Never before in the history of advertising has it been possible to spend five bucks, write a couple of ads and get instant access to more than 100 million people in 10 minutes. But that's exactly what Google AdWords does. It's an awesome concept-but you can lose a bundle if you don't know how it works.. .
Learn how to:
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Build an AdWords campaign from scratch.
Identify keywords that entice people to click on your ads.
Get the lowest bid prices on your keywords.
Defeat click fraud and other scams.
Use search engine optimization techniques.
Turn clicks into customers
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Plus get FREE e-mail updates on Google's ever-changing system.. . .
About this product: Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive "Googleplex," acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and most ambitious company of the Internet Age. His revelations demystify the strategy behind the company's recent flurry of bold moves, all driven by the pursuit of a business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world's information, the one-stop destination for all our information needs. Will Google succeed? And what are the implications of a single company commanding so much information and knowing so much about us?
As ambitious as Google's goal is, with 68 percent of all Web searches (and growing), profits that are the envy of the business world, and a surplus of talent, the company is, Stross shows, well along the way to fulfilling its ambition, becoming as dominant a force on the Web as Microsoft became on the PC. Google isn't just a superior search service anymore. In recent years it has launched a dizzying array of new services and advanced into whole new businesses, from the introductions of its controversial Book Search and the irresistible Google Earth, to bidding for a slice of the wireless-phone spectrum and nonchalantly purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion.
Google has also taken direct aim at Microsoft's core business, offering free e-mail and software from word processing to spreadsheets and calendars, pushing a transformative -- and highly disruptive -- concept known as "cloud computing." According to this plan, users will increasingly store all of their data on Google's massive servers -- a network of a million computers that amounts to the world's largest supercomputer, with unlimited capacity to house all the information Google seeks.
The more offerings Google adds, and the more ubiquitous a presence it becomes, the more dependent its users become on its services and the more information they contribute to its uniquely comprehensive collection of data. Will Google stay true to its famous "Don't Be Evil" mantra, using its power in its customers' best interests?
Stross's access to those who have spearheaded so many of Google's new initiatives, his penetrating research into the company's strategy, and his gift for lively storytelling produce an entertaining, deeply informed, and provocative examination of the company's audacious vision for the future and the consequences not only for the business world, but for our culture at large.
About this product: Are you getting the most out of your website? Google insider and web metrics expert Brian Clifton reveals the information you need to get a true picture of your site's impact and stay competitive using Google Analytics (GA) and the latest web metrics methodologies. Which marketing campaigns work best? How do you quantify their success? What indicators should you track? Packed with techniques and insider secrets not documented elsewhere, this book has the expert guidance you need to enhance your brand and increase your site's ROI.
About this product: A free alternative to Microsoft Office? Google Apps gives you that plus plenty of bonus reasons to switch: collaborate on documents with others at the same time; whip up a Web page stocked with downloadable files; and work on it all from any Web-connected computer. About the only thing Google doesn't offer is a guide like Google Apps: The Missing Manual--the authoritative and reader-friendly way to break free of Office.
