I am subscribed to the Google AdSense Blog and if you are into learning more about Google AdSense, I would recommend subscribing too. I read a blog post on the AdSense blog published by Steffanie Johnson who explained that Google just updated their Submit Your Contentpage.
“We updated our Submit Your Content site with more information about distributing your content through Google products such as Web Search, Maps, YouTube, and iGoogle. In addition, we launched our Content Central blog, featuring tips and information from Googlers who work on different products.” Steffanie Johnson said in the post.
The update is very nice and it brings many of the more modern services up to the forefront. One of the services that interest me is Google Gadgets. There was a time where adding you url into Google was of prime focus. And still to this day, people add their sites to Google. But as the Internet continues to shape and mold itself into a large super network of sharing and distributing, I think Google is making great efforts towards adapting their engine to accommodate for that.
Google Gadgets interests me because it is a system that allows users to create a unique way of sharing information with others. A Google Gadget can be something as simple as syndicating an RSS feed or as complex as creating an interactive video game.
A user can create, promote and share a Google Gadget. Most importantly, other users can search and find the Google Gadget created and even add it to their own iGoogle home page.
If you are a blogger and a publisher, you might want to also pick up a subscription Google’s Content Central Blog. This is one of Google’s newer blogs that was created back in September of 2008. The blog isn’t updated too often but when new posts are published, such as the Submit Your Content announcement, these items may be of interest to you.
Google’s revised Submit Your Content page brings Webmaster Tools, Local Search Inclusion, YouTube and Video Sitemap Inclusion, and Items For Sale inclusion, such as Google Base up to the top of the list. Also with the improved linking and navigation, I find it much easier for new users to discover these services for the first time and learn more.
What does that mean for you? Be creative. Let’s say that you have 5 blogs that you enjoy reading a lot. You can easily create a Google Gadget that syndicates their content and then share this gadget with 20 other friends by allowing them to install the gadget you created on their iGoogle home page.
You could also create an iGoogle Gadget that syndicates the RSS feed of your own blog. You could then create a small advertisement on the sidebar of your blog that encouraged your readers to install it on their iGoogle home page.
The odds of actually getting people to set your web site as their home page in their web browser is slim to none. However, with services such as Google Gadgets, you have a great chance at owning a section of real-estate on your readers home page.
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Date/Time: 12-19-2008 02:27:23 Comment #28218
Yeah, i have subscribed on all Google blogs because i want to hear more about the products that Google is trying to release to the public as well as updates about Google Events.
Date/Time: 12-20-2008 06:27:02 Comment #28261
Its good stuff man… seems like Google has a lot of blogs. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up.
Date/Time: 12-19-2008 03:41:21 Comment #28219
Very interesting. My question is how much “google content” can google put at the top of the SERP before the organic results lose eyeballs because they are too low?
Date/Time: 12-19-2008 04:19:36 Comment #28222
Hi Scott,
That is a great question to ask. So, let’s take a look at that and see what we come up with.
So to begin with, I did a very random search for the term Wholesale Vacuum Cleaners in the four major search engines: Ask.com, Google.com, Live.com, and Yahoo.com. The findings were pretty interesting.
Ask.com
Ask.com had three sponsored listings directly above the organic search results. I find that there is a lot of wasted space between each sponsored listing. The result is that only TWO organic results are shown above top fold. Ask.com did not have any sponsored listings on their sidebar and they did include related links to other search possibilities.
Google.com
Google.com had two sponsored listings with the option of having a third listing filled. Even with if the third sponsored listing was filled, Google would still show three results with the title of the forth result showing above top fold.
Live.com
Live.com seemed to provide the most balance. They have three sponsored links above the organic listings. Three organic listings on the top fold. They have related searches on the sidebar and sponsored links on the sidebar.
Yahoo.com
Yahoo.com was very similar to Google.com. Three sponsored links, three organic results above top fold. Sponsored links in the sidebar with no option for related searches.
All in all I think all four of the major search engines are very balanced for people who want to pay for traffic as well as people who want to work towards scoring free organic traffic. I can say this, of the four major search engines, Google is the only search engine that delivers me massive amounts of organic traffic.
This isn’t a ranking issue either. Most all of my blogs and the content from within rank equally well across the board. The problem is that the other search engines simply don’t get any traffic. I think Google is doing a great job with balancing paid listings compared to organic listings.
As far as the quality in the organic ranking, well… in all honesty, all four search engines didn’t return too much at all. And while we are on that topic, the term wholesale vacuum cleaners might not be a bad keyword phrase to target.
Date/Time: 12-19-2008 15:33:28 Comment #28230
Thanks for the thorough answer.
I just did a test of my own with google on a more specific product, “Rainbow vacuum cleaners”, and had 3 google shopping results below the sponsored links. I was hoping to post an image of my results but I have no idea how. Below the shopping results there was still room for 5 organic search results above the fold.
What I am curious about is what happens when the search returns sponsored links, google shopping, google maps, google images, youtube and any other gadget results above the organic search. I highly doubt google will let this happen, but if it did I think it would completely change the approach of getting #1 on google SERP because everything above the fold would be directly from google’s various services.
As another experiment, I reset my browser and cleared history, empty cache, remove cookies, among some other things. Then I did the same Rainbow vacuum cleaners search and the google shopping listings did not show up, just the sponsored links.
I also looked into getting listing in google shopping but just as I had assumed, google does not allow affiliate sites to list products. Makes sense or else it would become spammy.
Date/Time: 12-19-2008 12:46:58 Comment #28227
Thanks for the heads up Gary,
I am fairly new to bogging and never thought about the Google blogs to see what they have say. There might be some interesting things in there. I also will check out Google Gadgets that sounds like a good idea to get your blog syndicated to people’s home page.
Thanks for the continued information.