Translate, and two more new gadgets for your dynamic blogs

If you’re like many Blogger users, you write in one language, but may have readers from around the world. Not all of them speak your language. Today, we’ve made it easier to bring content from your blog to everyone, with the release of a new Google Translate gadget.

With the Google Translate gadget, visitors to your blog can select their preferred language from the drop-down menu, and using Google’s free translation service, it will display your posts in any of the 50+ languages Google Translate supports.

In addition to the new Translate gadget, we are also introducing a pair of gadgets that allow you to highlight things around the web you care about. For example, with the Blog List gadget, you can highlight blogs you enjoy. With the Text List gadget, you can display a list of your favorite books, movies, or whatever you like - helping your readers get to know you better.

To add these gadgets to your blog, click "Add a Gadget" from the "Layout" tab, and select them from the list of gadgets under "Basics". You’ll see three new gadgets for your dynamic blog, including “Blog List”, “Text List” and “Google Translate”.

Five Facebook Apps for Bloggers

Facebook pages:

Creating a fan page is one of the top facebook applications which will help you promote your blog. When you decide to create a fan page, keep your personal FB account away from your blogging community. You can post your blog’s news feeds, start discussions and even create a poll and get your users vote their choice. An easy way to gather data and responses. You can publish the results of the poll and get opinions from your fans.

Your RSS updates:

Add a RSS Feed subscription for your blog for users to get updated content. Let your Social RSS be visible and configured accordingly before you activate it. According to your latest post, the feeds will update automatically.

Try Facebook Ads:

Facebook ads are not free placing an Ad in Facebook is the quicker way to get targeted traffic. Facebook Ads reach out all people and have the ability to attract visitors to your blog or fan page.

Notes:

Notes is one of the Facebook applications available for your pages. Importing blog posts is easier with the help of Notes and it is the reason why many use it. You can either import the blog or copy and paste your individual articles into Notes and share it with your fans. They in-turn can share the note with others or add comments on it.

Blog:

The Blog application is the quick and easy way to start blogging on Facebook. You can promote your main site using Blog on Facebook. Another application similar to this is Blog Box which allows you to write, add a blog post or import articles from an existing blog. If you have imported articles, Blog box will check your main site for any new post and update content every 6 hours.

DS Monthly New Feature Training

To help you stay on top of the new DoubleClick Search features, we’re happy to introduce the DS New Feature Training. This webinar will run on the first Thursday of the month and will include a walk-through of the key new features released in the previous month.

We’ll kick off this monthly webinar Thursday, May 3rd at 1:00pm EST, with a review of our new features from April, including:

• Bulk edits in the interface


• Search query report*


• Floodlight column breakout*


• DS change history*


• Support for AdWords Sitelinks

*limited release

This new training joins our DS Fundamentals Series webinars (Intro to DS, Uploads & Sync, Reporting and Bid Strategies) as a regular monthly webinar.

Sign up for this or any of our trainings through the DS Training section of the Help Center.

The webinar will be recorded, so please reach out to the support team for a link to the recording if you’re unable to attend the live session.

Hope to see you there!

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

5 Factors Why Your Blog Creates No Money

Started Off On The Incorrect Foot

This is a much too typical faults many blog owners create. They develop their blog around what they believe to be an amazing concept, that is hopeless from the begin. I’ve have some buddies ask for guidance on blog subjects and I’ve had to carefully turn them down.

For example, if you would say you desired to develop your website about Celebrity Conflicts and generate income from it, I’d say you have a better possibility of getting arranged by super. The purpose is because that the individuals in that “niche” never have an encouraging issue that their trying to fix or a wish that they are trying to obtain.

Your Articles Are Not Up To The Standard

This is also much too typical. I had written a publish about this a few several weeks back, click on the link to examine it out. But the factor of it was that you need to pay attention to developing useful content that individuals actually want to study if you want to offer anything.

And no, I’m not discussing approaching “trending” subjects and capturing a big trend of guests because your publish rated extremely for “Justin Beiber & Selena Gomez”. Keep that for the enjoyment weblogs.  Your objectives with the items you create should always be to help your visitors. Be their innovator and information them towards their objectives.


No Advertising Strategy

What are you known as? What exactly is your exclusive promoting proposition? What are your colors? Weblog branding and individual branding is something many effective blog owners take seriously but not many individuals discuss it. One thing to keep in mind when trying to generate income from your blog is that individuals buy from those they know, like and believe in.

Blog and individual branding allows you develop that believe in and identify that likability. The key to branding your blog is to be very apparent about who you are, what you do and how you can help your guests. This way, the instant someone new areas on your website, they can determine what your cope is in about 8 a few moments.

You’re a Blog writer Not a Marketer

Not that there can be anything wrong with blog owners, but overall, promoters (specifically, immediate marketers) are more ideal than blog owners. Marketers concentrate on developing an e-mail of individuals who are considering what they have to offer. While blog owners want most individuals to join to their RSS for.

