The theme this year is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would." Google says along with the winners Doodle appearing on the homepage on May 27, 2010, they will also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.

Google has also put together a panel of expert judges. The Google Blog offers more details. "We’re happy to let you know that this year, we’ve also assembled a panel of well-known ‘Expert Jurors,’ including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. Our Expert Jurors will help us narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010."

"For the second year, we’ll also be partnering with the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, we’ll give out eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists."

Only schoolteachers or administrators can register their schools to participate.  Registration for the Doodle 4 Google contest closes at 11:59 Pacific Time on March 17, 2010, and entries must be submitted by March 31, 2010.

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Yusuf Mehdi, the senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business, talked to Reuters yesterday, and expressed a mixture of confidence and optimism on several fronts.  Much of that stemmed from his faith in a certain not-quite-cemented partnership.

"As soon as we close and implement the Yahoo deal, we have achieved a milestone: for advertisers, we are a credible No. 2," Mehdi said.

Later, Mehdi continued, "There’s no question we intend to make a profit. . . .  Clearly there’s a huge return in the search marketplace that can more than make up the investments we’ve put in to this point."

Bing (and perhaps Yahoo) fans should be happy to hear all this.  It doesn’t sound like Microsoft’s set its sights unrealistically high (note the "No. 2" comment), and at the same time, the company sees a way to make money off what’s generally been a losing proposition to date.

Now, of course, Microsoft and Yahoo just need to get regulators to approve their deal.

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Do you count speed among the priorities for your site? Comment here.

Despite the fact that Cutts never said that page speed would become any more important of a ranking factor than anything else, many around the web and Blogosphere jumped to conclusions. While many more have remained sensible about the concept, not expecting page speed to trump relevant content, Cutts has now provided a video setting the record straight. The video is a response to the following user-submitted question:

Since we’re hearing a lot of talk about the implications of Page Speed, I wonder if Google still cares as much about relevancy? Or are recentness and page load time more important?

Matt’s answer is simply, "No. Relevancy is the most important. If you have two sites that are equally relevant (same backlinks…everything else is the same), you’d probably prefer the one that’s a little bit faster, so page speed can be an interesting theory to try out for a factor in scoring different websites. But absolutely, relevance is the primary component, and we have over 200 signals in our scoring to try to return the most relevant, the most useful, the most accurate search result that we can find. That’s not going to change." (emphasis added)

"If you can speed your site up, it’s really good for users, as well as potentially down the road, being good for search engines," he says. "So it’s something that people within Google have thought about."

It is interesting that anyone would ever assume page speed would become more important than relevance to Google, just because Matt Cutts indicated that page speed may become one of the many factors Google uses. If it were more important than relevance, Google probably would have been placing emphasis on page speed for a long time.

That said, it is worth pondering just how big a factor page speed would play. If there are over 200 factors, where would page speed be placed within the ranking of ranking factors? On a scale of one to two hundred, where would Google rank the importance of page speed? That question might not be quite so easy to answer, particularly since Google isn’t real keen on the idea of giving away its secrets, and frankly, that’s probably in the best interest of the web.

Just as with any other SEO tactic, it is up to individuals and the industry at large to speculate, analyze, and test. It’s no easy feat, but there are plenty of educated guesses out there about just what Google’s "over 200 ranking factors" are. Once you get into how much weight each one carries, it gets even more difficult to speculate.

I think the real takeaway here is simply to make your site as fast and user-friendly as possible, within reason. If it means you have to spend less time producing relevant content that is likely to get you good search engine placement, then maybe it’s not worth it. However, if it means providing a better user experience on top of relevant content, and it’s within your means to do so, it will only have good implications for the future of your site.

Google offers webmasters a lot of different tools to help them make their sites faster. In fact, they have a list of such tools here, and it doesn’t just contain Google tools. They also point to tools from third-party developers. It’s all part of Google’s initiative to "make the web faster."

