Humans have always been fascinated by the night sky. And Googlers are no exception. Over the years, Google engineers have used their 20 percent time to create Google Sky, Moon, Mars and most recently Google Sky Map for Android . This handy app, built by engineers in our Pittsburgh office , turns your Android-powered phone into a live map of the night sky. You just point your phone to the sky and it gives you information about the stars and planets that you’re looking at. Since we introduced the app a year ago, Sky Map has been downloaded more than 5 million times. On Sunday night we had a wonderful opportunity to share our passion for astronomy with our community in Pittsburgh at the Deep Sky Urban Star Party , held in the abandoned swimming pool at Leslie Park in Lawrenceville . We loaded up a bunch of Android phones with Sky Map and joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh —who brought along their telescopes—and several hundred local residents for a night of stargazing. As a Sky Map engineer the biggest thrill I get is when we get emails from people who have used our app to show a planet to their children for the first time. At the Star Party we were delighted to have the chance to show people around the night sky in person. It was great to meet so many people who were both excited by astronomy and interested in Google’s technology. Thanks for all of your ideas for new features, and a big thank you to the Leslie Park Pool Collective and all involved for organizing such a fun event. Photos by Jason Parker-Burlingham Posted by John Taylor, Software Engineer

Continued here: 
Stargazing in Pittsburgh

Humans have always been fascinated by the night sky. And Googlers are no exception. Over the years, Google engineers have used their 20 percent time to create Google Sky, Moon, Mars and most recently Google Sky Map for Android . This handy app, built by engineers in our Pittsburgh office , turns your Android-powered phone into a live map of the night sky. You just point your phone to the sky and it gives you information about the stars and planets that you’re looking at. Since we introduced the app a year ago, Sky Map has been downloaded more than 5 million times. On Sunday night we had a wonderful opportunity to share our passion for astronomy with our community in Pittsburgh at the Deep Sky Urban Star Party , held in the abandoned swimming pool at Leslie Park in Lawrenceville . We loaded up a bunch of Android phones with Sky Map and joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh —who brought along their telescopes—and several hundred local residents for a night of stargazing. As a Sky Map engineer the biggest thrill I get is when we get emails from people who have used our app to show a planet to their children for the first time. At the Star Party we were delighted to have the chance to show people around the night sky in person. It was great to meet so many people who were both excited by astronomy and interested in Google’s technology. Thanks for all of your ideas for new features, and a big thank you to the Leslie Park Pool Collective and all involved for organizing such a fun event. Photos by Jason Parker-Burlingham Posted by John Taylor, Software Engineer

View post: 
Stargazing in Pittsburgh

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

See the original post:
Deeper understanding with Metaweb

John Mayer had a good post about a “ digital cleanse .” The idea is to step away from the busy, buzzy world for a week. John mentioned four ideas, but I’m going to try just one: “no use of Twitter or any other social networking site”. That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really use Facebook, so that’s not a problem. The only other social networking website I use is FriendFeed, so I’m cutting that out too. To keep me on track this week, here’s what I did: Tweeted that I was doing the digital cleanse and changed my Bio line to mention that I was doing the digital cleanse. Removed all Twitter apps from my mobile phone. Removed the Twitter and FriendFeed shortcuts from Chrome’s new tab page. Hard-coded a bunch of websites so that I can’t even access them. In Linux, you can type “sudo vi /etc/hosts” and add the following lines: 127.0.0.1 twitter.com 127.0.0.1 www.twitter.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 friendfeed.com 127.0.0.1 www.friendfeed.com What these lines say is “Computer, when you try to use the domain name system (DNS) to resolve twitter.com to an IP address, hard-code the IP address to be 127.0.0.1.” Note that 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that corresponds to your own computer. In essence, these entries make it impossible to browse to Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. You might need to reboot your computer too for the settings to take effect. I’m thinking that I might blog a little more now that I’ve stopped tweeting for a week, so I’m doing one extra step–I’m linking my blog in Feedburner so that when I publish a blog post, it will tweet a link to that blog post . Here’s how to do it: 1. Log in to http://feedburner.google.com/ and click on your blog’s feed. 2. Click on the “Publicize” tab and then the “Socialize” service on the left. 3. Add your Twitter account and select the options you want. Here’s how it looks: Then click “Save” and that’s all you need to do. So far, I’ve been Twitter-free for twelve hours. In that time, I’ve - worked out - taken down our Christmas tree, chopped it into sections and put it out on the street - typed in three months’ worth of data for a project that I’m working on - taken down our Christmas lights and packed them away - stored all our various Christmas decorations - run a couple loads of laundry - put out the trash - gone shopping and had a couple meals with my wife Oh, and written a blog post. We’ll see how the digital cleanse works for the rest of the week.

