Socialize and grow your blog with Google+

Blogger lets you share your thoughts, grow your readership, and engage with your audience. But we want to make Blogger even better by letting you tap into the growing Google+ community. Today, we’re adding a new “Google+” tab in the Blogger dashboard, so you now have a central place to start growing your blog with Google+. This means you can now:

Connect your blog to a Google+ profile or page
If you blog under your own name, you’ve already been able to associate your blog with your personal Google+ profile.  Starting today, you can now connect your blog to a Google+ page for your brand, business or organization.

Notify followers when you publish, and let them recommend your content
Each time you post on your blog, we'll show you a Google+ share box to let you notify followers that you have new blog content.  If they like what you share, followers can +1 or reshare your post to their own friends on Google+. This ripple effect exposes links to your content to a wider audience.

Build enduring connections with your audience
Adding the Google+ gadget to your blog makes it easy for people to add your profile or page to their circles when they like something you’ve published. Forming connections with readers that last after they've left your blog is essential.  

To get started, click the “Google+” tab in the Blogger dashboard and then the “Upgrade” button. If you’ve already upgraded to Google+, we’ll help you associate your blog with your profile or page.



We'll be introducing more settings on this tab in the future, so stay tuned for additional ways to get more out of Blogger with Google+.  If you have questions, you can learn more in our Help Center.

Doubling down on mobile in DoubleClick for Publishers

66% of the population accesses the Internet every day on their smartphone (source: Google and Ipsos Our Mobile Planet: Understanding the Mobile Consumer, May 2012), and never leaves home without their device(s).

The prevalence of mobile devices enables users to constantly connect to a publisher’s content, whether on-the-go, at work, or on the couch at home.

For a publisher’s advertising business, this means display advertising has needed to evolve from purely ads in web browsers, to ads across all screens and devices. You have to help advertisers connect with your audience in whatever setting and on whatever screen they're consuming your content.

At the heart of DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), we've built a single platform that enables publishers to seamlessly manage all of their digital advertising under one roof. In the most recent release of DFP, we’re excited to bring even more DFP desktop features to mobile so that trafficking a campaign to your website is no different to trafficking a campaign to your mobile site and application. New features include:

• Frequency capping: You can now enforce frequency caps on mobile web sites and in mobile applications. Frequency caps can be applied to mobile campaigns and to mobile ad units, allowing you fine-grained control over the advertiser and user experience.


• Suggested ad units: You can now create mobile ad units by approving suggestions generated from actual traffic. This saves you time by automatically creating ad units in advance, while still maintaining control over your overall inventory structure.


• Multiple sizes for ad units in applications: You can now create ad units with multiple sizes in applications, allowing you to sell high-value custom sizes without compromising your ability to deliver standard banners or use ad networks.


• Data transfer for mobile: If you are using the data transfer beta, you will now have access to mobile-specific reporting data, including device, carrier and OS information.

In addition to bringing the best-in-class desktop functionality of DFP to mobile, we recognize that mobile is indeed different, and presents publishers with unique advertising opportunities not found on desktop. To help publishers capitalize on new opportunities and the uniqueness of mobile, we’ve recently released the following mobile functionality:

• SDK mediation: You can now connect with major in-app advertising networks, including iAd, via the networks’ own SDKs. You can choose which SDKs to include in your application with our adapter-based approach, minimising application size and giving you control over updates. You also have the option to serve ads from a sequence of ad networks to maximize fill rates and improve RPMs.


• App events: You can now provide a custom advertising experience by extending the Google AdMob SDK. Creatives can pass messages to the application, allowing the application to respond (for example, to change the background color). This enables truly integrated ad formats while still using the SDK to do the heavy lifting.


• Support for pre-loading ads: You can now pre-load ads from DFP Mobile. This enables you to improve the user experience, whether to mitigate the effect of slow mobile connections, or to match the smooth user experience of the rest of your application.

With DFP, we’re committed to giving publishers the tools they need to seamlessly manage and deliver all of their digital advertising in order to take full advantage of the multi-screen world. 

Posted by Marcel Gordon, Product Manager

See a preview of the bids for a bid strategy

We recently announced the launch of the Target bid column in DoubleClick Search (DS) reporting, which shows you the bid that DS would have used if there were no secondary constraints in the keyword’s bid strategy. Here’s a way you can use the column to get a preview of the bids in a bid strategy, so you can feel confident that it will result in a solid return on your investment.

You’ve heard about all the great things DS has been doing to improve the Performance Bidding Suite, both in the UI and behind the scenes with improved algorithms. You’re ready to try a bid strategy, but you’d love to have some idea as to what DS is going to bid before giving over full control. Based on your bid strategy settings, how is DS going to bid on your keywords?

