1. It’s confusing to use, unlike other Gmail products. Facebook had that effect on me at first but it went away with time. Hope the same happens with Buzz
2. It’s another Google program. I’m already worried about my dependence of Big G and wonder if their ‘do no evil’ saying won’t lose the ‘no’ word at some point
3. It looks like Google doesn’t have a strategy for their social media hub (as all their services will probably try and integrate into Buzz at some time). They don’t get that the center/focus point in social media is the person and his relationships. In Buzz is hard to add new friends, catalog them in categories, import contacts and such. There are no complex choices like you get in Facebook (sorry for bringing this up again, but Buzz is meant to compete with them after all)

I believe those three things will put a lot of users away from Buzz once the first buzz wears off. I’m afraid Google Buzz will become another Wave, but only time will tell if I’m right.

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Google custom search is still in beta

In this post I’ll treat the case of integrating the Google Custom search engine in WordPress, the most used free software platform for blogging.

What do you need?

• A blog running a self hosted version of WordPress. Sorry guy, but no wordpress.com domains.
• An HTML editor (I use Notepad ++)
• FTP client (I use FileZilla)
• An AdSense account
• Some time and a few HTML/CSS knowledge

Steps required to integrate custom search in WordPress

First, you have to sign in to your Google AdSense account and create a new ad slot for the custom search results ads: Adsense Setup – AdSense for Search. Once you get here select “Single page” to have all options on one page. I’ll explain to you what every field means:

• Search type: specifies where to search, the Internet or only your site
• Selected sites: put here every site URL you wish to search, one per each line
• Optional Keywords: if there’ any word combination you wish to add to the string of chars the used inputs in the Custom Search field here’s the place to mention them
• Site language: self explanatory, is the language your blog uses
• Your site encoding: go to your blog, right click on a free space, select “View Source” and look for “charset”. Select in the Adsense drop down list the encoding your website uses
• Country or territory for Google domain: to better list localized search results Google needs to know the region of your website’s visitors, where most of them come from
• Custom channel: give a name to the ad channel to better track its results in your Adsense reports
• Safe Search: specify if you want adult content to be omitted from displayed results
• Look and Feel: choose from a few themes available for the search box
• Text Box Length: specify the size of the search box as it will appear on your site
• Opening of search results page: here you’ll specify how the search results page will look like. Options are in the same page, in new windows (easiest to implement), or in a dedicated page on your site. For the last option you have to create a page on your blog (page, not post) and give it a name that you’ll specify in this Adsense wizard. Mine is called “search”, so the URL is http://www.johnpopes.com/search. Also enter the width of the search results area so that it will fit your theme layout.
• Ad location: where should google display ads on your search results page. Depending on what you choose the aforementioned Width of the results area has a bigger minimum value.
• The Palettes: here you’ll change the colors of the search results. Every change is reflected in a sample box on the left.
• Agree with the special terms
• Enter a name for this particular search unit and hit “Submit and Get Code”

The long Adsense setup wizard (click for large image)

Now you’re presented with two codes (if you chose to display results in the same page or in another page on your blog, not in a new window. Now the input box code goes in your theme. Mine was searchform.php. The second one goes into the page template (here is more info on how to create a WordPress page template) I’ve created starting with page.php and replaced the part with the_content(). Use this template when creating the page that will you’re your results (see the “Opening of search results page” step). Remember that those file names in your WordPress theme may be different, but also look for the code that displays your normal search box and create a new template for pages, where you replace the content with the provided code by Adsense.

Custom search results on my blog

If you want to change the look of the Custom Search you have to log back in Google Adsense and hit Adsense Setup – Manage Ads and Edit on your Custom Search module. That’s it. If you get stuck at one step or need more clarification don’t hesitate to post a comment below and I’ll help you.

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All Google needs to put every piece of data to a special profile is cross-referencing. They’ve already started to do that with the new Dashboard and by starting I mean displaying that data, as the gathering process surely started a while ago.

A theoretical example of what might happen to you

Imagine this scenario: you’re building a business online and heavily rely on Google services. All those services have Terms and Condition, which once broken will almost sure deny you access to that service, or even worse (here’s the evil part) access to other Google services.

Imagine that one day, because you placed too much Adsense units on your blog’s pages or placed them too close to post pictures of used any other practice that breaks their rules you get your Adsense account blocked and all your income is lost (or a significant part of it). This is not fiction as it happened to many people. Maybe you’re innocent, maybe not, but one thing is certain: contacting Google support might not help you at all as billions others are contacting them on many topics. If they respond and help you in a few weeks you may be already out of business.

Now, for those with bad intentions like selling links, buying reviews, black hat SEO and other wrong tactics be sure you can get caught by Big G if they start cross-referencing data about you. If you speak by email for a link sale and the other person uses Gmail or forwards email to Gmail (as I so for example) then Google might find out what you’re doing.

Imagine that you want to build a network of sites and link to/from them. If Google knows they’re all your websites the value of a single link is lowered automatically. And you can’t just create 100 Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts without Google knowing they’re all yours. You don’t have that many IPs and supposed you create those accounts, once you log in from the same 2-3 IPs you’re busted.

