Trailblazing in Portland

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog]

When we announced the availability of Hotpot last month, we knew from the beginning we were going to take a different approach to marketing the product and engaging with our users, both businesses and consumers.

To that end, we’re excited today to start testing this new approach by launching our first local marketing campaign in Portland, Oregon. Portland is a tech savvy, forward-thinking city with a history of innovation and some of the best coffee houses, microbreweries and parks in the country. Whether you know it as The City of Roses, Stumptown, P-Town, Rip City or just PDX, Portland’s thriving local business community and strong heritage of being a trailblazer made it a great choice for us to try something new.

So starting today and over the course of the next few months, we’ll be out and about in Portland. Here’s a taste of what’s in store:

Business Kits and Window Decals

Every day millions of people search on Google.com to find local businesses, and we want to make it seamless for standout businesses to get discovered online. To achieve this, we’ll be working directly with some of Portland’s top businesses to educate them about Google Places for business and all its benefits. In addition, to help these businesses spread the word, we’re providing owners with special Google Places Business Kits. These kits are a multi-flavored sampler of marketing materials that can help businesses get even more exposure, get them rated and reviewed online, and get more customers through their door. We’re already distributing these to some of Portland’s top businesses, but any business in Portland who has claimed their Place page can request a box.

A central part of the kit is the bright red “Recommended on Google” window sticker. This is not your ordinary sticker. Unlike others, this is an interactive sticker that has Near Field Communications (NFC) technology built right in, allowing people with cutting edge phones like the Nexus S to simply touch their phones to the sticker to find out more information about the business. Suddenly stickers are cool again!

Community Events

Sure, Hotpot’s about sharing recommendations with friends online. But we thought it’d be fun to take things offline. To kick things off, we’re partnering with Portland’s beloved Voodoo Doughnut. Because we at Google are such big fans of their tasty treats, we wanted to spread the love — so if you like doughnuts and coffee, be sure to stop by both locations starting this Saturday at 10am for a special treat.

Hotpot Jackpot

We’re also launching our second Hotpot Jackpot competition to encourage Portlanders to start rating the places they know and share them with friends and family. Everyone over the age of 18 who lives within a 50-mile radius of Portland can participate, and the top five raters at the end of the competition will win dinner for 10 at any restaurant in Portland, courtesy of Google. To kick things off, all of the fans at tonight’s Trail Blazers vs. Magic game will receive t-shirts announcing the competition and supporting the Blazers.

This is just the beginning and we’ll be doing a lot more in the upcoming months. For the latest and greatest of what we’re up to in Portland (and elsewhere), keep an eye out by staying up to date via the Hotpot Blog, and by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook.

Posted by Bernardo Hernandez, Director of Emerging Marketing

Now available with Google Apps: Google Website Optimizer

[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 Website Optimizer
Making changes to your website can be a challenge. Websites are often built with little data available in the design phase but once the site launches, tracking tools such as Google Analytics can provide tons of information about visitor behavior, and can highlight areas that aren’t performing as expected. But how will you know what kind of revisions will better achieve your goals? How can you be confident that changes won’t actually result in worse performance? How can you reconcile the different ideas that stakeholders throughout your company contribute about what the site should look like? Now, Google Apps users can address these questions using Google Website Optimizer for free with their Google Apps accounts.

Google Website Optimizer is a tool that lets you eliminate guesswork from website design by testing variations of your webpages. When you identify a page that might need a change, you can create alternate versions of that page and use Google Website Optimizer to send a fraction of the users visiting your website to each alternate version. Website Optimizer then runs an analysis to tell you how visitors to each version of the webpage behave. With this data, you can make much more informed decisions about website updates.



The key advantages of running website tests using Google Website Optimizer are:

• Base website design decisions on data, not intuition. You probably hear a different opinion about what’s best for your website from each person you ask. Controlled tests provide objective data that can be used to support or disprove different hypotheses.


