Should you use Google Trends to Estimate Site Traffic?

Google Trends for Websites is one among the few online tools that you may use to get an idea of a website’s traffic. Simply provide the address (URL) of the website and the tool will give you a rough estimate of the number of people who visit that site per day (unique visitors).

For instance, this report generated by Google Trends seems to suggest that the Wikipedia website, on an average, gets around 40 million unique visitors daily.

But how accurate is Google Trends data? I was recently comparing the Google Analytics data with Google Trends for labnol.org and, surprisingly, the results were vastly different. See these Google Trends and Google Analytics charts for the same period.

Google Analytics Chart for labnol.org

Google Trends Chart for labnol.org

The Google Trends chart for this site seems to suggest that global traffic (daily unique visitors) has been on a constant decline since March 2011 and almost hit the December 2008 level. However, another data source - Google Analytics - paints a very different picture.

Analytics puts the daily visitor count at 100K while Trends calculates that number as 50K. Yes, there was a dip in March when Panda struck but the site recovered soon thereafter.

Anyone else seeing such a discrepancy for their site in Google Trends?

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Sharing on Twitter, Facebook and Google+

There’s little denying that Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the three most active social networks at this time where billions of pieces of content are shared every single day.

To give you an idea, more than 200 million tweets are written every day by 100+ million users on Twitter while the numbers are even more impressive for Facebook. The 800+ million users of Facebook like and share more than 2 billion posts per day. Google+ is growing at an impressive rate but is still a relatively small player with 43 million users.

Thus, as a web publisher, it definitely makes lot of sense for you to share your content across all these channels but have you ever wondered which of these networks have the highest engagement level? Which of them would bring the maximum eyeballs to your content?

Kevin Rose, best known as the founder of Digg, recently did an interesting experiment. He shared the same web article on his Twitter, Facebook and Google+ profiles simultaneously and, with the help of bit.ly analytics, calculated the number of clicks coming from each of these social networks for the next two days. The results aren’t very surprising.

 

Kevin has 1.2 million followers on Twitter who clicked on the link ~5800 times. Some 135k people have added Kevin to their Google+ circle and that got him ~3600 clicks. Finally, his 261k subscribers on Facebook clicked on the link link more than 11000 times.

The click-through ratio, or the engagement level, was the highest on Facebook.

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Google Chrome is now Bundled with Adobe Reader

Not long ago, the Google Toolbar was bundled with some popular software programs including Skype, Adobe Reader, Real Player, WinZip and more.

Next on the bundled software list is probably Google Chrome. If you are on the Adobe.com website to download Adobe Reader X, you may also be prompted to install the Google Chrome browser on your computer (screenshot).

This looks a strange combination to me for one very-obvious reason.

A majority of people could be using Adobe Reader primarily for viewing PDF files on their computer but the newer versions of Google Chrome include a built-in PDF viewer by default. Would people still want to install Adobe Reader on their machines when they’ve already got Chrome, courtesy Adobe?

Yes, Adobe Reader is a more powerful and capable software that Chrome’s PDF viewer but for reading simple PDFs, wouldn’t the latter tool just suffice?

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Google+ Hangouts Are Now More Sign-Language Friendly [VIDEO]

Google+ Hangouts were already popular with users who communicate with sign language, but thanks to improvements in video stability and a new “Take the Floor” feature, Google’s group video chat capability just got a lot more accessible for everyone.

Switching between speakers in Hangouts is automatic using voice activation, where whomever is talking the most (or the loudest) is shown in the main video area, and all others are seen in smaller video thumbnails. Sounds great, and that automatic switching is one of the coolest features of Google+ Hangouts.

But that wasn’t working as well for hearing-impaired users in chat areas where all users were signing — the main screen was usually occupied by whichever user’s microphone was picking up the most background noise. As a result, most users were often trying to read the sign language of people who were shown on tiny thumbnail screens.

