With less than a week left until the U.S. 2010 midterm elections, interest is heating up around the country—in polling places, close races and hot political issues. We thought we'd peek into the search data to see what we could find about what kinds of info people are looking for as they get ready to go to the ballot box next Tuesday. We used a combination of Insights for Search and internal tools to dig up this data, and all searches studied are anonymous. Over the past few months, we've seen rising searches for things like [voter registration], [early voting] and [absentee voting] as people prepare for Election Day. People are also looking for information on [polls] (check out our elections rating site to compare expert predictions). What are the issues occupying people's mind as they choose who to vote for? Looking at the most popular searches on Google News in October, the issues that stand out are the economy (we continue to see many searches for terms like [unemployment] and [foreclosures]), as well as immigration and health care. At our headquarters in California, we're of course paying close attention to two high profile races in this state: the Senate race between Carly Fiorina and incumbent Barbara Boxer, and the governor's race between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown. Looking the gubernatorial candidates, Brown has been leading in the polls recently, but in the search race, Whitman has the edge, with more than 50% more search volume in 2010 than Brown. Fittingly, Sacramentans are more likely to search for both Whitman and Brown, followed by Angelenos and then San Franciscans. Popular related searches show people looking for information about polling data as well as the candidate debates: we saw searches spike for both candidates on September 29 and October 13, two days that followed debates. There was also a spike around the time of the primary election on June 8, as well as on October 8, when a controversial comment by an aide of Brown's hit newsstands. We also wanted to find out what the big issues people were interested in about each candidate. Naturally, we saw a lot of searches for things like [meg whitman bio] or [jerry brown wikipedia], as well as [meg whitman ad] or [jerry brown platform] and vice versa. Terms more specifically related to Meg Whitman include [housekeeper] and [immigration]—reflecting interest in reports that Whitman had employed an undocumented worker as her housekeeper, and corresponding interest in the candidate's views on immigration and immigration reform. People also want to know about her history at [ebay] and about her family (with the terms [husband] and [children] showing up in searches related to Whitman). But this being California, people are also looking for information about how Whitman would approach the problem of the state's budget and economy—after immigration, the next issue we saw turn up in terms related to Whitman was [spending]. Interestingly, immigration was also the number one issue in searches related to Jerry Brown. People also seem to be looking for information about Brown's previous term as governor, and, as with Whitman, we're seeing searches for information about his [wife]. There's also growing interest in one of the propositions on California's ballot this year: Proposition 19, which would legalize and allow regulation of certain marijuana activities. Even though Prop 19 is a state initiative, its implications have people across the country searching for information about it:  Moving across the country, another state that's grabbed headlines during this primary season is Delaware. Prior to her upset win in the Republican primary against former governor Mike Castle in September, searches for Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell were minimal—even though she'd been in the running since March. Since then, however, she's been a subject of conversations across the country and searches for her name have consequently risen as well.  Searchers looked for information on a comment O'Donnell made on Bill Maher's show in 1999 about [witchcraft]—it's one of the top terms related to searches for O'Donnell. People also are interested in an [snl] spoof of O'Donnell earlier this month. O'Donnell is clearly outmatching her Democrat opponent Chris Coons in search, but only time will tell how the votes play out. The potential shift in power in the House and Senate following these elections has people closely watching a handful of races to see which party comes out on top. We took a look at the Insights for Search graphs for a handful of close races and races that are considered influential. Take a look at the links below to see more, and plug in the names and other states of other candidates to try it out for yourself:
And finally, we've also seen some popular political rallies in the past few months. Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally in Washington, D.C. in late August kicked things off, and inspired Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to host their own events—the March to Keep Fear Alive and the Rally to Restore Sanity, respectively—both of which are taking place this coming Saturday in D.C. Searches related to all of these rallies, especially Stewart's, have seen huge increases in volume—above 5000%.  We'll be back soon with more search trends and other information about the mid-term elections. In the meantime, don't forget to vote!      |
I love to discover new places, from sandwich shops in my neighborhood to great museums around the globe. When I start looking for something in a new area, like a barbecue restaurant in Austin, I usually do quite a few searches. I might search for a list of restaurants and then search for details about each place, like which one has the best atmosphere and live music. Today we're introducing Place Search, a new kind of local search result that organizes the world's information around places. We've clustered search results around specific locations so you can more easily make comparisons and decide where to go. Say you're looking for that great barbecue restaurant with live music. With Place Search here's what you'll get:  The new results are marked with red pins, and each one is a unique restaurant with relevant information and links from across the web. I can see that Stubb's has live music, and I can click citysearch.com, tripadvisor.com and other sites to read reviews. In the past, the same search would return links with information about Stubb's in different parts of the results page (here's a screenshot of what it used to look like). Now information is grouped conveniently to make it easier to digest and