Mobile search- Mo-mentum

Mobile search helps people find what they need in a snap. Whether they’re choosing between two restaurants, shopping for a new watch, or buying a movie ticket, people make better decisions when they have access to more information. Search ads are information—answers—and on mobile devices, they’re able to connect people and businesses in new, useful and relevant ways.

Today, we’re unveiling new mobile search ad formats and some new details about the ways many different businesses are benefiting from mobile advertising.

Search ads, meet mobile apps

We’re bringing the worlds of search and apps together with mobile advertising in a few ways:

  • Search ads in mobile apps: Lots of mobile apps give people the ability to search for information—like an app that lets you search for a restaurant nearby. Today we’re announcing Custom Search Ads for these apps. These ads provide useful and relevant answers, for people searching within a mobile app. Custom Search Ads will also help app developers earn more money to fund their apps and grow their businesses on mobile.

    Custom Search Ads in mobile apps

  • Click to Download: Not surprisingly, many people use Google to search for information about mobile apps. This ad format helps consumers right when they’re searching for information about an app, linking them directly to the App Store or Android Marketplace to download. We’ve recently enabled app developers to include app icons and information about the app in their ad unit so that people can make more informed decisions about whether they want to download the app.
  • Mobile App Extensions: This new, beta ad unit enables businesses to use mobile search ads to direct someone to a page within a mobile app already installed on their phone. For example, if someone searches for sneakers on a mobile device, they might see an ad that takes them directly into a cool shopping app they’ve installed on their phone.

Local search ads—so hot right now

Building local context into mobile ads makes them more useful both for both consumers and businesses. Here are a few specific examples:

  • Click to Call: We introduced these ads for high-end smartphones less than two years ago and they’re now driving millions of calls per week to hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. Click to call ads have been very effective in generating leads for businesses of all sizes, across many verticals—more people can call an Enterprise Rent-A-Car near them for rentals and more potential customers can connect with ADT Security for alarm system expertise, for example.
  • Hyperlocal search ads: Launched a year ago, these search ads contain useful local information like phone numbers, driving directions, a number to click and call a business directly, and also show people how far they are from specific business locations. Roy’s Restaurants’ efforts with this format led to a 40 percent increase in call volume—and lots more full tables!
  • Proximity as a factor in mobile search ads ranking: The distance between a person and an advertiser’s business location is now a factor in mobile search ads ranking. This means an ad for a business with a physical location close to to a consumer may perform better in AdWords—driving more mobile traffic at a lower cost. The feature will be effective only when consumers opt in to share their device location for mobile searches. It will make our hyperlocal format more useful for businesses and users—advertisers can get started with this by creating Location Extensions for their mobile campaigns. Particularly this holiday season, when consumers are using their mobile phones to find a nearby store for last minute gift purchases, this new feature will help connect customers with storefronts.
  • Circulars: We began testing this new ad format with Best Buy and Macy’s earlier this month. When someone clicks on a search or display ad (on desktop, mobile or tablet devices), they may see these engaging ads which contain photos of relevant products and special offers. With a few simple clicks, people who are at their desk can email that circular to their mobile phones, and later walk into their local store, flash their phone and redeem the offers.
Macy’s Circular ads on mobile

The exciting thing for mobile users and businesses is that the possibilities for mobile search advertising are nearly endless. We’re looking forward to helping businesses and consumers alike take advantage of this brave new (mobile) world.

Google Apps at I/O 2011: A Lots of Excitement

It’s been only two short weeks since Google I/O 2011! There was fantastic energy at the event, and developers had their choice of over 100+ sessions on topics ranging from Google Apps to Android to App Engine to HTML5 to Cloud Robotics.


Here are the highlights from the Google Apps track:

Sessions

In the Google Apps track, we had 8 sessions on a variety of topics of interest to Google Apps Marketplace developers, systems integrators and customers alike. All of the sessions are available in HD on YouTube and we’ve also posted many of the session slides and notes.

