Now available with Google Apps: Google Alerts

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Alerts
No organization is an island. If you’re in business, it’s critical to be connected to what’s happening in your market and to hear what your customers are saying. If you’re in education, you need to stay on top of the latest announcements and innovations within your field. But given the immense amount of data being created every day on the Web, how can you possibly keep track of new information as it's published?

Now Google Apps customers can tackle this problem using Google Alerts with their Apps accounts. Google Alerts is a content monitoring service that notifies you when Google’s search engine encounters new content - such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs - that you’re interested in from all across the Web. Simply enter your search terms and Google Alerts will notify you via email whenever Google finds new results that match your terms. To avoid information overload, you can configure Google Alerts to send one email per day or per week, compressing the most important results into a brief message.


Once you’re up and running with Google Alerts, try setting up an alert on the name of your organization or industry. Use quotes if your search term is longer than one word (for example, “small business financing” or “solar power”) - you’ll get more accurate results. Then wait and see what turns up in your inbox. You might be surprised to find out who’s writing about you!

Learn more and get started
Google Alerts can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information or answers to specific questions about Alerts, visit our Help Center pages.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Alerts at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Oli Gaymond, Product Manager, Google Alerts

Note: Google Alerts may not be available in all areas.

Automated Trading - Updates

In our continuing quest to improve Flo, we have tried many things. The difficulty was to make an improvement that was not a curve fit, so apart from a drop dead stop loss most of what we have been doing is market action related.

As you can see from all the charts and videos on the blog, entries are pretty easy. It's the money management and exits that are more difficult to translate into an algo. When I'm trading, I look at so many things that contribute to the order flow. There are things I do in processing all the information - deciding which piece of information is more important than another - that I can't always make into rules. It just happens.

Flo paints with a broad brush. She copes with all types of markets and gives an average trading result. Her win rate is well above 60% over time, but she has more losing days than I do in my discretionary trading, even a losing month very occasionally.

To handle exits, we decided to treat them like entries. We knew that it would have to be simple. We made great strides when we ran the exits off a different data stream to that of the entries. Entries can be a little late, but the timing of exits is more critical once you have an entry in place, as otherwise you lose the profit from the entry. Sounds logical, simple but very important. We use a much shorter periodicity to time the exits and rely on Flo's re-entry techniques to get back into a trade that has a longer trend.

Below are Flo's trades during the London morning from our test sub-account trading 1 lot. The result of a profit of $561 after commissions is the result of implementing a better exit. I can't emphasise enough how critical the exits are to an algo strategy, as the exit will impact the next entry too if you only allow a single position at a time.

Flo's entries are pretty good. Flo was running on 3 markets this morning (London time) and didn't make a trade in either the ES or FESX, which was a good thing.

Tell Us Your Biggest Wish for 2011

Today the Google Small Business team is kicking off a conversation about the hopes and wishes you have for your business next year. We are working on a project to help small businesses succeed in 2011 and we want to hear from you.

We’ll start by asking, if you had one wish for your small business in 2011, what would it be? This is just the beginning and we’ll be looking for common themes to share with everyone. We'll pull out the common themes from submissions all over the web or via the form below and share them, anonymously, in aggregate.

Think big and audacious, or be more practical – but narrow it down to just one single wish. We're trying to understand what's most important to small businesses in general, so your wish doesn't have to be specific to Google. It might be something that helps your business prosper and grow. Or, it might be something that gives you personal peace of mind.

Just complete the form below. Or, tell us on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag #Wish2011. We would like to share some of the specific wishes we hear from businesses. If you'd like us to share your wish (not anonymously) on our blog, please provide us your email and we'll be in touch.

Spread the word and tell your friends -- we want to know their wish too. Let’s get this conversation started.

The one wish I have for my small business in 2011 is....

Email address

Please provide your email address if you're willing to share your specific wish publicly.

Powered by Google DocsReport Abuse - Terms of Service - Additional Terms

Our online conversation about your wishes is intended to be viral with shared responses. Your response in this blog form will be used anonymously and will be kept anonymous. We may share your publicly posted Tweets and Facebook updates by re-tweeting or sharing your update. In those cases, the public usernames on your Twitter and Facebook posts will be included in our retweets and status updates, however, we are only looking at responses to identify common themes to share with everyone. Let’s keep the conversation focused on your 2011 wish for your business.

We would like to share some of the specific wishes that we hear from businesses. If you'd like us to share your wish (not anonymously) on our blog, please provide us your email and we'll be in touch. We will only use your data as indicated above - please see our privacy policy for more information.

Posted by Leslie Hernandez, Product Marketing Manager, Google Small Businesses Team

Now available with Google Apps: AdWords

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google AdWords
Every business wants to connect with its customers and this is often one of the goals that a business spends the most time on. Now, your business can more easily use the power of Google AdWords to connect with your customers using your Google Apps account.

