In case you're looking for some Google employee blogs, here is a list:

1. Aaron Boodman
2. Alma Whitten: general computer security, and usability and user centered design for computer security (HCISec)
3. Adam Bosworth
4. Ben Goodger: Firefox lead engineer
5. Bo Cowgill
6. Bob Lee
7. Bret Taylor
8. Cédric Beust
9. Chad Thornton
10. Chip Turner
11. Chris DiBona: Open Source Program Manager
12. Chris Wetherell
13. Christine Davis
14. Colin Smith
15. Darin Fisher: Firefox lead engineer
16. Dave Barr
17. David Alpert
18. David Krane
19. Devinoch: Adwords Representative (Adwords)
20. Doe Mountain
21. Douwe Osinga: Search Engineer (Google's European Engineering Office)
22. Ellen Spertus
23. Eric Case (Blogger)
24. Graham Waldon (Blogger)
25. Greg Rae: Log Analyzer
26. Greg Stein: Engineering Manager (Blogger)
27. Ian Hickson
28. Jason Goldman
29. Jason Shellen: Program Manager (Blogger)
30. Jeremy Lilley: Software Engineer
31. Joe Beda: Software developer in Seattle
32. John Hawkins
33. Joseph
34. Josh MacDonald
35. Kenny Smith
36. Kevin Fox: User Interface Designer
37. Kimbalina: Contractor-to-hire (Blogger)
38. Laurence Gonsalves
39. Lilly Irani
40. Mark Ayzenshtat
41. Matt Cutts
42. Mihai Parparita
43. Mike Tsao
44. Natala Menezes: Account Manager
45. Nelson Minar: Web API Engineer
46. Oliver Deighton
47. Ovidiu Predescu
48. Paul Watson: information security engineer
49. Paul Haahr: Software Engineer
50. Piaw Na
51. Ryan Barrett
52. Sanjay G. Mavinkurve
53. Shuman Ghosemajumder
54. Tan Chade-Meng: Software Engineer
55. Wesley Chan: Product Manager/Staff photographer
56. Will McNair

Check out also our list of Yahoo! employee blogs.

Do you know other Google employee blogs? Please contact us or leave a comment.

Like , Nelson Minar, an engineer working at Google, says he's been working on .

Lots of interesting work, I plan to summarize some of what I've learned at the ETech conference in March.

Mark Ayzenshtat (Google Employee) says he's been working on (launched today) for 7 months.

The API lets you interact with Google's advertising system programmatically. It's probably too geeky for, say, your grandmother to appreciate, but if you have an AdWords account and have written a for-loop or two in your day, go check it out.

Google has opened the AdWords API developer blog to make announcements to the developer community.

Here's the official public launch announcement:

Despite all the development we've done for our AdWords program, much more remains to be built. Fortunately there's no shortage of good ideas outsidethe Googleplex: our community of users is amazingly expert and innovative and knows exactly what features they want. Many successful companies fall prey to the NIH ("Not Invented Here") syndrome, but as hard as we try, not every talented developer is working at Google. Which is why we've just announced the arrival of the AdWords API beta.

The AdWords API beta program is an open invitation to developers to explore new concepts (and then write great software) for managing Google AdWords advertising campaigns. Large advertisers can use it for their complex ad management needs, like tying product margins to optimized keyword bids.Third parties can use the API to build new interfaces to manage their client accounts. Best of all, an API enables the creation of all sorts of unanticipated ideas. In our experience, it's better to wear "Not Invented Here" as a badge of honor than as a chip on your shoulder. Come sign up fora developer token and show us what we've been missing.

(Josh McFarland, Product Manager and Nelson Minar, Software Engineer)

, Google has released the Google AdWords API:

• Google AdWords API:
• Google AdWords API developer doc:
• Google AdWords API FAQ:
• Google AdWords API forum:
• Google AdWords API blog: http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/

Google AdWords API coverage:

• AdWords API Blog
• ISEDB
• Search Engine Watch Blog

Chris DiBona (Google's employee) points out that Google is looking for an Open Source Program Manager in CraigList.

