Archive for April, 2006

This May we will enable AdWords and MCC account owners to set their accounts' time zones. This means that all metrics returned for a given account will be reported in that account's time zone (currently all accounts are reported in US Pacific Standard Time (PST) – the time zone for Google's headquarters in California). In addition, billing and budgeting cycles will be based on each account's time zone.

Advertisers and MCC managers will be invited to set their time zones in May, at which point we will release a new version of the AdWords API that includes "set" and "get" time zone functionality. We plan to release more detailed/technical FAQs (via the AdWords API Blog) as we get closer to the launch date.

In the meantime, we'd like to give you a high-level overview of time-zone related functionality and implications for developers.

What is Time Zone Support?

Advertisers can select any time zone in the world for their AdWords account. All reporting, ad serving, and billing will be based on the time zone set by the advertiser. Advertisers or MCC managers who choose not to establish account time zone settings will continue to have their accounts managed in US PST, as they have been in the past. It is important to note that each account's time zone may only be set once, so advertisers should be careful when setting their time zone.

What will change in the web application?

Starting in early May, existing advertisers who login to the AdWords website will receive an invitation to set their account’s local time zone. New advertisers will be asked to specify their local time zone during the account setup process.

How will Time Zone support impact AdWords API developers?

The interfaces for submitting and returning date/time values already support local time zones (even though all data is currently submitted/reported in US Pacific Standard Time). Therefore, the impact should be minimal.

• You will be able to get and set your local time zone through new methods in AccountService, as well as get the effective date of the most recent time zone change.
• Statistics will be collected at standardized times within each account's local time zone boundaries. For example, if a customer in Tokyo sets her account for Japan Standard Time (JST), that account's stats will be collected from midnight to midnight, JST. Likewise, accounts set to PST will have their stats collected from midnight to midnight, PST.
• The start and end time specified in report jobs sent to ReportService will be interpreted in the account's local time zone.
• Where appropriate, date parameters will be used instead of date-time (xsd:date instead of xsd:dateTime). This includes the start and end day of a campaign, the start and end period for stat methods, and the start and end day of report jobs. The day will automatically be interpreted in the account's local time. If a time zone is specified along with the day, it must match the account's local time zone.
• If you schedule a single report to aggregate data across multiple accounts (and those accounts are in different time zones), the report will aggregate each account’s local daily data.
• If you schedule a single report to aggregate data across multiple accounts (and those accounts are in different time zones), the report will aggregate each account’s local daily data.

Will this change be backward-compatible with V3?

Once you begin setting time zones for your accounts, you will still be able to use the current version (V3) of the API. However, there will be one difference. In V3, all API calls will still return account statistics in PST (regardless of each account’s specified time zone) except for reports, whose day boundaries will be calculated in each account’s local time zone.



Once you migrate to the new version (V4), all API calls will return statistics and reports calculated in each account’s local time zone. However, we understand that some developers may want to return all account statistics in one time zone. Therefore, you will be able to access all account statistics in PST by passing in a flag to the stat methods. The coming release notes will have more information on this.

We hope you find this information helpful, and we promise to release further technical details as soon as possible.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

Posted by Rachel Goldman, Software Engineer We'll be releasing revision 2.48 of API v2 later today with no intended changes. A lot of developers have been wondering when we plan to turn off v1. Rest assured that we won't turn off v1 on May 3 (exactly one month after we announced v2). However, we strongly urge you to upgrade. There will be at least two weeks notice before version 1 becomes

Posted by Jess Lee, Product Manager Du nouveau sur l'API Google Maps! As many of you have already noticed, we recently added European maps to the Google Maps API. This update includes maps for France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, and more. The European maps are automatically available to anyone who uses v2 of the API. If

Renton is so bored. He's 14 years old, and he dreads the life that his grandfather has mapped out for him. His only dream is to fly all over the world.Until a cute girl named Eureka crash-lands her humanoid fighting vessel on his grandfather's roof.

Yesterday we identified an issue with our ReportService that is causing some reports to return incomplete or no data. We are working quickly to resolve this issue.

As this is a non-systematic (and therefore unpredictable) issue, we recommend that you double-check your reports in order to ensure that they are complete. You can diagnose incomplete/truncated reports by checking if the report’s XML is valid.

This bug is specific to the AdWords API and does not affect the AdWords web interface (http://adwords.google.com). Therefore, you can still pull complete reports via the web interface.

We apologize again for the inconvenience, and will notify you as soon as we have more information.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

Today's Highlighted Videos




#100

I'd like to introduce you to someone - or perhaps I should say "reintroduce" you, since you've probably known him for years. (Sure, he's had a little work done, but who among us couldn't use the help of a pixel-painting designer to freshen our look now and then?) This is the Babel Fish: mascot, star, and proprietor of the oldest free, on-line translation service on the web, babelfish.altavista.com.

Today Babel Fish is hanging his shingle here at Yahoo!, debuting Yahoo! Babel Fish across our properties worldwide. For those of you new to Babel Fish, you can visit babelfish.yahoo.com and translate text or web pages across your choice of 38 language pairs, such as English => Korean, Dutch => French, and Greek => English. It's the same convenient, free, easy-to-use resource that people have relied on for years, and now we've added more features, such as:

• Two more language pair choices: Simplified Chinese into Traditional Chinese, and Traditional Chinese into Simplified Chinese;
• Yahoo! Search Translator Beta, currently available in Germany and in France, allowing users to translate queries and search for web pages, images, and videos in multiple languages simultaneously;
• Tighter integration with Yahoo! services such as:
  • Yahoo! Search - With one click, use your text translation result to search the web
  • Yahoo! Toolbar - Add the Babel Fish button to your Yahoo! Toolbar to enable one-click translation of web pages
  • The Yahoo! network - links to Babel Fish from Search Shortcuts, the Yahoo! Services pages, and other pages in the network for easy access.

Raymond Flournoy
Linguistic Product Manager

P.S. To help us celebrate the relaunch of Yahoo! Babel Fish, why not mix up a cocktail we’re calling "The Babbling Fish"!

The Babbling Fish

4 parts vodka
2 parts Blue Curaçao
1 part key lime juice
a spash of Midori (approximately 1/2 part)

Shake all of the above with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Top with brut champagne.

Decorate with a scoop of mango sorbet. Enjoy!

The color is a nice aquamarine and the champagne gives your mango fish some bubbles. And by selecting ingredients carefully you can enjoy some Russian (vodka), Dutch (Curaçao), Japanese (Midori), and French (champagne) flavors in one glass--all languages that we translate on Babel Fish!