AdWords gives you the ability to reach more than 80% of Internet users* as they are actively searching for information about products and services on Google and Google’s advertising network. AdWords enables you to connect with your potential customers at the right time with the right message, by letting you select Google search keywords related to your product or services so that users searching for these keywords can see your advertisements.

Setting up an account takes only minutes and controlling costs is easy - you only pay when people click on your ad and land on your site, and you can set a daily budget to limit your total spend. AdWords also offers great flexibility, allowing you to change your budget on the fly. Plus, if your business serves certain geographies, you have the ability to target your ads only to people searching in a particular state, city, or region.



Now that AdWords works with Google Apps, collaborating with other people in your organization to manage campaigns in AdWords is simple as well. You can invite colleagues to access your AdWords account with their existing Google Apps accounts and grant them differing levels of access depending on how much or little control you’d like them to have. Whether your business has one person that handles all of the online marketing or a team that works collaboratively, AdWords can accommodate your needs.



Also, in addition to collaborating in AdWords itself, tight integration with Google Apps lets you export your reports to Google Docs in a single click. This lets you share your campaign data with colleagues and collaborate in real-time in the same way that you already collaborate on other documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs with your Apps account.



Be sure to check out some success stories from businesses of all sizes, including First Crush Restaurant, which was able to increase traffic to its website by 400%, or Happy Hound dog daycare and boarding facility, which gets over 90% of its business through AdWords.

Learn more and get started
Google AdWords can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about AdWords you can visit our information page or you can find the latest news and tips at the AdWords Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google AdWords at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Kit Broussard, AdWords Team

Note: Google AdWords may not be available in all areas.
*Source: comScore Media Metrix (US, May 2009)

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

The Valley here this morning was very picturesque. The snow has stopped falling and skiing weather is here. Let's see if the market lets me skive a bit this week.

I had a couple of goes at selling the DAX this morning. I scratched the first attempt, but the second worked well. My one and only Fib found The Spot. From there it was pretty easy. I just kept selling the pullbacks. It finally found support at the reciprocal of the first Fib.

I have been getting more questions about the DVDs. All these trades are taught in the DVDs. The full set is made up of 4 theory DVDs on days when the market was closed (Saturdays and Sundays) and the other 14 are about 14 hours a day of live market trading with me describing EXACTLY what I do to envision, identify and trigger the trades and then manage them. All the live trading is very valuable to a student, as the camera is not turned off for the whole day. There are 10 full teaching days and 4 SIM days with me doing some teaching and the webinar attendees interacting with what they have learned. I also show not just what to learn, but HOW to learn it. How to create the "muscle memory" and confidence to trade with real money when you have proven to yourself that you are CP in SIM.

In my opinion, whether you learn my methodology or something else, this is THE way to learn, as you KNOW you are consistently profitable before you have risked one cent of your money. The structured step by step evolving TPs (trading plans) that we provide, take you through the process with you needing to hit milestones before you progress to the next one.

If you look at the trade locations you can see their importance and also see the structured nature and context sensitivity of the entries. This structure and context is one of the cornerstones of the EL methodology and is one of the reasons why people can learn it and make it their own. Everything is measurable and back testable.

The First Snow

We had the first snow of the year last night here in France and it's snowing now as I write. The ski season is really close, maybe here already. I can almost not stand the wait. I have my skis waxed, my boots ready and my season pass bought. Bring it on. The official date for the start of the lifts is December 18, but they have said that they will open the lifts on the weekend if there is enough snow. Looks like I may get to ski afterall.

I've been playing around with Flo some more. I am using Flo in the DAX to enter trades and then I manage them manually. The DAX can be a market on steroids, and I find that I can concentrate less and not miss entries. The converse is that I get put into trades that I would not have entered manually. But I manage them, and on the whole not missing trades seems to be more beneficial than having to scratch trades that I don't want to be in. I'll let you know how this progresses. It may suit some of you to use this technique if you want to be a bit more mechanical but still manage the trade. I am still finding that the exits for Flo are the most problematic in terms of maximizing profits. There are so many more ways of exiting than entering. I'm used to taking profits and finding re-entries on the trend or swing and that's the rub with Flo. To a certain extent it's the periodicity.

The Gap trade for the ESTX50 is a trade I look for on most days. It's the Eurex traded Dow Euro 50 stock index, for those not familiar with it. It's the European eMini ES. Trades 1 million-ish contracts a day on average.

