Check out the new tool just launched to help you explore images called Google Image Swirl which incorporates brand new computer vision research to “cluster similar images into representative groups” in an exciting interface.
For example, if you search on Image Swirl for [washington], you’ll see 12 image thumbnails including President Washington, the Washington Monument, a map of Washington D.C. and the Capitol Building:
For those of you who build websites using Google Sites you will be pleased to know that Google have just added a gallery of site templates in Google Sites. Anyone can browse the public template gallery, and businesses using Google Apps each have a private area where employees can share site templates with coworkers.
Templates are designed to help you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more.
There are templates for family sites, weddings, neighborhood associations, clubs, charitable causes and more in the public gallery.
Google have announced a new AdSense interface in beta that is about to be rolled out to publishers. Here is a summary of the key differences with the new interface:
Helps you make more informed decisions about your sites.
The new AdSense interface includes more detailed performance reports and enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats. It also will provide you with additional metrics such as the amount you’ve earned from various ad, targeting and bid types. Here’s a preview of what the new reports currently look like in the beta:
Today Google announced a set of new features in Google Friend Connect that let website owners get to know their users, encourage users to get to know each other and personalize their site content, including Google ads. This now gives publishers (website owners) the option to show ads that match visitors’ interests.
When you log in to your Google Friend Connect account, you’ll notice a new “Interests” section where you can create a list of questions for users to answer, either as part of your website’s registration process or via a poll gadget on the site itself.
For instance, if you have a website for guitar enthusiasts, you might ask users to share their preferred brand of guitar, the last concert they attended, their favorite guitar artist, and so on. The details users share are added to their Friend Connect profiles and made publicly available, enabling users to learn more about each other.
These details also allow you to display more relevant ads that match the interests users share. From the “AdSense” section of your Friend Connect account, you can either create new ad units that take users’ interests into account or choose to enhance existing ad units on your website.
Google Ad Planner is a new free media planning tool that can help you to refine and target your advertising in a number of ways:
Identify websites your target customers are most likely to visit
Easily build media plans for yourself or your clients
This tool is amazing. Check it out at https://www.google.com/adplanner/
Squidoo is one of the largest free sites that allow you to make money and drive traffic to your other offers.
Some “lensmasters” (owners of Squidoo lenses or pages) earn thousands of dollars a year. Admittedly it’s not enough money to live on but it’s a nice additional bonus income no matter how much you are currently earning.
Perhaps more importantly however Squidoo is a great way to get a top search engine ranking for even the most competitive key phrases because the Squidoo.com domain has such a high Google Pagerank – current PR7.
There are several ways to earn money on Squidoo:
Sell things on your lens through affiliate programs provided by CafePress, Amazon and eBay. Squidoo splits the commission with you.
Google Adsense and Glam ads. All the revenue from these programs go into a big pot and then it’s split with lensmasters according to how much traffic their lenses got.
For more details on earning money with Squidoo click here
One of the best ways to drive traffic with Squidoo is to create a lot of lenses. Not just 2 or 3 but try for 50 high quality lenses on subjects around the main offer you promote.
Here are some great examples of the biggest lenses on Squidoo right now:
You can also find a list of the top lenses by Lens Rank.
Squidoo has nearly 900,000 hand built “lenses” – another word for pages focusing on a specific subject. The site launched in 2006 and has since then become one of the top sites to focus on if you want high ranking pages to attract your target audience and funnel them through to your main offer pages.
There is much information about ways to use Squidoo. If you would like to use Squidoo to drive a lot of traffic to your pages really quickly I highly recommend the 5 Minute Traffic Trick.
