Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google. Have you ever wondered what those searches are about—or whether what you’re searching for also happens to be on the minds of millions of others across the country? We’re introducing a new way to find out—a regular video series called the Google Beat that highlights some of the hottest searches on Google in the U.S. Using data from Google Trends , Google Insights for Search and some additional tools, the Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week. You’ve probably seen our previous deep dives into Google search trends, like our annual year-end Zeitgeist and posts here about search trends related to events like the World Cup , the Oscars® and beyond. Searches can be unexpected, and sometimes what’s popular one week could never have been predicted the week before (think of Falcon Heene, last October’s “balloon boy” or Steven Slater ). We’re looking forward to seeing what our data will reveal. Check out this week’s premier video below, and subscribe to the Google Beat YouTube channel to get regular updates. We hope you enjoy. Posted by Emily Wood, Editor, Google Blog team

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Find out what’s hot on search with the Google Beat

Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google. Have you ever wondered what those searches are about—or whether what you’re searching for also happens to be on the minds of millions of others across the country? We’re introducing a new way to find out—a regular video series called the Google Beat that highlights some of the hottest searches on Google in the U.S. Using data from Google Trends , Google Insights for Search and some additional tools, the Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week. You’ve probably seen our previous deep dives into Google search trends, like our annual year-end Zeitgeist and posts here about search trends related to events like the World Cup , the Oscars® and beyond. Searches can be unexpected, and sometimes what’s popular one week could never have been predicted the week before (think of Falcon Heene, last October’s “balloon boy” or Steven Slater ). We’re looking forward to seeing what our data will reveal. Check out this week’s premier video below, and subscribe to the Google Beat YouTube channel to get regular updates. We hope you enjoy. Posted by Emily Wood, Editor, Google Blog team

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Find out what’s hot on search with the Google Beat

by Mike Fleming Google’s Display Network has two types of targeting options. The first, automatic placements , we’ve talked about already. This is where you create keyword-themed ad groups and Google makes your ads eligible to appear on web pages whose content theme matches the theme of the keywords in your ad group. Now, we’ll talk about the second - managed placements . This type of campaign is useful for two purposes: 1. Targeting specific websites that you’ve already found have performed well for your ads in an automatic placement campaign to maximize your exposure on those sites. 2. Targeting specific websites that you’ve found through research. With this campaign, you do not choose keywords because you are telling Google exactly which sites you want your ad to be eligible for auction, so they don’t need keywords to come up with a theme to match to websites. The way to create this campaign is to choose “relevant pages only on the placements and audiences I manage ” under ” Networks ” in the ” Network and Devices ” option of your campaign settings. The easiest way to pick some websites where you want your ad to be shown is to run and analyze a Placement Performance Report of your Automatic Placement Campaign once a significant amount of data has been collected. You can export the data in this report to Excel and find some websites that have historically met the marketing objectives you have set for your ads. Once you add them to your new Managed Placement Campaign, make sure you exclude them from your Automatic Placement Campaign by selecting the placement and hitting “Exclude Placement” above the list - Then, you go in to the Networks tab of your new Managed Placement campaign, click on “show details” next to managed placements and then click “add placements.” This is where you enter and submit the sites where you want your ads to be shown. If you are not as patient and/or you would rather not rely on Google’s imperfect algorithm to find some websites you’d like to test, once you hit “add placements” and choose an ad group, you can click on a link to take you to the Placement Tool . Here, you can look up sites by category, keyword, ad type or size, and URL and the tool will spit out all sorts of options for you to pick from to add to your ad group . You’ll want to monitor these choices over time to weed out the bad and maximize the good. Remember, just because you think something in marketing will work doesn’t mean it will. It has to be proven with data. Take a look at the sites that are suggested and decide on some that are locations where your target audience frequents, select them and add them to your campaign. Once you start to find some websites that are working for you, you can start to develop themed ad groups with your managed placements and write more targeted ads for similar types of sites . For instance, if you sold guitars and you are finding that guitar lesson sites work well for you, group all of the sites about guitar lessons together and create targeted ads for those sites. You should see click-through and conversion rates improve significantly. This makes it easier to identify sites and themes that work best for your business. Now, you’ve got one campaign that is going out to hunt down sites that will work for what you’re advertising (automatic placement) and one campaign that contains sites that work for you that you can optimize for the long-run (managed placement). As time passes and data is collected, continue to add keyword-themed ad groups to your Automatic Placement Campaign to replace themes that aren’t working for you while pulling the sites that work to place into your Managed Placement campaign. Frequently, you should go in and apply standard optimization techniques to your ad groups and placements similar to how you would optimize search campaigns with keywords. Hopefully, my short introduction series to the Display Network will allow you to take your online business to new heights ! Down the road, we’ll get into some more advanced Display Network strategies. Hope you’ll hang around. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Take Your Online Business to New Heights With the Display Network - Part 5

