Google Search Insights

Google Trends is useful if you want to compare the popularity of two or more search terms, but it can't generate lists with popular search terms from a category, like in Google Zeitgeist. You need to provide the search terms and adjust them until you found the most popular keywords, but this is time consuming and ineffective.

Google Insights for Search categorizes searches and shows popular queries from a category like Telecommunications, popular queries from a certain country or from a specific date range. You can use it to find answers to questions like:

* what are the most popular cars in the US this year?
* what are the top searches in France for the past 30 days?
* which file sharing services were the most popular in 2007?
* what was the distribution of the Google searches for iPhone in the US last month?
* what are the top searches related to Google this year?


The service has been created with the advertisers in mind and has many potential business uses: examining seasonality, comparing synonyms, finding regions that are interested in a certain product.

To group multiple keywords, separate them using +. To compare two or more keywords, click on "Add search term" or separate the keywords using a comma.

Restrict Google Video Results to Embeddable Videos

Google Video has a new option: restrict the search results to videos that can be embedded in a web page. This is especially useful for the TV view that plays videos without opening new pages. Google shows a small "play" icon next to the videos that are playable inline.



In other related news, Google Video tests an autocomplete feature that shows popular queries from YouTube [sic]. As previously reported, YouTube Suggest has been launched in May after more than a month of public testing.

Google and the Summer Games 2008

Google uses a clever way to promote some of its tools that let you find the latest information about the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The homepage doodle links to a search that triggers a special OneBox for medal count.


Google's OneBox includes a link to an iGoogle gadget that shows schedules, results, and medal counts. There's also a Google News section for the Summer Games.

Other searches that trigger Google OneBoxes: sport, olympic sport (e.g.: olympic boxing or simply boxing), olympic country (e.g.: olympic china). The OneBoxes are also available on Google's mobile search site, where you can search for similar keywords or use a list of sports.


When you search for [summer games], there's an ad that asks you to "stay up to date on the summer games using Google". The ad links to a page that promotes the iGoogle gadget mentioned above, a YouTube channel with news from Associated Press, NY Times, EuroNews and a Google Maps mashup that shows the locations of the Olympics events.

Google Blogoscoped points to a Chinese version of the landing page, which promotes more Google services, including the new Google SMS Alerts (English translation). The new service, available only in Chinese, sends free text messages with information about weather, medal counts and results.

Google Page Creator to Be Closed

This year, Google discontinued a lot of services: Browser Sync, Hello, Send to SMS and Send to Phone extension. Another Google Labs experiment is about to be discontinued: Page Creator, a simple way to create web pages without knowing HTML. Google Page Creator's rich text editor is now included in many other Google services, but Google decided to focus on the more powerful Google Sites.

We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google docs. If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year.

It's not clear if Google will also move the files uploaded to Page Creator, so you can continue to use them. "For migrated sites we will automatically redirect your googlepages.com URL to the appropriate sites.google.com URL to ensure your visitors aren't lost due to the transition. In addition, we will be providing a means for you to download your site so that you can easily export it to other services if you choose to do so," explains Google.

Instead of having two overlapping services, Google decided to develop only one of them. "By concentrating our work on one product we hope to ultimately create a superior product than if we maintained the two products separately."

I'm not sure if Google Sites is a good replacement for Page Creator, since the interface is more complicated and there are many limitations: you can't add JavaScript code, embedded objects or iframes, it's more difficult to upload files and to setup a simple site.

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

A Week Without Google

What would you miss the most if your ISP blocked all Google services for a week? Among other things, the search engine would no longer work, Gmail's web interface wouldn't load, YouTube videos would be blocked, web pages would load slower because the Analytics tracking code would no longer work, all the Google Maps mashups would be completely useless for you.

Fortunately, you don't have stay a week without Google, but this blog takes a break for a week.

Replacing Desktop Software with Web Applications

Note: This blog takes a break for a week. If you find something interesting related to Google, send a mail to the address from the sidebar.

Web applications aren't, in most cases, real replacements for desktop software. Google Docs or Zoho will never be as fast, as powerful or as easy to use as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, but their other strengths could convince some people to use them.

On the other hand, Gmail and Google Reader could easily replace many desktop email clients and feed readers, as most of the time when you read your mail or news you're online.

Browsers' limitations, security risks, latency, the lack of offline access are serious problems that won't be solved too soon and will continue to prevent many web applications to become real alternatives for their desktop relatives.

Did you replace a desktop application with a web app that has a similar functionality? What desktop applications do you think will become obsolete in 5 years?

(Originally published in August 2007)

Google Reader Adds the Blogs You Follow in Blogger

Google Reader tests a new feature that automatically subscribes you to the "blogs you are following" in Blogger. "The blogs you follow in Blogger have been added as subscriptions in Google Reader. Subscriptions can be managed in Reader without affecting your following list in Blogger."

It's not very clear if "blogs you are following" is a new feature or a synonymous for blogroll, since Google Reader links to a non-existent page that is supposed to reveal more information. A thread from Google Reader Group shows that the new feature was accidentally added and then removed.

"Google Reader automatically added a "Blogs I'm Following" folder on my Reader. I've already got my Reader set up the way I want it and this folder is superfluous and annoying," says Vanessa. "It would be nice if they gave us the option of using it before they just took it over that way! There is no mention of it in any of their help files either, this is just ridiculous," mentions Jackie.

The following screenshot, courtesy of "The Other Drummer", shows the new folder automatically added by Google Reader:
http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.blogger/following.


In other Google Reader news, the iPhone version started to reformat the linked web pages for mobile browser, but this can be changed in the settings. "For users with Nokia and other AppleWebKit-enabled phones, soon your phones won't automatically choose the iPhone version of Google Reader," says a Google employee.

{ Thanks, hlpPy. }