More: "Google is looking for a candidate who can manage technical programs in our open source software programs office. The candidate will be responsible for the overall planning, budgeting, execution and success of these projects and will work with google engineering, legal, pr/marketing, finance, recruiting and the executive staff."

(BetaNews), another Mozilla developer joins Google:

With at least two high-profile browser developers under its belt, rumors have begun swirling about Google's future plans with the Mozilla platform.

Darin, a former IBM and Netscape employee, is a "module owner" for the Mozilla project and is in charge of cookies and permissions, as well as Mozilla's networking library. As did Goodger, Darin promises to remain devoted to his current work, despite monetary backing from Google.

Darin Fisher announces in this blog "Following on the heals of Ben's annoucement yesterday, I thought I'd post that I have joined Google as well. Like Ben, I will still be very much involved with the Mozilla project and community :-)"

Google Video Enables Users to Search TV Content From PBS, the NBA, Fox News, C-SPAN, and Others

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -Jan. 25, 2005- Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) today announced the availability of Google Video, a new service that enables users to search the content of television programs from leading TV content providers including PBS, the NBA, Fox News, and C-SPAN, among others. This announcement demonstrates Google's commitment to creating innovative technologies that provide access to a greater diversity of the world's information.

"What Google did for the web, Google Video aims to do for television," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products. "This preview release demonstrates how searching television can work today. Users can search the content of TV programs for anything, see relevant thumbnails, and discover where and when to watch matching television programs. We are working with content owners to improve this service by providing additional enhancements such as playback."

The Google Video beta (http://www.google.com/video) enables users to search across the closed captioning content of a growing number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December, 2004. Entering a query such as (iPod) will return a list of relevant television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken. Google Video offers these additional search features:

• Preview page: Displays up to five still video images and five short text segments from the closed captioning of each program.
• Upcoming episodes: Shows when the program will be aired next.
• Search within the show: Enables searching for specific words within a given program.
• Program details: Offers program and episode information including channel, date and time.
• Change location: Finds the next time and channel where a program will air locally according to zip code.

For television channels and content producers, Google Video can increase viewership by providing Google users with information on future airings of relevant programs.

"For more than three decades PBS and local PBS stations have pioneered the use of state-of-the-art technology to use media to inform, engage, entertain, and educate the American public," said Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of PBS. "Today we are proud to join with Google, a company that continues to achieve new levels of technical innovation with the launch of Google Video, a new service that increases the reach and impact of PBS content."

"NBA fans are tech savvy early adopters," said NBA Commissioner David Stern. "With our partnership with Google on the pioneering Google Video service, we enhance our ability to meet the needs of NBA fans, delivering to them content and information in a new and innovative way."

This early-stage release of Google Video does not include Google AdWords advertising or playback options. For more information, please visit .

Google has hired a lead developer of Firefox. Ben Goodger has been intimately involved with many facets of FireFox since its inception, and also worked previously on Netscape back in the more productive days of the AOL/Netscape cabal.

Ben Goodger said:

As of January 10, 2005, my source of income changed from The Mozilla Foundation to Google, Inc. of Mountain View, California. My role with Firefox and the Mozilla project will remain largely unchanged, I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases. I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general. I'm sure you have many questions. While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises. For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.

About Ben Goodger:

My name is Ben Goodger...

... I am 24 years old...

I was born in London, England - but spent most of my life in Auckland, New Zealand.

I live in Campbell, California.

I work for The Mozilla Foundation and am the lead engineer on the Firefox browser project. Some of the key areas in the browser I am responsible for include: the Extension system, Software Update, Preference Migration for IE, Opera, Seamonkey, Netscape 4, etc, Windows shell integration, the new Download system, the new Options UI, the new permission manager UI for things like popup blocking and XPInstall and the Windows Install Wizard. Of the code that originates from the Mozilla Suite I was the original author of the buggy bookmarks manager UI (much improved by folk like Pierre, Vlad and Myk in Firefox but still buggy), save-page-with-images (much improved by other contributors since the original version), and the original Classic theme upon which much of Qute and later Winstripe were based. I have done a significant amount of UI design both for features I have implemented and those implemented by others. I have done a large chunk of the project management of the project, tracking bugs and scheduling milestones, have in the past maintained the project and product home pages, began the first serious and successful attempt to market the product in April 2003, and have acted as a liason between various contributing groups. Outside of cvs.mozilla.org I also maintain the Magpie extension which is a set of downloading utilities.

