Is Halloween your “Selloween”? How to prepare for your key business periods

‘Tis the season to be… scary! Halloween has come and gone again — the peak season not just for marauding ghouls and goblins but also for Australia’s costume and party suppliers. Here at Google we see a spike every year around this time in searches about Halloween topics. And we also see businesses like Dean Salakas at ThePartyPeople smartly timing their AdWords campaigns to capitalize on the public’s perennial interest in all things spooky.

ThePartyPeople is one of Australia’s most successful party supply stores, offering a large range of costumes, balloons and themed party accessories. About six weeks ago Dean started “flexing up” for the season by switching on his Halloween AdWords campaign and staffing up for increased customer enquiries. If you take a look at Insights for Search – our free tool to find out what search terms trend on Google at any given time – you can see what searches for Halloween have been hot this year. Unsurprisingly, most people have been looking online for costumes and costume ideas, followed by food, party games and decorations.

The graph shows the growing interest of Aussies in Halloween. By matching his Google AdWords campaign to this trend, Dean got so many orders he actually had to ease up on his campaign in order to fill all the orders. Right through Halloween eve, Dean and his team were still busy trying to keep up with all the enquiries and sales requests that came in over the last few weeks.

If you wonder how you can replicate Dean’s success, here are some tips to help you achieve similar results:

• Make sure you’re online — no matter the device. If you don’t yet have a website, you can sign up for a free one at http://www.gettingbusinessonline.com.au/. You can add your business listing to Google Places on Google Maps. And don’t forget all those customers with smartphones and tablets; with Google sites for mobile landing pages, you can set up a simple site that’s optimized for smaller screens.
• Find and understand your peak seasons. Look up your products or services on Google Insights for Search to determine their demand over the year, and then tweak your keywords to correspond with trending topics. Riding a natural wave is a lot easier than trying to generate your own initial momentum.
• Connect with the hot topics. Can you easily link your product or service to a popular search topic? For example, if you own a costume business that sells items modeled after the latest superhero movie, you might want to advertise against search queries connected to the movie or superhero.

Of course, you know your business better than anyone. But these tools give you a little extra data to help you make decisions.

And a final Halloween tip? Even though Hollywood keeps pumping out vampire romances, Dean told us that Aussies have been much more into zombie costumes this year. And yep — we are seeing that exact same trend in Insights for Search.

Posted by Ross Mcdonald, Head of Retail, Google Australia

Read More Here...

Google+ is now available with Google Apps

This is a cross-post from our Official Google Enterprise Blog

Google Apps fans, today we’re ready to add you to our circles. Google+ makes sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world, and now Google+ is available to people who use Google Apps at university, at work or at home.

Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organisation. Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.*

Google Apps users will have access to the same set of features that are available to every Google+ user, and more. In addition to sharing publicly or with your circles, you’ll also have the option to share with everyone in your organisation, even if you haven’t added all of those people to a circle.


Google+ at home, at work and at university
You use Google Apps in lots of different ways, and we expect the same for Google+. Apps users from artists to doctors to parents to students to teachers have told us that they are ready to join the 40 million people already sharing on Google+.

Circles is a great way to share relevant content with the right people. With Circles, your photography crew doesn’t have to get an update about your morning workout, your triathlon team doesn’t have to see all your thoughts on the latest camera gear, and your project teams can be kept separate from all of this.


Hangouts with extras, which combines multi-person video chat with screen sharing and collaboration in Google Docs, lets you work together on projects even when your team can't be in the same room. Whether you’re out of town, working on a project with a distributed group, or just don’t feel like walking to the next building for your meeting, Hangouts with extras can give your team the productivity boost it needs.


Google+ coming to a campus near you
Many students and teachers have sent us their ideas about how they can use Google+ to teach, learn, work, and play. These are a few Google Apps for Education universities from around the world that are bringing Google+ to their campuses today:

Abilene Christian University

American University in Cairo (Egypt)

Arizona State University

AT Still University

Boise State University

Central Piedmont Community College

Dublin City University (Ireland)

ESSEC Business School (France)

Leeds Metropolitan University (United Kingdom)

Loughborough University (United Kingdom)

Saint Louis University

Strathmore University (Kenya)

Universidad Panamericana (Mexico)

University of Ferrara (Italy)

University of Maryland Baltimore County

University of Minnesota

University of Notre Dame

University of Pavia (Italy)

University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom)

University of Washington

Vanderbilt University

Wake Forest University

Just the beginning
For those of you who’ve already started using Google+ with a personal Google Account and would prefer to use your Google Apps account, we’re building a migration tool to help you move over. With this tool, you won’t have to rebuild your circles, and people who’ve already added you to their circles will automatically be connected to your new profile. We expect this migration option to be ready in a few weeks, so if you’d like, you can go ahead and get started with your Apps account today and merge your connections once the tool is available.

It took more technical work than we expected to bring Google+ to Google Apps, and we thank you for your patience. This integration is just the beginning. We’ll continue to add features and improve the way that Google+ works with Google Apps, and we encourage you to share your ideas.

Note: * Google+ requires Picasa Web Albums for photo sharing and Google Talk for chat, so if these services are not enabled then Google+ will not automatically become available, even if your domain has chosen to automatically enable new services. The option to automatically enable new services is controlled in the Domain settings tab of the administrator control panel. More information about using Google+ with Google Apps is available in the Help Center.

