs a few pit stops, especially with two small kids.

Today, we’re launching Google Maps Navigation in Australia and New Zealand, which means getting to Hobart this year (and exploring along the way) just got a lot easier. Google Maps Navigation is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that provides voice-guided turn by turn directions in real time. That means that instead of printing out your directions in advance, or having your co-pilot read aloud from list of directions, you can use your Android smartphone to guide you there directly.

Some of you may have already taken advantage of driving directions in Google Maps for Mobile. Google Maps Navigation builds on that by combining the best of Google Maps for mobile, Google Search, and a host of unique capabilities only available on smartphones, like GPS, compass, text-to-speech technology, a permanent Internet connection, and the ability to search by voice. How?

• Search instead of type. Maps Navigation is integrated with Google Search, as well as Google Voice Search. That means you don’t need to know your destination’s exact address, or even its name. You can search instead: try saying “art gallery sydney” instead of “Museum of Contemporary Art”
• See where you’re going. You don’t have to download imagery or data or store it on your phone. It’s always connected to the Internet, which means you can access satellite views of your route or preview your destination in Street View.
• Explore along the way. Once you’re on your route, you can search for anything along your route: petrol stations, restaurants, museums, hotels, parks, anything you can think of. Some common searches, like petrol stations, are built in as layers you can turn on and off. Because Google Maps Navigation is integrated with Google Search, you can search your surroundings just as easily as you search the Internet.
• Steer clear of traffic. Maps Navigation displays live traffic conditions on top of your route: red means heavy, yellow means slow, and green means clear sailing. If traffic is looking bad, you can find an alternate route. Road traffic is available in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Wollongong and Newcastle.
• Seamlessly in sync. Simply sign in to Google Maps on your desktop, click the star next to any result on maps.google.com.au and that place will automatically be starred on your phone, making it easy to remember (and navigate to!).

Google Maps Navigation is available for smartphones running Android 1.6 and later in both Australia and New Zealand. To try it out, go to Android Market and download Google Maps.

We’re also excited to announce walking navigation too to help you explore your destination on foot. Your phone will vibrate when you need to make a turn. You can even turn off voice guidance and just use these notifications while soaking in the sights and sounds around you. Use it like a virtual compass with satellite imagery to look ahead or to help pick out landmarks along the way.

As for me, I’m looking forward to our family trip to Hobart even more, now that I have one less thing to worry about, and more time to spend playing “I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with...”

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

24 hours in politics is a long time in search

The last 24 hours has seen a swift but bloody political battle; an ousted leader; and Australia’s first woman Prime Minister. Australians were following online at every step of the way.

We’ve been flocking in our millions to online media reports, watching press conferences streamed live online, tweeting ferociously (replay the tweet history) - and searching for everything we can find out about this long and remarkable day in Australian politics.

As at 2pm today (Thursday, June 24), the fastest rising search term on google.com.au was no surprise:

australian labour party (1st fastest rising - and yep, that's how Aussies are spelling it when we search)

It was followed by:

rudd speech (2)
tim matheison (4)
alister jordan (6)
kirribilli house (8)
quentin bryce (11)
craig emerson (15)
kevin rudd speech (18)

Rudd and Gillard are the names on everyone’s lips ... but who are the other personalities involved that we want to know more about:

tim matheison (Julia Gillard’s partner) (4)
alister jordan (Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff) (6)
quentin bryce (Governor General) (11)
craig emerson (Small Business Minister) (15)
mark arbib (Minister for Employment Participation) (56)

We’re searching to get to know our new Prime Minister. Among the most popular queries today:

wikipedia julia gillard
julia gillard partner
tim mathieson hairdresser
is julia gillard married
julia gillard atheist
julia gillard boyfriend
how old is julia gillard
julia gillard biography
where was julia gillard born
julia gillard photos
julia gillard religion

Of the top 100 fastest rising terms in Australia as of 2pm, 90 of them were related to the political situation or to news sites covering the remarkable events.

Posted by Lucinda Barlow, Head of Communications and Public Affairs, Google Australia

Hey! My site disappeared!

Occasionally we get questions about why a particular webpage or site has disappeared from Google's search results in Australia.

First, it's important to remember that our search results are generated objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google. We view the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority, both in terms of the user's experience as well as protecting freedom of speech. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints about it.

