Introducing website satisfaction by Google Consumer Surveys

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Webmaster level: all

We're now offering webmasters an easy and free way to collect feedback from your website visitors with website satisfaction surveys. All you have to do is paste a small snippet of code in the HTML for your website and this will load a discreet satisfaction survey in the lower right hand corner of your website. Google automatically aggregates and analyzes responses, providing the data back to you through a simple online interface.


Users will be asked to complete a four-question satisfaction survey. Surveys will run until they have received 500 responses and will start again after 30 days so you can track responses over time. This is currently limited to US English visitors on non-mobile devices. The default questions are free and you can customize questions for just $0.01 per response or $5.00 for 500 responses.


Survey Setup and Code Placement Tips

To set up the survey code, you'll need to have access to the source code for your website.
  1. Sign into Google Consumer Surveys for website satisfaction to find the code snippet.
  2. You have the option to enter the website name and URL, survey timing, and survey frequency.
  3. Click on the “Activate survey” button when ready.
  4. Once you find the code snippet on top of the setup page, copy and paste it into your web page, just before the closing </head> tag. If your website uses templates to generate pages, enter it just before the closing </head> tag in the file that contains the <head> section.
If  you have any questions, please read our Help Center article to learn more.

Posted by Marisa Currie-Rose
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Update on Public Service Search

Author Admin
Public Service Search is a service that enables non-profit, university, and government web sites to provide search functionality to their visitors without serving ads. While we've stopped accepting new Public Service Search accounts, if you want to add the functionality of this service to your site, we encourage you to check out the Google Custom Search Engine. Note that if you already have a Public Service Search account, you'll be able to continue offering search results on your site.

A Custom Search Engine can provide you with free web search and site search with the option to specify and prioritize the sites that are included in your search results. You can also customize your search engine to match the look and feel of your site, and if your site is a non-profit, university, or government site, you can choose not to display ads on your results pages.

You have two opportunities to disable ads on your Custom Search Engine. You can select the "Do not show ads" option when you first create a Custom Search Engine, or you can follow the steps below to disable advertising on your existing Custom Search Engine:

1. Click the "My search engines" link on the left-hand side of the Overview page.
2. Click the "control panel" link next to the name of your search engine.
3. Under the "Preferences" section of the Control panel page, select the Advertising status option that reads "Do not show ads on results pages (for non-profits, universities, and government agencies only)."
4. Click the "Save Changes" button.

Remember that disabling ads is available only for non-profit, university, and government sites. If you have a site that doesn't fit into one of these categories, you can still provide search to your visitors using the Custom Search Engine capabilities.

For more information or help with Custom Search Engines, check out the FAQ or post a question to the discussion group.
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Viva, Webmasters in Vegas

Author Admin
Thanks for visiting us at WebmasterWorld PubCon in Las Vegas couple weeks ago. Whether it was at the panel sessions, the exhibitor hall, or the Safe Bets event, we had a blast meeting you and sharing with you the many Google products that are available to webmasters to enhance and drive traffic to your site. For those who weren't able to join us, here are answers to some of the top questions that we heard:

Q: How do I increase the visibility of my site in search results?
A: There are many factors that can impact visibility of your site in search results. We outlined just a few tips that can make a big difference to increasing your site's visibility in Google search results. First, you should ensure your site has quality content that is unique. Second, have quality sites link to your site. Third, submit a Sitemap to let us know about all the URLs on your site. Fourth, sign up for a webmaster tools account to get information how about Google sees your site, such as crawl errors, indexing details, and top queries to your site. Lastly, you can visit Webmaster Central and Webmaster Help Center for more webmaster related questions and resources.

Q How much do I have to pay to create a Google Custom Search Engine?
A: Nothing -- it's free. In addition to being able to create your own custom search engine on your site, you can make money on your site using AdSense for Search.

Q: Why is it better to create gadgets rather than create feeds?
A: First, gadgets are much more flexible. As a publisher, you control the format of your content. Second, gadgets are by nature more interactive. They can be built with flash, HTML or AJAX, and are generally much more interesting than feeds. Finally, your users can customize a gadget to their liking, making your content a lot more targeted.

Q: What is this new ad placement feature for AdSense and how come I don't see it in my account?
A: Ad placements are publisher-defined groups of ad units that advertisers will see when searching for places where they can target their ads. If you don't yet see it in your AdSense account, it's because we've been slowly rolling out this feature to everyone. This exciting feature will be available to all publishers in the next few weeks, so be sure to keep an eye out.