I used to work for America Online/Netscape and have contributed to a number of their products (Netscape 6, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7.1) before the demise of Netscape browser development in July 2003.

I graduated from The University of Auckland in May 2003 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Systems Engineering.

Google has launched silently . Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.

Just type in your search term (for instance, ) or do a more advanced search (for instance, ) and Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show. Visit the "" side panel to learn when this show will air next.

Right now Google's just testing this product, so you'll find programs only from a limited number of channels, which Google has been indexing since late December 2004. You can expect to see more and more content as Google continues to add new channels.

Example of video result page (click to enlarge):

Example of video result preview (click to enlarge):

Tara Calishain has noticed that Google has raised the number of words allowed in a query from 10 to 32, without mentioning it on the help pages.

This news may have no effect for the standard user but this new limit allows developers to create better tools based on Google queries. You can also add more negative terms to restrict your query.

gives some details about the implementation:

The support for the new limit is somewhat patchy :-

• the 32 word limit is used on the main search engine, image search, Froogle, and via the Google search API
• the 10 word limit is still in force for Google groups, news

Philipp Lenssen gives a list of usages of large queries:

• When you automate search tasks using the Google API, you often find yourself hitting the 10-word limit.
• When you search for quotes from a text, you would hit the 10-word limit very fast.
• When you want to exclude a lot of words from a search because your result is not specific enough.
• Meta search engines (or an "uber" engine like FindForward) may take a user's query and add their own "tuned" words in the background. This means when the tuning uses up 6 words, and the user entered 5 words, 1 tuned word was ignored.
• When you wanted to trace all synonyms Google knows for a word.

According to Tom Foremski and Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com, Google is about to announce technology that will allow its advertisers unprecedented levels of control over when, where, and who can view their advertising on Google search pages and those of Google partner web sites.

For the first time, the search giant will provide its advertisers with an application programming interface (API), which will enable them to link their computer systems with Google and control parts of the mammoth Google ad delivery system. The API will allow advertisers to self-administer the delivery, the timing and the price they will pay for their text ads.

This raises the bar in the online advertising market as Google turns to technology to try and outwit and pull ahead of media savvy competitors such as Kanoodle and others. Kanoodle says its average click-through revenue is twice as much as that of Google's because it gives online publishers greater control over what types of advertising is displayed, at which times, and is better matched to page content or search terms.

Philipp Lenssen has a nice idea: highlighting every link with the NoFollow attribute easily with Firefox:

A nice way to visualize which links use the new "nofollow" relation is to include a special user-stylesheet into Firefox. To do so, you need to install the Web Developer extension (unfortunately, Firefox doesn't allow an easy way to include user-stylesheets via the native menu). Once you've got this extension running (this needs a restart after installation) you can right-click any page and select Web Developer -> CSS -> Add User Style Sheet. Now you select a simple text file with the extension *.css (you may want to call it "user.css" and put it right on the desktop), in which you saved the following lines:

a[rel="nofollow"]
{
background-color: red !important;
color: white !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
}

This will instantly reformat all "nofollow" anchors on the page to have white-on-red colors – no need to check the HTML source for what's happening. And here's a nofollow link to Example.com for you to easily try it.

Here is a screen capture for those who cannot see the NoFollow link highlighted in Firefox:

Picasa 2 has a new blog and also official forums (since Jan 20, 2003).

(via Zorgloob)

More and more bloggers show their opposition to the system proposed by Google, MSN and Yahoo to fight against comment spam (rel=nofollow attribute on links).

No-nofollow initiative

Sascha Carlin has a nice small pic for the no-nofollow initiative.

Nofollow Free

Philipp Lenssen (Google Blogoscoped) has created a GIF image to put on your blog if you're not following the "nofollow" attribute. His nofollow-illustration banner is used to promote "Nofollow Free" zones in and around blogspace.