You can see today's chart shows the attempt to fill the Gap at the open. I leaned against my one and only Fib number, which held - Long at 2740. It traded up to almost close the Gap, but yesterday's POC held and I exited there - 2751. This was a scale out point in any case. I then had a short picture at the 33EMA - Short at 2746 and rode it down, scaling out as it retreated downwards. The sequence continued with a scale out at 2727 after the market became oversold and I prepared to exit the balance. Covered more at 2721 and then the low of a couple of days ago at 2720 broke sharply. I ran out of bullets at 2715 and prepared for the next trade.

This stuff is not hard to do if you create a structure within which to trade. Knowing in advance where you want to do business is part of the secret. Envisioning what can happen is another part, even if you're wrong, because what doesn't happen tells you a lot too.

I know what I won't give thanks for

I won't be thankful for more days like today - holidays are no trade days for me, unless there is something special going on.

These are days I use for testing. I have been making a few more improvements to Flo. We are trading Crude, Bunds, Euro, ES and DAX and are looking to add more currencies as well as some commodities - softs. This means more back testing. The basic algo is the same but as each market has it's own fingerprint, some adjustments have to be made.

I thought the Korean stuff would have a bigger effect, but looks like not. Also the Irish and Spanish economic situation is not causing as much agro as I thought either. So it was a testing day for me.

My son in law started restocking the wine cellar and I'm looking forward to tasting one of his choices tonight.

Those of you who are having a well earned rest, enjoy. Remember, you have to feed the soul too.

How I’m Using Hotpot to Plan My Thanksgiving Weekend

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog. We recently announced the availability of our new local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends, called Google Hotpot. Read on about how folks in your local area can find your business through the ratings, reviews and recommendations on Google. - Ed.]

The word “Thanksgiving” conjures up images of my family gathering around the table in Pennsylvania, passing the turkey and mashed potatoes to one another. But not this year. While my family's off on a surfing trip in Mexico, I'm staying in New York to spend time with my boyfriend Wes.

But I don't want to spend the next several days lazing about the apartment. I want to use the time to discover new local places, and maybe even visit a few forgotten ones. So here I sit, with my Google search fired up and my Hotpot recommendations — based on what I’ve rated and what my Hotpot friends have rated — ready to set my course. What new places should Wes and I check out? Here's what Hotpot suggested:


Thursday
Sure, I could attempt to cook, but why make Wes suffer? In Maps, I search for "restaurants new york, ny,” and in the left navigation where I see my search results, I find friend recommendations listed with the top several results. Here’s one restaurant that catches my eye, recommended by my friend Vivi:

I’m thinking we can get an early meal at Freemans, and then treat ourselves to some delicious dessert. Preferably close to home — Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn — so we can load up on sweets and then roll ourselves back to the couch. Searching for "dessert brooklyn, ny" pulls up this local gem, one I’ve been meaning to visit:

Note to self: Remember to schedule in some gym time.

Friday
My family's big into books, so for Black Friday, I want to go somewhere a little less big bookseller, a little more worn-and-torn. I’ve rated and reviewed a bunch of independent book shops already on Hotpot, so by searching for "book shop new york, ny,” Google should know exactly what kinda bookseller I’m looking for. And voila:

Saturday
I live in New York, but, sadly, I don't always take full advantage of the many wonderful cultural institutions we have. So this weekend, I'm committed to getting us to a museum. But which museum? The search "museum new york" pulls up a great recommendation from my friend Daniel:

Sunday
After an eventful few days, Wes and I will most likely just want to chill out in front of a movie. To avoid the crushing Harry Potter crowds at the cineplex, I'm thinking we should see something at a local independent theater. Searching for "cinema new york, ny" shows me a few options based on theaters I’ve already told Google I like. This one stands out:

And they're showing Woody Allen's latest! Perfect.

Now that I’ve shared with you how I’m using Hotpot to plan my Thanksgiving weekend, do tell: How are you using Hotpot for the holiday? Share your stories in the comments.

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Hotpot Team

Now available with Google Apps: Google Finance

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Finance
Financial market data is some of the most time-sensitive and important information that many businesses track minute by minute. Portfolios, stock charts, and up-to-the-second market news are all central to understanding investment options, making business decisions, and tracking suppliers, partners, and competitors. How is the market reacting to the press release you just issued? How financially stable is the vendor you’re considering? What are your competitors in the market announcing today? Fortunately, Google Finance is now available to our Google Apps customers, so you can answer all of these questions and more for free with your Google Apps account.

Google Finance puts all of the financial data and market news that matters to you at your fingertips throughout the day and enables you to share it easily with colleagues and clients. Integration with your Apps account allows you to create and save multiple portfolios and track performance over time as well as access your saved portfolios through your mobile device when you’re away from your computer.


Google Finance also makes it easy to keep track of important portfolio company events, such as quarterly earnings announcements, by allowing you to add these events directly to your linked Google Calendar with a single click.


