No one is sure what Google has up its sleeve, but it could be something you’ll have at home in years to come.

Google applied for a Federal Communications Commission experimental license to test an unnamed prototype entertainment device in its employees’ homes. The company says the device will connect to home electronics through wireless Internet and Bluetooth.

The main reason for the testing is to see if the device works properly and to “reveal real world engineering issues and reliability of networks,” the company said in its application. Google says the device is still in early stages of development and will be modified after reviewing test results from the 252 devices Google would like to place into employee homes in New York; Cambridge, Mass.; Los Angeles and Mountain View, Calif.

Google asked to test the devices from Jan. 17 to July 17.

SEE ALSO: FCC Grants Google Access To “Super Wi-Fi” Broadband Spectrum

“From this testing we hope to modify the design in order to maximize product robustness and user experience,” the application — submitted by Richard Whitt, Google’s director and managing counsel for Telecom and Media — says. “Utilizing the requested number of units will allow testing of real world network performance and its impact on applications running on the device, so that any problems can be discovered and addressed promptly.”

Little has been disclosed about the what the device actually is, but GigaOM and tech bloggers are wondering if it could be related to Android@Home — Google’s technology to control light switches, alarm clocks and other home appliances through Android devices — or wearable Google Goggles.

Watch the video to learn more. What do you think Google is testing?

More About: android, Entertainment, Google, technology, Video

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In this post, we are going to look at some potential link building benefits to content scrapers, how to find out what sites are scraping your content, and what you can do if you want to either benefit from the linking standpoint or have them take it down.

Linking Benefits of Content Scrapers

Last week, I was happy to see that I was listed in ProBlogger’s 20 Bloggers to Watch in 2012. Within 24 hours, I received a notification in my WordPress dashboard that a page on my blog had been linked to in the post on ProBlogger’s site.

After receiving the original notification from the ProBlogger post, I also received another 18 trackbacks from sites that had stolen the content in their post verbatim. Trackbacks are WordPress’ way of letting you know that another website has linked to a post on your blog. In this case, these 18 sites had posted the content exactly like the original post – with the links back to my blog still intact.

It was then that I started contemplating the potential link building benefits of content scrapers. These are not by any means quality links – the highest Google PageRank was a PR 2 domain, many were stealing content in a variety of languages, and one even had the nerve to use some kind of redirection script to take away the link juice of outgoing links! So while these links didn’t have the same authority that the original post had, they still count as links.

How to Catch Content Scrapers

Unfortunately, unless you want to continuously search for your post titles in Google, you’ll only be able to easily track down sites that keep your in-content links active. If you want to know what websites are scraping your content, here are a few tips to sniff them out.

Copyscape

Copyscape is a simple search engine that allows you to enter the URL of your content to find out if there are duplicates of it on the Internet. You can get a few results using their free search, or you can pay for a premium account to check up to 10,000 pages on your site and more.

Trackbacks

The first way is through your trackbacks in WordPress (as shown in the image above). Many of these will show up in the spam folder if you use Akismet. The key to getting trackbacks to appear from content scrapers is to always include links to other posts in your content. Be sure those links have great anchor text too, if you’re going for a little extra link juice. And even if you are not, internal linking with strong anchor text is good for your on-site optimization too!

Webmaster Tools

The next way to catch them is in Webmaster Tools. Simply go to your site in Webmaster Tools, and look under Your Site on the Web > Links to Your Site. Then sort by the Linked Pages column.

Anyone thinking about link building benefits at this point is probably noting the sheer volume of links from these sites, some of which are content scrapers. Essentially any site that is linking to a lot of your posts that isn’t a social network, social bookmarking site, or a die-hard fan who just loves linking to you is potentially a content scraper. You’ll have to go to their website to be sure. To find your links on their site, click on one of the domains to see the details of what pages on your site they are linking to specifically.

Then, click on one of your links to see which pages on their site is linking to yours.

You can see here that they are just blatantly copying my posts titles. When I visited one of the links, sure enough, they are copying my entire posts in their full glory onto their site.