Q: What's the easiest way to put a searchable Google Map on my web page?
A: Use the Map Search Wizard to design a Google Map for your page. The wizard will write all of the code for you; all you need to do is copy and paste the code into your web page, and your users will see your location on a map.

For more information about Google products for webmasters, you can check them out here:
We also wanted to share some photos from PubCon. If you look closely enough, you may be able to see yourself.


Thanks for stopping by, on behalf of the 25 Googlers in attendance!
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Got a website? Get gadgets.

Author Admin
Google Gadgets are miniature-sized devices that offer cool and dynamic content -- they can be games, news clips, weather reports, maps, or most anything you can dream up. They've been around for a while, but their reach got a lot broader last week when we made it possible for anyone to add gadgets to their own webpages. Here's an example of a flight status tracker, for instance, that can be placed on any page on the web for free.

Anyone can search for gadgets to add to their own webpage for free in our directory of gadgets for your webpage. To put a gadget on your page, just pick the gadget you like, set your preferences, and copy-and-paste the HTML that is generated for you onto your own page.

Creating gadgets for others isn't hard, either, and it can be a great way to get your content in front of people while they're visiting Google or other sites. Here are a few suggestions for distributing your own content on the Google homepage or other pages across the web:

* Create a Google Gadget for distribution across the web. Gadgets can be most anything, from simple HTML to complex applications. It’s easy to experiment with gadgets – anyone with even a little bit of web design experience can make a simple one (even me!), and more advanced programmers can create really snazzy, complex ones. But remember, it’s also quick and easy for people to delete gadgets or add new ones too their own pages. To help you make sure your gadget will be popular across the web, we provide a few guidelines you can use to create gadgets. The more often folks find your content to be useful, the longer they'll keep your gadget on their pages, and the more often they’ll visit your site.

* If your website has a feed, visitors can put snippets of your content on their own Google homepages quickly and easily, and you don't even need to develop a gadget. However, you will be able to customize their experience much more fully with a gadget than with a feed.

* By putting the “Add to Google” button in a prominent spot on your site, you can increase the reach of your content, because visitors who click to add your gadget or feed to Google can see your content each time they visit the Google homepage. Promoting your own gadget or feed can also increase its popularity, which contributes to a higher ranking in the directory of gadgets for the Google personalized homepage.
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Introducing Google Checkout

Author Admin
For you webmasters that manage sites that sell online, we'd like to introduce you to one of our newest products, Google Checkout. Google Checkout is a checkout process that you integrate with your site(s), enabling your customers to quickly buy from you by providing only a single username and password. From there, you can use Checkout to charge your customers' credit cards and process their orders.

Users of Google's search advertising program, AdWords, get the added benefit of the Google Checkout badge and free transaction processing. The Google Checkout badge is an icon that appears on your AdWords ads and improves the effectiveness of your advertising by letting searchers know that you accept Checkout. Also, for every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 of Checkout sales for free. Even if you don't use AdWords, you can still process sales for a low 2% and $0.20 per transaction. So if you're interested in implementing Google Checkout, we encourage you to learn more.

If you're managing the sites of other sellers, you might want to sign up for our merchant referral program where you can earn cash for helping your sellers get up and running with Google Checkout. You can earn $25 for every merchant you refer that processes at least 3 unique customer transactions and $500 in Checkout sales. And you can earn $5 for every $1,000 of Checkout sales processed by the merchants you refer. If you're interested, apply here.
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For Those Wondering About Public Service Search

Author Admin

Update: The described product or service is no longer available. More information.

We recently learned of a security issue with our Public Service Search service and disabled login functionality temporarily to protect our Public Service Search users while we were working to fix the problem. We are not aware of any malicious exploits of this problem and this service represents an extremely small portion of searches.

We have a temporary fix in place currently that prevents exploitation of this problem and will have a permanent solution in place shortly. Unfortunately, the temporary fix may inconvenience a small number of Public Service Search users in the following ways:

* Public Service Search is currently not open to new signups.
* If you use Public Service Search on your site, you are currently unable to log in to make changes, but rest assured that Public Service Search continues to function properly on your site.
* The template system is currently disabled, so search results will appear in a standard Google search results format, rather than customized to match the look and feel of your site. However, the search results themselves are not being modified.


If you are a Public Service Search user and are having trouble logging in right now, please sit tight. As soon as the permanent solution is in place the service will be back on its feet again. In the meantime, you will still be able to provide site-specific searches on your site as usual.

Google introduced this service several years ago to support universities and non-profit organizations by offering ad-free search capabilities for their sites. Our non-profit and university users are extremely important to us and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please post any questions or concerns in our webmaster discussion forum and we'll try our best to answer any questions you may have.
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