Other Google Finance features allow you to create custom stock charts that include related companies’ performance and custom technicals and indicators of your choosing -- and share them with colleagues easily. And you can brainstorm investment opportunities using the Google Finance Stock Screener or Domestic Trends features.

Learn more and get started
Google Finance can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps control panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about Google Finance, you can check out our Help Center pages, or you can follow the latest product news, tips, and features on the Google Finance Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Finance at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story, and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Karolína Netolicka, Product Manager, Google Finance

Note: Google Finance may not be available in all areas.

Early Thanksgiving Wish and Flo Results

We don't really have a Thanksgiving celebration at our house, although Mrs. EL is American. I guess it's partly because we are now spread over three continents and in several countries.  Outside of the U.S., it's a holiday not celebrated, although Candace did have a small Thanksgiving get together last Sunday with all her London friends.  (They love the typical American Thanksgiving dinner, especially pumpkin pie).

None the less, at this time of the year I count my blessings.

I have have just hung up the phone after talking to Nick in Australia. A few months ago, I didn't know whether I would ever be thankful again. Tomorrow, his twin sister will be coming down from Brisbane to visit him. This morning I spoke to Candace in London on the phone about the EL operations that she is managing. Tonight I'll be chatting to Kiki and see how she survived the boredom of Thanksgiving markets.

As I walk around the farm here in France with Mrs. EL, I know that I have a lot to be thankful for and I don't take any of it for granted. I'm a very lucky man.

I wish each and every one of you, whether you celebrate it or not, a Happy Thanksgiving Day and wish you all what you would wish for yourselves.

Flo was working overtime today. It was a bit quiet for me, but it was good to know that Flo has her head down and bum up, grinding it out. Below are the trades and the P and L. These are real live money trades allocated to a 1 Lot sub account that we are using for gathering test statistics. I switched Flo off at 1.30pm London (8.30am NY) as we get closer to Turkey Time.

These are the trades showing the prices and when they happened, all in London time. Below is the P and L including fees.

Part of what we do with this information is to re-run the day using the historical data from eSignal and then compare the signaled trades with the actual executions. We track the actual performance against the hypothetical performance and make any execution instruction changes that we feel will align the two if there is a consistent discrepancy. It took a lot of work to get to this stage and I guess we will be looking for improvements all the time.

Spreading holiday cheer and regional cuisine through AdWords

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.]

When we here in the U.S. think of Thanksgiving, many of us think of our favorite foods: perhaps a fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin pie, a sweet glazed ham or a succulent turkey. But thanks to Charlie Hohorst III of Lafayette, La., tens of thousands of Americans dream instead of a turkey... stuffed with a duck... stuffed with a chicken.

For the past 15 years, Hohorst has run food shopping site Cajun Grocer, which specializes in more than 1,000 different authentic Louisianan foodstuffs and delicacies. The “turducken”—a Cajun dish consisting of a de-boned turkey filled with duck, chicken and stuffing—is “the bread and butter” of his business, says Hohorst. He can attest to their growing popularity as he ships an ever-increasing number of turduckens to cities all over the country, from Los Angeles to Boston.

Cajun Grocer’s business has grown hand-in-hand with the use of Google AdWords. Before starting AdWords campaigns in 2002, sales were fueled primarily by word of mouth, and reaching the right audience at an affordable price was a challenge. “With a specialty product like a turducken,” says Hohorst, “who do you target and how do you target them?” Using AdWords, Cajun Grocer can show off their products alongside relevant searches on Google and measure every penny spent on advertising.

Cajun Grocer’s ad for “turducken” searches, using AdWords Product Extensions.

The process of hand-crafting all eight types of turducken for the Thanksgiving rush starts in April and continues through packing and last-minute shipping as late as November 23.

Aside from their role in spreading the culinary influence of his native Louisiana, what Hohorst really loves about turduckens is that, much like the Thanksgiving holiday itself, they give people a reason to come together. “They’re a gathering item. Many people have heard of them, and when someone they know has one, it can bring in 10 or even 20 people.”

Posted by Jim Prosser, Communications Manager

Now available with Google Apps: Blogger

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Blogger
How do you let the world know what's important to your organization on a day-to-day basis? You may have a Web site, but when was the last time you added fresh content? You may have advertisements and media placements, but how interactive can you make those conversations? Many companies solve these problems by using blogs to connect in more meaningful ways, sharing up-to-date information and allowing follow-on conversations; and now Google Apps users have the perfect tool for delivering a corporate blog: Blogger.

Blogger is an easy-to-use yet extremely powerful content publishing platform that helps you broadcast stories, insights, and ideas to others in only a few clicks. Your organization can use Blogger to start conversations with customers or partners about upcoming events, product launches, or your company's vision for your industry.