Google Alerts

If you don’t post often or want to keep up with any mentions of your top blog posts on other websites, you can create a Google Alert using the exact match for your post’s title by putting the title in quotation marks.

I deliver all of my Google Alerts to an RSS feed so I can manage them in Google Reader, but you can also have them delivered regularly by email. You’ll even get an instant preview of the types of results you will get.

How to Get Credit for Scraped Posts

If you use WordPress, then you definitely want to try out the RSS footer plugin. This plugin allows you to place a custom piece of text at the top or bottom of your RSS feed content.

The result is this simple line on my blog posts when viewed through a RSS feed.

As you can see, even if you aren’t using it for the purpose of getting credit back to your posts when content thieves steal it, you can still use it for a little extra bit of advertising with the possible benefit of people who subscribe to your RSS feed clicking through to your website or social profiles. And when someone does scrape your content from your RSS feed, it shows up there too.

So in the event that someone finds your scraped content, they will hopefully notice the credit before assuming it was created by the blog that stole it. If you don’t have WordPress, you can simply include a note at the top or bottom of your content that includes the same information.

How to Stop Content Scrapers

If you’re not interested in anyone copying your content, then you have a few options to choose from. You can start by contacting the site that is stealing your content and sending them a notice that you want all of your content removed immediately. You can do this through the site’s contact form, email address, or post it to any social accounts they list.

If there is no contact information on the website stealing your content, you can do a Whois Lookup to (hopefully) find out who owns the domain.

If it is not privately registered, you should find an administrative contact’s email address. If not, you should at least see the domain registrar which, in this case, is GoDaddy and/or the hosting company for the website which, in this case, is HostGator. You can try to contact both companies (HostGator has a DMCA form and GoDaddy has an email) and let them know that the domain in question is stealing copyrighted content in hopes that the website will be suspended or removed.

You can also visit the DMCA and use their takedown services to remove anyone who is copying your photos, video, audio, blog, or other content. They even offer a WordPress plugin to incorporate a DMCA protected badge on your site to warn potential thieves.

Have you ever dealt with content scrapers and thieves? Do you leave it alone for the link benefits, or do you fight back? What other tools, services, or other preventative tactics do you use to block content scrapers? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!

About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

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The Google.com/elections site’s navigation allows browsing by candidate or issue. It also features a “Trends” browser, showing how candidates are doing in Google search, Google News mentions and YouTube views, and an ‘On the Ground’ viewer showing stories overlaid on a map.

Sponsor

Google began a concerted overhaul of its political resources in October. It shut down the previous incarnation, the Public Sector and Elections Lab, and launched the Google Politics and Elections Team. The new team planned to “build tools to connect voters to the electoral process.”

In November, Google launched an election hub for Egypt, which held its first elections since longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted. Today’s launch of the U.S. elections page offers a similar set of features to empower voters and enhance campaigns, all built on Google’s platform of valuable Web tools.

Where do you get your campaign news?

Discuss

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You know about Google Books, right? It’s an ambitious project by Google to, essentially, scan and make publicly available every known book. I’m guessing the end goal is to put them all onto a chip implanted in Larry Page’s brain so he can always beat anyone in an argument, forever. It’s a grand, noble idea, and it’s made possible via some amazing technical feats, such as scanning 1000 pages per hour via some elaborate scanning setup, which I’m picturing as having dozens of whirling, gleaming metal arms. More »

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Santa Claus is awfully busy this time of year, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have enough time to robocall the person of your choice, free. He’s also ready to listen to his voicemail.

There are two separate Santa-related delights Google is offering this year. First, you can let Santa know what you want for Christmas by leaving him a message at his Google Voice number — 855-34-SANTA (855 347-2682). According to the official Google blog, it’s a free call for residents of the United States and Canada; outside those areas it will cost $.01 per minute.

If you live in the U.S., you can delight your favorite kid (or amuse your friends) by having Santa immediately send a customized voice message, complete with the person’s name, state, and a variety of other customizations, which can all be combined for hilarious results (see graphic below). It’s fun — try it at Google’s Send a Call From Santa site, or listen to a sample message here.