Top 14 Google Docs Tricks 1. If you install Google Gears (http://gears.google.com/), you can edit Docs word-processing documents offline, and Docs automatically syncs them with the online version the next time you sign in online. 2. If you make other folks collaborators on Docs documents and spreadsheets, everyone can work on the files simultaneously. To invite collaborators, head to the upper-right Share button (for documents) or Share tab (for spreadsheets). 3. It’s a snap to publish documents created in Docs as blog posts—just select "Publish as web page" from the Share menu, and then click the "Post to blog" button. 4. If you want to embed a Docs presentation in a Web site, just go to the Publish tab, click "Publish document", and then copy the HTML that appears in the Mini Presentation Module box. Paste the code into your site’s HTML, upload the revised version of the site, and voilà! 5. Google gives you a whole slew of functions to help make working with spreadsheets more efficient. For the complete list, go to www.docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets. (The GoogleLookup function is particularly nifty.) 6. If your Docs list is getting cluttered, you can hide files (documents, spreadsheets, or presentations) to keep your list clean. Just turn on the checkbox next to any file you want to hide (you can select more than one), and then click the Hide button. To make a hidden file reappear, find All Items in the left-hand menu and, if necessary, click its + sign to expand it. Then click Hidden to see your hidden files; select the one(s) you want to see in your Docs list, and then click Unhide. 7. You can easily turn spreadsheet data into all kinds of charts: column, bar, pie, line, area, or scatter. To create a chart, open your spreadsheet to the Edit tab, select the range of cells you want to convert into a chart, and then click the "Add chart" button. In the Create Chart box that appears, tell Docs what kind of chart you want to create and fill in the other info it needs, and then click "Save chart." 8. If you create a chart based on a Docs spreadsheet, you can save it as an image and insert it into a Docs document. After you create your chart, click its upper-left Chart link and select "Save image". Save it to your computer, and then open the document you want to put it in. Click Insert and select Image, then tell Docs where to find the file on your computer. 9. If you don’t like a change that you (or someone else) made to one of your Docs files, no problem. Just head to that file’s revision history (click File and then choose "Revision history") and pick a previous version that you like better. 10. If you’re working on a computer that doesn’t have Adobe Reader and you need to print a document, click Share and select "View as web page (Preview)" to open the formatted document as a Web page. You can then print it from your Web browser. The formatting isn’t quite as good as if you print from a PDF—and you’ll probably have the browser’s header and footer—but all the content is there. 11. If you’ve published a Docs document as a Web page, you can make the Web page update automatically whenever you edit the document. Just click Share and select "Publish as web page"; then turn on the "Automatically republish when changes are made" checkbox. 12. To see how your Docs document will look to folks you share it with, click the Share This Document page’s "Preview document as a viewer" link. If the preview doesn’t look quite right, then go back and edit the document before you share it. 13. You can add YouTube videos to your Docs presentations. In the blue bar above the edit pane, click "Insert video". Google opens a box where you can search YouTube videos by keyword. Find the one you want and click it to select it. Then click the Insert Video button to put the video on your slide. Once it’s there, you can move, resize, or delete it, just like any image or shape. During a slideshow, viewers can play the video by clicking the Play button on its slide. 14. When you’ve got several collaborators editing the same document all at once, have each person choose a different color for his text to help sort out who made what changes. (The simplest thing is to have each person use the same text and highlight color.) Then, when you finalize the document, simply select the whole thing and click the "Text color" button to change the rainbow of text colors to basic black.
Top 10 Cool Things about Gmail 1. Gmail’s system of organizing emails into conversations (a collection of all the messages in an exchange) makes it easy to keep track of the various messages in a discussion. 2. You can access Gmail from a cellphone or other mobile device. Just start up your phone’s browser and point it to http://gmail.com to sign in. 3. Although you can have periods in your Gmail address, Gmail doesn’t actually recognize periods—it treats the address exactly the same with or without the periods. So if your Gmail address is jesse.smith@gmail.com, emails sent to jessesmith@gmail.com or even j.e.s.s.e.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com will reach you. 4. If you’re reading an email and want to set up a filter for this message and similar ones, click More Actions and select "Filter messages like these". (You can also select messages in a mailbox, and then choose this option.) Gmail shows the filter options with the sender’s From address already filled in. From there, you can filter by sender and/or any of the other filtering criteria. 5. Gmail scans your emails, looks for keywords, and then pairs the email with advertising that relates to those keywords. Usually, one ad’s displayed above the message you’re reading and several others are on the right-hand side of the page (they’re easy to ignore). But Gmail tries to keep things tasteful, so if you receive an email about a tragedy, such as a death in the family, you won’t see any ads at all. 6. You can set up your Gmail account so that messages sent to your other email accounts arrive in your Gmail inbox. That way, you can check all your email accounts in one place. Even better, in Gmail, you can send emails so that they look like they come from your various email accounts. 7. If you write emails in more than one language, Gmail tries to guess the language of the email you’re working on and uses the appropriate dictionary. (If Gmail’s wrong, next to the Check Spelling link, click the arrow, and, from the list that appears, select the language you want.) 8. You can chat with your AOL Instant Messenger buddies through Gmail’s version of Google Talk. In Gmail’s left-hand Chat section, click the Options link and select "Sign into AIM", then follow the directions. 9. To help protect you from viruses and other Internet threats, Gmail neither sends nor receives executable files—they typically have the file extension .exe—which can launch programs and wreak havoc on your computer. 10. Instead of folders to file your messages in, Gmail uses labels to organize messages. You can assign more than one label to a message, so you have several ways of finding it and don’t have to remember which folder you put it in.
