Google Stuff

Improve snippets with a meta description makeover

Written by Raj Krishnan, Snippets Team

The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta description for each URL.


Why does Google care about meta descriptions?
We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results.

Snippet showing quality meta description




Snippet showing lower-quality meta description



What are some good meta description strategies?
Differentiate the descriptions for different pages
Using identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site isn't very helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Create descriptions that accurately describe each specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and consider using page-level descriptions everywhere else. You should obviously prioritize parts of your site if you don't have time to create a description for every single page; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your homepage and popular pages.

Include clearly tagged facts in the description
The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information -- price, age, manufacturer -- scattered throughout a page, making it unlikely that a snippet will capture all of this information. Meta descriptions can bring all this data together. For example, consider the following meta description for the 7th Harry Potter Book, taken from a major product aggregator.

Not as desirable:

There are a number of reasons this meta description wouldn't work well as a snippet on our search results page:

• The title of the book is complete duplication of information already in the page title.
• Information within the description itself is duplicated (J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré are each listed twice).
• None of the information in the description is clearly identified; who is Mary GrandPré?
• The missing spacing and overuse of colons makes the description hard to read.

All of this means that the average person viewing a Google results page -- who might spend under a second scanning any given snippet -- is likely to skip this result. As an alternative, consider the meta description below.

Much nicer:

What's changed? No duplication, more information, and everything is clearly tagged and separated. No real additional work is required to generate something of this quality: the price and length are the only new data, and they are already displayed on the site.

Programmatically generate descriptions
For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions are more difficult. In the latter case, though, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and is encouraged -- just make sure that your descriptions are not "spammy." Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation.

Use quality descriptions
Finally, make sure your descriptions are... descriptive. It's easy to become lax on the quality of the meta descriptions, since they're not directly visible in the UI for your site's visitors. But meta descriptions might be displayed in Google search results -- if the description is high enough quality. A little extra work on your meta descriptions can go a long way towards showing a relevant snippet in search results. That's likely to improve the quality and quantity of your user traffic.

Mediascrape

Mediascape has done an amazing mashup of Google Maps and video!  Very slick interface with a ton of video.  This is  great example of what the web is becoming!

Nice job! 

Python client library: same great taste - less filling

Posted by Jeffery Scudder, Google data APIs Team

The recent release of the Python client library (version 1.0.8) contains some changes that I'm particularly proud of. I recently refactored all of the data model classes to improve efficiency and make the code cleaner. You might notice an improvement in XML parsing speed, but the real benefit is to those writing new code for the library (like Takashi Matsuo, for example). With some of the recent launches of new Google data APIs, there are a lot of new classes to write - and there are more on the way.

Refactoring can often be painful and boring, but in this case it was actually fun. I felt like I was moving to a new and better design and the library has sufficient tests to let me know that I haven't broken something. Along the way I learned a few things, and I thought I'd share:

• Take advantage of metadata: I used a dictionary to map XML tags to class members and types so I could use a set of generic conversion methods to convert any XML into any of the data model classes. Not only does this mean less code, but it runs faster than the way I was doing things before.
• Unit tests are vital: When refactoring and rewriting major portions of an application it is extremely easy to introduce bugs and break things, so having unit tests that catch these things is very helpful. Thankfully, I had to add very few new test cases since we had written tests for the initial code.
• Plan ahead carefully: For about two weeks before this change I'd scribble some designs on a whiteboard or notepad at random free moments. I wrote a couple of test programs to check my proof of concept and measure efficiency improvements. In the end this meant that my final conversion was pretty painless.

None of these are rocket science, but I think these tips have made this project fun. I don't know if everyone else out there uses similar techniques to stay sane while coding, so I'm interested to hear what kinds of best practices you, the reader, recommend. Why not post it in the Google data Python contributors group?

P.S. For an example on how the code has changed, see the wiki page entitled Data Model Refactoring.

Before you apply to AdSense

Getting started with AdSense is easy, but when reviewing the applications we get, we've noticed a few common pitfalls. To help make sure your application is approved the first time around, ask yourself the following questions below before submitting.

Do I have what I need to apply?

• Website: To display Google ads, you need administrative access to the site you submit for AdSense in order to place our JavaScript ad code on your site. Adding the Google code to your site's source code will enable you to show ads, search boxes, and referral units on your pages.
  
  If you don't have a website of your own, that doesn't mean you can't participate in AdSense. We offer a couple of options to help you easily create your own site.
  
  First, there's Blogger, a free tool for setting up and publishing your own blog online. With its easy-to-use and customizable templates, you can create an account and start blogging right away. You can also set up AdSense ads easily through your Blogger account.
  
  If you prefer more flexibility and control, then our web page tool, Page Creator, may be more suitable. Signing up for a Page Creator account is free as well -- all you need is a Gmail account. The best part is that you don't have to download any software or hire a designer. Once you've created your Page Creator site, you can begin displaying Google ads in minutes.
  