See original here: 
Doing the “Digital Cleanse”: no Twitter for a week

John Mayer had a good post about a “ digital cleanse .” The idea is to step away from the busy, buzzy world for a week. John mentioned four ideas, but I’m going to try just one: “no use of Twitter or any other social networking site”. That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really use Facebook, so that’s not a problem. The only other social networking website I use is FriendFeed, so I’m cutting that out too. To keep me on track this week, here’s what I did: Tweeted that I was doing the digital cleanse and changed my Bio line to mention that I was doing the digital cleanse. Removed all Twitter apps from my mobile phone. Removed the Twitter and FriendFeed shortcuts from Chrome’s new tab page. Hard-coded a bunch of websites so that I can’t even access them. In Linux, you can type “sudo vi /etc/hosts” and add the following lines: 127.0.0.1 twitter.com 127.0.0.1 www.twitter.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 friendfeed.com 127.0.0.1 www.friendfeed.com What these lines say is “Computer, when you try to use the domain name system (DNS) to resolve twitter.com to an IP address, hard-code the IP address to be 127.0.0.1.” Note that 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that corresponds to your own computer. In essence, these entries make it impossible to browse to Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. You might need to reboot your computer too for the settings to take effect. I’m thinking that I might blog a little more now that I’ve stopped tweeting for a week, so I’m doing one extra step–I’m linking my blog in Feedburner so that when I publish a blog post, it will tweet a link to that blog post . Here’s how to do it: 1. Log in to http://feedburner.google.com/ and click on your blog’s feed. 2. Click on the “Publicize” tab and then the “Socialize” service on the left. 3. Add your Twitter account and select the options you want. Here’s how it looks: Then click “Save” and that’s all you need to do. So far, I’ve been Twitter-free for twelve hours. In that time, I’ve - worked out - taken down our Christmas tree, chopped it into sections and put it out on the street - typed in three months’ worth of data for a project that I’m working on - taken down our Christmas lights and packed them away - stored all our various Christmas decorations - run a couple loads of laundry - put out the trash - gone shopping and had a couple meals with my wife Oh, and written a blog post. We’ll see how the digital cleanse works for the rest of the week.

Here is the original:
Doing the “Digital Cleanse”: no Twitter for a week

Today, we’re happy to announce that Similar Images is graduating from Google Labs and becoming a permanent feature in Google Images. You can try it out by clicking on “Find similar images” below the most popular images in our search results. For example, if you search for jaguar , you can use the “Find similar images” link to find more pictures of the car or the animal.  When we revamped Labs in April , we also launched Similar Images to highlight some of the innovative work our engineers have been working on. Google Labs gives us a way to get some of our new ideas in front of you early in the process, refine them based on your feedback and see what sticks. Your support has helped to make Similar Images the first major feature to graduate from Google Labs since its recent overhaul. So, let’s say you want to find images of Ancient Egypt . Google Images will provide you with a rich variety of results, including pyramids, maps, relics, drawings and other types of images. Instead of poring through hundreds of images, now you can simply click “Find similar images” to narrow down the results to the results to the type you want. (We’re rolling this out gradually, so the links in the below examples may not work for you yet.) You could narrow down your results to show you only the  Great Sphinx of Giza : Or illustrative maps of Ancient Egypt : Or ancient Egyptian-style drawings : While we’ll continue to use Google Labs as a way to showcase and collect feedback for exciting new technologies, we also want to make it easier for you to provide direct feedback on all aspects of Google Images. That’s why today we’re also announcing the availability of Product Ideas for Google Images . With product ideas, you can post comments that will be seen directly by members of the Images team, as well as vote on ideas that others have submitted. We’ll pay special attention to those ideas that are voted to the top of the list. Posted by Erik Murphy-Chutorian and Chuck Rosenberg, Software Engineers