Here’s the interface:

Google’s being coy about additional Gmail features that will be rolled out as Christmas draws nearer. The company urges you to continue checking the Send a Call from Santa site to find out more about Santa’s “extra special way to spread the holiday cheer.”

More About: Christmas, Google, Send a Call From Santa

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Continue reading Google donates $850,000 to restore home of the codebreakers

Google donates $850,000 to restore home of the codebreakers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, Google Currents is a slightly different product than Flipboard or its ilk, since it doesn’t draw links directly from social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Instead, it grabs content from discrete sources. Currents offers many sources to choose from (including GigaOM) in a variety of categories, and even allows you to follow individual content curators, like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, or any Google+ public stream. It ties into Google+ quite closely, in fact, letting users share articles or content they discover within Current with the Google social network.

Content is a little more organized than in Flipboard or other apps, and publishers have more control over how it appears thanks to a self-service platform also launched Thursday that allows them to brand and customize their content, even without developer know-how. It’s a very nice way to both encourage small producers to get on board with Currents, and also help expand Google’s available content library for readers. Publishers also get the opportunity to easily tie their content to Google Analytics to better track reader interaction and engagement.

Currents plays nice with Google Reader, too, so if you already managed most of your reading through Google’s RSS service, you can bring it with you and get the advantages of Currents’ news discovery tools. A lot of the content from its partners is also available in full, so articles are rendered beautifully in their entirety for reading in either landscape or portrait mode directly in-app.

It’s a good-looking reader, features clean lines and smooth animations, and allows for very granular control over what kind of content you do and don’t see. It reminds me of a better executed version of Yahoo Livestand, with more content and improved social hooks. Also, on the iPhone, I actually find it better organized than Flipboard, and more easy to parse. In short, it delivers on the promise of the Yahoo product, which means Flipboard and others in the same business should definitely take note.

One major limitation of Currents so far, however, is that it’s U.S.-only for the time being. That could limit its appeal, but Google will likely try to expand its availability to other countries once it can work out licensing details, and if the U.S. launch goes over well.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Mobile Q3: the fight for OS domination continues

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Rachael Gerson spearheads the Analytics division at SEER Interactive. Follow her on Twitter @rachaelgerson.

Over the past eight months, Google has steadily released one revolutionary new feature after another. On March 17, the company announced a new version of Google Analytics. Up until this point, users could decide whether they preferred to stick with the old interface or switch to the new one. However, Google recently announced that the old version of GA will be turned off in January 2012.

If you’re not already familiar with the new version, take the next few weeks to get comfortable with it. To help you get started, let’s review the top 10 features of the new Google Analytics.

1. Dashboards

Dashboards got a much needed overhaul in the new GA. Users can now create up to 20 personalized dashboards, developing widgets and formats that make the most sense for them or their company. For instance, each company department could develop its own distinct dashboard to quickly access site performance statistics that relate to department goals. Keep in mind: Dashboards can only be shared by users on the same login.

At a minimum, these four widgets would benefit the average user.

• Visits – Timeline (can also include Metric)
• Goal Completions and/or Transactions – Timeline
• Source/Medium – Table
• Bounce Rate – Timeline

2. Keyword Clouds

Rather than viewing a long list of keywords to spot trends, users can now evaluate a keyword cloud. This cloud makes it easy to visualize top keywords based on different user-selected criteria, including visits, bounce rates and pages per visit.

3. Real-Time Data

In the past, Google Analytics data was typically delayed up to 24 hours after the visit. For the first time, GA offers a real-time data solution. With its real-time reports, users can view the activity on the site as it happens, drilling into the top active pages, top referrals, keywords and geographic locations driving the traffic. In addition to monitoring current activity on the site, these reports can also be used to test campaign tracking prior to launching campaigns.

4. Site Speed

When Google released this report several months ago, it required additional code to be added to sites. Now speed reporting is standard on GA, and doesn’t need extra code. Use the site speed reports to get information about average page load time.