• Try multiple ideas at the same time, instead of just one. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, Google Website Optimizer lets you test many ideas at once and pick the winner as it emerges.


• Experiment, with a safety net. If the new page you are testing performs well, you can keep that page and maintain the conversion gains. If the new page doesn’t perform well, you can easily stop the test. Google Website Optimizer even monitors page performance and can be set up to automatically disable website variations that begin to perform worse than your original page.

Take, for example, our landing page for a Google Maps Driving Directions widget. The team wanted more visitors to add the widget, but wasn’t sure what design elements would work best. Using Google Website Optimizer, the team ran an experiment to compare the original page to three alternate designs. You can see the four versions below (including the original in the top left):


The result? The Google Maps team found that the lower right-hand design outperformed the original with a 75% conversion rate increase, meaning more users added the widget. Google Website Optimizer made it easy to select the best version of the webpage.

Learn more and get started
Google Website Optimizer 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.

You can learn more about using Website Optimizer from the team’s Help Center, and more technical users should also read the Techie Guide to Website Optimizer (PDF). You can also follow the latest news about Google Website Optimizer on our team blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Website Optimizer 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 Trevor Claiborne, Google Website Optimizer team

Note: Google Website Optimizer may not be available in all areas.

Like Those Batteries

The last few days have been particular satisfying ones for me, as one of the people I am mentoring has now turned the corner. This particular guy, one of the students from the July seminar, is a real hard worker who has tremendous focus, determination and discipline. He only trades a couple of hours a day while he holds down his day job, so not a lot of screen time. Within the last week everything changed and he has CP within his sights. Great work! You deserve it.

As far as people reading this blog are concerned, this should be an inspiration. The guy in question is not the only one who has reached or is approaching CP. Between the seminar, the webinar and the DVD students, lots of them have made it, but not without a lot of work.

I am reading another book, Mastery, recommended to me by another student. The author, an akido master, talks about the learning process and describes it as a lot of hard work followed by a spurt of progress followed by a plateau, when not much seems to be achieved, until suddenly there is another spurt of progress followed by another plateau. This seems to be the case with many of my students.

The harder they work, the luckier they get.

The market, it just keeps on going, and going ............

I started the morning with the Gap trade as you can see. I leaned on my one and only Fib number. From there, I just traded the pull backs, scaling as I went and covering when it looked like the party was over, but starting again when the picture set up again. I finished the day going long into the number and the fundamentals fit the technicals beautifully.

Now available with Google Apps: Google Checkout

[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 Checkout
With global online sales measured in hundreds of billions of dollars annually*, how does your company process its online orders? Do you worry about order path friction causing customers to drop out before completing their purchase? How do you help your customers feel secure and protected from fraud when they purchase online? Whether you don’t yet have a checkout solution or you’re looking to give your customers multiple checkout options, you now have an additional tool at your disposal that is integrated with Google Apps: Google Checkout.

Google Checkout is a fast and highly secure online checkout process that allows your customers to buy from you quickly and easily with a single login.


Not only does Google Checkout provide a flexible shopping cart and payment infrastructure that enables customers to buy from you online, but the use of Google Checkout can also bring other benefits to you as a seller. For example, Google Checkout’s fast, convenient checkout process reduces transaction friction by using customers’ existing Google accounts and has increased conversion rates by as much as 40% for some sellers. Also, our data shows that Google Checkout customers click on search advertisements 10% more often if those ads feature the Google Checkout badge, bringing more traffic to those sellers’ sites.

Most importantly, Google Checkout gives customers peace of mind when they shop online because our fraud policy offers protection against unauthorized purchase and users can use their existing Google account instead of entering their data again. Sellers also benefit directly from fraud protection with our Payment Guarantee Policy.

Best of all, it's quick and easy to add Google Checkout functionality to your website using various integration options, including Buy Now buttons, custom shopping carts, and the Google Checkout Store Gadget, which allows you to quickly set up a storefront for buyers in over 140 countries.