by Mike Fleming Google’s Display Network has two types of targeting options. The first, automatic placements , we’ve talked about already. This is where you create keyword-themed ad groups and Google makes your ads eligible to appear on web pages whose content theme matches the theme of the keywords in your ad group. Now, we’ll talk about the second - managed placements . This type of campaign is useful for two purposes: 1. Targeting specific websites that you’ve already found have performed well for your ads in an automatic placement campaign to maximize your exposure on those sites. 2. Targeting specific websites that you’ve found through research. With this campaign, you do not choose keywords because you are telling Google exactly which sites you want your ad to be eligible for auction, so they don’t need keywords to come up with a theme to match to websites. The way to create this campaign is to choose “relevant pages only on the placements and audiences I manage ” under ” Networks ” in the ” Network and Devices ” option of your campaign settings. The easiest way to pick some websites where you want your ad to be shown is to run and analyze a Placement Performance Report of your Automatic Placement Campaign once a significant amount of data has been collected. You can export the data in this report to Excel and find some websites that have historically met the marketing objectives you have set for your ads. Once you add them to your new Managed Placement Campaign, make sure you exclude them from your Automatic Placement Campaign by selecting the placement and hitting “Exclude Placement” above the list - Then, you go in to the Networks tab of your new Managed Placement campaign, click on “show details” next to managed placements and then click “add placements.” This is where you enter and submit the sites where you want your ads to be shown. If you are not as patient and/or you would rather not rely on Google’s imperfect algorithm to find some websites you’d like to test, once you hit “add placements” and choose an ad group, you can click on a link to take you to the Placement Tool . Here, you can look up sites by category, keyword, ad type or size, and URL and the tool will spit out all sorts of options for you to pick from to add to your ad group . You’ll want to monitor these choices over time to weed out the bad and maximize the good. Remember, just because you think something in marketing will work doesn’t mean it will. It has to be proven with data. Take a look at the sites that are suggested and decide on some that are locations where your target audience frequents, select them and add them to your campaign. Once you start to find some websites that are working for you, you can start to develop themed ad groups with your managed placements and write more targeted ads for similar types of sites . For instance, if you sold guitars and you are finding that guitar lesson sites work well for you, group all of the sites about guitar lessons together and create targeted ads for those sites. You should see click-through and conversion rates improve significantly. This makes it easier to identify sites and themes that work best for your business. Now, you’ve got one campaign that is going out to hunt down sites that will work for what you’re advertising (automatic placement) and one campaign that contains sites that work for you that you can optimize for the long-run (managed placement). As time passes and data is collected, continue to add keyword-themed ad groups to your Automatic Placement Campaign to replace themes that aren’t working for you while pulling the sites that work to place into your Managed Placement campaign. Frequently, you should go in and apply standard optimization techniques to your ad groups and placements similar to how you would optimize search campaigns with keywords. Hopefully, my short introduction series to the Display Network will allow you to take your online business to new heights ! Down the road, we’ll get into some more advanced Display Network strategies. Hope you’ll hang around. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Take Your Online Business to New Heights With the Display Network - Part 5

Many developers have asked for a faster, more powerful way to access Google Analytics account configuration data through the Data Export API. We’ve listened and today we’re releasing a preview of the new Google Analytics Management API . The Management API provides read-only access to Google Analytics configuration data. It consists of 5 new Google Data Feeds that map directly to the Google Analytics data model. Previously, the API returned all the configuration data at once, which in many cases was inefficient if you only needed a subset of data. Now with separate feeds, developers can request only the data they need. For example, it’s now easy to get the Profile IDs for a single account or the Goal configuration data for only a single Profile. To help you learn more we created a new Management API section in our developer documentation. We also created new reference examples in Java and have a live working demo in JavaScript . Check it out, no coding needed! The Management API is being launched in Labs as an early preview. The API will change, grow, and get better over time. We recommend developers who aren’t committed to making updates to their applications only experiment with the new API and continue to use the Account Feed as their primary source for configuration data. We will strive to give you at least one month advanced notice of changes to this API. The Management API represents a significant new piece of the Google Analytics developer platform. We encourage you to come try it out and give us feedback in our new Management API Google Group . Thanks! Jeetendra M. Soneja, on behalf of the Google Analytics API team P.S. - Please make sure to sign-up for our notify list to stay up-to-date on all the latest Google Analytics Developer updates.