A recent study showed that an estimated 34% of US companies already use one or more blogs to connect with their customers, and this figure has doubled in the past few years.* Google uses blogs, just like the Enterprise Blog where you’re reading now, to connect with our users and partners. In fact, Google has almost a hundred blogs running on the Blogger platform, covering topics as diverse as our renewable energy policies, product updates, developer challenges and code snippets, and information for advertisers and partners.

Blogger offers a powerful rich-editor that lets you create a great looking site with simple and intuitive tools that require no web design experience to use. And for those that want to achieve a deeper level customization, Blogger provides great flexibility and full control over the blog content you create, letting you edit the HTML and add CSS and Javascript to create your own unique look and feel.

Just like Google Apps, Blogger runs in Google’s cloud so you never have to worry about provisioning new hardware or updating software. Blogger already serves content from millions of contributors to over 300 million readers, so the platform is ready to scale to meet your needs as readership grows with your organization.

Learn more and get started
Blogger can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information you can take a product tour or learn about Blogger’s top features. Finally, you can track the latest news and updates on Blogger’s own blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Blogger at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Anil Sabharwal, Product Manager, Blogger

Note: Blogger may not be available in all areas.
* Source: eMarketer, August 2010

Selling into the Hole

Days like today need particularly good timing. It's very easy to sell into the hole and have the market come "right back atchya".

Price falls until it shuts off selling.

The ES today was weak on the overnight news. There were opportunities to get shorts on at a good trade location between 9.30am and 11.30am at around 1190.50ish. It doesn't often give you that much time. The thought did enter my head whether I was selling into the hole, but two things made me do it anyway:
1. The picture fit my trading plan and so I had to take the trade, and
2. I thought there were traders long from yesterday's close and that they would feel the pain and push the market lower. That was my vision.

The RTH open was another decision point. There was the Gap trade to think about. There was the "they" to think about. Would the two coincide or would there be a battle?

Those support lines you can see on both yesterday's and today's MP chart came in handy too.

Well, the Gap traders were run over. They provided yet another chance to go short (trade #4) and then the sellers stepped on the gas. I picked a couple of spots that I thought could hold: 1177.00 and 1173.50. You can see them on the MP chart.

Driving toward better ROI: How one small business uses the Conversion Optimizer to increase sales

Elliott Antal, eMarketing Manager from the Richard Petty Driving Experience, recently won the Google AdWords Conversion Champion Challenge. His sweet, sweet reward was one-on-one time with the Conversion Optimizer team (and a free trip to Google headquarters).

While Antal was here, we gained more insight into why the Conversion Optimizer, an automated AdWords tool that manages bids to achieve conversion targets, has become an important part of his small business marketing strategy. “We don’t have a large marketing budget so we have to optimize everything we have,” says Antal. “Using the Conversion Optimizer makes perfect sense because it allowed us to track all dollars and maximize efficiencies.”

Renowned NASCAR driver Richard Petty founded the driving experience in 1994 to provide high quality motorsports entertainment with new audiences. The business is headquartered in Concord, North Carolina and it runs NASCAR driving experiences at over twenty racetracks worldwide. The Richard Petty Driving Experience is all about the in-person adventure, so marketing it online requires creativity and dedication.

Antal’s initial strategy was to target new audiences with two campaigns: one focused on race tracks where Richard Petty has a presence and another focused on Richard Petty branded terms. He quickly noticed that while he was reaching a vast audience, clicks weren’t resulting in as many purchases as he had hoped.

When he activated the Conversion Optimizer, Antal knew he’d found the solution to his problem. By automatically investing budget in clicks that are likely to lead to sales, the Conversion Optimizer reallocated funds to the most cost-effective terms. “Our main goal is to have people book a riding or driving experience and this allowed us to move money to keywords that lead to those conversions,” says Antal.

Before using the Conversion Optimizer, Antal had allocated budget equally across branded and non-branded terms. When he activated the tool, conversions on branded terms increased significantly and yielded a stunning return on investment -- even better than other non-AdWords initiatives. To capture even more conversions, Antal moved some of his overall marketing budget over to the branded terms campaign.

“As much as I would like to do so, I’m not able to comb through my AdWords account every hour,” says Antal. “The Conversion Optimizer is like my assistant, helping me change bids and keywords even when I’m not able to. For many small businesses where marketers have to wear multiple hats, I think Conversion Optimizer is a huge help.”

To learn more about the Conversion Optimizer, please visit the Conversion Optimizer site.

Posted by Lisa Coffey, Product Marketing Manager, Conversion Optimizer

Now available with Google Apps: Google Voice

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.