Link condom

(via rustybrick) You can even adopt the first Link Condom! They're mocking the solution provided by the search engines to comment spam:

Now is the time to act and stop the spread of Viral Link Popularity. For far too long now the Internet has functioned as a network of interlinked sites that have been likened unto a 'web' of sites. This is clearly a poor view of the Information Super Highway. To that end the Powers That Be have banded together to fix this massive problem and reshape the web into a more useful controlled environment.

THE SOLUTION......wait for it.....

rel="nofollow"

This handy new tag is simply added to the code of your site next to the link you want to disinfect and voila!! one more link no longer spreading disease. Yes! it's just that simple. Cut and paste the Internet in to shape today. Don't delay. Your links are oozing all sorts of nastiness such as PageRank and Link Popularity.

FEATURES...

• Hoard your PageRank
• Hide your outgoing links
• Screw your reciprocal link partners
• Add code bloat to your page
• Find out today if people are buying links for the right reasons
• Yet more to obsess about
• Freely link to bad neighbourhoods
• Far easier to use than JavaScript, perl, php, robots.txt etc

Very nice site, really!

The Picasa team has opened a new blog dedicated to Picasa 2 where they may be posting tips and tricks on how to use Picasa 2.

The first tip is about Collage:

Making a collage in Picasa 2 is an easy and fun way to present a group of pictures. Here are a few tips for creating exactly the collage you want:

• By default, the image used for the background is the last one in your selection.
• Use captions! If you add captions to your pictures, they will appear in Picture Pile collages.
• You can shuffle the picture ordering by clicking on the preview (this will also affect the background image if you are using one).
• For Picture Piles, you can shuffle the picture locations by holding down SHIFT and clicking on the preview.
• Remember that your collage will be made from all of the pictures in the Picture Tray, so you aren't limited to the pictures in just one folder or label. Just drag all of the pictures you want in the collage to the Picture Tray before pressing the Collage button.
• Don't worry if pictures look a little fuzzy in the preview. The preview uses low resolution images, but the final image will be rendered using full resolution images.

Picasa 2 was on the official Google blog by Lars Perkins (General Manager, Picasa).

Google has released Picasa 2. Try it!

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you know. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print at home, make gift CDs, instantly share via Hello™, and even put pictures on your own blog.

Keynote Press Release

SAN MATEO, Calif., — January 13, 2005 — The Yahoo! and MSN search engines are closing the gap with Google by improving the search experience for consumers and that will lead to increased usage for those sites, according to a new study. The syndicated research study conducted by Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, provides the industry’s most comprehensive competitive benchmarking of customer attitudes and experience at leading search engine sites.

The Keynote Customer Experience (CE) Rankings for the Search Engine Industry are based on research with 2,000 consumers as they interacted with leading search engines. In addition to traditional opinion data, Keynote’s proprietary research technology collects detailed qualitative and behavioral data as users perform tasks at each site.

Google Leads, Yahoo! and MSN Close the Gap “Google is the king of customer experience in the search engine industry, but Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves are improving,” said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research and public services for Keynote. “Given the open nature of the Web, as these sites continue to improve the user experience they will undoubtedly begin to attract more users and improve user loyalty. Obviously this will impact the advertising side of the business.”

According to the study, Google maintains its clear leadership position in the search industry, again leading the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings. Sites topping the Keynote CE Rankings perform best, in aggregate, across all 250+ metrics and indices measured during the study, including those for brand impact, future usage, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Keynote Customer Experience Rankings

1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. MSN
4. Ask Jeeves
5. Lycos

However, Yahoo! and MSN have made significant gains against Google since the last Keynote search engine study, published in May 2004. Yahoo!, which remains in second place across the Keynote CE Rankings and other leading indicators, launched an expanded local search service and a new search results page after the last study and, as a result, significantly improved its overall user experience.

The quality of local search results is a major frustration to many search engine users. Across all search sites, almost one in four (22%) users complain that the local results are not what they are looking for or are not ranked appropriately. Yahoo! showed significant improvement in the ranking of the quality of its local search results, tying Google in leading the industry in this key category.

