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Tips and tricks for managing your business with Google’s solutions
Small businesses in NYC help fight breast cancer with Pink Pin
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
This October and November, Google and
Susan G. Komen for the Cure
are taking the fight against breast cancer to New York City with the
Pink Pin initiative
. The Pink Pin initiative is a way for businesses to support the fight against breast cancer by encouraging consumers to donate to the search for a cure.
Physical businesses who register at PinkPin.com will be marked with a Pink Pin on our map. Customers who visit these businesses will be able to donate to Susan G. Komen for the Cure at stores via mobile phones. The more customers businesses reach, the more of an impact Pink Pin will have—and the closer we’ll be to a cure. We’re also encouraging businesses and consumers to inspire others by sharing their stories about the cause online at
www.pinkpin.com
. Our goal is to raise hope, raise spirits and raise more than $100,000 for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
So get involved, get on the map, share your stories and be a part of Pink Pin. With the support of small businesses like yours, Google and Susan G. Komen for the Cure can help take breast cancer off the map.
Posted by Ria Tobaccowala, Associate Product Marketing Manager
Faster updates to local business listings
Thursday, October 13, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Lat Long Blog
.)
Our goal to create a digital representation of the real world doesn’t just mean a birds’ eye view through
Google Earth
, or a
street-level view
through Google Maps. It means providing a local view as well, and tools like Google Places help people across the globe learn about and connect with the places and businesses in their immediate areas.
We use a variety of authoritative sources to give users relevant local information about places that might interest them, including data from partners, users, and directly from business owners who verify their organic listings via
Google Places for business
. In addition, we always want to know about changes to a business that should be reflected on our local search products. That’s why we have the “
Report a problem
” tool on Google Maps, and also enable users to click on the "Edit this place” link at the top of the Place page to provide updates to a business listing.
And while some business owners may have previously verified their organic listing to ensure that their company information was correct at that particular moment in time, we recognize that amidst all the work that goes into running a successful enterprise, remembering to update their Google Places account may not always be top of mind. Oftentimes, a neighborhood local or a loyal customer is eager to help their favorite business update its online presence when it moves into a bigger space across the street, or extends its hours for the summer season.
That’s why today, we’re introducing a new process that helps streamline the way updates are made to potentially outdated or incorrect business listings. Previously, verified business listings would always reflect the information provided by its owner - even if we received data about an updated name, address, or hours of operation. But now, if a user provides new information about a business they know -- or if our system identifies information from another source on the web that may be more recent than the data the business owner provided via Google Places -- the organic listing will automatically be updated and the business owner will be sent an email notification about the change. Without requiring any effort on the part of the business owner, we’ll take measures to keep their listing up-to-date if our system determines that the edit is accurate. Of course, if the business owner disagrees or has even more recent information, they can always directly log in to their Google Places account and make further edits.
Online ads from business owners using our AdWords or AdWords Express programs will not be affected by these automatic updates. Ads will continue to display the business information the owner has provided in Google Places.
We hope these new features help users find the most accurate local information available, and make it even easier for business owners to manage their online presence. If you’re a business owner with additional questions about your specific listing, please consult the
Google Places for business Help Center
or visit our
user support forum
.
Posted by Lior Ron, Google Places Product Manager
Introducing a new support feature for Google Places for business
Monday, October 3, 2011
We want to make it easy for you to get found on Google. The best way to do that is to add your business information to
Google Places for business
to make sure all your information is up to date.
But sometimes, you need a little help along the way to ensure that you can be found on Google. And lately, we’ve been hearing from many of you that you’d like a little more of this kind of help. That’s why we’re excited to share a recent change to our
Help Center
.
Now when you visit the
Help Center homepage
, you’ll notice a new section called “Fix a problem.” Click the problem that applies to you. We’ll walk you through some questions to help you get to the bottom of the issue, giving you tips to help resolve any issues you experience. And sometimes, if you still need additional help, you can send us a note. Fill out the contact form, hit submit, and someone from our team will get back to you soon.
Here’s a video to help you get started, featuring Derek, a member of our Google Places team:
Posted by Joel Headley, Consumer Operations
Google Apps highlights – 9/23/2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “
Google Apps highlights
" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
It’s back-to-school season, and we’ve made Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and Sites easier to use and more powerful for students and non-students alike—including some important accessibility improvements to help blind users be productive in our apps.
Multiple sign-in and other new preferences in Gmail for mobile
On Wednesday, we added some
helpful new features
for people who use Gmail on a mobile browser. You can now sign in to more than one Gmail account at a time, and toggle between them easily from the account switcher menu at the bottom of the mobile inbox. This can be a good time saver if you have multiple accounts or share a mobile device with family members. Gmail for mobile also now enables you to set up mobile-specific email signatures and create vacation responders right from your phone to let people know when you won't be available by email.
Calling credit auto-recharge
Now you can
automatically add international calling credits
for phone calls in Gmail when your balance gets low. Just visit the "Billing" area of the Google Voice settings page and click "Add credit" to put your account on cruise control.
