Saad Kamal » Google

YouTube Trends – Watch Trending Videos on YouTube

Saad Kamal — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:26:00 +0000

On Youtube over 35 hours of videos are being uploaded every minute! Thats a massive amount of content for anyone to watch and quite frankly out of that 35 hours of video 49% are probably crap and 50% are probably cat videos! So the gem actually lies within that 1% that goes viral and becomes really popular. But keeping track of these youtube memes and trends are often a big problem as there is no central place where you can go to just consume all the “great” stuff.

Well youtube seem to have just solved that problem with their new initiative named :Youtube Trends. The site is basically an analytics hub for the giant video sharing site, featuring a lot of feeds showing all the trending videos and trending topics (which are generated via metadata). In their official blog post they also mentioned a feature called “4 at 4? that will present four buzzed-about videos twice a day. Other features include: a Know Your Meme-esque blog to analyze said videos and a dashboard that breaks down popular videos by demographics (location, age, gender, etc). Youtube Trends also presents videos in billboard-style charts, some cool data visualizations and more.

Read the Youtube Trends FAQ section to learn more about the service and also take this chance to watch a nice YouTube compilation of the most watched videos of 2010.

Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager writes:

“We see YouTube as a way to not just be entertained and informed, but also as place that can help us understand more about the world we live in and the people we live in it with. And that’s what YouTube Trends is all about.”

Introduction to YouTube Trends

(video link – for RSS Users)

Google Introduces Social Sitelinks – Dumb Idea?

Saad Kamal — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 23:09:36 +0000

Google has recently introduced something called “social sitelinks” in the search results. Social sitelinks basically looks like normal sitelinks but includes your friend’s profile pictures/avatar, their name and the link to their profile. Currently its working for sites like: Twitter, Youtube & Myspace.

Mike Cassidy, Director of Product Management at Google wrote that Google Sitelinks are based on the same technology as Google Social Search – they are using the social circle of a user to identify relevant websites and user pages.

Example of how Social Sitelinks may appear in your search results:

If you want to see the social sitelinks in action, try doing a search for the term “twitter” in google. Note: This may not work if you are not logged into your Google account and you don’t have Google profiles enabled.

Even though I have both enabled, I couldn’t really replicate the screenshot as posted in the official Google blog. Thus I believe this may not have been rolled out to all users yet. However I just don’t see the point of Social sitelinks. I follow over 2000+ people on twitter, I wonder which 5-6 people are they going to shown as sitelinks and how are they going to pick the most important ones? And why would someone do a search for the phrase ‘twitter’ in the first place?

What Google Social Sitelinks Could Have Been?

Even though I don’t quite understand the current application of Google Social Sitelinks, I don’t totally discredit the idea. If social sitelinks works for other major sites that I read everyday e.g. Techcrunch, Mashable, Search Engine Land, Techmeme, NYTimes etc. then there could be rather an interesting implementation.

For instance, If I could just do a search on google for the term “Techcrunch” and underneath the organic Techcrunch listing get an additional 5-10 social sitelinks, which can basically be the most recent techcrunch links shared by my friends then I think that additional information will be pretty useful to me.

Just a thought…

So what do you think of this new Social sitelinks?4

Google’s Lesser known Search Operator – AROUND(n)

Saad Kamal — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 13:58:47 +0000

Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration recently blogged about a new Google search operator that totally missed my radar. But according to Googler Daniel M. Russel, who was the first one to write about this AROUND operator in early October 2010 – this operator has been around for over 5-6 years!

Google AROUND(n) Operator

AROUND operator is basically a proximity search operator that lets you find a phrase that happens to be in close proximity of another phrase. Previously if you have searched for a term like: pancake recipe in Google search (without any quotes), what it would basically do is search the entire web for the term “pancake” + “recipe” and will return the pages where both these terms happens to be on the same page (regardless of their proximity).

But then you may sometimes prefer to do a phrase search / exact match search where they can put your search term inside quotes, like “pancake recipe” and then Google will only return results where the word pancake and recipe appears together.

So in this example the results returned via the first technique is often ‘too broad’ and the latter is ‘too specific’. What if you want something that is in between? Even better, what if you could specify the exact proximity of your two keywords (in words) to get more desired results?

With this Google AROUND(n) Operator, you can do just that!