  
• Valid payee name: Payments will be made out to the name on your account, so make sure to include your full and valid name, or that of your business, rather than just initials. If banks won't accept the name you enter in the 'Payee Name' field, neither will we.
  
  
• Valid address: We want to make sure your hard-earned money reaches you, so please also provide a complete valid address where you can receive mail. If you live in a country or territory that doesn't have a standard format for addresses, please be sure that your application includes as much information as a mailman would need to find your residence.
  

Does my website meet all the necessary requirements?

• Valid URL: If you manage an entire website, give us the URL of your home page. If you manage a blog or other account within a larger website, you should provide the URL of the specific page that you manage and not the URL of the entire hosting website. Don't forget to double check your URL for typos!
  
  
• Fully launched website: Since we won't be able to review websites that are not fully launched or built, please ensure that your site is live and functioning at the time you submit your application.
  
  
• Unique content: We want visitors to sites in the AdSense network to have a good experience, so please publish content that's interesting and unique. Avoid using "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other cookie cutter approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. If you're participating in an affiliate program, give people a reason to visit your site first.
  
  
• Supported language: We're constantly working to provide targeted, relevant ads in more languages. However, until then, we can only approve your application if the majority of your website is in one of our supported languages.
  
  
• Pay-To Sites: If your site participates in programs that compensate people to perform activities that drive traffic to you, we can't approve your application. Some examples of these "pay-to" programs are sites that encourage users "to click" or "to surf" or "to read email." In addition, you shouldn't encourage others to join these programs in the content, links, or third-party ads on your site.
  

We also encourage you to read our program policies in detail for further insight on how to create a successful application. Now that you have all the necessary information, now's a good time to apply.

Posted by Courtney Chin and Rohit Jenveja - AdSense Publisher Support

AdSense for search launches in Vietnamese

Following our announcement about Indonesian in July, we're happy to let you know that AdSense for search is now available in another southeast Asian language: Vietnamese. Vietnamese publishers can now offer users Google search capabilities while generating revenue from ads on the search results pages.

As we've done in the past, we'd like to celebrate this launch by providing you with a few fun facts about Vietnam:

• Vietnam is shaped like a narrow 'S'. Even though Vietnam is 1,650 kilometers (1,031 miles) from north to south, the country gets as narrow as 50 kilometers (31 miles) across.
  
  
• Vietnamese is the seventh most spoken language in the United States and sixth in Australia. According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
  
  
• Vietnam is the world's second largest exporter of coffee and rice.
  

Chào mừng các nhà xuất bản Việt Nam đến với AdSense!

Posted by Thiena Dao - AdSense Vietnamese Publisher Support

Google Analytics Videos On YouTube

We have put a tremendous amount of effort into making Google Analytics more intuitive and easy to use. The hard part is teaching people how to use their insights to drive action. We hope to change that with the introduction of our very own Google Analytics Playlist on YouTube. Here you can check out full-length presentations on advanced analytics implementation, best practices, how to create a data driven culture and more.\u003cbr\>In the future, you can expect more in-depth content about the Google Analytics product to be filmed and posted here in this Playlist.  These videos are a great source of insight into how you can continually improve your web analytics practices, and even insight into our own team here at Google.  We hope you enjoy them.\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003c/span\>",1] ); D(["mb","\u003cdiv\>Thanks Yee, nice work.\u003c/div\>",1] ); D(["mb","\u003cspan class\u003dsg\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>Brett\u003c/div\>\u003c/span\>",1] ); //-->
In the future, you can expect more in-depth content about the Google Analytics product to be filmed and posted here in this Playlist. These videos are a great source of insight into how you can continually improve your web analytics practices, and even into our own team here at Google. We hope you enjoy them.

Posted by Christian Yee, Google Analytics Team

Introducing Google Gadget Ads

Today we launched Google Gadget Ads, customized "mini-sites" that run as ads on AdSense publisher websites. These ads are interactive, engaging, and will appeal to your users, simultaneously providing value to advertisers while getting visitors to stick around your site. The end result is that advertisers get more engaged users, users have a richer ad experience, and publishers opted in to image ads may see increased competition for their ad space.

What does a gadget ad look like? We're glad you asked. Below is a gadget ad that we've built to advertise our AdSense program.




Gadget ads can take a number of shapes, sizes, and formats. If you're interested in seeing other cool gadget ads, you can check out our Google Gadget Ad Center. Also, please rest assured that gadget ads must adhere to our editorial policies, so there won't be any distracting "punch the monkey" ads.

Ready to start displaying gadget ads on your website? While there's no guarantee that they'll appear on your site, you can increase the chances that they'll be shown by making sure you're opted in to image ads and using one of the image ad formats. Please note that the most popular sizes for gadget ads are the rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper formats.

Also, keep in mind that there are a few things advertisers look for when targeting their ads to specific sites.

Got questions about gadget ads? We've got answers -- check out our Help Center.

Posted by Magnus Yang - AdSense Product Marketing

Calendar Mashups Anyone?