And examples can go on and on, but the reality is the same: if Google wants to catch you, it will, but that maybe is not such a bad deal for the rest of us, the good guys.

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Google Analytics is one of the best ways to monitor your visitors, plus it has the advantages of being free. In this post I’m going to present the main functions of Google Analytics, how it works and what are the main concepts of web traffic analysis.

How Google Analytics or any other web monitoring service works

First you have to sign up for a Google Account, if you don’t already have one, login to Google Analytics, and create a new website profile. The code that’s being given to you has to be inserted on every page of the website you’re monitoring. Google recommends you put it in the footer, so it loads after the whole page, giving you better statistics as it doesn’t include users that get bored and close the page before it loads completely in their browsers.

After Google Analytics validates the code you’ve inserted into your website’s pages you have to wait a few hours till stats gather up and then you can start learning more about your visitors. The stats are gathered thanks to the code mentioned earlier that registers data about every user loading a page from your site. This data includes, but it’s not limited to IP, Operating System, browser type, screen resolution, time on page or page impressions.

What are the main concepts of web analysis

Even if different monitoring systems give different numbers that has to do with the data gathering methodology, the way information is processed, the code placement and so on. Although, there are a few common metrics that are widely defined the same way, so here’s a list of them:

• A visitor: is a person that enters your website in a given amount of time. Same person can make multiple visits to your website the same day.
• An unique visitor: is an unique person that visits your website throughout the period you’re getting the metrics.
• A page impression (or pageview): any page loaded from your website is called a page impression. The same page can be loaded multiple times in a period of time and is counted every time it refreshes.
• Bounce rate: the percentage of people that exit your website from a page without loading another one from the same domain.
• Time on site: is counted as the average time a visitor spends on your website during a visit.
• Time on page: same as above but refers to time spent on a single page.
• New visits: this is the percentage of new people that have never visited your website before.
• Referral: is the domain/site/service previously visited by an user, which pointed him to your website through a link.

What are the main statistics provided by Google Analytics

Once you select a website in your Google Analytics profile to see its stats there are 5 important types of statistics you can browse, and those are:

1  – Dashboard

Hare you can see the main stats of your website. It defaults to past 30 days (not included current day) but this period can be set in the upper right part to any date interval. The main metrics are easily displayed here: visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, time on site and new visits. You can also see a top of your most visited pages, referral sources and geographical location of your visitors.

Google Analytics Dashboard: where it all begins

2 – Visitors

Here you’ll learn about your visitors geographical location, screen resolution, operating system and browser used, connection speed, language used by their system, loyalty (number of times they visited your website in a given period) and so on.

All about your visitors

3 – Traffic sources

This is the tab that tells you where your visitors come from (referring sites), which keywords they used in search engines to get to your pages. The keywords tab is a very important piece of information to better understand what your visitors are interested in, so you can better cover those topics in the future. Also you can understand which pages you need to push in Search Engines to get better traffic on them.

See who sent traffic to you

4 – Content

It’s the place where you see what are your most visited pages, entrance paths to those pages, the referring source and bounce rate for every page and site overlay, a function that shows you where people clicked on any of your pages, so you can better understand how they navigate in your website. Top exit pages (pages where the most users left your website) are also monitored here so you’ll know which pages are the worst in the eyes of your visitors.

Most visited pages are displayed here

5 – Goals

This is a more advanced area of your Google Analytics stats. Before info shows here you have to set up goals in your site: set up visiting patterns that start with one page and lead to an end page. You set up also an amount of earnings for each successfully completed goal. This is an useful part of GA that can be used by online stores to record the number of people that had put products in their basket and then completed the checkout process.

I tried to keep this guide about what is and how Google Analytics can be used in your interest to monitor and analyze your websites from traffic and visitors point of view. Hope you like it. If you have any questions post them below in comments.

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I don’t want to say that Google Wave is a bad thing, not at all, but don’t expect it to break the 20 + years of daily sending emails (email was invented almost 40 years ago) in just a few weeks. Email is not only in our blood, but also in the DNA of the Internet, being integrated everywhere, plus there are tons of applications using it, for desktops, laptops or mobile devices.

Google Wave

Google Wave might prove itself to be a very good conversations archive or collaboration tool but won’t replace Email anytime soon, nor it intends to do so (I don’t think Google is enthusiast enough to make this kind of grandiose plans). It might be Google’s answer to social media, that I believe.

Now that I bored you with my ramblings, what’s your take on this and do you have a Google Wave invitation you don’t need?

Google Wave presentation

In case you don’t know much about Google Wave here’s a short video presentation.

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I personally don’t really believe in conspiracies or in the expression “if everybody says so it must be true” but that doesn’t mean some conspiracies aren’t true. My guess is that really good conspiracies are the ones you never hear about, that’s why I don’t trust unmasked conspiracy theories. In Google’s case I don’t really think they have an evil background plan, other than maintain monopoly in certain areas of interest. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be afraid of Google, or better said about your addiction to Google, and I’m gonna make a list of reasons for this.