Welcome to Google Voice
Telephones make our lives easier every day, but we’ve all met with the limitations of what the existing technology can do for us. Maybe it’s missing an important call because you were away from your office. Maybe it’s juggling multiple voicemail inboxes or struggling to listen to voicemail in a crowded conference room or on a noisy train. Maybe its wishing you could set up a conference call right from your mobile phone and connect with colleagues instantly.

Now, Google Apps users can move beyond these limitation and use their telephones in new and more flexible ways by using Google Voice with their Google Apps accounts.

Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, regardless of which phone or carrier you use. Here’s a little bit about how it works:

• A Google Voice number is tied to you (not to a single device) and can ring all of your phones. This means when someone calls your Google Voice number, you can choose to have it ring your work phone, home phone, mobile phone, or all of them at once, so you’ll never miss a call again.


• Google Voice makes voicemail as easy as email by transcribing your voicemail messages and storing them all in one place, along with your SMS messages, for as long as you like. You’ve long had the ability to quickly scan email messages as they arrive, and Google Voice now brings this same flexibility to voicemail.


• With Google Voice you can switch phones in the middle of a call, so you can continue a conversation that you started on your desk phone from your mobile when you need to get going.


• You can also customize call settings based on who’s calling. Google Voice lets you choose which phones ring based on the caller, which voicemail greeting is played if you don’t answer, and allows you to block certain numbers or send them straight to voicemail. For example, with this functionality you could direct most calls to your desk phone, but also ring your mobile when an important customer calls, as well as serve different voicemail greetings to that customer than you do to your coworkers or suppliers.

Just like Google Apps, Google Voice runs in Google’s cloud so it can be accessed online, even when you are away from your phone.

Learn more and get started
Google Voice can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information, you can visit the Google Voice overview page to see video explanations of the key features or take a look at our Help Center for details instructions. You can also follow the latest product news and features on the Google Voice Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Voice at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Vincent Paquet, Product Manager, Google Voice

Note: Google Voice is only available in the U.S.

A bridge to the cloud: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog and the Google Docs Blog]

Tens of millions of people have moved to Google Docs because it’s 100% web: it provides real-time collaboration in the browser, with no software to install, manage or upgrade. Of course, we know that many more of you still use Microsoft Office, because until recently, there weren’t many tools to help you collaborate and share with others. Now there’s more choice.

To help smooth the transition from Office to the cloud, my teammates and I founded a company called DocVerse, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Over the last 9 months, we’ve been hard at work moving the DocVerse product to Google’s infrastructure. We’ve also renamed it Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Today, we’re pleased to take the next step towards a public launch and make it available to early testers.

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now we’re bringing them to Microsoft Office.

All you need is a Google account, and you’re ready to go. That’s it!

If you’re a Google Apps for Business customer interested in joining our preview program, please sign up here. If you’re not, don’t worry- at launch, Google Cloud Connect will be available free to everyone, including consumers.

Posted by Shan Sinha, Group Product Manager

Update: Thank you for your interest! Due to the extraordinary demand from thousands of businesses in just the last few hours, we are no longer accepting volunteers for our early testing program. Please fill out this form if you would like to be notified when Google Cloud Connect becomes available.

Many of you have also asked about availability for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

The Father of Algos?

It's the Comice pear season now. I absolutely love Comice pears. I remember that I first ate one when I lived in the U.S in the mid 1980's. I had been helping Bob Pardo with his autotrading program. I was doing some testing, if I remember rightly. Bob was the first person to sell a commercial autotrading program where the user could optimise. I really can't remember the details and whether I was of much use at the time, but Bob was kind enough to send me a fruit basket and it was full of Comice pears. I've loved them ever since. They are originally French, I think, and I'm now buying them in France, which makes them taste especially good.

Autotrading has come a long way since those early Bob Pardo days. Bob has since gone on to write a book about autotrading: here.

When looking up that reference, I see Bob has written another - a rewrite of the first. Look here. I haven't yet read this second one (but I will), but knowing the first one and reading the contents list for the second one, I can say that it would benefit anyone wanting to create an algo.

Today's trading in the ES RTH was great. All the people who took my course by DVD or (w)(s)eminar will recognise the pictures. It all started with the Gap trade and then just got better. The reversal at the EMA resistance trade hit the Fib target like an olympic champion archer hitting the bulls eye. There was a reload option on the way as well, Great stuff!!

Now available with Google Apps: Google Reader

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: Yesterday we launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.


Welcome to Google Reader
We all have favorite websites. The ones that we keep returning to day after day – or even several times a day – to check for new content. Whether you follow company press coverage on a set of news websites, track industry-related developments through trade journals, or follow what people are saying about your organization in the blogosphere, you can now do all of this in one place using Google Reader.

