2011 November 08 | Mapsys.info Mapsys.info

Google+ Pages – Already HERE!

Google helps to grow your audience by connecting you with new users. They introduced the +1 button so your site would stand out on search and your users could easily share your content on Google+. But, sometimes you want to join the conversation and post content directly to where people are sharing.

Today they’re introducing Google+ for Business, a collection of tools and products that help you grow your audience. At the core of this is Google+ Pages, your site’s identity on Google+.

Google+ Pages: Have real conversations with the right people
To get your site on Google+, you first need to create a Google+ Page. On your page, you can engage in conversations with your visitors, direct readers back to your site for the latest updates, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and see how many +1’s you have across the web. Google+ Pages will help you build relationships with your users, encouraging them to spend more time engaging with your content.

Google+ Pages are at the heart of Google+ for Business

Hangouts

Sometimes you might want to chat with your users face-to-face. For example, if you run a food blog, you may want to invite a chef to talk about her favorite recipe, or if you manage a fashion review site, beauty specialists might want to hold how-to sessions with makeup tips. Hangouts make this easy, by letting you have high-quality video chats with nine people with a single click. You can use Hangouts to hold live forums, break news or simply get to know people better, all in real time.

Hangouts let you meet your customers, face-to-face

Circles

Circles allow you to group followers of your Page into smaller audiences. You can then share specific messages with specific groups. For example, you could create a Circle containing your most loyal readers and offer them exclusive content.

The Google+ badge: Grow your audience on Google+
To help your users find your page and start sharing, there are two buttons you can add to your site by visiting our Google+ badge configuration tool:

The Google+ icon, a small icon that directly links to your Page.

The Google+ badge, which we’re introducing in the coming days. This badge lets people add your page to their circles without leaving your site, and allows them to get updates from your site via Google+.

Extend the power of +1, stand out in Google search
You can also link your site to your Google+ page so that all your +1s — from your Page, your website, and search results — will get tallied together and appear as a single total. Potential visitors will be more likely to see the recommendations your site has received, whether they’re looking at a search result, your website, or your Page, meaning your +1’s will reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day. You can link your site to your Page either using the Google+ badge or with a piece of code. To set this up, visit our Google+ badge configuration tool.

Bringing Google+ to the rest of Google

Our ultimate vision for Google+ is to transform the overall Google experience — weaving identity and sharing into all of our products. Beginning today, we’re rolling out a new experimental feature to a small group of eligible publishers,Google+ Direct Connect — an easy way for your audience to find your Google+ Page on Google search. If you’ve linked your Page to your site and you qualify, when someone searches for your website’s name with the ‘+’ sign before it Direct Connect will send them directly to your Page. For example, try searching for ‘+YouTube’ on Google. Users will also be prompted to automatically add Pages they find through Direct Connect to their circles.

Direct Connect suggestions start populating as you type on Google.com

Just the beginning
We want to help you get your site on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today. Creating a Google+ Page only takes a few minutes. To get started, you’ll need a personal Google+ profile. If you don’t have a Google account, it’s very quick and easy to join. And if you’re looking for inspiration, check out some of the sites that are already starting to set up their Pages:

To learn more about how Google+ works for your site, check out the Google+ Your Business site. We’re just getting started, and have many more features planned for the coming weeks and months. To keep up to date on the latest news and tips, add the Google+ Your Business page to your circles. If you have ideas on how we can improve Google+ for your site, we’d love to hear them.

Cross posted from the Inside AdSense blog

Google Earth 6.1: New features to explore your world

The Google Earth 6.1 update includes enhancements to make Google Earth easier than ever for both everyday users and business professionals.

Easier to use My Places
If you’re like me, your growing collection of maps in the My Places panel is getting a bit unwieldy. Every time I find a great new map or upload a new GPS track, it gets a little harder to find things. With this release, we’ve added a couple of new features to help you clean house a bit and find things more easily. First, we’ve added the ability to sort a folder – just right click on any folder and choose “Sort A-Z.” We’ve also made our My Places search feature easier to find; now all you have to do is type in the name of a map or a feature and it will highlight in the My Places panel.

You can now sort your My Places folders to improve organization.

Improved Street View
Building on the improvements we made to the Street View experience in Google Earth 6, we’ve now added even more Street View features, including better zoom control through the slider tool and a wider field of view similar to Google Maps. You can now also navigate from one place to another with just a single-click of the mouse. These features make Street View in Google Earth more immersive, while performance improvements create a faster, smoother overall experience.

Street View in Google Earth now has a wider field of view.

Google Earth Pro
While these features are available to all of our users, much of the work we’ve done in Google Earth 6.1 benefits power users and professionals who use Google Earth Pro, including:

Enhanced print layout: Pro users can now include scale bars and directional arrows when printing, making it easy to include all relevant information in client presentations.
Simplified movie maker: It’s now easier to convert saved tours to video and record live actions from the 3D viewer to really bring your presentation to life.
Expanded data styling: Control up to 64 unique style attributes for imported datasets.
Improved networking infrastructure: Earth Pro 6.1 received a robust network update, which offers better support for network proxies and SSL certificates commonly found in corporate networking environments.
Combined elevation profiles and ruler tool: We know that sometimes distance is only one part of the equation. We’ve tied elevation profiles into the ruler tool, making it possible to take into account the entire 3D environment when measuring distance.

Combined ruler and elevation profile tool used to measure Yosemite’s Half Dome Peak.

We hope these enhancements make it even more fun and exciting to explore the planet, wherever you are in the world. Download Google Earth 6.1 to get started.