Posted by Ronald Ho, Product Manager

Read More Here...

From the desert to the sea: Google Voice Search experiments

As an engineer I like to solve problems and I like to test stuff, the bigger the better. A couple of months ago I was intrigued by a challenge: Australians have the second highest smartphone penetration in the world (second only to Singapore) but we have one of the lowest usage rates of Google Voice Search. This had some of us scratching our heads, because Google Voice Search understands our Australian accents.

So we thought it would be fun to show Australians how well Google Voice Search works by conducting a series of experiments in remote Australian locations. I went to the middle of the South Australian desert with James, a fellow engineer. We found some of the hottest, reddest earth in the country to test a long distance voice search - 50 metres away from the phone! Here’s our adventure:



Meanwhile, our fellow Google engineers Noel and Alice went up north to the beautiful Great Barrier Reef, to test Google Voice Search underwater.



Now that you’ve seen what Google Voice Search can do, we hope these experiments will inspire you to try it yourself in a more everyday setting, and with your broadest Aussie accent!

You can use Google Voice Search on Android phones by pressing the microphone button on the homescreen or downloading the app. You can also download the app for the iPhone here.

Posted by Mike Lawther, Software Engineer.

Read More Here...

Sydney Google+ photowalk

It all began with a quick post I threw up on Google+ a month ago: “Is anyone interested in doing a photo walk here in Australia?”

Since joining Google+ I’ve discovered so many great photographers, with many of them right here in Australia. So I chatted with +Gretchen Chapelle and +Michael Sutton about the the idea of hosting a photowalk, a day where budding photographers who have met online can get together, take photos, help each other with tips/tricks and - most importantly - get to know each other. Lucky for us, a Googler saw my post and offered to support our idea, helping out with customised Google+ t-shirts, camera straps, stickers and even a BBQ to end the day.

We were hoping maybe 10 to 20 people would enjoy a day out, take some photos and pick each others’ brains about our photography obsession. Instead, over 150 people turned up. The light was beautiful and there was lots to inspire us from architecture, to the Occupy Sydney demonstration, gardens, and Art & About installations.

Thanks to everyone who came along and stayed tuned for details about the next one. You can check out the photos for yourself via this search link in Google+.

Posted by +Giuseppe Basile (Aussie Google+ Photographer)

Read More Here...

Dynamic Views: Update #2

Hi Bloggers!

Thanks again for all the terrific feedback on Dynamic Views. Over half a million blogs have selected Dynamic Views as their default template since they were introduced less than a month ago, which is solid evidence that you’re as excited about this new technology as we are!

As I mentioned in my last update, we’ve been working hard to respond to your feedback and quickly introduce enhancements. The ability to customize Dynamic Views has been a top request, so I’m pleased to announce that as of today, this is now possible.

Using the Template Designer, you can now modify your background, fonts, or colors, and add a custom header image like we did on Blogger Buzz (just make sure it’s 65 pixels high). If you don’t fancy yourself a web designer, simply choose from one of the “suggested themes” that we provide.

To begin personalizing your blog, log in to the Blogger dashboard, select “Template”, choose from one of the seven Dynamic Views, and then click “Customize” to access the Template Designer.

Finally, if you’re waiting for gadget support in Dynamic Views, stay tuned...

Happy blogging!

Posted by: Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Read More Here...

Use your Google+ profile with your Blogger blogs

In fewer than 4 months since its launch, more than 40 million people have joined Google+, making it a living, breathing space for social connections and sharing to thrive.

Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

Plus, bloggers who switch will automatically get access to the Google+ integrations we’ll be rolling out in the future.

If you blog under a pseudonym and you don’t want to connect your common name with your blog, this integration may not work for you. That’s why we’ve made it completely optional to switch.

This option is available for all users today in our testing ground, Blogger in Draft, and will be accessible from www.blogger.com in the coming weeks.

If you have a Google+ account and would like to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile, log in to draft.blogger.com and click “Get started” on the promotion message, pictured below, or click here to get started right away.

If you don’t have a Google+ account, you can create one here first, and then head back to draft.blogger.com and look for the promotion message.

To learn more, check out our FAQs or visit our Help Forum. Happy blogging!

Posted by Vardhman Jain, Software Engineer

Read More Here...

Update: Blogger’s new look

Back in August, we announced a completely new, streamlined blogging experience that makes it easier for you to find what you need and focus on writing great blog posts.

Since then, millions of you have opted to try it out, and we’ve received tens of thousands of feedback submissions. Based on that feedback we’ve fixed a number of bugs, including design updates, Safari compatibility for the iPad, and tweaks to scheduling posts.

In about two weeks from today, all Blogger accounts that haven’t yet made the switch will be upgraded to the new user interface. You will be able to opt-out at any time by clicking the “Switch back” link; however, all accounts will eventually be permanently upgraded.

To help you get a better sense of what’s changed and how to navigate the new interface, check out the short video below.

If you’d like to switch to the new look at any time, you can easily do so by clicking the “Try the updated Blogger interface” link at the top of your dashboard.

We hope you enjoy the updates we continue to make to Blogger and welcome your thoughts about the new look. If you have suggestions or feedback, click the gear icon in the top right of the navigation bar and select “Send Feedback.”

Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager

Read More Here...