Now available with Google Apps accounts, Google Reader is a web-based content aggregator that allows you to pull updates from your favorite websites together in one place. By subscribing to a site's RSS or Atom feed in Reader, you’re automatically notified when that website posts new content. Instead of checking many sites repeatedly for updates, Google Reader brings your favorite web content to you!



Google Reader also makes it easy to share relevant articles with colleagues at your organization using Google Apps. Reader is integrated with your existing contacts list so address auto-complete works seamlessly. For example, if you see an article in your Reader feed about new tax incentives for your industry, you can easily share this with a coworker responsible for financial planning or with an entire distribution list you have created, right from the Google Reader.


For those of you always on the move, Google Reader also makes it easy and convenient to follow the stream of updates from your favorite websites on your mobile device, automatically synced through your Google Apps account.

Learn more and get started
Google Reader can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about Google Reader you can take a look at our Help Center pages or follow the latest news and get tips and tricks from the Google Reader Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Reader at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager, Google Reader

Note: Google Reader may not be available in all areas.

Great tech support and good karma found with Google AdWords online

When Uday Challu noticed a growing dissatisfaction with avenues for technical support, he was inspired to create a better way for people to get help with their tech troubles. So in 2007 he founded iYogi.com, India’s first direct-to-consumer remote technical support company. Founded on a belief in good karma, iYogi aims to mitigate frustrations with technical products and services by delivering a high-quality customer service experience.

iYogi Founder Uday Challu

iYogi provides round-the-clock, 24-hours service on a wide variety of technical products and issues, in Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Uday uses Google AdWords to reach these international customers.

Uday says he saw search and, in particular, AdWords as a way to reach customers in need of technical support. He says, “iYogi services are currently available in multiple geographies and advertising with AdWords seemed like the most obvious way to reach customers who were turning to the Internet to find and fix their problems.”

With the intent of starting small and building to scale, Uday targeted his first campaigns to the U.S. only. Using location and language targeting, iYogi launched a U.S.-only campaign with general keywords related to customer support, and honed his campaign over time. “We gathered lots of intelligence from the Search Query Report, which helped us identify other keywords people in the U.S. were searching for,” says iYogi Vice President of Online Marketing K.R. Sreejith. “We also tested new ad texts and customized these ad texts to highlight popular keywords.”

Then, using lessons from his experiences in targeting the U.S., Uday expanded into the Canadian market. He found his experience in the U.S. helpful for the Canadian campaign, but didn’t see similarly high volume. After examining the global competitive landscape, he decided to expand to Australia and the U.K.

“We quickly learned that ads in the U.K., for example, had to be different than ads in the U.S.,” says Sreejith. “Using the Search Query Report, we noticed that the popularity of certain keywords was different in the U.K. and that there are differences in the spelling of these terms. We also learned from our sales teams that U.K. customers spend more time on the phone than do U.S. customers. So, we edited our ad texts and landing pages to reflect these different keywords and values.”

Today, iYogi is one of the fastest growing remote tech support provider in the world. As Uday continues to expand his business internationally, he’ll continue to use insights gained from his ad campaigns and to provide the rest of the world with similarly karmic technical support experiences!

Posted by Anand Devsharma, Team Manager, India

European Ben

We had Ben Bernanke here in Europe spreading his message. Not much effect on the markets. The Chinese announcing some policy change created a little blip while Ben was talking. Trichet showed what a big fan of Ben he is. Rome and fiddles come to mind. You can read the text of his speech here.

I did some trades in my old market, the German Bund (I traded it when LIFFE owned it). Not so many trades but the net was quite green.

It's Thursday

Today was biz as usual (BAU). Most of my efforts were in the Euro, as has been the case lately. It was a strange kind of day in both the ES and the Euro. Some say it was because of the GM IPO. I don't know, but it felt a bit off. Maybe it was just me.

The good news of the day is that the new beds are being delivered to the farm in a week. I can hardly wait.

The Euro was good to us again today. This volatility is providing many more opportunities than ever.

Biztree's Google AdWords Success Story

Here on the Small Business Blog, we occasionally share the successes of our customers by letting them tell their story in their own voice. Today, we’re happy to feature Jonathan Defoy and Bruno Goulet, founders of Biztree, who have found success using AdWords.

Biztree’s relationship with Google started in early 2003. We had just taken a loan of $25,000 to invest in advertising and we spread it across seven channels including affiliate programs, mass email, forum advertising, content and search advertising. After 30 days we lost all our money in all channels – except one. The small investment we made in Google search returned almost three times our investment!

At that point we went back to the bank to borrow $100K hoping to replicate the results. After much fighting with investors, we finally received the funds and the same results were obtained again! To this day we continue to see similar results (2 to 3X returns) and know that we can count on Google as a reliable source of quality traffic.