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Launched: New Google Analytics Management API!

Many developers have asked for a faster, more powerful way to access Google Analytics account configuration data through the Data Export API. We’ve listened and today we’re releasing a preview of the new Google Analytics Management API . The Management API provides read-only access to Google Analytics configuration data. It consists of 5 new Google Data Feeds that map directly to the Google Analytics data model. Previously, the API returned all the configuration data at once, which in many cases was inefficient if you only needed a subset of data. Now with separate feeds, developers can request only the data they need. For example, it’s now easy to get the Profile IDs for a single account or the Goal configuration data for only a single Profile. To help you learn more we created a new Management API section in our developer documentation. We also created new reference examples in Java and have a live working demo in JavaScript . Check it out, no coding needed! The Management API is being launched in Labs as an early preview. The API will change, grow, and get better over time. We recommend developers who aren’t committed to making updates to their applications only experiment with the new API and continue to use the Account Feed as their primary source for configuration data. We will strive to give you at least one month advanced notice of changes to this API. The Management API represents a significant new piece of the Google Analytics developer platform. We encourage you to come try it out and give us feedback in our new Management API Google Group . Thanks! Jeetendra M. Soneja, on behalf of the Google Analytics API team P.S. - Please make sure to sign-up for our notify list to stay up-to-date on all the latest Google Analytics Developer updates.

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Launched: New Google Analytics Management API!

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics - Disreli We get presented with graphs and statistics every day. “Most SEOs think keywords in the title tag is an important ranking factor.” “Spending on search to rise by $10b”. Ever get that feeling that what you’re being presented with sounds plausible, but the conclusion just doesn’t make sense? Here are a few common ways people try to pull the wool over your eyes with statistics. Some you’ll be familiar with. If you’ve got more, add ‘em to the comments 1. Built In Bias The sample data supports an obvious agenda. For example, a company is hardly likely to show a graph that shows their product has produced negative results. Try to determine the bias of the person or organisation presenting the data - “what would they want me to hear”? then ask yourself: “what data are they not showing me?” 2. The Average The media loves to state “the average”, then neglect to tell you which average they are talking about. For example, the average house price for an area could both be 500K and 200K, depending on what type of average is being used. They could be referring to either the mean , the median or the mode . They often mix these up, depending on what conclusion they want you to reach. 3. Inadequate Sample Size 20% of web designers make over $1M. That may be true if the sample size consisted of ten highest earning people in the industry, and two people just happen to have had a great year. But what if the sample size is all those who practice web design for a living? The outcome may be somewhat different. 4. Meaningless Differences A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference. Potential employee Jill may have an IQ of 120, and potential employee Jack may have an IQ of 118, but does that really mean anything? What if Jill has an attitude problem, and Jack is a great conversationalist? Who would be the better hire? 5. Oh My God! Al Gore loves this one. The graph that shows some astonishing change in the status quo. The impression is one of significant movement and is meant to shock an audience. However, if the chart appears in a different context - say, over a longer time period - the rise may not look all that unusual. You often see this in stock price quotes. You could also change the measurement into smaller units, thus making any movement in the graph look even more impressive. 6. What You Infer Is Up To You If you can’t prove what you want to prove, prove something else and pretend they are the same thing. Often used in the alternative medicine industry. They may not be able to prove that their natural products cure cancer, but they can say that the plant extract has been used by some remote tribe, and they have a proven historical low incidence of cancer. 7. Post Hoc A study found students who smoked got lower grades. The fallacy of one thing not following the other i.e. smoking doesn’t cause bad grades. Frequently, other factors are left out i.e. the students who smoked also tended to be party animals. Look out for correlations that happen by chance. 8. Data Precision Quoting specific numbers, especially including decimals points, can look authoritative. “Real estate values up 4.95%” Why would someone be so precise if they didn’t know their stuff? The numbers can be wild guesses, but accuracy gives an air of authority. General Tips For Spotting The Lies Ask “who says so?” Are they likely to be biased? If experts are cited, check to see if those experts actually agree with the conclusions. Often, they do not. Ask “How do they know”? Is the sample size really large enough, or relevant enough, to draw conclusions? Look To See If They Change The Subject. Look for a change between the raw data and the conclusion. Does one follow the other? For example, more reported incidences of crime do not necessarily mean there is more crime occurring. Ask “Does this make sense?” - are they trying to blind you with numbers? If the conclusion just sounds wrong, look for a disconnect between the data and the conclusion If you want to delve deeper in to How To Lie With Statistics , grab the little book of the same name. It’s getting a bit dated now - it was written in 1954 - but the advice and examples are great

