So hands up the Chrome users…. Yeah, I know, I was all about Firefox a while ago but I’ll admit to using Chrome more and more. The speed, increasing number of extensions, the speed, the interface, and the speed are just some of the reasons why its siphoning more and more of my web time.

Reading the Chrome Blog today, it seems that Google themselves seem pretty happy with how their shiny browser is performing, with the userbase tripling from 40 million to 120 million just this year (bet that widespread advertising campaign might have helped). But they aren’t donning their slippers and settling down for the holiday season, more improvements in the form of an overhauled ‘V8′ javascript engine and inclusion of Google Instant’s insto-result-style search functionality are also in the post. Things seem to be gathering pace rather than slowwing off.

Chrome Web Store Announced

Also announced is the Chrome Web Store – your one-stop-shop for Chrome aps. Although currently for the US only, its already brimmed with developer-created goodies, can’t wait to see what the future brings….

Chrome OS Preliminary Launch

Perhaps unsurprisingly the future is bringing Chrome OS. The much talked about and highly anticipated new operating system from the search goliaths in Mountain View. Though this isn’t a full launch, Google are looking for people to sign up (again, just the US at the moment) for a pilot program and provide feedback. Want to join? They say they are looking for ‘qualified users’, developers, schools and businesses. Head on over to the Chrome Notebook Site.

More information can be found on the Google Chrome Blog.

Google has issued a rare security email about potential issues that could result (if the site / browser had already been compromised) in malicious code being executed on a site. Although they are saying that any immediate chance of this happening is low, they are advising web masters to update any potentially vulnerable code.

The email basically tells users to stop, remove, and then re-create any experiments that were created before the 3^rd of December. This applies even to experiments that are not currently running – that code needs to be removed / updated. New experiments are not vulnerable.

To create a new experiment Google is advising:

1. Stop any experiments that are currently running.
2. Remove any scripts from Website Optimiser that are on your site.
3. Create a new experiment.

There is also the option to update the actual code on your site directly, although Google is advising users to take the first option of recreating the experiments as this is a much easier process.

There seems to be nothing on the Official Google Blog about this currently but if we get any more information we will be sure to bring it to you.

Looking for new opportunities with your AdWords ads? Well it looks like Google had read your mind with the introduction of their new Global Market finder, a tool for people looking to decide which country to target with their adverts.

International AdWords Clicks

Just visit the Global Market Finder site, select your location, language, keywords and country filter (Americas / Asia / G20 / etc.) and the Market Finder does the rest. The result is a list of countries sorted by opportunity, with information about monthly searches, suggested bid and competition.

Even if you aren’t thinking about using it at the moment its interesting information non the less.

Google have also launched a Global Advertiser hub site with lots of juicy info. More information can be found on the Inside AdWords blog.

Well the weather outside certainly is frightful at the moment (note to self: possibly a good song lyric?) but that hasn’t stopped Google from getting the message out about new advertising opportunities for the legions of businesses that use them every day. Certainly, in this increasingly festive period businesses often rely on a boost in sales to keep themselves in the black.

Product Ads

Google is talking about product ads again, you may have heard of them before, but if you haven’t and you run an e-commerce store then you need to check them out. It allows you to actually link up your merchant center account to allow actual products, with images, to feature in your ads. It’s highly specific content about actual products – such as a picture and price – exactly the sort of thing that can engage users. But there’s more! In the US there is currently the option of advertising a product directly on a cost-per-acquisition basis – I’ve got my fingers crossed for a UK roll-out, c’mon Santa!

Be charmed by this info-cartoon-advert about product ads:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-T12usumM [/youtube]

More information can be found on the Google Inside AdWords blog or check out the entry in the AdWords Help centre.

Keeping pace with change is perhaps one of the biggest and most misunderstood parts of running a website. Whether it’s users demanding a certain quality of features from a site or even users demanding new ways of accessing your content. To keep on top of all this you need a way of analysing these changing requirements and be able to act on them efficiently.

One perennial question of course is just what should you be targeting your efforts towards? In an time where mobile internet is becoming a significant force, a growing pocket of users are already trying to access your site through these new channels. What are you  to do?

Analytics to the rescue! (again)

The Google Analytics Blog is currently in the midst of a 3 part trilo-blog about Mobile internet use and how, as a webmaster, you can find and analyse data about how mobile users are interacting with your site.

The first post looks at spotting trends in mobile internet use on your site, and has some tips for keeping up to date with the data.

Part 2 looks at how you can assign monetary values to the reports and data you are getting from Analytics. If you are showing these reports to your bosses then having the amount of revenue generated in your reports can certainly give traction to your point!

The third in the trilogy of posts – “Act on your ROI” – is coming soon!