Google can turn evil

Reasons you should be more careful when it comes to Google

• Google drives traffic to most new websites. Even if in time proportions change at first you only grow because of Google (not a rule, but a statistics). What if Google starts charging for this sometime in future
• Google helps you monetize your website or promote your products through AdSense and AdWords. Many businesses depend too much on those two products
• Email is delivered by Google. Gmail is so nice that it’s addictive to use. It even allows you to check other email POP3/IMAP accounts. When Gmail doesn’t work (and that happened a few times lately) you can’t work.
• Online Office via Google Docs. Same as Gmail, if GDocs doesn’t work you can’t access your documents
• Ultimately Google knows everything about you. This is a fact, as you use enough Google services for them to make a perfect profile about you. They can use this info to provide you with better content, but what if they decide to use this information for wrong causes or, more plausible, information leaks and ill intended people get their dirty hands on that info, like is happens to credit card records that get stolen.

The thing is that the more you get online and divulge personal information, not just to Google, there’s a risk that info can get into wrong hands, that’s why you need to be careful all time time. Online you’re like a star: exposed to public.

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Google search is primitive

Well, when we talk about search today I think Google results are not that good, where good is defined by the quality of the answers people get. What Google does is match the search term with results in its internal database and returns the user a list of results it thinks are the best. It does that rather efficient, fast and manages to get regular website in its index very fast (better than the competition), but that’s pretty much it: many times results are not what you’re expecting and are the base for further personal investigations.

It’s like you go to a library, ask for a particular Jules Verne book and get his entire work on the desk, all books without titles. Then you start looking into each and everyone to find what you’re looking for.

What can’t Google do?

• search into picture contents with advanced filters for color and so on
• search into videos
• search into other content than your birth language and automatically translate relevant results
• compose similar pages with the same topic into one single document (text, images, video and social media mentions)

The future of search as I see it lies in the quality of the results, not the speed. That was also the case when Google enter the market and was more relevant than the competition at that time (competition that now has narrowed down significantly). If Google doesn’t do something to stay ahead of the game and come up with something evolved (I’m not talking about Caffeine) we’re looking at a dead man walking, don’t you think?

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This tool I’m talking about, that can help predict the future is Google Trends, a tool often forgot and used only by experts. I’ve recently started using it to get ideas about a new websites that will target new IT products that will grow big in sales in the future. I’m trying somehow to replicate my friend’s success with a netbook website, a relatively new hot IT trend, that he started a few months ago and already gets him a few bucks every months and rising.

How to spot trends with Google Trends?

It’s easier that you might think: just enter a term or two (each term must be separated by commas). Hit Enter and see what comes up. In the screen that now comes up you’ll see how many searches for these terms were performed in pasy years. You can see which countries got the most search volume for those trends, which cities and languages used.

This is crucial data that can make you discover things others will read in newspappers after a few months. Now all you need is patience and a few ideas to narrow down your trend search. Check out what Google Trends tell us about “past”, “present” and “future”: nobody cares about present and you get more chances of making money thinking about the future. But that we all knew, don’t we?

Google Trends search evolution

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Google chrome beta 3

Don’t try and search for “google chrome” to find it as it will point you to the “regular” version. Go here if you want to install Google Chrome Beta 3. I’ve done so last night and now I can tell you from my point of view what it does that previous version didn’t and if it is worth downloading.

Google Chrome Beta 3 improvements

First thing you’ll notice is the New Tab page, where you can customize the position of most visited websites and even can pin a tab to a specific position. The recent activities window moved down and there’s a new mystery window that says: ‘What will we put here?‘.

The Address Bar is now called Omnibox and it’s more like Firefox’s combined search/history/address bar. It seems the logical step here, why don’t copy something that’s proven to be efficient.

Visual improvements were something Google Chrome lacked and Google addressed that with a themes gallery with a few dozen visual skins to choose from. It’s nice but I wouldn’t get too excited as the styles are not so inspired.

Speed was also improved by 30% (as stated by Google), but that wasn’t an issue with Chrome. And finally, Google Chrome Beta 3 brings HTML 5.0 capabilities, a thing to look for in future websites.

New tab page in Google Chrome 3 Beta

Is it worth installing?

I think it does as it seem stable enough, not less than any Google Beta program or service. The improvements are OK, but I’m still waiting for extensions support. Till then I’m gonna stick to Firefox as my main browser.

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As you expect from Google, their software suite will heavily interact online with the existing applications like Google Maps and their search engine. If that’s not your thing you can always write your own code, and maybe with the 10 millions dollars prize offered by Google for the best app for Android.

Watch the video after the jump to learn more, of go here for more videos about the technology behind Android.

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If you don’t know what IMAP is check the Wikipedia page. In short is a protocol that allows you to view, read, delete mail from a regular desktop email client. The difference from POP is that any change is reflected on server, so if you move from work to home, and change computers, the changes perpetuate.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t have the IMAP option for my account yet, so I’m still speculating.

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