compare. Place Search results will begin appearing automatically on Google when we predict you're looking for local information. In addition, you'll find a new link for "Places" in the left-hand panel of the search results page so you can switch to these results whenever you want. For example, when I'm in New York, I love to go out and play foosball, but a search for [foosball] doesn't automatically show me Place Search results. If I click "Places" I get the new view:  We've made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Place Search, we're dynamically connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don't provide addresses and use different names ("stubb's bbq" is the same as "stubbs bar-b-que"). One of the great things about our approach is that it makes it easier to find a comprehensive view of each place. In our new layout you'll find many more relevant links on a single results page—often 30 or 40. Instead of doing eight or 10 searches, often you'll get to the sites you're looking for with just one search. In our testing Place Search saves people an average of two seconds on searches for local information. Place Search is rolling out now and will be available globally in more than 40 languages in the next few days. During the roll-out process you can use this special link to preview the new results. Our goal is to help you feel like a local everywhere you go!     |
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Place Search: a faster, easier way to find local information
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Small Business Tools for Online Success
Tools for Online Success
Google and the Small Business Administration have partnered to educate local businesses about how to succeed online. Each video describes how a small business owner successfully uses the internet to grow his or her business. It's important to be where your customers are...online!Tips for Success
* Highlight important contact details in your listing, such as address, phone number, and email address.* Use local listings and a website to build your representation on the web. Local listings help your business display details, while a website is your virtual store front.
* Complete every available listing field to give your customers even more information.
SalonRed provides a creative and compassionate salon environment in Decatur, GA. It excels in the services industry because it uses a website and local listings to help customers find its locations and book appointments.
CT Web Designers
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Discussing free expression at Internet at Liberty 2010
It's not often that we get to step out of our everyday jobs and spend extended time engaging in global conversations about one of our fundamental values at Google: ensuring access to information. For three days last week in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, we had that chance when more than 300 bloggers, activists, academics, government officials and representatives of non-profits and business convened for "Internet at Liberty 2010." The conference, which we co-hosted with the Central European University, focused on "the promise and peril of online free expression" and the role of individuals, corporations and government in protecting free expression online. The conference drew participants from 74 countries, including many from places where free expression is constantly under threat—such as Kazakhstan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. It drew a large contingent of bloggers and activists from the Middle East and representatives from both the Iranian and Chinese diasporas. Our liveblog of the conference was followed by more than 3.3 million people around the world. The issues at the heart of the gathering—and the challenges faced by free expression advocates the world over, were highlighted by our senior vice president, David Drummond, when in his opening remarks to the conference he quoted an email from an activist who could not obtain permission to attend "Internet at Liberty." The activist wrote: Everywhere I turned, I was only talking to a repetition of the same monomaniac mind where all the keywords around the conference were defined as dangerous and forbidden: 'liberty,' 'access,' 'Internet,' 'Google,' and even such simple words as 'university,' 'conference' and 'Europe.' Upon a second investigation, I realized that they are not afraid of these things because of their intrinsic identity, but because they can transform me from a passive and obedient member of the mass to a free, critical, creative and active citizen.Also at the conference, we introduced Google Transparency Report, an interactive online site that allows users to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. (Read more in our blog post.) Other sessions included a debate on the question, "Is the potential of the Internet as a force for positive political change being oversold?" and workshops offering practical education and tools for lobbying governments on key issues. Visit our website for the conference, which we plan to turn into a discussion and action forum for those who attended the conference and—we hope—thousands more. Our aim is to bring together people who share the common goal of promoting free expression on the Internet. We want to build constituencies behind key initiatives including helping individuals protect themselves online; promoting corporate and government transparency; finding the right balance between privacy and free expression; and making sure that platforms like Google aren't held liable for content they host. We're committed to reaching far beyond the results of the Budapest conference and the banks of the Danube to help ensure that online free expression, like the Internet itself, knows no borders.     |
What does the future of display advertising look like?
This afternoon, we gave a keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX Conference in New York, entitled "Display 2015: Smart and Sexy." As you know by now, we're investing significantly to make display advertising better for users, advertisers and publishers. Display advertising really is at the heart of what we're doing at Google these days. 99 percent of our top 1,000 clients are now running campaigns on the Google Display Network. And last year, they increased their spending on display advertising by over 75 percent. Today, we explained why we think display advertising is about to go through the biggest and most important revolution in its history. We made seven predictions about where display advertising will be in 2015:
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