To get an idea, just follow these steps:

1. Create your bid strategy and apply it to some keywords.


2. When applying the min and max bids for the selected keywords, set a tight bid range that you’re comfortable with. For example, you could set the bids so they match the range of max CPCs, as shown in the following example:
   


3. Let the bid strategy run.
   The bid strategy won’t be able to update the bid beyond the tight min and max bid limits, but it will update the Target bid column.


4. Navigate to a Keywords page that contains the keywords in the bid strategy.


5. Filter to the keywords in the bid strategy.


6. Above the performance summary graph, click Columns and then select the Target bid column.
   


7. Review the target bids. If they look reasonable, relax the bid limits to give more control to the bid strategy. In the following example, you may want to set your min bid to $5.00 and max bid to $60.00 for the keywords, to ensure that the Performance Bidding Suite has the room to set the target bids.
   

After you give the bid strategy control, remember that you can use Change History to gain insights into bid strategy changes with a summary of the bid rationale. In addition to the target bid, this feature lets you know how often bids are evaluated and provides details on why a change was made to a target position strategy. You also receive guidance on how to improve bid strategy performance by discovering where settings like max bid inhibit the bid changes. Learn more.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

Announcing Google App Engine education awards

In addition to the startups and businesses we frequently highlight on our blog, we have seen educational institutions and their students build amazing applications, using Google App Engine as a platform for teaching and groundbreaking research.



Earlier this year we announced funding for researchers looking to use App Engine for scientific discovery. Today we are introducing the Google App Engine Education Awards to foster continued innovation from educational institutions in areas outside of research. Through this program we are inviting faculty members, initially from the United States, to submit proposals for using App Engine for their course development, educational research, university tools or for student projects. A selection of the proposals we receive will receive $1,000 in App Engine credits to assist in making the proposal a reality.



App Engine allows you to build scalable applications using the same technology that powers Google’s global-scale web applications. With no hardware to setup, App Engine makes it simple to learn how to write a simple web application or to build an application that handles millions of hits a day. If you haven’t already tried App Engine, we encourage you to download the SDK, follow the Getting Started Guide and take advantage of our free tier to deploy your first application.



If you teach at an accredited college, university or community college in the United States, we encourage you to apply. You can submit a proposal by filling out this form. Applications must be received by midnight PST August 31, 2012.





- Posted by the Google App Engine Team

OS X Mountain Lion Hompage

With random endless changing OS X Mountain Lion Backgrounds

Safari
Safari is the default browser on Mac OS X. A while ago it was also ported to Windows. It’s one of the finest browsers around, but sadly underused. If you belong to the Safari-minority, this section is for you.

1. If you’ve got a Mac, open the Safari dropdown menu and select Preferences… at the top-left of the browser.
2. If you’ve got Windows, open the Edit dropdown menu and select Preferences… at the top-left of the browser.

Both in Windows and Mac, you can change your homepage in the General tab. You can choose how to open new pages — blank, or with a homepage — and type in the address of your favorite site. Additionally, you can also choose to use the address of the page you’re currently visiting.

While you’re at it, you can also tell Safari what to do upon opening new tabs. Top Sites, one of the best features in Safari, is default, but perhaps you still prefer to use your homepage.


Opera
Opera is – sadly – one of the lesser used browsers, even though it’s got remarkable charms and has introduced numerous innovations in the browser market. If you’re amongst the fine men and women using this slick competitor, this section is for you.

1. At the top of the browser, open the Tools dropdown menu and select Preferences.
2. In the General tab, you can configure your homepage. Either type in the address you want to use, or choose to use the currently active page as homepage.

Alternatively, you can configure Opera to launch with a blank page, the startup dialog, or with the tabs of last time’s session.


Firefox and Firefox-based Browsers
Firefox is not just the acclaimed geek-browser anymore. These days, it’s the most used browser in the internet market. As such, that is where we’ll start. Note that any menu-names might have to be translated to your own language, but any changes should be obvious.

How to Set Browser Home Page ?
In the top left of your browser, open the Edit menu and select Preferences.
In the Main tab, you can change your default homepage.
You can also configure Firefox to load with a blank page, or to restore your last session.

When you start typing in the text-field, Firefox will make suggestions based on your history. Alternatively, you can also use the address of the webpage currently active in your browser, one of your bookmarks, or restore the default Firefox Start page.

You can add multiple home pages — which will launch in tabs upon opening firefox — by putting vertical slashes between the links. (e.g. “http://mac--desk.blogspot.com | http://www.google.com”)

This will work with Firefox, but also with Firefox-based browsers, like Flock, Wyzo, and many others.


Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8)
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer might be loathed by many, but one can’t ignore the fact that it takes a worthy second as most used browser. And thus we go on. The differences between Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are superfluous for this tutorial.

Option 1
In the top right of your screen, open the Tools dropdown menu and select Internet Options.
In the General tab, you’ll be able to set the browser home page to one of your liking. Similar to Firefox, you can use the address of the currently active page, the default start page, or a blank page.
If you want Internet Explorer to open multiple pages upon launch, you  need to type the different addresses in the text-box, below each other.

Option 2
There’s a second way to configure your home page. First, surf to the webpage you want to use.
Next, open the dropdown menu next to the Home button, and select Add or Change Home Page…
A new window will pop up. You can choose to replace your current home page by the current address, or to add the webpage to your current bookmarks.
In Internet Explorer 8, you can also use the current tab set (all your open pages) as homepages.


Google Chrome
Chrome‘s one of the new guys on the block, but a relatively popular browser, taking in account its short time with us. If you like Google’s browser of simplicity, this part is for you.
In the top-right corner of the browser, open the wrench dropdown menu and select Options. Go to the Basics tab, here you can configure your homepage.

Option 1
Make sure that ‘Open the following pages’ is selected in the startup section near the top of the page.
In the box below, you can add multiple web addresses to be opened upon browser launch. If you want to open a blank page, you’ll have to enter ‘about:blank’, manually.

Option 2
Make sure that the ‘Open the home page’ is selected in the startup section near the top of the page.
In the Home Page section, you’ve got two options. Either use the New Tab Page — which is selected by default — or enter a custom address in the text-field.

Hangouts can be even more interactive

We think that there are few things in life more awesome than being able to turn yourself into a unicorn and catch falling donuts on your horn. That’s one of the reasons we love Donut Horns, a game that B-REEL created using the Google+ Hangouts API.



Through the API, anyone can customize the intimacy and collaborative spontaneity of Hangouts: Custom hats, name tags, or glasses for your brand. Trivia challenges. Sing-alongs. You name it. Users can control aspects of an app with their bodies, sport custom media effects, play group games, and collaborate in real time. And you can make this easy: The Google+ Hangout button is easy to install on your site, and can launch a Hangout with your app pre-loaded.







Over 200 apps have been created so far -- from the useful ones, like Lower Third (which gives Hangout participants newscaster-like nameplates) to the fun ones, like the reality show trivia game that BRAVO made for Watch What Happens Live. (Some G+ fans have created a great directory for them.) Apps make Hangouts even more engaging -- one in three Hangouts now use apps, and the average duration of a Hangout increases 2.5 times when an app is used.



Sound interesting? Here’s a one-sheeter that we’ve made about Hangout Apps so that you have a quick guide for your colleagues and clients. But if you’re even more curious, we regularly host Google Developer Office Hours via Hangout to offer answers to questions and 1:1 advice. Check out our schedule and see what’s coming up.



And if you want to see some Hangout App action, here’s a video from our friends at The Webby Awards from the backstage Hangout at their annual awards show in May. Pirate hats and scuba masks sure make video conversations a little more interesting.







Posted by Caro McCarthy, PMM, Google+ for Business

A simpler way to re-connect with your website visitors

Google Analytics has always provided powerful tools to help you better understand your website visitors and improve their experience. Some of you have also started using insights from your website to optimize your remarketing campaigns and re-engage customers who have visited your site. But this has traditionally required you to add a second tag to your site for remarketing, in addition to your existing Google Analytics tag. To simplify the process, we’re rolling out Remarketing with Google Analytics in beta, to help you make the most of those valuable insights.

Remarketing with Google Analytics helps you create remarketing lists based on certain audiences who visit your website and show interest in your products, without having to tag your site twice. This can help you more easily create remarketing campaigns to show ads across the Google Display Network (GDN). 

We’ll be rolling this beta feature out in waves by the end of the summer to all Google Analytics users who are account administrators with at least one linked Google AdWords account. Once the feature is available to you, you can learn about the steps to enable it in your account by clicking on the "Admin" tab in the upper right corner of Google Analytics, then look for the tab for "Remarketing Lists.”

Remarketing can help improve the relevancy of the ads that users see online. We’re also committed to giving users increased control over the ads they see on Google and across the web with tools like Mute This Ad, the Ads Preferences Manager, and the Google Analytics Opt-out.

To learn more about Google’s suite of remarketing tools, please visit the AdWords blog here.

Happy analyzing... and happy remarketing!

Posted by Jesse Savage, Product Manager