Syntax: Keyword1 AROUND(n) Keyword2 [Where n = number of words (proximity)]

So the same search of pancake recipe can be performed using something like this: pancake AROUND(10) recipe. Here I’m telling google to return all those pages where the keyword – pancake & recipe appears within the proximity of 10 words.

Some Notes:

If my keyword1 contain multiple words (e.g. breakfast pancake instead of just pancake), then you can use “quotes” to limit the search scope of your first keyword to only breakfast pancakes. So it will look something like this: “breakfast pancake” AROUND(10) recipe
The word AROUND needs to be in CAPS in order for this to work
If Google can’t find anything within the limit that you specified, it will just do regular ranking of the terms without the AROUND coming into play.
Barry Schwartz pointed out that Microsoft’s Bing also have a similar search operator called “near:n” which works pretty much the same way. You can read more about it here.

Google Launches Google Demo Slam

Saad Kamal — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:36:40 +0000

Few days ago there has been a lot of buzz about this really mysterious website called demoslam. It was clearly a Google related website, but there were no official words from the Google team about that.

Today RWW confirms that, Google Demo Slam (http://demoslam.com) is ON and its a place where Google wants everyone to make and submit their creative & entertaining tech demo videos that illustrates any functionality of a Google product. And later some of the best videos will be picked by Googlers and will be showcased on the Google demo slam website for user voting.

So far the videos there are pretty interesting & fun. Check out some of them below:

This is what Google says about Demo Slam:

The Demos Slam preseason will start today and will be on for the next few weeks. If you go to the official website, you will be able to vote for all the weekly winners from the featured demos. I personally love the idea because this site will eventually become really beneficial for anybody who isn’t very tech savvy or for someone who is new to the Google universe.

Check it out today: http://demoslam.com and submit your own tech demos!

Youtube Instant – Find Videos Instantly

Saad Kamal — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 21:10:19 +0000

If you like what Google has done with Google Instant, then you are going to like this new Youtube Mashup, “Youtube Instant” – http://ytinstant.com/ created by a Stanford university student – Feross Aboukhadijeh.

With the same principle as Google Instant, this new youtube mash up lets you search YouTube videos and get instant results as you type in your search query. Currently only one of the best matched video is returned on the search result page and the video gets played automatically without availability of any sort of traditional YouTube player control (e.g. Play/Pause).

In an interview with AllThingsD, the creator Ferros mentioned that he coded Youtube Instant in 3 hours in order to fulfill a bet he had with his friend.

After the news of this service broke, YouTube’s CEO & Co-founder Chad Hurley informally offered Feross a job via Twitter.

So check out Youtube Instant: http://ytinstant.com/

Google Instant – Search The Web Instantly As you Type

Saad Kamal — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:54:25 +0000

Google has just rolled out a new product – Google Instant that lets you search the web instantly the moment you start typing your search query in Google’s Search Box. Googler Marissa Mayer called it “search at the speed of thought.”

According to Google, the average search takes about 25 seconds, and about 24 of those tick by while you’re either typing keywords or deciding which result to choose. Google has been working really hard over the years to improve the speed of their server, network architecture, internet backbone, browser technologies to deliver search results faster. And I have to say that they did a pretty good job on that. However there are certain human factors which are beyond Google’s control – for instance, what if the searcher can’t seem to find the right result, or what if the searcher can’t communicate what he wants via a search phrase etc. Google has tried to tackle some of the human factors with products like Google Suggest which is Google’s auto complete feature for search keywords, the auto spelling correction, related searches and so on.

But now with this new Google Instant, they really want to take everything to the next level. Google Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Some Cool Features of Google Instant:

Truly Dynamic Results - Google dynamically displays lots of relevant search results as you type in your search query. You don’t need to click anything or even hit enter. This allows you to easily interact with your results and click through to the web content you need.

Auto Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that it can predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing your complete search phrase. So if you happen to find what you need, you don’t need to complete your search phrase.

Scroll to search - Google Instant allows you to Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Google Instant – Demo Video

Check out Google Instant: http://google.com/instant

The Google Beat

Saad Kamal — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:28:41 +0000

Do you like to keep yourself on top of all the latest trends & happenings around you? Then you must try out the Google Beat. Google beat is a regular video series with it’s host Anne Espiritu, who goes over some of the hottest searches on Google in the United States. The search data is compiled from Google’s very own public tools like Google Trends & Google Insights for search and they are presented in a nice High Definition video podcast with some context & news surrounding the searches.