11 Ways to Save Time with Google Apps 1. With Google Docs, you and your coworkers can edit the same document simultaneously, so you don’t have to waste time emailing files or tracking down the current version. 2. Put the Gmail gadget on your iGoogle page so you know right away when new email lands in your inbox (and can read it with one click). 3. When you’re away from a computer, check your Google Calendar events and appointments by sending a quick text message from your cell phone. Send one of these messages to GVENT (48368):
"Next" to get a message about the next event in your calendar.
"Day" to get a message listing all of today’s events.
"Nday" to get a message listing tomorrow’s events.
4. Don’t waste time waiting around for a friend or coworker to answer your email. Use Google Talk to see at a glance whether the other person is online; if she is, click her name to start chatting. 5. Quit slowing yourself down by reaching for the mouse. Use the keyboard shortcuts available for Google Docs (http://documents.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66280), Gmail (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6594), and Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en-ch&answer=37034) to bring your data entry up to power-user speed. 6. If you use Firefox or Internet Explorer to browse the Web, install the Google Toolbar so you can keep an eye on Gmail, add events to your Calendar, and open files as you zip around the Web. 7. Use Gmail’s colored labels so you can scan your messages and quickly find what you’re looking for. Or simply use Gmail’s awesome search feature to zero in on a message. 8. Creating a Web site? Don’t get flummoxed by HTML, CSS, or any other what-the-heck-does-that-mean acronym. Use Google Page Creator, which comes preloaded with layouts and color-coordinated themes so you can see your pages as you build them. 9. Speed up data gathering by creating a form that automatically feeds data into a Google Docs spreadsheet: Create a new spreadsheet, and then click the Share tab. In the "Invite people" section, turn on the "to fill out a form" radio button, and then click "Start editing your form". The form can have text boxes, multiple choice lists, checkboxes, and radio buttons. Click "Next, choose recipients" and specify who’ll receive the form. You can publish the form to the Web or embed it in your Web site or blog. When someone fills out the form, the info goes straight into your spreadsheet. 10. Send or receive files as you chat in Google Talk—no waiting around for someone to remember to send them via email or drop them off at your desk. Just drag-and-drop the file into the chat window, and off it goes. 11. Gather the info you refer to most in one place: your iGoogle page. Using Google gadgets, you get at-a-glance access to news headlines, weather forecasts, local movie times, a dictionary, and a whole lot more. So instead of chasing information around the Web, you’ve got the info that’s important to you right where you want it, all on one page. Best of all, you can put mini-versions of your Google apps on iGoogle, including Docs, Gmail, Talk, and Calendar, making it easy to keep an eye on your work and sending your productivity through the roof.
Considerably easier to use than other 3D software, Google SketchUp has found a niche in architecture, landscaping, real estate development, furniture building, and other design professions
The fun and friendly approach assumes no previous 3D modeling experience and explains the basic concepts involved in 3D modeling
Shows readers how to build a 3D model, print it, share it, export it to another professional design package, export it to Google Earth, and create a 3D animated tour
Helps readers harness the power of Google SketchUp so that they can populate Google Earth with 3D buildings, monuments, and other sculptures
About this product: Written in a clear, non-technical, style by a leading expert in SEO (search engine optimization), GTTTOG explains techniques and strategies proven to return higher search engine rankings and sales. It addresses all aspects of search engine marketing and includes an assessment of the impact of Web 2.0 on Internet search strategies.