On a scale of 1 to 200, where would you place the importance of page speed? Discuss here.

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"If you often use both a computer and a mobile phone in your daily routine, it can seem like a hassle when they don’t stay in sync," the Google Maps team says. "You might spend time on your computer looking for a great used bookstore, only to forget the name of the place when you are ready to get directions from your phone. Sure, you could print directions in advance, but we believe smartphones are ’smart’ because they save you time."

In addition to the personalized suggestions, Google has introduced starring in Google Maps for Mobile on Android. This provides users with a way to save places to access later.

"So whether you’re standing at Amoeba Music with your phone or making plans to go there on your computer, you can star it so it appears on the map next time you’re on either device," the team says. "When viewing place details, just press the star icon next to the place name; these starred places are automatically synchronized between desktop and mobile, and can be accessed from both the ‘More’ menu on your phone and from the My Maps tab on your computer."

Google actually just introduced a starring feature for Google News as well. As I mentioned with reference to that, this gives users another reason to have a Google account, which could just be one of Google’s motives for offering this feature.

Both starring and personalized suggestions in Google Maps require you to be signed in with you Google account. The suggestions require you to have web history enabled.

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"These people said the store will sell business software designed by outside developers to integrate and add capabilities to Google Apps, such as enhanced security features or the ability to import contacts," the WSJ reports, later adding, "Google eventually plans to allow customers to purchase its partners’ software through the site, taking a cut for itself and sharing some revenue with the developers, these people said. Google will allow users to quickly access their purchased applications through the menu at the top of their screens within Gmail or Google Docs, they said."

Both publications refer to a statement from Google in which the company said, "The Google Solutions Marketplace makes it easy for our customers to connect with an ecosystem of products and professional services. We’re constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time."

The Google Solutions Marketplace is described by the company as a place that links customers to vendors whose solutions integrate and extend Google’s communication, collaboration, and enterprise search products.

The rumored product would presumably be separate from this, operating as a standalone store for consumers and businesses to purchase apps that meet their needs, not unlike they can do with Apple’s app store or Google’s own Android Market.

If the rumor turns out to be true, it could mean some very interesting things for Google Apps and the businesses that use them. It could also give Google more of an edge in the competition for office software dominance.

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Stanford and Google first sealed a book-related deal in late 2004.  In fact, Stanford was one of five organizations that, on December 14th of 2004, joined what was then known as an expansion of the Google Print program.

Now, a post on the Google Public Policy Blog has stated, "Stanford University . . . has expanded our original partnership to take advantage of our settlement agreement to make millions of works from its library collection accessible to readers, researchers, and book lovers across the United States."

The post continued, "That means that if the settlement agreement is approved by the court, anyone in the US will be able to find, preview and buy online access to books from Stanford’s library."

So obviously, this could be a significant agreement.  We’ll just need to find out how the settlement agreement fares before we can be sure that the terms will stick.

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Google is telling users to switch to v200909 as soon as possible to avoid any complications.

Original Article: Google has launched the newest version of the AdWords API v2009 beta. That would be version 200909. Google cites the following as the highlights of the new API:

- Asynchronous calls - Asynchronous calls allow you to work with large sets of data faster and more easily. Instead of having to wait for our system to fully complete your request before you can make another one, you’re now able to make another call as soon as the API service confirms that it has received your previous call. No more waiting for the server to complete large requests. V200909 will continue to support Synchronous methods as well.

- Keyword and placement ideas - With the new TargetingIdeaService, you’ll be able to get keyword and placement ideas through the API, leveraging the functionality of the search-based keyword tool.

- Location Extensions preview – Limited location extensions functionality is now available as a preview of the full functionality in development.

These are just the highlights. Google has a complete list of all of the new features in its release notes.

The company says that over the next few months, it will continue to introduce new features and additional AdWords functionality. New features will include ReportService, AccountService and the ability to pre-check for errors.