Google’s fixed that with its new “Take the Floor” feature. In a Google+ post, Google engineering director Chee Chew explained how it works:

1) Have everyone mute their audio.
2) When you want to sign something, hit Shift+s.
3) When you see yourself as the main video, that’s your cue. You’ve got the floor… everyone’s main video has switched to you. Sign away.

Chew added, “We’ve noticed over the past few weeks that the stability and quality of the video in Hangouts has improved as well, which also makes it easier for the hearing impaired to see and understand sign language.”

Great idea, Google.

[via WebProNews]

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Turn your Google Docs into a Fax Machine

While there are dozens of web-based services that let you send and receive faxes from the computer without requiring a fax machine, Interfax goes one step further – it turns your Google Docs into a complete fax machine.

You just have to connect your Google Docs account with Interfax and once the link is enabled, you can fax any of your existing Google Docs documents, or spreadsheets, to any fax number in the world right from the browser. You may even send the same Google Docs file to multiple fax machines in one go – remember to separate the different fax numbers / Google Contact names by commas.

The cost for sending faxes from Google Docs varies according to the destination country and the length of the document. For instance, if you are to send a fax to US, the cost would be 13¢ per page, 15¢ for UK while a single page fax to an Indian number would cost you 60¢. There’s no monthly fee for sending faxes though you’ll have to buy minimum credits for $10.

GinzaFax is another online fax service that is built around Google Docs. It is slightly more expensive to send faxes through GinzaFax – the cost 40¢ per page for US numbers and 60¢ for other countries – but here you get a $5 free credit for sending faxes the first time you sign up for an account.

Other than sending faxes, you may also use both Interfax and Ginza Fax to receive faxes from anywhere in the world directly into your Google Docs account. The incoming faxes are automatically converted to PDF format and they get saved in a separate folder thus making it easier for you to locate them later.

Also see: Choosing an Internet Based Fax Service

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Samsung Drops Prices for Google Chromebooks

Chromebooks went for sale in June and in this short period of time, Samsung has already dropped the price of their Google Chrome OS laptops by as much as 10%.

The Wi-Fi only Series 5 Chromebook is now selling for $399.99, down from $429.99, while the 3G + Wi-Fi Chromebook is available for $449.99, down 10% from the original $499.99. The prices for Acer Chromebooks are however unchanged.

While a price drop is always welcome, I am still not convinced why would anyone prefer a stripped-down Chrome OS based laptop over these netbooks that are much more versatile.

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File a DMCA Complaint with the help of Google Docs

The moment you publish a new article on your website or blog, the “web scraping” bots around the world will spring into action. They’ll copy your articles to publish them on other websites and the fact that you syndicate content through RSS feeds makes their “copy-paste” job even simpler.

These bots are often lazy – they would rarely modify your articles before republishing them – and thus it becomes very easy for you as well to identify the sites that are using your content without permission. For instance, I add a line “This story was originally published at Digital Inspiration” to the feed and thus a quick Google search can reveal the names of sites that are possibly copying my stories.

The easiest way to deal with online plagiarism is that you send a DMCA notice to search engines, the web hosting provider and the advertising partners (like AdSense) of the offending site. Google Search requires you to fax the DMCA notices, AdSense offers an online form while most web hosts accept DMCA over e-mail.

Find Copies of your Work with Google Docs

It is pretty easy to write a DMCA complaint but there’s one section in the form that may involve a little effort – you need to provide a list of URLs of pages that “allegedly contain infringing material” and also the corresponding URLs that contain the original work.

If you have been looking for a tool that can automatically generate this list for you, take a peek at this Google Docs Sheet. Make sure you are signed in with your Google Account and the use File -> Make a copy to create your own working copy of the Google Sheet. Then put in your site’s RSS feed URL in the Cell B3 and the URL of offending site in Cell B4 and the sheet will create the data you need for the DMCA.

What happens behind the scenes

Here’s how the above Google Docs sheet work - it take your RSS feed and determines the title and the URL of your 10 recently published stories using the ImportFeed function.

