Google just recently launched a new powerful search product designed specifically for e-commerce websites and online retailers– Google Commerce Search.

Good timing now that we’re entering the holiday rush!

The new service is a cloud-based search utility that promises to provide visitors with an improved online shopping experience by helping them find the right products faster. On the other hand, both retailers and ecommerce stores can benefit from this tool by setting up filters on their sites to customize the search experience based on customer needs, such as category, brand, or any other attribute.

This way retailers are helping customers find what they need faster and more efficiently, and in result, customers are driving sales up and increasing conversions.

Other features the Commerce Search provides include the ability to promote certain products at the top of results and and design the site for particular promotions.

In result, retailers can control product placement on the page and because the service is being integrated with Google Analytics, it can be used to point out what products are selling best and therefore featured at the top.

The move is beneficial for retailers and shoppers. With Commerce Search, site search is greatly enhanced making products in an online retail shop easy to find and purchased by consumers without the need to spend time hunting them down and running price comparisons. This, without a doubt, helps online shops improve conversion rates, grow sales and offer better customer satisfaction.

The new Gmail lab applet helps you test whether you are sober when you are trying to send an email, by giving you simple math problems. Look here:

By default it works on Friday and Saturday night between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. but you can turn it on at any time of day. If the party people are not able to solve the math additions and multiplications with one digit number (or even three digits, depending on the level of difficulty selected), the email will not be sent.

Get some sleep and write again in the morning – hopefully with a clear mind.

Gmail offers solutions for workaholics as well. The applet called Email Addict tries to save those users who are close to be driven crazy by the long hours spent writing emails. When you enable it a link appears in the upper right corner of your explorer. You just need to click on it and it blocks your screen for 15 minutes and suggests you to “take a break, get some real work done, or have a snack”.

Gmail Googles and Email Addict together with other 11 experimental features were built in order to improve email user experience and provide its users with the best content possible. After trying these new functions you can send feedback to Gmail, explaining how the new applications saved your life.

Thanks to the Geolocator API web application your phone will be able to:

* Obtain the user’s current position, using the getCurrentPosition method
* Watch the user’s position as it changes over time, using the watchPosition method
* Quickly and cheaply obtain the user’s last known position, using the lastPosition property

So before this advancement and when logging onto Google Maps to request your current location, this would specify your remote location with a ‘blue circle’, which wouldn’t change size regardless of your current position in a given place.

Today, if you request your exact location on Google Maps, you will be given a more precise location and pin pointed more accurately on the map, which also means the circle will change depending on how close its estimate is to your true location or how far.

So the better the estimate, the smaller the circle, or the more populated the area, the smaller the circle and vice versa.

Check out this video for a more in depth explanation on the advantages of My Location.  In the meantime, keep in mind that any application powered by Google’s geolocation service automatically benefits from these latest improvements, so it takes nothing to begin enjoying the service.

Don’t get lost, and don’t be late!

As we know, a couple weeks back, Google released ‘walking directions’ as part of their Google Maps feature options.

If you’re keen to taking random strolls down some unknown street, perhaps some new ‘pedestrian friendly’ town you happen to be visiting for the weekend, or want to enjoy the beautifully HOT weather that has come to us this year, or basically move within a radius of not more than 10km, Google walking directions is your thing.

I can’t even tell you how glad I am for this. Even though I strangely enjoy getting lost in places I don’t know cause I’m a strong believer that the more you get lost; the better you get to know a place,- this new feature is definitely a time-saver.

BUT, lately, it has become somewhat of a private issue for some. Concerns have been raised that Google is being a bit reckless in terms of providing high precision information, like walking directions down your street sidewalk. This takes us back to the couple from Pittsburgh who sued Google for trespassing ‘Private Road’ territory using Street View, which provides users with a 360-degree photo of the place intended for visit.

Same thing goes for Google Health. This is also a fairly new feature where people can keep track of their health information by importing health reports, gathering all medical related data and saving it all in one safe place. Safe? People are beginning to think twice about this whole ’sharing their world’ ideology on the Web, in particularly Google.

Some may call it paranoia, for others it’s convenient, others just can’t be bothered with it. What do you think?

The Google Team has realized, maybe due to continuous claims, that some of the places that appear on Google Maps, are in need for some major tweaking. Meaning, they may not even contain any rivers, roads or even bike trails. They’re just plain…blank. In the example below you can notice there’s the before and after versions of a map from Myanmar, which has slowly been modified by engineers from the area.

What better than having the locals contribute to ‘filling in the blanks’ of their own geographical region?

Some other regions in the world in need for local support and expertise are the following: Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Caribbean nations of: Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago.

Although, as I was browsing through other sites, I found this blogger’s opinion to be quite reasonable. Stephen Shankland from Cnet News commented on how Google is continuously profiting from user-generated contributions that offer users better mapping, however, and I quote Stephen’s words, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we could do it through a more neutral mechanism that lets others benefit from the work, too?’ I agree.

The Google Map Maker functions are very easy to use and basically anyone can add to any of these empty looking maps.Its just a matter of time before users become fully aware about the fact that their local knowledge could really give the search engine monster a hand.

Google has been hard at work developing their Google Enterprise business. They have advanced their customizable search hardware and software to make them more affordable for the smaller enterprise and to give users a boost in functionality:

Universal Search

Google released the first version of their Google Search Appliance back in 2002 as an internal search solution for businesses. The plug and play box enables employees to search their intranet for internal company information and helps businesses optimize search on their public sites by hosting their searching capabilities; basically it’s Google in a box. This years Google released their fifth edition of the hardware and software along with a vamped up mini-me version for the smaller firm; the aptly named ‘Google Mini Search Appliance’. Both machines allow businesses to search over 220 different file types in one simple Google style search supposedly increasing employee efficiency by lessening the time searching for items as well as increasing user adoption as there will be less need for training. The most affordable mini me version costs $2,990 and holds up to 300,000 documents. The big one is slightly more expensive starting at a cool $30,000 but does hold up to 30 million documents and can search up to 50,000 documents.

Website Search

The mammoth search engine has also enabled businesses to easily create customizable searches for their own websites where the business defines what pages will be searched and how the search results appear (well, text and background colour for now). The business signs up to the service then selects the site from Google’s index that should be included in the search, customizes the search, imbeds the code and then, hey presto, you have your very own Google search on your website. Of course this is accompanied by a bit of Google branding and Google’s very own ads which magically disappear for the princely sum of $100 a year.

Google Apps

Google has also advanced their Google Apps package for enterprises. The package of customizable applications is based around Google’s very own Gmail. Enterprises can use domain names as their Gmail address, instantly chat with contacts and personalize their home pages. A new and slightly scary addition is an email detection function where Gmail detects when an email is about an event and then suggests adding it to your diary.

by Peter Jackson from 77Academy

Google has released a preview of a new service where developers can house their developed applications within Google’s infrastructure. The service has been named Google App Engine and looks to help developers bypass difficulties that are common with application creation and development such as long deployment schedules and scalability problems. Google’s main aim seems to attract programmers who need a larger and more scalable platform to be able to develop applications with the hope of increasing the amount of online applications and in turn attract more internet users (a.k.a. advertising opportunities).

On the other hand, Google hopes to attract a range of developers and large companies to Google App Engine, who they believe will benefit from the scalability of the service as well as easier data mining. For now the preview is focused on reaching smaller consumer targeted applications.

The Web as a Platform

The idea of using the web as a platform is not new. Amazon released their online data storage service AmazonS3 to enable users to make use of their huge data storage capabilities. The difference with Google’s is that they are offering a fully integrated service; developers can directly create applications and APIs and host the finished product so it’s visible to the end users. It seems the general consensus is that using the web as a hosting platform is a much more attractive option for many web developers than using physical servers. In a way it is the economies of scale of mass hosting; everyone can benefit from sharing.