More information can be found on the Google Analytics Blog.

We’ve all seen a number of changes in AdWords over the past months – new features have sprung up allowing advertisers to interact more readily with customers. We’ve had…

• Sitelinks – allowing users a choice of which entry page they land on
• Product Ads – enticing users with a juicy picture of actual products
• Click-to-call – For mobile ads where users can phone directly by clicking on an ad.

..to name but a few. With all these new types of ads there has obviously been the desire to identify quite what part of the ads are being selected – are your new Product Ads really improving the click-through-rate of people selecting the images? What’s more, this means that if the your market really responds to a particular type of ad extension then you know you can focus your optimising time on rolling that out across your other campaigns.

Id-ing Those Clicks

Googles PPC boffins have now handily added a new segment type to allow AdWords users to identify what part of their ads are receiving clicks. As always, its integrated into the AdWords interface – just select the Segment drop-menu above the graphs and select ‘Click type’.

More information can be found on the Inside AdWords blog.

If you have used the web for a while you have probably seen that Google ads are pretty ubiquitous – not only AdWords, but also the AdSense ads that web masters can opt to actually show on their sites. You may have also noticed that sometimes these normally content-relevant ads have the capacity to ‘drift’ a little in their relevance – its understandable that in a system that uses website content to define the type of ad to show that the targeting might (for many reasons) become a little wayward.

More Power To The (AdSense-using) People!

Well Google has recently launched some new controls to allow web masters to moderate the ads that appear on their site to ensure their relevance. Interestingly, there is even the possibility that when an ad is refused that the web master can actually send some feedback to the advertiser to explain the reason for the blocking – providing valuable information and helping to improve the service for everyone. There are even tools to block ads by landing page so you can ensure that competitor ads don’t sprout up on your site, nifty.

As is the style of the time, Google has a disarmingly charming animation to explain the new tools:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VTjN-4S4so[/youtube]

If your company has followed the ‘yellow brick’ road to use a Google Search Appliance to allow information held on its corporate networks to be searched using Google technology, then you may be happy to know that Google is thinking outside of the box with this latest addition – Cloud Connect.

With Cloud Connect your Google Search Appliance can now deliver search results not just from your corporate network, but also from ‘the cloud’. So data held in Google Docs or Google Sites can now be included, meaning improved access to collaborative documents.

Intrigued by the idea of the Google Search Assistant (and like shiny yellow hardware)? Here is an overview video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NrO4Llyr0Y[/youtube]

More information can be found on the Google Enterprise Blog and on the Google Search Assistant Homepage.

Well I say ‘new’, some might say that there is more than a passing resemblance to the old ‘site overlay’ tool that has now been removed from Analytics. That’s not to say we aren’t grateful, it certainly is an improvement on what was a slightly ‘agricultural’ tool. In reference to the old Site Overlay, a recent post to the Google Analytics blog admitted that it “hasn’t worked as well it could”.

The new In-Page Analytics tool provides a similar experience to Site Overlay in that you see your site as you would through a normal web browser, but with details about which links were clicked shown as well. This new interface is not only more presentable (it’s polished enough to show visiting clients) but it allows for a number of advanced features (such as Advanced Segments) to allow for improved data visualisation.

In-Page Analytics is currently in beta, so it’s not considered to be a full release – you may find some issues with it (sawdust on the ground, that sort of thing) but it’s an indicator of where Google obviously wants to take this tool. It’s not only an exciting tool for webmasters and people looking at site architecture, it’s also invaluable for people looking at site usability and how different visual configurations may lead to improved click-through-rates and sales.

Here is a video overview of the new feature:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl8GW3M_2h0[/youtube]

More information can be found in your Google Analytics account: Content section -> In-Page Analytics. Google’s Analytics Blog also has more details.

To say people spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about links is to massively underreport quite how much effort is spent analysing them. As we all know, back-links are the backbone of many an SEO campaign.

So it is nice to see that Google has seen fit to update Webmaster tools with some new interfaces to allow users to analyse the links their site is receiving.

In the Links to Your Site section of Webmaster Tools you are greeted with 3 main summary sections:

• ‘Who links the most’ – A list of the sites linking to you.
• ‘Your most linked content’ – A list of the pages with the most backlinks
• ‘How your data is linked’ – The anchor text used in your links.

Clicking on the ‘More’ link takes you to another page with more detailed information for that section. For example, in the ‘Who links the most’ section, you are taken to a list of sites that Google has credited you with a link from. The data includes the number of links and the number of linked pages. Further information can be found by clicking on the actual referring sites, this allows you to see the actual pages that the referring site is linking to.

More information can be found on the Webmaster Central Blog.