About this product: Site statistics give you raw numbers, but Web analytics crunch those numbers into meaningful metrics you can actually use. Here’s what's new in Google Analytics 2.0, such as cross-segment reporting and drilldown content that enhance analysis. Learn to set up Analytics and choose filters, explore goals and goal-setting, use customizable dashboards and date ranges, and master basic analytics and Web statistics concepts. Examine every aspect of available reports, learn to use those best suited for e-commerce sites, and more.
BONUS: Each copy of Google Analytics 2.0 includes a $25 Google AdWords gift card compliments of Google. With this $25 gift card , you can attract new customers to your website on Google's dime.
There is much to like about this book. The explanations are straightforward, the code is readable, the examples are relevant, and the writing style is approachable.
— Michael J. Ross, Web developer/Slashdot contributor
Until recently, building interactive web-based mapping applications has been a cumbersome affair. This changed when Google released its powerful Maps API. Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax was written to help you take advantage of this technology in your own endeavorswhether you're an enthusiast playing for fun or a professional building for profit. This book covers version 2 of the API, including Google's new Geocoding service.
Authors Jeffrey Sambells, Cameron Turner, and Michael Purvis get rolling with examples that require hardly any code at all, but you'll quickly become acquainted with many facets of the Maps API. They demonstrate powerful methods for simultaneously plotting large data sets, creating your own map overlays, and harvesting and geocoding sets of addresses. You'll see how to set up alternative tile sets and where to access imagery to use for them. The authors even show you how to build your own geocoder from scratch, for those high-volume batch jobs.
As well as providing hands-on examples of real mapping projects, this book supplies a complete reference for the Maps API, along with the relevant aspects of JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Visit the authors' website for additional tips and advice.
About this product: Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, "Google" has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It's this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.
The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google's impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book. Vise and Malseed interviewed over 150 people, including numerous Google employees, Wall Street analysts, Stanford professors, venture capitalists, even Larry Page's Cub Scout leader, and their comprehensiveness shows.
As the narrative unfolds, readers learn how Google grew out of the intellectually fertile and not particularly directed friendship between Page and Brin; how the founders attempted to peddle early versions of their search technology to different Silicon Valley firms for $1 million; how Larry and Sergey celebrated their first investor's check with breakfast at Burger King; how the pair initially housed their company in a Palo Alto office, then eventually moved to a futuristic campus dubbed the "Googleplex"; how the company found its financial footing through keyword-targeted Web ads; how various products like Google News, Froogle, and others were cooked up by an inventive staff; how Brin and Page proved their mettle as tough businessmen through negotiations with AOL Europe and their controversial IPO process, among other instances; and how the company's vision for itself continues to grow, such as geographic expansion to China and cooperation with Craig Venter on the Human Genome Project.
Like the company it profiles, The Google Story is a bit of a wild ride, and fun, too. Its first appendix lists 23 "tips" which readers can use to get more utility out of Google. The second contains the intelligence test which Google Research offers to prospective job applicants, and shows the sometimes zany methods of this most unusual business. Through it all, Vise and Malseed synthesize a variety of fascinating anecdotes and speculation about Google, and readers seeking a first draft of the history of the company will enjoy an easy read. --Peter Han
About this product: Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, "change the world" through a powerful search engine that would organize every bit of information on the Web for free. The Google Story takes you deep inside the company's wild ride from an idea that struggled for funding in 1998 to a firm that rakes in billions in profits, making Brin and Page the wealthiest young men in America. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, this fast-moving narrative reveals how an unorthodox management style and culture of innovation enabled a search engine to shake up Madison Avenue and Wall Street, scoop up YouTube, and battle Microsoft at every turn. Not afraid of controversy, Google is expanding in Communist China and quietly working on a searchable genetic database, initiatives that test the founders' guiding mantra: DON'T BE EVIL.
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