The sheet then runs a separate Google Search for each of the 10 stories to determine if a story with the same title exists on the offending site. If a copy is found, the URL of that page is extracted from Google Search using XPath and ImportXML as shown below.

=ImportXML(CONCATENATE("http://www.google.com/search?q=intitle:%22", A6, "%22 site:", $B$4), "//a[@class='l']/@href")

If you are getting an N/A for some fields, it either indicates that the particular story was not found on the offending site or it could be temporary problem with Google search as well.

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Drive a Car Anywhere in the World on Google Maps

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to drive a car on the congested streets of lower Manhattan in Now York or the scenic Transfagara?an road in Romania?

Meet Mini Maps, a Google Maps based Flash mashup that lets you drive a car virtually anywhere in the world using the controls on the keyboard. Simply select a location on Google Maps – you can either type the address or choose a point on the map visually – and hit the car accelerator (the up arrow key) to start moving.

Unlike the other Google Maps based car-driving games, Mini Maps is smart enough to recognize the terrain and the roads in your driving area and adds virtual boundaries on either sides of the road as you drive. If the area you’ve selected for driving is too dark, the car headlights will turn on automatically or your can press the “N” key to turn-off the night mode.

There’s more. You can create your own track on Google Maps by clicking at different points on the map or you can invite your other Facebook friends to Mini Map for a quick game of car racing. The stuff is very nicely done and can be addictive!

See the other Google Games.

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Google Search iOS App Receives Instant Pages Update

Following on from the addition of the new Instant Pages in Google’s Chrome browser earlier this month. Google has now rolled out a new update for its iOS Search application which also now includes the new Instant Pages feature.

Instant Pages has been designed by Google to bring extra speed to your search by preloading your first search results, when Google is confident they have matched your search request accurately. When you then select the first result it will load instantly. Watch a video after the jump to see just how quick the new Instant Pages feature is when used with Google’s Chrome desktop browser.

Other new additions in the latest iOS App update also include a new way to switch between Web, Images, Places and more - Improved help screen - Removed Calendar alerts, together with minor bug fixes.

Source: Google Search App

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Google Maps Android App Receives “Bubble Buttons” For Easier Navigation And Calls

If you use Google Maps on your Android device you might be interested in a new feature called “Bubble Buttons” which has arrived with the latest update from Google.

Bubble Buttons, as you can see in the image below, the larger buttons have now been added to map results enabling you to make a calls and navigate with ease on your Android smartphone.

If you have already installed the latest Google Maps version on your Android device you can enable the new Bubble Buttons feature by going to Menu > More > Labs. Then scroll down to “Bubble Buttons” and turn it on. If you don’t already have Google Maps for Android you can download it from the Android Market now for free.

Source: Google Maps : Lifehacker

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Google Adds Honeycomb Support To Its Android Reader App

As well as their update to their iOS Search application Google has also today rolled out a new updated for its Android Reader app. Bring Honeycomb support to the application together with a number of visual improvements.

The new Honeycomb support within Google Android Reader app provides a similar look to its desktop version within two viewing panes. Together with a streamlined interface and easy to use navigation and sharing controls positioned in the top right of the screen.

Its looks and feel of Google’s Reader app on Android smartphones has also improved bringin it more inline with other device version with a slicker interface design and easier navigation. Also note the “Mark Previous as Read” button has now moved into the context menu; simply press and hold on an item to use this feature.

If you haven’t already downloaded it Google Reader for Android is free from the Android Market now.

Source: Android Police

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Google Sets A Deadline To Complete The $12.5 Billion Motorola Deal

Earlier this week Google announced they had made an offer to purchase Motorola for 12.5 Billion with a guarantee that if the deal didn’t go through Google would pay Motorola a massive $2.5 Billion break up fee. Well today Google has now drawn a line in the sand and set a date for the deals completion of February 15th 2013.

Google’s CEO Larry Page had the following to say about the deal, 

“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

Source: All Things D

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