MSN, which remains in third place overall, began separating sponsored results from its Web search results in July 2004 and, as a consequence, also showed a significant improvement in overall user experience. The company is expected to release a new version of the MSN search site in early 2005, and that site will be evaluated in the next Keynote study in June 2005.

The perceived usefulness of sponsored results is one of the top five drivers impacting user experience, and MSN showed a significant increase in this category since the last study. More than 47% of MSN users described the site’s sponsored results as very useful in the most recent study, as compared to just 37% doing so prior to the change.

Ask Jeeves also showed a significant increase in its overall customer experience in large part driven by a significant improvement in its local search.

Yahoo!, MSN Jump in Future Usage Index As a direct result of their improvements in user experience, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves also saw a notable increase in their standing in the Keynote Future Usage Index, which measures the likelihood of consumers to use a search site as their primary search tool and to return to the site in the future. The index also measures a user’s likelihood to recommend a search site to others or to use a search toolbar offered by the site. Google maintained its position as the leader in the Future Usage Index, but did not improve its overall standing.

Since the last study, Yahoo! has boosted the number of users who said they would consider the site as their primary search engine by more than 20% and MSN by almost 30%. More than 81% of Yahoo! users and 61% of MSN users said they would return to those sites in the future, as compared to just 72% of Yahoo! users and 55% of MSN users stating so in the previous Keynote study.

“Over the past year, the major search engines have made great strides to improve their services, and users have noticed,” said Chris Sherman, Editor, Search Engine Watch. “However, loyalty is fragmented, and alternatives are just a mouse click away. It's becoming increasingly crucial for search engines not just to attract users but to build loyalty – and the only way to do that is by improving the overall quality of the user experience.”

Even though 75% of users say they have one primary search engine, when search expectations are not met up to 50% of users will turn to another search engine as an alternative. Additionally, up to 20% of users regularly use different search engines for different types of searches. As a result, all the leading sites get fairly extensive exposure.

MSN Separation of Sponsored, Web Results Pays Off The perceived quality of search results is the leading factor influencing user satisfaction, and MSN was the only site to make significant gains in this category. Google and Yahoo! continue to lead the industry in terms of user perceptions about the quality of search results.

Keynote studies, which measure both user perceptions and actual search results, have revealed that search engine success is based in large part on the presentation of search results and brand affinity. Sites that users rank well in terms of presentation and brand, also rank well in perceived quality and success of search. Keynote has found that actual search results returned by the leading five search engines, when measured objectively, do not differ significantly. In fact, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and MSN perform as well as Google and Yahoo! when actual user success in conducting complex searches was measured.

“MSN’s recent separation of sponsored results from actual Web results greatly improved user perceptions of MSN search results,” said Brown. “This move has increased the loyalty of MSN users and improved perceptions of advertising and sponsored results on the MSN site.”

Piper Jaffray predicts the search engine industry will generate $8.9 billion in revenues by 2007, up from $2.6 billion in 2003.

The entire report, Keynote Customer Experience (CE) Rankings for the Search Engine Industry, is a 100+ page examination of the search engine industry containing hundreds of additional data points and a detailed analysis of the findings. For information about purchasing the full report, visit http://www.keynote.com/syndicated.html

1) How many web pages of your site are listed on Google News?
To know how many web pages of your site (or your competitors sites) are listed on Google News use the following command:
source:site -gggg
site is the name of the source on Google News (This name is given by Google News to a news source)
Example:
For Search Engine Watch:

Remarks:

* If the source name on Google News contains several words use _ to separate words.


* To receive an email alert as soon as your news is listed on Google News use the following command:
Example:
For Search engine watch:


* Similar command on Google search is site:www.your-domain-name.com
Example:




2) How many web pages of your site that contain a word or an expression are listed on Google News?
To know how many web pages of your site that contain a word are listed on Google News use the following command:
source:site keyword
Example:



* Similar command on Google search is site:www.domain-name.com word
Example:




3) Is your site well ranked on Google News search for your targeted keywords?
To know your website ranking on Google News for your targeted keywords you can use Agent Web Ranking software. Google news ranking option was added to this software few weeks ago.