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How To Lie With Statistics

If you’ve ever wondered how to make sense of the long lists of keywords that appear in your reports, this week’s tip is for you. Look at the bottom of most tables in Google Analytics and you’ll see an Advanced Filter option. With this option, you can filter the data in your table according to almost any set of conditions you wish. Let’s say you’re only interested in keywords that brought in visitors who spent at least 2 minutes on your site. When you enter the condition for Avg Time on Site, you’ll need to use seconds. So, here, we’ve entered 120 seconds (=2 minutes). Or, perhaps you only want the keywords with a bounce rate of less than 30%. (Make sure you use .3 for 30%. So, for example, .05 is 5%, .25 is 25%, and 1 is 100%.) You can even enter multiple conditions. In this case, we want to weed out all the low traffic keywords as well. Advanced Filters are a great way to focus on your most important keywords. To see this example in action, watch this short video . Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

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Back to Basics: Filtering Keywords

Over time we’ve improved search by deepening our understanding of queries and web pages. The web isn’t merely words—it’s information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly. Today, we’ve acquired Metaweb , a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. Working together we want to improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone. With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature , we’re just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better. Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers. In addition to our ideas for search, we’re also excited about the possibilities for Freebase , Metaweb’s free and open database of over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more. Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world. Better yet, we plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data. We believe that by improving Freebase, it will be a tremendous resource to make the web richer for everyone. And to the extent the web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users. We look forward to working with the talented Metaweb team. We’ll be sure to share details on our progress in the coming months. In the meantime, if you’re interested to learn more about Metaweb’s technology, we encourage you to check out a helpful video they’ve posted on their blog. Posted by Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management

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Deeper understanding with Metaweb

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “ Google Apps highlights ” and subscribe to the series. - Ed. Over the last couple of weeks we rolled out some nice updates in Gmail, improved on Google forms, added new mobile device security features and celebrated many new applications recently added to the Apps Marketplace. Enjoy! Rich text signatures in Gmail You’ve been able to add plain text signatures to your messages in Gmail for some time, but last Thursday we stepped it up a notch by adding rich text signatures , one of our most requested features. Now you can create signatures with different fonts, font sizes, font colors, links and images. The feature also supports different signatures for different custom “From:” addresses that you’ve configured. Head over to the “Settings” page in Gmail to get started. HTML5 features in Gmail on Safari Gmail has recently added some new interactive features, like drag-and-drop attachments and images, and new windows that “outlive” your original Gmail window. These features are possible thanks to HTML5, but until this week, Safari users have been left out. All of that changed on Monday, and users of Safari 5 can now enjoy these helpful HTML5 features , too. Simpler page navigation in Google forms With Google forms (part of Google Docs), you can quickly create and send surveys to your contacts or publish surveys on the web. We started out offering simple one-page forms, but last week we made some big improvements to our logic branching capabilities . Now you can easily create multi-page surveys that adapt depending on how people answer your questions. Try it out for yourself in the form-based choose your own adventure game that we built. More security controls for mobile devices Businesses and schools using Google Apps often want the ability to centrally manage mobile devices that their users connect to Google Apps, and on Tuesday we rolled out several new device management capabilities . Organizations can now require devices to use data encryption, auto-wipe devices after a certain number of failed password attempts, require device passwords to be changed periodically and more. Apps Tuesday: 10 new additions to the Apps Marketplace Some technology companies burden IT departments with software patches and fixes every month, but our cloud computing approach means that customers get improvements automatically with Google Apps. In addition to all the new features built by Google, this month we added 10 new applications from third-party software companies to the Apps Marketplace . Third-party apps integrate seamlessly with Google Apps and can be activated by administrators with just a couple clicks. Who’s gone Google? More and more organizations are getting with the times and switching to Google Apps. Today we welcome Vektrex , Rypple , XAOP , Limbach Facility Services , Riley Chartered Accounts and tens of thousands of other businesses worldwide that have moved to the cloud with Google since my last update here. More universities are preparing to reopen their doors in the fall with new campus technology tools, too. We’re excited to have University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts , Universitat de Girona in Spain and The College of St. Scholastica join us! I hope you’re making the most of these new features, whether you’re using Google Apps with friends, family, coworkers or classmates. For more details and updates from the Apps team, head on over to the Google Apps Blog . Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Google Apps highlights – 7/16/2010