Google Checkout runs in Google’s cloud, so there is no hardware to maintain or software to update. And Google Checkout can be integrated with your Google Apps account, allowing you to quickly and easily insert a Checkout store gadget into a site you create with Google Sites or Blogger.

Learn more and get started
Google Checkout 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 Checkout, take our product tour. You can visit our Help Center for answers to specific questions or check out our blog for the latest updates.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Checkout 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 Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager, Google Checkout

Note: Google Checkout may not be available in all areas.
* Source eMarketer, 2009.

Spacex....

Congratulations to spacex.
The scope and scale of what Elon and his troops have accomplished is just breathtaking.
I am in stunned awe.

I raise a toast to a most unreasonable man!

Keeping Google Places Up To Date

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community blog]

Lots of things can change about a business — it can close, move, or change operating hours. As you rate places on Hotpot, you may notice that the business information on Google Places isn’t always completely accurate. You may even find duplicate listings for the same business.

Many of you have asked how you can help us keep the information about a place up to date. As a local expert, you can tell us about outdated information, or even change it yourself on the Place page.

Edit details on an unverified listing

There are two ways to fix business information on Google Maps. For unverified listings, you can click the Edit Details or Edit this place links on the Place page to correct the address, homepage, location, phone number, or business categories of the place. Once you’ve made an edit, we’ll verify that it’s correct and make the change on Google Maps.

Report a problem on a verified listing

Where available, you can use the Report a Problem link to tell us about incorrect information in a verified listing, such as:

• Listing contains incorrect information or spam
• Place is permanently closed
• Place has another listing
• Place doesn’t exist or is private
• Some photos, reviews, or details below to a different place

Add a place

Finally, you can also use the Report a Problem link below Maps search results to add a new place. If you search for the business on Google Maps and can’t find it, click Report a Problem at the bottom of the search results. From there, choose A place is missing from Google Maps and follow the steps to add a new place to Maps. Once the place is added, you can easily rate it on the Place page.

The place editing features are not currently available in all countries. Don’t worry, we’re working hard to make this available in more places. In the meantime, if you don’t see the Report a Problem tool in your Google Maps viewport, we encourage you to get in touch

with your local data provider and request edits or updates to the information on Maps.

Thanks for helping to keep local information on Google Maps correct and up-to-date!

Posted by Cecelia Stewart, Strategist Google Places and Hotpot

A Broad Investment Strategy

I get quite a few questions about what else I do, more long term, apart from the day trading that you see in the blog.

Let me first say that in these times, I want to be able to convert to cash with the press of a "Close All" button. Anything can still happen as far as I am concerned. I believe in diversification, but of a particular kind.

OK, how is my diversification different? Well firstly, I don't think that passive investment works now. Passive means buying something and letting it sit until you get rich. I think active investment is needed if I want to reduce risk and get a high return. Maybe my diversification isn't really diversification in the normal sense. Wasn't it Warren Buffet who said: "Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing". I diversify between different derivative strategies.

Specifically, I work my investments. Investments are like a garden that needs to be watered every day, looked after, fertilized and harvested. Presently, this is what I do:

1. Discretionary day trading - you see it in the blog

2. FloBot - Flo autotrades a portfolio of futures markets across the spectrum and I'm adding markets regularly

3. Non directional option trading - earning the time decay

4. Directional option trading - both earning time decay and earning by longer term (swing) directional speculation

5. Pairs trading (sometimes called Spread trading) - inter-market spreads, buying one and selling another, both with the underlying and options

Some of the above is computer assisted but all need to be worked, some only a few minutes a day. I can liquidate all my investments with just a few clicks of my mouse. This is very important to me in today's environment.

Active investments earn their keep every day. I can see what I am earning. I can make any adjustments and I am not relying on hope for the investments to pay off.

Today's Gap trade in the Dow Euro 50 showed the benefits of this trade. I could do this one trade and be done for the day. Pity the snow has melted here, so I guess I'll be working all day.