The Technical Info

The application currently only supports software written in python programming language although Google hopes to support all types of programming language in the near future. They hope programmers will have the ability to create any type of application using any language they desire . Developers can also write software offline using the Google Software Development Kit and then upload it onto the App Engine.

For the time being the App Engine has limits of 500mb of storage and 10GB of daily data bandwidth. This is basically enough to power websites with 5million views per month.

The Future

The future implications of using the web as a platform are huge. Through simplifying the process and handling the entire life cycle of an appliance Google will most probably attract a new generation of developers who will effectively be able to outsource certain aspects of web development. This will mean less time can be spent on restructuring, data mining, data basing and more on designing more useful and exciting internet applications. As for Google, this seems to be yet another step on the way to ‘Googlizing’ the internet: users can design and develop on App Engine, connect to domain through Google App, serve Ads with Google AdSense, and sell through Google checkout.

by Peter Jackson from 77Academy

Now this hope is becoming a reality: Google has announced that Google Gears is coming also for Google Docs, so every user will be provided with an offline access to documents. Just install Google Gears and that’s it! Google Gears will save your documents on your computer so you will be able to get to them using a browser and writing the appropriate web address http://docs.google.com, or using the Google Desktop Icon. Every offline change to your documents will be saved and synced as soon as you re-gain an Internet connection.

In my opinion, this is one of the most relevant steps for Google in order to build a true alternative to Microsoft Office, Open Office or any other office suite. In fact, this new feature adds to Google Docs the flexibility of a traditional offline suite, but leaving the networking soul of the web apps: as Google itself stated in a recent post, Google Docs means sharing; so the Big G has created a new YouTube channel, the Google Docs Community Channel.

Here you can find and share videos, tips and suggestions about Google Docs, to improve your knowledge about the application. Since its official announcement, Google is slowly adding the offline option to every Google Account, not everyone will get the new feature immediately. On my behalf, I just can’t wait to try it, hoping that next offline step could be Gmail.

I’m quite positive many of you have already heard the expression that the best way to learn is by having fun and using images, this is why Google has now offered more options for developers and users in general, to view, customize, and build on top of Google Docs.

Now spreadsheets will no longer be a whole bunch of numbers scattered around your screen, instead they can be displayed into tables, charts, or even pictures of your significant other. Why is this useful? Information can be easily interpreted and used by those viewing the data, allowing numbers to speak for themselves. And as Google’s own Product Managers for Gadgets-in-Docs and Visualization API commented in their release, “…we decided to deliver a platform on which anyone, not just Google, could build the next best thing,” this is fit for absolutely anyone.

The graph below displays some sample gadgets.

On the other hand, Visualization API, provides developers to create, share and reuse visualizations written by the developer community. It is a great way to see how data has evolved over time, and its a very interactive way of analyzing information. Another way for us to help, support and make life alot easier for our clients here at 77. Just when we thought they weren’t paying attention to us, now they have no excuse. The colorful, interactive, creative and self-descriptive charts will now plot campaign statistics quite clearly for them.

To know more about these gadgets and applications, view this blog.

Why is the landing page load time so important? On one hand, it is prominent users are taken to the page of interest as quickly as possible. The better quality the landing page, the faster it will load. On the other hand, since nobody likes waiting too long for anything, before you know it, users will abandon their search the minute they realize the loading process is just neverending. This is not a good sign.

Users should be able to perform the ‘click’ and in seconds, land on the destination URL. We at 77 know for a fact that the longer it takes for a landing page to load, the worst your conversion rate becomes. And this is why we applaud efforts such as these where Google looks out for its client’s campaign performance by offering such a useful instrument. It is our job at 77 to bring to our client’s attention that a slow load of a landing page will result in low Quality Scores, and in turn, generate higher minimum bids, whereas a quick landing page load can only positively affect your Quality Score, thus generating low minimum bids.

To learn more about the various tips into improving your page’s load time and general information about this new application, please visit the AdWords Help Center.