Google Apps Marketplace:

  • Launch and Grow your Business App on the Google Apps Marketplace provided an intro to the Apps Marketplace, but most of the session was third-party developers telling the story of their businesses, demoing their integrations and providing guidance for other developers looking for success on the Marketplace. Teaser: 30% free->paid conversion rates from GQueues on the Google Apps Marketplace.
  • Apps Marketplace: Best Practices and Integrations covered a wealth of best practices for business app development and Google Apps integrations based on experience working with hundreds of developers building applications for the Google Apps Marketplace.

Google Apps Script:

  • Enterprise Workflow with Apps Script showed how Google Apps Script can be used to build complex workflows using simple server-side JavaScript code. The speakers built on several examples for document publishing approval, showing lots of code for how it’s done.
  • Developing Apps, Add-Ins and More stepped through building Add-Ins with deep integration into the Google Apps UI and full applications. The team announced the Apps Script GUI Builder to drag and drop UI components and full Apps Script APIs for Gmail and Google Docs.

Application APIs:

Solutions and Administration:

  • Developing Innovative Custom Business Solutions with Google Apps covered how web solution providers are driving us towards the goal of 100% web. Included many real-world examples from a variety of companies who are extending Google Apps using Apps Script, Google Sites, gadgets, Data APIs, App Engine, GWT and more.
  • Compliance and Security in the Cloud talked about the suite of APIs and tools available for Google Apps customers to handle policy compliance, audit, incident response and more. Very helpful session for IT administrators, CTOs and CIOs using Google Apps, with much of the session diving into several examples using real-world use cases.

Developer Sandbox

We had 24 fantastic companies in our Developer Sandbox this year, showcasing the applications they built for the Google Apps Marketplace and the services they provide Google Apps customers as system integrators or VARs. We were excited to see many of the companies talking about new integrations they have recently built with Google Apps.

Parties and Fun

The official After Hours event celebrated technical and artistic innovation and included robots, games and transforming vehicles in addition to a live performance from Jane’s Addiction. Many Google teams and companies attending I/O also threw plenty of great parties at nearby bars and restaurants.

Mini-Newsletter From Your Google Chrome Security Team

We’re always working hard to enhance the Chrome browser with bug fixes, new defenses and new features. The release of Chrome 10 is no different, and there are some items worth highlighting:
Chrome 10: Flash sandboxing
With Chrome 10, our first cut of the previously announced Flash sandboxing initiative is now enabled by default for the Windows platform on Vista and newer. Additionally, because we automatically update Flash to the latest and most secure version, this should provide useful defense in depth.
Chrome 10: Out-of-date plug-in warnings
As we previously mentioned, we believe that some of the most significant opportunities to increase user security revolve around plugins. We’ve made a number of improvements in this area, including actively encouraging users to update their plug-ins to the most secure version. Chrome now detects when a plug-in is out of date and blocks it with a simple infobar. This infobar helps guide the user towards updating their plug-in with the latest security fixes.
Chrome 10: Plug-in blocking enhancements
Some of our more advanced users prefer fine-grained control over which plug-ins they wish to run — which can have security and privacy benefits. Chrome has long had a feature which blocks plug-ins by default (Wrench menu -> Preferences -> Under the hood -> Content Settings -> Plug-ins). We’ve improved this feature by adding a context menu to the blocked plug-in placeholder. This menu lets users control which plug-ins do and do not run. Using a context menu helps prevent clickjacking attacks that try to bypass the block. Plug-in placeholders can also be hidden (for example, if they are floating over and obscuring real content), and the actual plug-in that wishes to run is made apparent.
Chromium Security Rewards program still going strong
We mentioned in passing in the 9.0.597.107 release notes that our rewards program has passed $100,000 of rewards. We’d like to re-iterate our thanks to all the named researchers in our Hall of Fame. We’re continually delighted with the stream of interesting and clever bugs that we receive, so it will be exciting to see what the rest of 2011 brings. Remember, we love giving out money!
Still hiring!
We are always looking to expand the Google Chrome Security Team, and we’re looking for a wide range of talents. We can promise exciting and varied work, working to protect hundreds of millions of users and working alongside the best in the industry. Why not have a look at our job posting?