Google is a colossus that sits astride access to information on the World Wide Web. Ubiquitous, useful, and often imitated—but seldom equaled—Google has lent its name to a verb: to google something (or someone) is to search for the thing or person on the Web. Google is also a forward-looking corporation filled with brilliant thinkers and one of the largest companies in the world in terms of market capitalization. From its roots as a search engine company, Google has emerged as a leader in many spheres, from applications that are used to watch videos on the Web to on-demand office productivity software.
The primary focus of this book is making money with the Google advertising applications: the AdSense and AdWords programs. These programs are closely related to Google’s searching technology. An AdSense ad is placed on your website depending on the context of your site (in other words, Google’s analysis of how your site is likely to be found in response to a variety of searches). And the very same AdWords ad is targeted using keywords and phrases—the same keywords and phrases used when searching for something with Google.
The close relationship between Google web searching technology and the advertising programs means that it is important to understand a little about the syntax of Google searches when working with the AdSense program or crafting AdWords campaigns. It’s not that I propose to teach you how to use Google to search in this book. Rather, you need a sense of how others may be using Google to search when they come across your sites or ads.
To get the most out of working with Google, you also need to understand the parts of Google. It’s not easy to get a grasp of what Google is and what Google does in addition to web search. For one thing, the parts of Google don’t all work together seamlessly. This chapter starts with an overview explaining the parts of Google and what they do so that you’ll get a sense of what Google resources may be available to you and how all these moving parts integrate (or, as the case may be, don’t integrate).
After explaining Google’s search syntax and exploring what Google has to offer generally, this chapter drills down on Google’s role as an automated advertising broker with these programs and explains, in general terms, how these programs are related and how you work with them.
Google’s parts can, roughly speaking, be divided into the following categories:
- Services
These let people do something (for example, search the Web or create a blog)
- Tools
Software to make chores easier (for example, the Google Toolbar or the Picasa image manipulation software)
- Developer tools
Programs aimed at software developers, such as the AdWords API
- Advertising solutions
Programs such as AdSense and AdWords
- Business solutions
Products intended to be used as part of an enterprise infrastructure, such as the Google Enterprise search appliance
Obviously, many of these aspects of Google are beyond the scope of this book, which focuses on making money with Google advertising and the AdSense and AdWords programs.
Google itself takes a more pragmatic tack in categorizing its applications that are available to consumers. On the More Google Products page, partly shown in Figure 7-1, you’ll find the following categories:
Search
Explore and innovate
Communicate, show & share
Go mobile
Make your computer work better
Some of the parts of Google can be opened directly from the Google home page. If you don’t see the link you are interested in on the Google home page, open the More Google Products page by starting at Google’s home page. Click the More link found on the upper left of the page, then choose “even more” from the drop-down list.
Note
You can reach the More Google Products page directly by opening http://www.google.com/options/ in your browser.
However you categorize this vast collection of applications and tools, you should at least be aware of the scope of what is available. This section explains the parts of Google you should know about, with a focus on the parts that are relevant to advertising.
Note
Don’t be fazed because Google marks an application as still in beta. Google tends to call applications beta (supposedly meaning still in testing and not ready for release) long after most companies would declare the software complete.
In addition to the software shown on the More Google Products page, Google has numerous applications that have not yet made it to product status. You can test drive much of this software from the Google Labs page, partially shown in Figure 7-2.
Google is a moving target; it’s constantly innovating, releasing software, and acquiring software companies. No static list of Google parts is ever likely to be up-to-date or final.
You’ll find links to almost all the parts of Google on the More Google Products page; I’ll also provide a direct address to each Google part I discuss in the following sections.
Blogger is one of the largest hosted blogging services on the Web. Blogger hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs, and it is free and easy to use. From an advertiser’s viewpoint, Blogger and other hosted blogging services are interesting because they provide Google with a venue for AdWords contextual ads, categorized by the specific interest of the blog author. Some of the proceeds from these blogs go to the content creator, although you’ll probably make more money by hosting your own content and displayed AdSense units.
Google Books lets users search through books submitted to the program by publishers and other copyright holders. Google scans the books and hosts the resulting pages on Google servers. These pages are then used by Google to display contextual ads. Google pays a portion of the revenue from the ads to the owner of the materials. Google Book Search represents an interesting venue for advertisements, as well as a possible profit center for authors and publishers.
At the time of this writing, Google has reached an extensive and general licensing agreement with publishers and authors. Assuming this agreement becomes effective, the content available under this program (and potential sites to host advertising) will greatly expand.
Google Directory uses the categorization scheme and sites selected by the Open Directory Project (ODP) to find information that has been vetted by volunteer editors familiar with a particular subject. As I explained in Chapter 2, the ODP is important to you if you want to drive traffic to your site. You can use Google Directory to explore Google’s use of the ODP taxonomy.
Gmail is one of the best free email services on the Web, with good anti-spam technology, plentiful storage, and excellent searching capabilities. Gmail is used to host text and link ads that are relevant to a recipient’s email.
GOOG-411, 1-800-GOOG-411, is a directory assistance program that will partially be supported by audio advertisements relevant to searches requested.
Google Health is intended to help people organize their health records in one place online. This is an ambitious and laudable goal not intimately related to advertising, but note that the portions of the application that are used to search for health care providers do host contextual advertisements.
Google Maps is a service that provides maps and directions. When you search within Google Maps for an address, business, or landmark, the results page shows businesses that seem related to your search (for example, Japanese restaurants as in Figure 7-3), and also businesses located close to your search address.
Note
In Figure 7-3, the top “sponsored” link is a paid AdWords placement while the other listings come from natural search results. See Chapter 2 for more about the distinction.
For advertisers who draw business based on location—such as restaurants—the ability to place proximity-based ads on Google Maps may prove to be extremely significant.
Google Product Search lets you search through many of the products available on the Web. Sellers can add products to Product Search using a data feed; there’s no cost for inclusion. Google does use search results pages to host advertisements.
Google Scholar lets you search for academic, peer-reviewed articles and citations. Although Scholar has had some rather mixed reviews, it is certainly one of the largest free repositories online of scholarly material, and Google Scholar search results are another place Google displays contextual advertising.
YouTube, shown in Figure 7-4, is the leading application for watching, uploading, and sharing videos.
There are several advertising programs on YouTube that are either operational or in the works. Google enrolls partners that draw substantial traffic on YouTube in a program that derives revenue from contextual ads. The ads display on the pages that host the content. Other ads display for certain content as video overlays.
These kinds of ad programs are interesting to content owners. For example, a website might promote videos on YouTube that generate revenue. For details, see Chapter 8.
Obviously, YouTube is also interesting to advertisers. Check out http://www.youtube.com/t/advertising for more information.