Marketers technique out an whole affiliate promotion to be able to get individuals energized about the product; blog owners might publish about it once and then create a banner to position on their sidebar because they never want to be too tricky.

Which is the best approach? In my view it’s a variety of both. Bloggers are much better at growing connections with their clients and developing areas. These things are required to flourish in the online area. But blog owners must not be reluctant to develop a record, industry and offer a item that is designed to help the end individual.


Lack of Company Sense

Business running a blog is just that – Company. And just like an off-line business, you need to have:

An overall vision
Goals in position to keep you productive
A business plan
A way to perform that plan
& Products and/or solutions to sell
You need to program your understanding in a way that your viewers will want to pay you for it. You need to ask them what their problems are and help them fix them with your provides.

Announcing the April 24 DS3 release!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working on some exciting new features that will change the way you use DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3). While none are ready to be fully released, some of these features are currently in limited release to a few customers and include:

1. Search Query reporting: As described in this blog post, Search Query reporting will provide you with insight into the search queries, or terms, that are driving visits for your ads and the revenue you derive from these queries.


2. Floodlight column reporting: Will give you more power to select the level of Floodlight reporting you want to see, in an easy-to-read column format. You’ll be able to create the equivalent of a column (such, as Actions, Cost/action, etc.) that’s filtered to the selected Floodlight activities.


3. Change history: Will provide you with details on all changes made to your account, including user changes, inbound sync updates, and automated changes from the DS3 bid strategy system.


4. Reporting stats for labels: Labels are a great way to manage and report on keywords outside the traditional campaign structure. With this new feature, you’ll be able to see stats for these labels.

If you’d like to get a sneak preview of any of these features, and help us to test and improve them before they’re fully released, please contact your Technical Account Manager or email ds-support@google.com.



For this release, we did make an improvement to the bidding process for bid strategies: The bid strategy system now breaks up large bid changes. When the system determines that a large bid change is needed to optimize against the specified goal, it will now break up that change into increments. Previously, the system would change the bid all at once. This new bid smoothing feature helps to alleviate customer concerns over drastic bid changes. For example:

1. In a bid strategy, the DS3 system determines that the ideal bid for its keywords is $9.


2. The max strat bid is $2, so DS3 is constrained from applying the ideal bid. DS3 sets the bid at $2.  


3. The user changes the max strat bid from $2 to $10.


4. Before this release: The system would change the bid from $2 to $9 all at once.
   With this release: The system will make a series of bid changes. For example, it may change the bid from $2 to $4, then to $6,  and $8. As the system recalculates bids over time, at this point the system determines that the ideal bid is now $8.56. So the next bid change will be to $8.56.

Read the Help Center release notes for information on issues fixed in this release.



Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Mobile click-to-call in DFA

The mobile features in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) make it easy to traffic mobile ads alongside the rest of your online ads. Our mobile tags help you track mobile metrics and reach a wide range of phones. To make DFA even more useful to mobile advertising, we’ve added click-to-call support. You can now use the click-to-call option for:

• Standard ads


• Mobile display ads


• Click tracker ads (static and dynamic) on standard placements


• Click tracker ads (static and dynamic) on mobile placements

What are click-to-call ads?

Click-to-call ads redirect users to a telephone number instead of a landing page. When users click the ad, their mobile devices load the number.

Calling your number should be as easy visiting your landing page. That’s why click-to-call takes dialing out of the equation: it means one less step between seeing your ad and making the call.

To learn more about using the click-to-call option, see Serve mobile ads and creatives to mobile inventory in the DFA mobile guide (sign-in required).

Jeremy Axelrod, DFA Tech Writer

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist.



Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

With Google Drive, you can:

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items. 

• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader. 

• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

We know you rely on your files to get work done every day. Drive uses the same infrastructure as other Google Apps services, meaning it also has the same admin tools, security and reliability, including: 

• Centralized management: New tools available in the Apps control panel for administrators to add or remove storage for individuals or teams of users. 


• Security: Encryption on data transfer between your browser and our servers, and optional 2-step verification that prevents unauthorized account access by having users sign in with a secure code from their mobile phone. 


• Data Replication: Simultaneous data replication in multiple data centers, so that in the unlikely event that one data center is unavailable, your files will still be safe and accessible. 


• Uptime: 99.9% uptime guarantee so you can be confident that your files will be available whenever you need them. 


• Support: 24/7 support for assistance when you need it. 

By the way, the Google Engineering teams in Bangalore and Hyderabad conceptualized and built these centralized management tools, security features and billing systems, so the India team in particular is excited about this launch.

You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.











Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future.



Google Drive is rolling out globally over the next several weeks. If you’re interested in being one of the first people to try Google Drive, visit drive.google.com/start.



This is just the beginning for Google Drive; there’s a lot more to come.




Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome & Apps