Today, Business-in-a-Box is the leading legal and business document template software. It’s available in 8 different languages and has over 2 million users worldwide. We help small and medium businesses quickly produce all sorts of documents and with Google’s help, business people in over 200 countries are now able to create contracts, legal agreements, business plans, marketing plans, forms and financial spreadsheets, in a matter of minutes.

We owe a large part of our success to our relationship with Google where we’ve gone from spending $100K per year to well over $100K per month!

In our view, Google’s biggest strength lies in its ability to stay ahead of the competition by continually improving user experience and upgrading and fine-tuning its powerful technologies, as witnessed by constant additions to Google Analytics, AdWords Editor tool and Website Optimizer. The second thing we love most about Google is how it enables us to quickly test our marketing efforts, while generating near instant results.

A great deal of our success with Google comes not simply from its outstanding ad platform, but from its people. From the very start of our relationship, we’ve been dazzled by a customer service team that is not only great at resolving issues, but also at helping small businesses improve their advertising practices.

Posted by Jim Prosser, Small Business Blog Team

Ten times more applications for Google Apps customers

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog and the Google Enterprise Blog)

As customers begin to recognize large productivity gains with Gmail, Google Docs and the rest of Google Apps, they frequently ask when they’ll be able to use services like Google Voice, Reader, Blogger and AdWords with their Google Apps accounts. We’ve steadily added new functionality to Google Apps and recently added support for third-party apps, but we’re thrilled to swing the floodgates of new functionality wide open now. Starting today, customers worldwide can access a full spectrum of services from Google—including more than 60 productivity-boosting applications that extend far beyond any traditional software suite.

Coupled with the ability for administrators to provide different sets of applications to different groups of users, the possibilities for empowering workers in new ways are remarkable. For example, you could equip your marketing team with Picasa Web Albums so they can collect and share photos from customer appreciation events, and let that team publish your company’s blog with Blogger. Services like iGoogle and Alerts, on the other hand, may be broadly useful, and could be enabled for your whole organization.

Existing customers can transition at their own pace over the next couple months to the new infrastructure supporting these applications from the administrative control panel. New customers will automatically have the new infrastructure. The additional services are not covered by the Google Apps SLA or telephone support, but we’ll be watching for feedback how we can make these new applications even more useful.

In tandem with this big improvement, we’re also simplifying the names of the versions of Google Apps. Here’s how we now refer to our line-up:

• Google Apps is our free service geared towards families, entrepreneurs and other groups up to 50 users.
• Google Apps for Business offers 25GB of email storage per user, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, data migration capabilities, advanced management tools, telephone support, added security features and more, all for $50 per user per year.
• Google Apps for Government is FISMA certified and designed with local, state and federal agencies in mind.
• Google Apps for Education offers many benefits of Google Apps for Business, but at no cost to schools, universities and qualifying non-profits.

The team has worked hard to unlock all of this new functionality for our customers, and we think many of these new applications will become indispensable within your organization. To help get you started, each day the Google Enterprise Blog will profile how your organization could put a different application to use. The first post tomorrow will focus on Google Reader, so drop by again soon to follow the series.

Posted by Derek Parham, Lead Software Engineer, Google Apps

Autotrading or Discretionary

For me, the ultimate is using both auto trading and discretionary trading, but NOT in the same chart. I am a discretionary trader by DNA. I like the decision making process, the detective work to figure out what "they" are doing, and, of course, I can do better than my FloBot. Better means lower draw down and higher win rate - the heart of successful trading as far as I am concerned.

I have some markers on my discretionary charts to remind me of things. These are programmed in so they just appear at the right moment. I have been careful not to make these too exact, as I am fearful of becoming like one of Pavlov's dogs and just reacting to signals. I had an e-mail exchange about this with one of the guys from the seminar-he is a great thinker and I want him to stay that way. While reminders are good, reacting automatically to them is not, as you will just get an "average" performance. If that is what you want (and there is nothing wrong with that if it allows you to trade many markets at the same time) then by all means go to total algo trading. It will need more capital, but the computer won't tire and can do many things at the same time.

My solution is to trade discretionarily and have FloBot working away on her own.

Meanwhile, back at the market today, the Gap trade was on again. Today's trade again shows how important it is to get the Profile split done before I trade. The trade was pretty easy to execute once this was done. Yesterday's VAH was seen at 1177.50ish and that was my targeted sale point. All I then needed to do was let it play out and scale out on the way down. I was out of bullets when it hit yesterday's VAL at 1173.50. I didn't manage my hoped for 5 points, but it was not too shabby. Yesterday's building of the distribution, instead of further trending down, was my clue for today. The action in Asia and Europe confirmed the vision, so my expectations for the Gap trade were fairly set when the bell rang.