Posted by Jun Yang, Google Data APIs Team

When Google Maps was introduced in early 2005, the world took notice of the uniquely new capabilities it offered. However, more significantly, a group of shrewd developers quickly understood what new opportunities the Maps API opened up to them and started to create Maps mashups showing, for example, the locations of gas stations offering the lowest prices around your zip code. Today, there are thousands of such mashups.

Wouldn't it be great if we could create mashups with other Google services?

We have been busy adding Google data APIs to many Google services, APIs that allow you to create powerful desktop and server-side applications that integrate with Google services. But for JavaScript developers, we've only supported read-only access to publicly accessible data through JSON output. Today we are making a leap.

Today we are launching the GData JavaScript Client Library for Calendar. This is a full client library, with support for authenticated access to private data and read-write capabilities. Now you can create Calendar mashups that can read and write data from your Google Calendar. No server-side programming is required. Your mashups can run on any domain, too. No proxying is required.

With today's release, GData has moved into the client-side, supporting the most widely deployed language runtime , JavaScript. And Calendar is only the first, with more to come. To get you started, here are some samples showing how to use the new client library. Documentation is also available. We'd like to hear your feedback. Come join us in the Google Groups and let us know what you think. Show us your Calendar mashups.

Docs adds Presentation

Wow! Google has add Presentation to the Google Docs suite. 

In a word Wow!

Try it for yourself it's free and it's cool.  If you user Google Apps for Domains you have access well.

Reader leaves the Lab

Google Reader has left the lab and become a non-beta product.  At the same time multi-Language support was added. 

Hopefully reader will continue to grow and expand.  I have found the addition of search to be a huge asset. 

Keep up the good work Reader Team

Quick security checklist for webmasters

Written by Nathan Johns, Search Quality Team

In recent months, there's been a noticeable increase in the number of compromised websites around the web. One explanation is that people are resorting to hacking sites in order to distribute malware or attempt to spam search results. Regardless of the reason, it's a great time for all of us to review helpful webmaster security tips.

Obligatory disclaimer: While we've collected tips and pointers below, and we encourage webmasters to "please try the following at home," this is by no means an exhaustive list for your website's security. We hope it's useful, but we recommend that you conduct more thorough research as well.

• Check your server configuration.
  

• Stay up-to-date with the latest software updates and patches.

• Regularly keep an eye on your log files.
  

• Check your site for common vulnerabilities.
  

• Be wary of third-party content providers.

• Try a Google site: search to see what's indexed.
  

• Use Google's Webmaster Tools.
  

• Use secure protocols.
  

• Read the Google Online Security Blog.

• Contact your hosting company for support.
  

We hope you find these tips helpful. If you have some of your own tips you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment below or start a discussion in the Google Webmaster Help group. Practice safe webmastering!

Last call

If you haven't yet enrolled in tomorrow's webinar, What's New with AdSense, it's not too late. Just visit the link below:

https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=572956326

The webinar will take place online from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm PDT, and members of our team will be discussing the latest AdSense features. We look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Laura Chen - AdSense Publisher Support

Breaking up isn't hard to do

Dear "Labs",

We don't know how to tell you this, but it's time that we break up. It's just that we're different now. People can search. They can share what they read. They can even see trends about what they read, and how often they do it. There are all sorts of things we could do in the future to make feed reading awesome. And that means you just can't be around anymore.

But don't be sad. We'll always remember the good times: our first date, when we rolled out the new user-interface together, and the way sometimes we could just sit there and not talk at all because you are just a label.

When we get all teary-eyed and reminiscent we might even put on that mix tape you made us; the one with Paula Cole and Guster. We'll think of you.

Today is a big day for us. We learned to speak some new languages. And frankly, you don't translate well. But we both speak English, and we know that "u" and "I" are far apart in the alphabet. We're farther in real life.

It's not you. It's us.

Love always,

The Google Reader Team

Image based on a photo by CarbonNYC.

Here comes mobile

We've just launched AdSense for mobile, which can help you expand your online content to new platforms. If you have a website optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of our mobile advertisers.

When you add the new AdSense for mobile code to your site, we'll display relevant ads using the same targeting technology that you are familiar with for existing AdSense products.

To get started:
1) Sign in to your account.
2) Select the AdSense Setup tab and click on AdSense for mobile.
3) Follow the instructions to customize your ad unit for AdSense for mobile.



For the time being, publishers are welcome to add one ad unit to any mobile website that complies with our program policies. For more information, including technical requirements, visit the AdSense Help Center.

Posted by Alex Kenin - Product Marketing Manager

Webmaster Tools - RSS subscribers - Not all it could be.

The Webmaster Tools group has added subscriber counts to the set of tools. 

This will give you a count of how people are using Google Reader to subscribe to you sites RSS Feeds.  Would seem pretty cool, but not super inclusive.

Two big problems.

Only shows Google Reader subscriptions.
If you user FeedBurner, which Google owns, you feeds loose their association to your site. 

Oh well, nice try needs some work.  I would suggest to use FeedBurner and their stats are pretty inclusive. 

Maybe version 2 will be a little more accurate.