We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines. This most often happens when a website is using unfair methods to try to appear higher in the search rankings. Common guideline violations include cloaking (writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users) or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines and manipulating search engine results. When a webmaster has fixed the site to meet our guidelines, they can then ask for re-inclusion. We will also remove a site from our search results upon request from the webmaster who is responsible for it.

In addition, we will remove search results which link to website pages if we believe we are required to do so by applicable law. We believe in being transparent about this process, and provide notice in our search results when we have removed URLs in response to a legal request. In their place is a link to chillingeffects.org, which catalogues these removals as well as the legal ground for the removal, e.g. a court decision or a decision by a governmental authority. Anyone can request this type of removal by contacting us. Note that we receive many types of related requests--some part of valid legal process, some not--so we do need to take time to evaluate each request.

It's also important to remember that in the decision of removal, we only remove the specific URLs that have been provided in the request--we do not go about policing the Internet to decide what content should or should not be there.

Posted by Lucinda Barlow, Head of Corporate Communications, Google Australia

Google Insights for Search in Australia

You may have read a few interesting articles (here, and here) about a new tool called Google Insights for Search, a new product that allows advertisers and marketers to better understand search behaviour across the globe.

Like Google Trends, you can type in a search term to view search patterns, and we've also included some interesting new features like a geographic heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

We figured it would be great to highlight some Australian-specific insights we've found using Insights for Search.   Hopefully they'll stimulate your own discovery of other interesting online trends in Australia!

As an example, if you perform a basic enquiry, leaving all the default settings and simply type [didgeridoo], this will show you search information from across the world, from 2004 to today. As you might expect, there is a lot of interest in didgeridoos here in Australia. But what you might not expect is the other countries with a large relative interest in didgeridoos, like Austria. If you were in the business of making fine, handcrafted didgeridoos here in Australia, you could build your international business by focusing your online advertising within the most relevant international markets: Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

It's also possible to compare search terms by location, time range and category. With the Categories filter, you can hone in on results based on different categories. For example, you can enter the search query [the vines] and isolate results to the music category, to see interest in the rock band The Vines, rather than the WA resort. If you throw in a few more bands for comparative purposes, it's interesting to see how popularity is changing over time, and that great bands have peaks and troughs (often around album sales or tours)! [The Vines] peaked in early 2004, [Wolfmother] peaked in 2005/2006, but [Crowded House] continues to be consistently popular. It's also interesting to note which in which Australian regions [The Vines] are searched - as a proportion of total searches, they're most popular in Perth. 


Using the "Categories" filter, you can also see the most popular searches for an entire category, such as [basketball], where you can notice the huge spike in interest around the Beijing Olympic Games.

A further use of Insights for Search is to see popular searches and rising queries, from here and abroad. An analysis, for example, of Australian vacation destinations that Germans are searching for, shows that Ayers Rock/Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef are popular destinations, with the Whitsundays and Tasmania rapidly increasing in popularity in the past 18 months.  

Businesses can further use Insights for Search by viewing search trends for over time. The seasonality of searches can be used to target advertising campaigns around events like Fathers Day or Christmas.  Look at the spike in searches for [car stereos] in the lead up to Christmas.

We hope you'll find Google Insights for Search to be an extremely valuable tool. Given the various methods of comparison, the ability to filter by category and visualise heat maps by region, hopefully you'll discover new and engaging information about your products, markets, and advertising!

Posted by Justin Baird, Senior Product Specialist

A change is as good as a holiday

Posted by Carl Sjogreen, Group Product Manager, Australia & New Zealand

With summer holidays coming up, I regret to say that we aren't slowing down - we continue to work on finding the best ways to make your experience on Google as easy and useful as possible. To this end, you might have noticed a slight change to the Google Australia homepage to help you better navigate our site and find the information you're looking for.

We have introduced a new navigation bar at the top of the page to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as Google Maps and our popular email product, Gmail.

As well as being able to use this bar to navigate to your favourite Google products, using this navigation bar, you can "drill down" to specific types of information when you search. For instance, if you search for [Great Barrier Reef], you can click on the links for "web," "images", "maps, "news", "video" and "more" (under which you can see results in books, blogs, scholarly articles and more) to immediately find more results.

This is part of our vision of consistent navigation across all Google search properties. We recognise that the search result you are looking for may not be a web page - it may be a geographic location, a news article, an image, a blog post, a video or in a book. The new navigation bar makes it easier for you to find exactly what you want with a single click of the mouse.

Hope you find the new look and feel useful and, as always, feedback is most welcome!