Archive for December, 2005

Throughout the world, people of every stripe are preparing to celebrate Christmas. However, “Christmas” has different meanings to different people. For Christians, of course, it is the feast that celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe is...

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience

The recent announcement of the AOL partnership has been the source of a lot of rumors and misconceptions. We'd like to clear some of those up.

- Biased results? No way. Providing great search is the core of what we do. Business partnerships will never compromise the integrity or objectivity of our search results. If a partner's page ranks high, it's because they have a good answer to your search, not because of their business relationship with us.

- Indexing more of AOL's content. Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say "all the world's information," this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content.

- AOL will receive a credit towards advertising purchased through Google's ad program. You might wonder if this will affect the ad auction. It won't. We don't offer preferential treatment on advertising (in either the auction or the display) to any of our partners.

- We have a service called "onebox" for which we provide some additional links separate from ads (sponsored links) and search results. (Try searching on [new york transit strike] and look for the news section.) AOL and its products have always been a part of onebox, along with many other providers, and will continue to be.

- There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

Our service and our business works because of you - our users. You're important to us and something that we think about all the time -- as we build new products, negotiate deals, and think about what our future holds.

We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you, and believe that our new agreement with them will only create a better experience for you in 2006 and beyond -- one where you can continue to trust that we're giving you a result because it's the best one we can possibly provide.

We're always looking into better ways to communicate with you to help you get the most of AdSense. So on Wednesday, December 21st we held a webinar to provide an overview of some recently launched AdSense features including Onsite Advertiser Sign-up, referrals, section targeting, themed ad units, and custom and emailable reports. We also discuss each in our previous blog posts -- feel free to browse through these.

Satya Patel from product management, Mohammed Abdoolcarim from product marketing, and Phoebe Ho from account management were on hand to provide information about their areas of expertise. Their presentations concluded with a live Q&A session you might also find useful.

If you missed it, be sure to watch a recorded version of the New Features Webinar here (Firefox users, you will need to view this in Internet Explorer).

Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support

As 2005 comes to an end, businesses close out their books, people start making New Year’s resolutions, and AdWords advertisers like yourselves start planning for 2006. To help you review this past year’s campaign performance, we’d like to remind you of the handy tools available in the Report Center. To drill down on specific metrics, try generating a custom report for the past year, 6 months, or whatever date range you specify.

Here at Inside AdWords, we’re also doing our own annual review of sorts – reading over your emails and the topics we’ve covered in our inaugural year in order to plan for 2006. We’re taking a bit of a break for the holidays (and hope that you’ll do the same), but we’ll be back after the New Year with more tips, insights and otherwise interesting AdWords tidbits to share.

Happy Holidays and see you in ’06!

Posted by Arielle & Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Getting ready to visit relatives and friends for the holidays? Do they have an old piano sitting in the living room? Want to impress everyone with a simple, yet beautiful holiday classic? The Piano Guy will show you how...



How to play "The First Noel"

Scott "The Piano Guy" Houston has been called “the Pied Piper of recreational music-making” by giving hope to millions who just want to play their favorite tunes. Scott demonstrates how to play the Holiday classic, "The First Noel." Keywords: piano, play piano, piano in a flash, play piano in a flash, scott the piano guy, the piano guy, piano lessons, how to play the piano, piano help, pianist, learn to play the piano, piano instruction, piano teacher, buy piano instruction, purchase piano instruction, quick piano, piano lesson, piano made easy, easy piano, holiday songs, holiday tunes, play holiday songs. (Description provided by content owner)

Producer: Ken Mills
Director: Ken Mills
Associate Producer: R J Cavallaro
Production Company: Mills James Productions

The Piano Guy
www.scottthepianoguy.com
7 min 3 sec

Do your talents lie in crafting crafty CSS? Do you want to have thousands of people see your work? Gada.be is breaking down the design door and letting the greater community in. We are now letting you… anybody design Gada.be with CSS. Submissions will be added to a site-wide, dynamic style-switcher that will let Gada.be users see Gada.be their way - literally! Here’s what to do:

1. Download the Gada.be design template and use your favorite CSS editor to whip up a spiffy new look for our site. We’d recommend TopStyle for Windows.
2. Send your changes to css@gada.be.
3. Wait for your (qualifying) submission to be added to the list. Once added, all visitors will have the option to see and use it immediately.
4. Get traffic - with full name recognition and a link back to your Web site.

Always wanted to change the way search results look on the page? Think you can do better? We’re looking forward to seeing what everybody does! The first five designs accepted will actually receive a full copy of TopStyle!

Posted by Shannon Bauman, AdSense Team

Whether you're gazing up at the glistening giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan or passing by the elaborate gingerbread house in the window of your local candy store, it's mighty hard to miss that the holiday season is in full swing. The creativity and energy people put into decorating is so inspiring, in fact, that we decided to do a little decorating of our own in Google AdSense (those "Ads by Google" that you've probably seen on lots of websites and blogs).

Like the cherries that Aunt Ellie puts in her famous fruitcake, we're spicing up our ads with some great Google-y images: snowmen, holiday packages, and Waldo, the ice skating penguin. Unlike the fruitcake, though, these ads don't last for years and years – they're just present until December 26. And here's what they look like.

AdSense publishers can opt in to the designs by going to their account settings. And in the new year, we'll be rolling out more designs for holidays and events around the world.