Google Beat – Premier Episode 1

Google Blog officially announced the opening of the Google beat youtube channel today and writes:

Using data from Google Trends, Google Insights for Search and some additional tools, the Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week. You’ve probably seen our previous deep dives into Google search trends, like our annual year-end Zeitgeist and posts here about search trends related to events like the World Cup, the Oscars® and beyond. Searches can be unexpected, and sometimes what’s popular one week could never have been predicted the week before (think of Falcon Heene, last October’s “balloon boy” or Steven Slater). We’re looking forward to seeing what our data will reveal.

So if you are interested you should check out Google beats premier video embedded above (or click here), and don’t forget to subscribe to the Google Beat YouTube channel to get the regular updates.

Personally I really like the idea and I did enjoy the premier video. However I’d love the videos to be slightly longer and cover some of the international searches too. In case Google hasn’t noticed, there are people who uses google search outside the U.S.

Adsense Content Ad Units Revamped!

Saad Kamal — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:00:32 +0000

Official Google adsense blog reported that Google adsense team is working on a revamped design of three of the Adsense for Content Ad units. The new units are more space efficient and visually appealing for users with the change in the layout of the text.

According to Google, they have done a lot of testing (I’m sure they have) and starting the first revamp initiative with the following ad units:

Leaderboard (728×90): the title, description, and URL are now arranged in rows instead of columns (except in the case when only one single ad is showing)
Medium and large rectangles (300×250, 336×280): the URL is now in the same line as the title

In addition to the layout, Adsense publishers may also see a few minor adjustments made to the font size. For instnace, the font size for the leaderboard with four ads is much more readable now compared to the previous version.

Here is a sample of how they may look like:

My Two Cents: I’m personally very excited about this news from both Advertiser and Publisher stand point. I do like the new design/layout of the Adsense Content ad units and I’m pretty sure that this will have a big positive impact on the CTR. I am yet to see these units popping up anywhere on the web but as I understand, Google is slowly rolling this feature out to all Adsense publishers.

So what do you think of this new ad design? Share in the comments!

5 Useful Google Analytics Features You Probably Don’t Use

Saad Kamal — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:14:46 +0000

Google Analytics is free and powerful web analytics tool that gives webmasters all sorts of statistics about their website. Over the years Google analytics has really evolved with amazing new features and become a strong product for any small-medium business or even an enterprise.

Recently during a session with one of my client (who runs an online t-shirts store), I went over some of the analytics feature that he wasn’t using. In fact he was totally clueless that many of those even existed. Even though these features have existed inside Google Analytics for quite some time now, but an average webmasters never bothers to check beyond their total number of hits on a day, traffic sources and so on.

So I decided to do a quick post highlighting some of the ‘less-used’ features of Google Analytics and why you should start using them.

1. Google Analytics Alerts (Intelligence): Google Analytics intelligence comes with a set of default alerts that will show you interesting trends in your analytics data, 24/7. When something happens out of ordinary, it is important that you get access to that information fast and focus on making strategic decisions, instead of sifting through an endless pile of data. The Automatic Alerts stores historical data as well so you can go back in time and look at some of the automatic alerts which has been triggered by Google Analytics. This can really help you discover insights that might otherwise go unnoticed. For instance, if your site’s bounce rate suddenly increases or say Search Traffic suddenly decreases, Google Analytics should be able to catch that and alert you to dig down further. Google Analytics also gives you the flexibility of adding custom alerts with your own variables & rules. Watch the following video to learn more:

2. Comparing Stats with your Past Data: Everyone loves the calendar feature that lets you see all your stats for a specific time frame (e.g. 22nd July 2010 – 29th July 2010). But sometimes raw figures doesn’t really make much sense if you don’t have anything to compare those with. Fortunately Google Analytics gives a easy way for anyone to compare their stats with a past timeline. The best part is it also calculates the difference in numbers for you and give you a quick overview of the comparison. To access this feature, simply check “Compare to past” in the calendar and it will let you select the time period of your past stats.