Original post:
Similar Images graduates from Google Labs

Late last year we announced Project 10^100 , a call for ideas to help as many people as possible, and a program to bring the best of those ideas to life with a total of $10 million. We hoped to capture the imagination of people around the world and offer a way to bring their best ideas to fruition. We were overwhelmed by the response — you sent us more than 150,000 ideas (approximately 10^5.2) in more than 25 languages and it took more than 3,000 Googlers in offices around the world to review the submissions. (The review process took us much longer than we expected and we appreciate your patience!) Some ideas we received suggested broad areas of investment, others were very specific technology or implementation proposals, and many of the ideas shared overlapping elements. So rather than posting individual idea submissions, we’ve decided to do something a little different. We’ve pooled similar ideas into a set of 16 top idea themes aimed at addressing some important common goals, from making government more transparent to driving innovation in public transport. Every theme has different possible implementations and we intend to consider all reasonable possibilities. But we need your help. Over the next two weeks we’ll be gathering your votes to help inform an advisory board that will then choose up to five winning ideas that will receive funding. After that, we’ll present the finalists and ask for proposals from individuals or organizations that can implement these ideas. It has been a long road for those of us who have worked on this from the beginning. Although it took a lot longer than we first planned, we’re pleased with the outcome. In the end, we followed the tried-and-true Google method of “launch and iterate.” We enjoyed going through so many interesting proposals and adapted to the massive volume of ideas. We are incredibly proud to be able to put these 16 ideas in front of you to see what you think. Let the voting begin! Posted by the Project 10^100 Team

Read more from the original source: 
Announcing Project 10^100 idea themes

Anyone who writes a regular blog knows about writers block. But no matter how much time you spend staring at that blank page, the article just never writes itself. Pity. So how do you overcome writers block? Here are a few tips. Topic Selection It’s not that there aren’t plenty of topics to write about, the problem is we often feel we need to say something new. The reality is that not much is genuinely new. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Instead, try and find new angles on old ideas. One good way of doing this is to combine two topics. For example, if you know a lot about SEO, apply this knowledge to a more conventional topic, like, say “How To Innovate” The article then becomes “How To Innovate In The SEO Business”. Not rocket science - or a particularly new angle for that matter - but combining two tried-n-true topics can create something new. 2. Just Write Often called free-writing, there’s a lot to be said for just making a start. Think of a question - any question at all - and start writing about it. Don’t worry if your produce gibberish, the aim is to get rid of that blank page. Introduce an SEO twist by going through your keyword logs. Find any keywords phrased as a question, and free- write about that keyword. Put the keyword phrases into Google’s Keyword Research Tool , and see what word associations, and other questions, come up. I’m getting self-reflexive and post-modern here, but that’s how this article started. I’m rewriting this article from a page of utter gibberish. Hopefully I’m making slightly more sense now. 3. Go For A Walk One daily habit I’ve got into recently - and I can’t recommend it enough - is to go for a walk. There’s something about exercise, and being away from a computer, that clears your thinking processes. Try it for a few days and see if you notice the difference. I’d be really interested to hear if your experience has been the same as mine. 4. Steal! Well, not really. Creatively borrow There isn’t much that is genuinely new in this world, and there is even less new in the field of marketing theory. I loved the book “The Purple Cow”, but really, it’s a new spin on an old topic - having a unique selling point. A lot of the books I’ve been reading recently have a “sameness” about them. That’s because a lot of marketing books rehash old theory using new terminology. But hey - why not join them! What’s old to you might be new to someone else. And if you can put your ideas in a contemporary setting, then that will bring something new to the table. Grab some old books or magazines and rewrite articles. Bring them up to date. Put them in a new context. Redefine terms. Add a new spin. Do some keyword research on the key themes and integrate. The good thing about writing from existing pieces is that you get over the blank page effect. You’re already starting from a finished piece. Your job is to rewrite, expand, take it into new territories, respin and create something new. 5. Chunk It Chunking is a method of writing where you split concepts into small pieces. Create bullet-point lists of things you want to say - write the conclusion first Create headings Write a paragraph of one sentence under each heading Can you scan the document and understand it? Although sparse, the article is complete in terms of structure. You then dress up the bare bones by expanding the sentences under the headings, thus turning them into fully formed paragraphs. 6. Write Something Unrelated Ever get the feeling that everything that can be said about SEO has been said already? It’s not true, of course, but it feels that way sometimes. Try researching and writing about a completely different topic area. You might not publish the piece, but by immersing yourself in new areas and concepts, you might gain new insights on your chosen field. Unfortunately, the SEO niche has become an echo chamber, so try to read outside the area of SEO as much as you can. How about looking at areas such as future gazing, trends, history, economics, business, politics or personal development? Can you relate any of these fields back to SEO and marketing? 7. Don’t Write At All A lot of people feel the need to publish, even when they have nothing to say. You often see this on blogs. Some arbitrary decision has been made that the writer must make one post a day, or must Twitter five times a day, or else, or else…. ….or else what? People will leave and never come back? No one is that important. I think it’s more likely that readers will appreciate something that is worth their time reading. Time is a scarce thing, so I don’t think writers do readers any favours by churning out, well, typing. Sure, the golden rule of blogging is to keep a blog regularly updated. A good thing, if you can manage it. But this can create a pressure to churn something - anything - out. The reality is that few people can write killer pieces each and everyday. So rather than write something substandard because you’re not really feeling like it, why not just do something else instead. I’d be interested to hear your strategies for beating writers block.

View original here:
How To Overcome Writers Block

Professional SEO Blogger If you are a public SEO and your only gig is writing a blog about SEO and selling client services then it can be quite easy to share and not care. If you destroy a technique or someone else’s business to earn a bit of attention who cares? You got the attention, and that can be converted into currency as herds of newbies flock to where the crowd and controversy are. This is why some of the sleaziest SEOs publicly promote SEO outing. They understand that justifying their own business actions helps to legitimize them, even if they are hypocritical scumbags who use their blog to threaten and bully around people with a smaller platform. Real SEO Professionals But if a significant portion of your revenues comes from affiliate and/or ad driven sites which just happen to be ran by SEOs (which Google generally hate, in spite of some claims to the contrary) the care with which you give out information increases. And competition is not always above board. Business Can Be Dirty About a month ago a person contacting me about how they were an honest Joe wanted more tips from me, and about a week earlier I noticed that the same person stole something from one of my sites and was trying to compete directly against me using my own content!!! About a year ago a “friend” claimed he wanted to invest in some of our businesses. He came up with an offer, got most of our information about some of our business ideas, grabbed a hold of some of our business relationships, and is now creating a similar business model competing head on. He claims that his capital was illiquid as for why he did not complete the deal, but he does not realize I know how much he spent on some other assets at the time. And a case of inadequate resources is never an adequate excuse when the person who approaches you names their offer price. They burned 100% of the trust I had in them to the ground. How could I ever trust them again? A couple years ago one of my sites got dinged with a penalty. While that penalty was in play, another “friend” working on building other businesses told a friend of mine “clone Aaron’s site,” not expecting that sleazy advice would come back to me. I think about a week ago someone asked me a blog comment along the lines of “what affiliate offers should I promote right now.” At that level the person… is not a paying customer is valuing my time at nothing is trying to take away time I could spend servicing our paying customers (or attention I could spend promoting our other money making sites) AND they want me to give them advice which would increase the competition we faced in our other publishing projects, sacrificing our future revenues When I wanted to be well known there was value to popularity, but the people who are paying you $0 for your time AND who are asking specific specialized questions about what you are doing are only going to harm your business interests. And so you must say no thanks to answering those types of questions. Real SEOs Become Guarded - or go Bankrupt! After a few years of being constantly screwed over by a bunch of snakes and liars you simply decide to share less. Either you do that, or you are simply commoditizing the value of your own time (past/present/future) with each advanced tip you share publicly. Who wants to work harder to lower their current (and future) wages? The internet marketing field is branded in part as being sleazy largely because a huge segment of the marketplace is. Even if 90% of PPC affiliate marketers were honest, the sleaziest 10% of the market will get 90%+ of the ad impressions because they are willing to go the extra mile to promote scams, bundle reverse billing fraud, use fake celebrity endorsements, create fake brands, etc. Given that search engines are willing to compete against their top advertisers and ad networks are how many internet marketers make their money, it is quite hard to build a sustainable business model unless you create and sell your own products. And in the SEO market, if you are open and honest you set yourself up for Google penalties , competitors outing you , getting hate from envious competitors , and former “friends” trying to marginalize your business. Let alone contemplating how other third parties might use your public information against you. Not only is Google going out of their way to promote brands , but many of the big brands are further compounding that effect by heavily investing into SEO…and Google typically won’t penalize the brand for doing the same thing that a smaller publisher would get penalized for doing. Free Specific SEO Advice Worth Thousands of Dollars Here is a ranking chart…let me tell you how to boost rankings for a site from nowhere to in the game on a bunch of keywords for only a few hundred bucks. Well if I actually did that, it would just get burned to the ground. Real SEO Goes Underground Lots of other smart people have came to the same conclusions, which is why SEO has gone back underground . Yes some of the public information is decent, but more and more misinformation and hype are polluting the industry. It is just like people writing about social media, but giving you a half-truth about how it organically spreads rather than mentioning what they really do to seed it…and where one rats out the next while selling himself to the highest bidder. As the market matures and SEO returns go from x hundred/thousand percent to y percent you can only expect competitors to act sleazier to gain any competitive advantage they can. After all, who wants to go back to having a regular old job?

Go here to see the original: 
Why So Much Conflicting SEO Advice?

What is the purpose of that new page you’re adding to your site? Is it to rank highly for a keyword term? That’s half the battle won, of course After the visitor has arrived on your page, what do you want the visitor to do next? According to Seth Godin , you probably want a visitor to do one of five things: Click to go to another page on your site Buy something Register for something Click on/view advertising Pass your message on to a friend So, if you build a landing page, and you’re going to invest time and money to get people to visit it, it makes sense to optimize that page to accomplish just one of the things above. Perhaps two, but no more. Keep that desired action firmly in mind when you design and optimize your pages. The first rule of optimization is to optimize for humans. Ranking a page, only to have visitors click away, is a waste of time and effort. Optimize For Focus In the SEOBook Forums, we offer site reviews as a service to members. We often see sites where it isn’t clear what they visitor needs to do. This is usually caused by too many options presented on one page. By trying to please all audiences, we often end up pleasing nobody. Decide the key action you want people to take, and relegate all other options. Either move some options to a different page, or reduce the visual weight of other options relative to the main action you want a visitor to take. Here’s a great example of a site where the one key action is in clear focus: DailyBurn.com An exception to this rule is when the user is very familiar with the site. A lack of options often means too many clicks to get things done. However, if your page is focused on the first time searcher, then simplicity and clarity is the way to go. Visual Focus Do you know where people’s eyes focus when they land on your site? Check out this tool at FenGui . The tool tries to work out how people will visually scan your site. Some web statistics packages, such as Google Analytics and ClickTracks , provide visual click tracking based on user activity. Before deciding on a template for your site, it is a good idea to test out your ideas using PPC. Knock up a few different designs, run a short campaign and use split/run testing to determine which page layout result in the user taking the desired action most often. Armed with this information, you’re less likely to waste time in your SEO campaign. Design Considerations There are few hard and fast rules when it comes to web design, because each element you add will affect what is already there. Or not there. However, a few factors remain constant: The eye will be attracted to color blocks The eye will be attracted to human faces or forms Whitespace promotes readability - keep paragraphs short, use headings and bulletpoints Make sure all visual elements underscore the desired action. Where Web Design/ SEO Often Goes Wrong The success of a page should be measured by one criteria: Does the visitor do what you want them to do? Often, other criteria will blur this vision. For example, a designer who is more interested in winning awards than ensuring your pages do what they should, may make a page pretty, but sometimes pretty doesn’t result in a desired action. An SEO can sometimes be overzealous in terms of keyword usage, which can result in dense text and odd-phrasing, which has the potential to put visitors off. There is little point putting a lot of effort into attracting visitors if they don’t do what you want them to do. A Word About Adsense Positioning of adsense can be the difference between making pocketmoney and making a living. Look at Adsense as a visual element, as opposed to a block of text. Typography and text layout are design elements, every bit as much as graphics. Are your eyes drawn to Adsense as you scan the page? If not, you may need to tone down other visual display elements, including color, to make Adsense Ads stand out. If Adsense is the way you monetize, the desired user action is the click. Are other elements on your page, be they links or graphics, competing for that click? In the forums, Aaron has a tested, field-proven killer Adsense template Split/Run testing adsense ads Increasing Your Revenue Potential

View original here:
There Is More To Optimization Than SEO