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This year of Google blogging
December 31, 2007
Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team
It's that time again, the end of a year - time to tote up Google's blogging activity for the last 365 days. First, a few bits of data about this particular blog:
Number of posts this year: 300
New product announcements: 15 (not counting our
April 1 release
)
News about upgrades and additions to products: 87
Announcing products in more languages and countries: 30
Acquisitions: 12
Unique visitors: 6,738,830 (for 8,655,830 visits)
Languages: 511 (preferred language configured on computers)
Top non-Google referrers: Yahoo, Digg, Slashdot, Fark
Beyond these basics, this year saw many more posts on privacy (9),
accessibility
(10), and
energy and the environment
(11). We blogged a good deal about Google's
people and culture
, our various offices around the world, and the pastimes and passions of Googlers (26, including 2
recipes
). We talked about
healthcare issues
that challenge consumers (5). There were competitions including Google Code Jam and events for developers, educators and others (29). Through YouTube, there has been much
political activity
(7) in the U.S. as well as in
Australia
.
The posts that elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include:
- the much-discussed
"Gphone"
news
- our thinking about the upcoming
FCC spectrum auction
- what the
OpenSocial APIs
could mean
- how a
black screen
might not save energy
- announcing the
Knol test project
- building
your own Google homepage
Of course, there's more than business to write about. We celebrated
National Gorilla Suit Day
,
deconstructed the Valentine's Day doodle
, and then
a snake went missing
.
As for the Google family of blogs, there's been lots of growth this year:
42
new ones launched, for a total to 83 active company blogs. Increasingly, Googlers want to quickly and regularly convey product news and updates to various constituents, and blogs are a great way to do that. Among the most popular of this newest crop are the
Gmail blog
(nearly 1.5 million unique visitors), the Orkut blogs (in
English
- 3.5 million uniques; and
Portuguese
- 8.8 million), and
Google Lat Long
, with 824,000 unique visitors, which covers everything geographical. In addition, readers can now turn to new product blogs including those for
Google Finance
,
Google News
, and
Mobile
. Reflecting keen interest in activity outside the U.S., the YouTube blog had the greatest number of comments for its
June post
about the fact that YouTube is available in 9 more countries, followed by the August post
announcing InVideo ads
.
On the ads side: there are now 6 more non-English blogs for AdSense publishers (
French
,
Turkish
,
Japanese
,
Korean
,
Italian
,
Chinese
). The AdWords team opened blogs for
Brasil
and the
Netherlands
, Japan now has
its own Analytics blog
, and there are now
German
and
Chinese
versions of the popular
Webmaster Central
. (The most popular ads-related blog is the one for
Analytics
, with nearly half a million unique visitors, followed by closely
Inside AdSense
and then
Inside AdWords
.)
To keep current and share their work, developers got a raft of new blogs, too, including those focused on APIs for
YouTube
,
Checkout
,
Gears
,
Mashup
, and
Gadgets
. Needless to say, there are now also blogs for
Android
and
OpenSocial
.
Two new country blogs, for the
Czech Republic
and
Australia
, went public, to talk about all things Google in their regions. Yet more readers congregated around the new
Public Policy
and
Google.org
blogs, as well as one dedicated to
online security
and malware.
Despite all this activity, and the fact that a growing number of companies also host corporate blogs, the
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki
(a collaborative project begun by
Wired Magazine
and SocialText) indicates that even today, just 46 of the Fortune 500 companies (about 9%), have active public blogs produced by company employees that focus on the company and its products. Let's hope in 2008 that number goes up. We think such blogs can serve users, journalists, critics, investors, and fans more effectively and directly than more traditional approaches. Apparently, so do 41,395,926 people around the world - the number of visitors to all of our blogs this year.
Labels
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
Africa
19
Android
58
apps
419
April 1
4
Asia
39
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
Europe
46
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
Latin America
18
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
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