Allow people to comment but not edit in documents
Sometimes, you might find yourself in situations when you’d like to share a document for feedback, but don’t want to make the document's content fully editable. The
comment-only level of access
launched last week is a nice option for these scenarios. You can let others discuss and add their thoughts to your document—without allowing them to change your work. You can allow document comments from specific individuals or groups, from anyone belonging your organization or from the general public.
Format painter, Fusion Tables, drag & drop images and vertical cell merge
Comment-only access isn't all that we've added to Google Docs over the last few weeks. Other
notable improvements
include a text format painter in documents, which is a fast way to copy and paste font, size, color and other text styling. Spreadsheets now support vertically merged cells (in addition to horizontal merges). In drawings, you can drag images from your desktop to the drawing canvas, then continue editing your graphic. We also added Fusion Tables as a new document type in the documents list.
Fusion Tables
are a powerful way to gather, visualize and collaborate on large data sets that might be unwieldy in a typical spreadsheet.
Fusion Table data visualized on an interactive map
Accessibility improvements in Google Calendar, Docs and Sites
We think technology can do a better job getting out of people’s way and helping you be more productive with less complexity and fewer frustrations. In this spirit, we’ve recently made a series of improvements to make our applications more accessible to blind users. We have more work to do, but Google
Calendar
,
Docs and Sites
now offer better support for screen readers and improved keyboard shortcuts. We hope these changes make our applications more useful to all users.
Who’s gone Google?
Organizations are moving to Google Apps for a diverse set of reasons—including cost savings, streamlined teamwork and better mobile access. We’ve even started hearing from schools and businesses who have made the switch to
reduce their impact on the environment
. No two organizations choose Google Apps for the exact same reasons, but in total, the momentum of Google Apps keeps growing.
We recently shared the news that
61 of the top 100 universities
ranked by
U.S. News and World Report
have gone Google. On the business side, there are now more than
4 million companies
using Google Apps, and businesses are joining at a rate of over 5,000 per day. In all, there are more than 40 million users that regularly use Google Apps in their organizations.
I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the
Google Apps Blog
.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
Ask us your Google Places for business questions
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A little more than a year ago,
we collected
your questions and feedback on Google Places for business via a Google Moderator page. You sent us some great feedback, and we had a blast responding! Check out our video responses
here on YouTube
, covering things like features of a listing, Report a problem and ranking.
It's important to us to continue hearing your great feedback — and we suspect you've had a lot of questions and ideas throughout the past year — so let's fire up another Moderator page. Starting today and for the next two weeks, you can
submit your questions and ideas
, as well as vote up other submissions from users. We'll answer some of the more popular questions directly on the page and post a new video or two to the
Google Places YouTube channel
.
Start sharing your ideas
right now, and stay tuned to us here on the Small Business Blog to see a roundup of responses.
Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Google Maps and Places community manager
Inc. Magazine and Google want to hear your online success story
Friday, September 2, 2011
In my role at Google, I am constantly impressed by the innovative and entrepreneurial ways that small business owners take their ideas or passions, and turn them into thriving businesses. One of my favorite business success stories is of a small boutique in New York City called Loopy Mango. For over a year, their storefront was covered by a scaffolding due to delays in renovation of the building next door. To overcome this challenge, they relied on online advertising to find customers and share what their unique lifestyle boutique had to offer.
Does your business have a unique online marketing story? In partnership with Inc. Magazine, we're now asking businesses across the country to share with us how they've used online marketing tools to improve their business. The three most impactful stories will receive tickets to the
Inc. 5000 conference
in the Washington, D.C. metro-area on September 22-24, 2011.
Inc. Magazine is taking submissions
here
. Please share your story with us by September 7, 2011 for a chance to win. Winners will be notified via email by September 10, 2011. Also, visit
Google@Inc
on Inc.com to learn more tips and tools from experts about how to grow your business online.
Posted by Ria Tobaccowala, Small Business Marketing Team
Better control in Google Sites with page-level permissions
Thursday, August 18, 2011
(Cross-posted from the
Google Docs Blog
.)
Today we’re introducing page-level permissions, a new feature that will allow you to control who can view and edit your Google Site on a page by page basis.
Using page-level permissions, you can make some pages private for certain users while keeping other pages public for everyone to see. For instance, let’s say you have a Google Site that you’ve shared with your team and your manager. You can allow your team to see one set of pages, let your manager edit another set of pages, and keep yet another set of pages private for only you.
Only site owners have the ability to enable this feature, which is turned off by default for new and existing sites. To turn on page-level permissions, go to
More Actions > Sharing and Permissions
.
From there, click
Enable page-level permissions
. Then, in the dialog box, click
Turn on page-level permissions
.
Once page-level permissions is enabled, you’ll have
three options to choose from
:
allow a page to inherit all of your site-level permissions
elect to include future site-level changes to a page
prevent a page from inheriting any future changes made at the site-level
Using page-level permissions should give you greater control over who can edit and access your Google site. To learn more about setting page-level permissions, take a look at our
getting started guide
. Let us know what you think in our
support forums
.
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