Why is this important? A slow site can have a negative effect on quality score for paid search, so visits can cost more to a slower site. Google has also indicated that site speed may be an important factor in organic search rankings. Additionally, a one-second delay can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. Use this report to monitor site speed and avoid these issues.

5. Search Simplifies Navigation

GA has activated menu search, a phenomenal usability update. The tool makes it easier for users to quickly navigate to the proper report. Google also created an account search that lets users directly access the correct profile, rather than scrolling through hundreds to locate the right one.

GA also introduced the ability to switch between multiple profiles while staying with and maintaining the settings of the same report. Previously this could only be done using a Firefox plugin.

6. Webmaster Tools

The new integration incorporates Google Webmaster Tools data into Google Analytics. Using this tool, users can get a better sense of which Google property (web, image, local) drove site traffic. Similar to statistics provided to paid search advertisers, Webmaster Tools provides impressions, average position and CTR data for GA.

Although the numbers are not 100% accurate, they can be used to evaluate relative trends and to provide insight into data lost due to Google’s search update. Although the Webmaster Tools report is in Google Analytics, it’s limited to a single part of GA.

7. Social Engagement

Use Google Analytics to track how visitors interact socially with your site. A 2010 study showed 54% of small and medium-sized businesses said they already use or plan to use social media, and 17% planned to increase their social budget again from 2010 to 2011. With more companies making a push for social, it makes sense to analyze social site interactions.

GA’s new social reports break down how many of a site’s visitors are socially engaged with the site, itemizing which social source and action occurred. That way you can determine how many of your visitors +1′d site content vs. how many Liked it, as well as the pages that prompted this social action. Social plugins ShareThis and AddThis easily integrate with Google Analytics, passing information on social interactions back to GA with minimal changes.

8. Visitor Flow & Goal Flow Visualization

Flow Visualization was announced in October, but only recently started rolling out to most users. Flow Visualization consists of two reports: Visitors Flow and Goal Flow. The Visitors Flow report can be used to visualize the “flow” of visitors through the site, while the Goal Flow is an improvement on the original Funnel Visualization reports.

The Goal Flow report is especially valuable, as it simplifies evaluating a conversion funnel. Have a checkout process six pages long? Now you can determine at which page people are abandoning their carts. Then improve the process and save the sales.

9. Event Tracking

Prior to this new feature, any goal interaction with a site that didn’t result in a new URL needed to be tracked using special code to create a virtual pageview, which resulted in inflated numbers in GA. For the first time, Events can be used as goals. Want to find out how many people downloaded a PDF? Interested in knowing how many visitors viewed more than 30 seconds of a video on your site? Now users can easily track these events without affecting other metrics.

10. Multi-Channel Funnels

The Multi-Channel Funnels are a series of reports intended to help provide attribution information. For example, a person visits your site first from a paid search ad, then from an organic search listing, then from a link in Twitter, and finally from an email link. Therefore, which channel should get credit for the conversion? With many analytics platforms, the credit goes to the final funnel, thus, the email marketing campaign.

Multiple reports in the new Multi-Channel Funnels allow users to view further back than the final channel. Now GA shows every interaction a user had with the site in the 30 days prior to conversion. Using these reports, departments can take credit for their assists to conversions, and companies can make more informed decisions about which marketing activities have the highest ROI.

These are just a few of the many great advancements made to Google Analytics with the new rollout. While there are still several features missing (such as the PDF and email export functionalities, percent comparisons, missing graph by week option, etc.), Google is constantly striving to correct these with future iterations of the platform.

What’s your favorite feature in the new Google Analytics?

More About: contributor, features, Google, google analytics, trending, web apps

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Address is Approximate by Tom Jenkins. I’ve watched this multiple times, and can’t get enough. Beautiful and touching. [via]

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The Google Street View snowmobile has apparently been busy. Google has added imagery for a number of ski resorts using the specially-equipped snowmobile that made its debut during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Check out the video above to find out where and how you can access the new imagery.

More About: Google, google street view, skiing

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