Google has put together a one-minute guide to using its Search-based Keyword tool. The tool was launched just over a year ago in beta. It lets paid search advertisers see what keywords they may be missing out on based on searches on their site. “Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords,” says Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew. “This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure you can ensure that you will reach a greater set of potential customers. To help you do this, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to quickly identify relevant keywords which aren’t yet included in your AdWords campaigns.” The guide follows: Earlier this year, Google made some improvements to the search-based keyword tool. The company not only expanded the reach to Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and New Zealand in addition to the US and the UK, but users can also now select the currency they’d like to see suggested bids in on the setting page. Google also added some customization features to the tool this year that could lead to more targeted results for users. These include language/country-specific results and ad/search share filters. Have You Read This? > Google Improves Search-Based Keyword Tool > Google Launches Search-Based Keyword Tool > Internal AdWords Tool Raises Rumors About Rankings
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Google’s One-Minute Guide to Search-Based Keywords
Companies that need a little help with AdWords may now find it easier to receive some thanks to Google.
Google’s Custom Search turned three in 2009, and it had arguably its biggest year to date. The technology is powering “many tens of millions” of queries a day on millions of sites, according to the company. As many others are doing, Google is reminiscing about the year that is almost over, and reflecting upon some of its accomplishments. The Custom Search Team specifically is reflecting on some of its highlights for 3009. Google lists the following as key developments for the year in custom search: integration with several hosters to bring Custom Search to your doorstep enabled support for rich snippets , giving you more control over presentation of results it’s now easier for you to promote specific content to the top of your search results we deployed contextual search within Blogger , Google Sites and Wikipedia automatic transliteration is now integrated into the search box improved results rendering flexibility with the Custom Search Element plug-n-play with themes for enhanced customizability of results look and feel added support for structured metadata and the ability to restrict results by specific attributes we got you ready for the growing population of users searching your websites with mobile devices , such as Android phones, iPhone, iPod Touch, Palm Pre, etc. Google promises additional metadata support in the new year, with more results customization and other features for Custom Search. With that in mind, it may be a good time to give Google you feedback , if you are a user of Custom Search. They’re openly requesting it.
Quite some time ago, Google and a number of other companies announced their intent to create something called the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC).
In case you were thinking that Google hadn’t made enough announcements this week, they have made a couple more. First, they are adding universal search results to Google Suggest, and second, they have released a new Chrome extension called Google Quick Scroll. Universal search in Google Suggest means that if you begin typing a query, not only will Google give you suggested text to help you complete your search, but they may even give you some of the other universal search information you’re used to seeing in search results. One example would be weather results for specific locations: “This kind of information will appear in Suggest either above or below the suggested search terms for a variety of queries,” Google says . “For example, you can type ‘delta 140′ to see the flight status. You can also quickly discover the current time, figure out how many Euros you’ll get per dollar, or even brush up on metric conversions. In total, there are currently 10 universal search features available in Google Suggest: weather, flight status, local time, area codes, package tracking, answers, definitions, calculator, currency and unit conversions — and we plan to add additional features in the future.” As Google continues to add additional features to Universal Search in Google Suggest, let’s hope that they are able to better control those than they have been with Google Suggest in general , particularly if they add images to it. Google began adding ads to Google Suggest earlier this year. The Quick Scroll Chrome extension lets users use Google’s search capabilities after leaving our results page. After a user clicks a result the extension scrolls right to the relevant content. A small black box appears in the lower right hand corner of the browser with a couple snippets of text from the page that might be relevant to your query. The extension works kind of like your web browser’s “find” feature, but it isn’t limited to exact words like that. It appears to use Google’s algorithm for determining relevance. “Like Google Search, Quick Scroll analyzes things like proximity, prominence and position of the words to identify the most relevant content,” the company says. “You can think of it like a personal assistant who reads webpages before you do and highlights the parts you might want to read. If several sections of the page have useful content, Quick Scroll will show you multiple text excerpts from different portions of the page and you can click on any of them to scroll to that spot.” Quick Scroll doesn’t appear for all results. It only shows up if Google doesn’t detect that the entire page is relevant to your query, and there is actually a need to scroll to a specific section.
Whole Foods Market has unveiled a new website aimed at mobile users. The company says it provides users with the same features as its non-mobile site. Visitors to the mobile site can access Whole Foods selection of over 2,000 recipes, store information including hours, driving directions, store specials and a calendar of events for their local store. “Whether they are at home, work, or out and about, our customers can now easily access store information and what’s on sale at their local Whole Foods Market ,” said Bill Tolany, global coordinator of integrated media for Whole Foods Market. “Shoppers can also use their handheld devices to create shopping lists and save their favorite recipes to ‘My Recipe Box,’ a popular feature on our website.” The mobile site also features a store locator where customers can use a ZIP code search to find the nearest Whole Foods Market store.
In Google Docs, there is a new sort-by-relevance feature for search results. When you search in Google Docs, your results will be organized by relevance, rather than “last modified date”, which has been the way of the past. There is a menu on the right side of the toolbar that lets you decide how you want your results sorted. “This improvement to search within Docs also includes automatic stemming and synonyms,” says Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs. “So if you search for ‘check account’, we’ll also include results for a few variations of those words, including ‘checking account’ (which is what you probably meant to type). Or if you search for “mac book”, we’ll also include results for ‘macbook’.” There is also a new “export all” option in Google Docs to let you export all of your documents (limited to 2GB at a time) with a single click. Google says that’s the equivalent of about 100,000 documents. In addition, you can export one file and email it to anyone by selecting an item, clicking “share”, and selecting “email as attachment.” You can then choose if you want to send it as a PDF, MS Office file, etc. Finally, Google is removing the “email-in” feature from Google Docs because it has been too buggy and it only supports a small subset of document types compared to the Docs list. They’re taking it down temporarily to work on it, and will bring it back with better functionality. Related Articles: > Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year > Google Adds Google Docs Previews to Gmail >