3. Customize your Google Analytics Dashboard: By default the Google Analytics Dashboard shows some basic widgets like Site usage, visitor overview, goal overview, content overview, traffic sources overview etc. But lets say if you are running an eCommerce website, you may also want to look at some other widgets on your dashboard like – Adwords overview, Top Landing Pages, Search Keywords etc. So if you like to see any particular widget on the dashboard, simply go to that specific page and press “Add to Dashboard” button on top. Now if you go back to your Dashboard you will see that widget at the bottom of the page. You are also free to drag-and-move all the dashboard widgets in any order you like. If you don’t find a particular widget useful and think that its taking up your dashboard space, simply press the cross (‘x’) on the corner to remove it from your default dashboard view.

4. Segment your Traffic using Advanced Segmentation: Analyzing your data in aggregate is not very useful, as it doesn’t give you the right insights of the many individual factors that builds up the overall stats. Google analytics comes with a very powerful segmentation tool that you can use to identify which segments of your traffic are performing and which are not. This leads to more analysis on the under performing segments and eventually an increased overall site performance. There are a bunch of default segments available, that makes it very easy for you to segment out your paid and organic search data or just perform some analysis on the visits with conversion and so on. Once you are comfortable with the basics, you can also make up your own custom segments and save them for later user. Watch the video below that briefly goes through the GA Advanced Segmentation feature.

5. Setting up Goals: Every website has some business objectives that it wants to achieve. For an eCommerce store it may be the number of raw sales, for a consulting business it may be the number of leads thats comes from the site’s contact page. Google analytics makes it very easy to define and track the business goals of your website. This comes very handy to justify the amount of money/resources that you are spending in order to achieve some of your business goals. For instance, you may have heard that twitter/facebook brings in a lot of traffic to a website and lets say so you have started spending 8 hours day on those sites trying to promote your products. Maybe you have gotten a couple of hundred visitors but without proper tracking it would be very hard for you to know whether it was worth all the effort? Because any typical analytics stats would only tell you that you have received “X” number of visits from Facebook or Twitter. But what it doesn’t tell you is, how many of those visitors has also made a purchase fro your store or has performed a positive action that helped your business in any way. With Google Analytics Goals tracking, you will be able to know exactly that. If you are spending money on PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising), Goals are a must have. You can learn more about setting up Goals in Google Analyics here.

Bonus:

Make it a habit to check your Analytics Data: Many website owners set up Google Analytics on Day 1 and never log back in to check what is actually happening. Having Google Analytics on your website doesn’t help you if you are not making good use of the data and insight it provides. So it is very important that you make it a habit to look at your stats regularly based on which you can further tweak your web strategy and (hopefully) improve your site’s overall performance. You can make Google analytics send you a daily/weekly/monthly report via email, so that you get access to all the stats right from your inbox.

So what is your favorite Google Analytics feature? Share in comments!

YouTube Leanback – YouTube for TV

Saad Kamal — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:00:47 +0000

If you are addicted to YouTube then you are going to love this new beta interface that youtube has put up – Its called “Youtube Leanback“. As the name implies, YouTube Leanback is basically all about letting you sit back, relax and be entertained by all the ~~crazy cat videos~~ great video content that YouTube has to offer. The best part of this interface is It works exactly like a TV channel; you basically tune in to YouTube Leanback and it automatically starts playing videos tailored to your interests and stuffs that you liked before. The videos play in full screen and in high definition. It doesn’t require any input from the user as it plays continuously one video after another. You don’t need to click, search or even browse for videos – you get them all automatically like a broadcast of a TV channel.

This is a basically Google’s move to put YouTube on your living room and essentially on all television sets & set top boxes that has access to the Internet. However I don’t quite like the way they recommend videos. I know its largely done automatically by the algorithm based on my preference & social graph, however I think Google needs to go one step forward here and find out a way to make these video content really ‘suitable’ for the living room. I mean, I may have came across a cat video and “liked” it on YouTube but that doesn’t mean that I am willing to watch cat videos all day on my TV.

How to get Youtube Leanback?

To experience YouTube Leanback yourself, simply go to www.youtube.com/leanback, and you’ll note that a selection of videos — your “feed” — plays immediately. This feed is created based on your YouTube settings and preferences. This includes videos from your subscriptions and stuff that your friends are sharing on Facebook (Provided that you have connected your Facebook account with YouTube). You can also watch the most popular comedy, entertainment, news, or more. And if you don’t care for the video that’s playing, use the right arrow key on your keyboard to skip ahead to the next video, or try the up/down arrows to search, access player controls, and browse channels and videos. The best thing about this interface is that you won’t need your mouse for this experience. Check out the video below to learn more: