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Browser Size: a tool to see how others view your website
December 16, 2009
In a newspaper, the most important story is featured on the front page. If it's a really important piece, then it's placed "
above the fold
," which means you can find it on the top half of the first page — the bottom half is folded behind and isn't readily seen when you first look at the newspaper.
The same concept applies to browsers as well. There's no clear line for "above the fold" on a browser — there are many different sizes of monitors, browsers are not always full screen and other things like toolbars can take up space. Consider a "Donate" button on a non-profit site. If it's far down the page, you may not see it when you first view the page. You can of course scroll downwards, but many people don't scroll and will miss it entirely. For example, on the download page for Google Earth, the install rate increased by 10% when we moved the "Download" button 100 pixels upward. We can attribute that increase to users who wanted to try out Google Earth, but didn't see the button before.
To help you understand how everyone sees your website, we created a tool called
Browser Size
in our
20% time
. Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to
google.com
. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you're a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience. We hope people will use this tool to make their websites better, in turn making the web better for everyone.
If you're interested in learning more about Browser Size, check out our post on the
Google Code Blog
.
Posted by Bruno Bowden, Senior Software Engineer
More great news sources to discover in Fast Flip
December 16, 2009
Three months ago, we
launched
Google Fast Flip, a service that seeks to make reading articles online as fast and simple as flipping through a magazine or newspaper. It's still early in this experiment, which is why
Fast Flip
remains in Google Labs. But so far our initial thesis has held up: If you make it easier to read news online, people will read more of it. Users have told us they like being able to browse content so quickly, and we've been pleased with the amount of time they have spent reading articles in Fast Flip.
We've also received good feedback from the three dozen publishers who joined us for the launch, as well as a lot of interest from others. Today, we're excited to be adding articles from another two dozen publishers representing more than 50 newspapers, magazines, web outlets, news wires and TV and radio broadcasters. Some of the new sources include Tribune Co. newspapers such as the
Los Angeles Times
and the
Chicago Tribune
, McClatchy Company newspapers such as the
Miami Herald
and the
Kansas City Star
, the
Huffington Post
,
Popular Science
,
Reuters
,
Public Radio International
,
POLITICO
and
U.S. News & World Report
. Now you can use Fast Flip to engage with content from even more of your favorite news outlets in an innovative way, and continue to explore topics covered by a diverse group of sources. And, through the
mobile version
, you can flip through all these new articles on your Android-powered device or iPhone.
While we're encouraged by the positive feedback about Fast Flip, it's just one of many experiments you'll see us try in partnership with news publishers. Our goal is to work with the industry to help it continue to innovate and build bigger audiences, better engage those audiences and generate more revenue. We're looking forward to innovating and iterating with all these new partners in Fast Flip. And if you have more suggestions for ways we can improve Fast Flip, please
let us know
.
Posted by Jack Hebert, Software Engineer
What you watched and searched for on YouTube in 2009
December 16, 2009
(Cross-posted from the
YouTube Blog
)
This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama's inauguration), some small (a Minnesota wedding party erupts into dance), some expected ("New Moon"), some surprising (Susan Boyle) — but all of them inspired, entertained and connected millions of people around the world via YouTube.
For these lists, we looked at view counts of YouTube's most popular videos (in some instances we aggregated views across multiple versions of the same video):
Most Watched YouTube videos (Global)
:
1.
Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent
(120+ million views)
2.
David After Dentis
t (37+ million views)
3.
JK Wedding Entrance Dance
(33+ million views)
4.
New Moon Movie Trailer
(31+ million views)
5.
Evian Roller Babies
(27+ million views)
Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global
)*:
1.
Pitbull - I Know You Want Me
(82+ million views)
2.
Miley Cyrus - The Climb
(64+ million views)
3.
Miley Cyrus - Party In The U.S.A.
(54+ million views)
4.
The Lonely Island - I'm On A Boat
(48+ million views)
5.
Keri Hilson - Knock You Down
(35+ million views)
Then, to determine the fastest rising search terms for each month, we examined the billions of queries that people searched for on YouTube (through December 15):
Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (Global)
:
January: inauguration
February: christian bale
March: the climb
April: susan boyle
May: pacquiao vs hatton
June: michael jackson thriller
July: michael jackson
August: usain bolt
September: kanye west
October: paranormal activity
November: bad romance
December: tiger woods
Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (U.S.)
:
January: obama inauguration
February: on a boat
March: watchmen
April: susan boyle
May: pacquiao
June: michael jackson thriller
July: wedding
August: send it on
September: kanye west
October: paranormal activity
November: adam lambert
December: tiger woods
There are a lot of interesting nuggets in here. The fastest rising U.S. search term in July was [wedding], clearly related to JK Wedding Entrance Dance, the third Most Watched YouTube video of the year. And while [michael jackson] was
Google's
fastest rising search term in 2009, [michael jackson thriller] was the faster rising search on YouTube. Movie trailers ("New Moon," "Watchmen," "Paranormal Activity") and inspirational moments (Susan Boyle, Usain Bolt) were popular, as were sensational celebrity scandals (Christian Bale, Kanye West, and most recently, Tiger Woods).
We hope to expand these lists in the future, so if there are any "Most Watched" categories you'd like to see in 2010, let us know by leaving a comment on the
YouTube Blog
.
*Note: Some music videos may be unavailable in your country due to copyright restrictions.
Posted by Jamie Davidson, Associate Product Manager
Live on YouTube: Leaders answer your questions in the CNN/YouTube Climate Debate
December 15, 2009
(Cross-posted from the
YouTube Blog
)
Today, at 8 a.m. ET, a panel of world climate leaders, among them former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and journalist Thomas Friedman, will gather in Copenhagen and answer the top questions that you submitted to the
CNN/YouTube Climate Debate channel
.
You can watch them address the issues that matter to you in real-time: We'll be live-streaming the debate at
www.youtube.com/cop15
.
Thank you for making this event truly international. We received thousands of questions from Italy to Brazil, Nigeria to New Zealand. To get a scope of just how many countries are represented, see
this map
, which depicts global submissions through a Google Earth layer.
And if you didn't have a chance to submit a question, but still want to raise your voice about climate change, we encourage you to join the discussion on Twitter during the debate using hashtag #cnnytdebate.
Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News & Politics, YouTube
The top ten ways to get your business ready for the holidays
December 14, 2009
A few weeks ago, we jump-started the holiday shopping season with
Black Friday and Cyber Monday
. Like us, you probably browsed the shops and sites for the coolest products and best shopping deals for your holiday purchases. But if you're a business or an advertiser, you probably know that some of the biggest shopping weekends of the year are approaching — and you need to get your business ready for the rush!
If you're as geeky as we are, you're probably doing everything you can to figure out how to best use the tools available on the web to find the right customers and effectively measure the results from the money you spent on marketing.
At T-minus ten days before Christmas, its not too late to look over your holiday campaigns and we’d like to share with you our top 10 holiday tips — a quick checklist to help you make use of important data now and improve your holiday campaigns.
Consider it a gift from one geeky data whiz to another!
1. Update your wishlist:
Use the
Search-based Keyword Tool
to find keywords that you never thought of incorporating into your campaign for the holidays. (Here is a how-to guide for how best to use the tool:
Monetize The Long Tail of Search
).
2. Know what's hot this season:
Research on
Insights for Search
to see what the “Rising Searches” are and understand how people are searching for your brand (and your competitors!).
3. Read the wish lists:
Who could be looking for you? Type your website URL into
Google Ad Planner
to see who is looking for your site, broken down by demographic categories like age and gender.
4. Follow the reindeer:
Where else are they going? Use
Ad Planner
to find other websites that share the same demographics as yours. Putting display ads on that site might be a great way for you to target that audience!
5. Build new toys:
Create new
AdWords campaigns
for your holiday lines and products. Incorporate new keywords and keep in mind the trends you found on Insights for Search.
6. Train the elves:
Test your AdWords campaigns by introducing new holiday promotions. Then, test your promotions — a promotion for "30% off" might resonate better with your customers than "Buy One Get One Free."
7. Check your list twice:
Use
Google Analytics
to better understand where your traffic is coming from during the holiday season. Find out who's coming to your website, when they're coming and where they're coming from.
8. Map out the route:
How long are people staying on your website? Use Google Analytics to understand your purchasing cycle. Which pages have the
highest bounce rate
? And which pages are people leaving the quickest?
9. Test run on the sleigh:
Run experiments using
Website Optimizer
on the landing pages you have linked from your ads. Make sure the images are in the right place and that they're not a distraction for your customer. Play around with the size of the image and the image type.
10. Does the chimney work?:
Test different versions of your purchase page to find out what works best. Change the "purchase" button on your webpage. Pick different colors — bright versus dark colors — and vary the button sizes. Try out different text on your button. See which of these variations lead to the most clicks to conversions.
We wish you a happy, data driven holiday season.
Posted by Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist
A deep dive on display advertising
December 14, 2009
2009 has been a busy year for Google in the area of display advertising — that is, the image, video and interactive ad formats that run across the web.
Our goal is to improve display advertising on the web for everyone. We're working to help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns, enable publishers to make more money from their ad space and deliver better, more relevant ads (and, ultimately, more ad-funded web content) to users.
To achieve these goals, in 2009 we released a host of
new features
for display advertisers on the Google Content Network and
on YouTube
,
launched the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange
and made
significant enhancements
to our ad serving products.
On Tuesday December 15 at 10am PT, we're hosting an educational webcast for analysts, investors and press about our display advertising business. This is our second educational webcast —
the first
, on search advertising, was held in September.
The webcast will be available at
investor.google.com
, and a replay will be available on the same website. If you're interested in hearing about our efforts in this space, please feel free to tune in.
Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management
Making URLs shorter for Google Toolbar and FeedBurner
December 14, 2009
This morning, we launched updated versions of the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner that offer a new URL shortening service from Google called the
Google URL Shortener
. We mentioned our URL shortener as a feature in both announcements, so we wanted to say a little more about how this product works and why we're offering it.
People share a lot of links online. This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity. If you're not familiar with them, URL shorteners basically squeeze a long URL into fewer characters to make it easier to share with others. With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short form publishing, a shorter URL leaves more room to say what's on your mind — and that's why people use them.
First, we think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links. Second, we've built this on Google's global infrastructure to offer the following benefits:
Stability: Google's scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.
Speed: At Google we like fast products and we've worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We'll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.
Google URL shortener is not a stand-alone service; you can't use it to shorten links directly. Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.
We're excited about enabling this functionality — try it for
Toolbar
and
FeedBurner
!
Posted by Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D'Angelo and Devin Mullins, Software Engineers
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