"Given that v2009 introduces new concepts and features, we have extended the sunset period for deprecated services to 6 months," Google says. "If you haven’t already begun migrating your systems to the v2009 API, we strongly encourage you to start right away."

v13 services CampaignService, AdGroupService, CriterionService, AdService, InfoService, KeywordToolService, and SiteSuggestionService will sunset on April 22, 2010. Other v13 service sunset dates will be announced in due time.

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Keep in mind that the social circle is based upon information that Google has about you from your Google account. You can see your list of connections anytime from here (assuming you have a Google account). It pulls connections from your Google Contacts, and any services you have listed on your Google profile (assuming you have services listed on your profile). If you have Twitter listed for example (Facebook connections are not public), anyone you are connected to through one of those services is fair game for potential search results.

Google’s thinking is that if the user is connected to certain people, results from those people will have relevance because you know and trust them. Google says, "You can improve social search results for your friends and contacts by linking to content you have created such as blogs, photos and videos on your Google profile."

"We’ve been having a lot of fun with Social Search. It’s baby season here on our team — two of us just had little ones, and a third is on the way," the company says in the announcement. "We’re all getting ready to be parents for the first time and we have lots of questions. So, what do we do? We search Google, of course! With Social Search, when we search for [baby sleep patterns], [swaddling] or [best cribs], not only do we get the usual websites with expert opinions, we also find relevant pages from our friends and contacts. For example, if one of my friends has written a blog where he talks about a great baby shop he found in Mountain View, this might appear in my social results. I could probably find other reviews, but my friend’s blog is more relevant because I know and trust the author."

Appearing in social search results means:

1. Make sure you have all of your important links on your Google Profile.
2. Make as many connections as possible.
3. Encourage customers to follow you via social networks.
4. Participate in social media so people will engage with you.
5. Encourage sharing of content (there are plenty available social media buttons)
6. Include social network info on business cards/signage, etc.
7. Include social network info in your online advertising
8. There are probably many more worthwhile tips (if you have any, share them in the comments).

Google’s social search doesn’t end with regular web search. They’re adding it to image search, and who knows what else. Look for a lot more features to become part of social search, as Google leaves that Beta tag on. Let’s not forget that Gmail only left beta last year, and I don’t have to tell you they’ve added a lot to that over the years.

Just remember that social results will always be clearly marked as such on Google’s SERPs. They will be accompanied by a heading that says "Results from your social circle". Still, for traditional SEO it is just one more thing to compete with as far as page real estate. That’s why social is a much more of an important part of search than ever.

Google has been making many moves over the last couple years that seem to slowly turn it more and more into its own social network. Now that its profiles have a direct impact on search results, how people view Google in this light is likely to change significantly. Once more and more average users start to realize the social features are being integrated more into their everyday searches, they may find themselves getting sucked into using Google as more of a social tool, as opposed to just search.

What are your thoughts on Google’s social search? Discuss here.

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Let’s start with the stuff that’s easier to understand.  On the Official Google Blog, Mark Davis explained today, "[T]he characters ‘fi’ can either be represented as two characters (‘f’ and ‘i’), or a special display form ‘?’.  A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent – to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce."

Davis then continued, "But no longer – after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents."

As for the news that may only mean something to a smaller set of people, well, Google’s been tracking Unicode usage for a while based on its index, and the search giant believes Unicode has itself nearly earned the "giant" moniker.  The graph below shows that usage is almost at 50 percent.

According to Davis, Google’s ability to deal with different languages should improve as Unicode becomes more common.

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…where new options may subject consumers to substantial ETFs, potentially from more than one entity, the Commission has a special interest in ensuring that consumers have a clear and complete understanding of the rates, terms, and conditions on which the communications services are being offered and the rationale for those rates, terms, and conditions. The combination of ETFs from Google and T-Mobile for the Nexus One is also unique among the four major national carriers. Consumers have been surprised by this policy and by its financial impact. Please let us know your rationale(s) for these combined fees, and whether you have coordinated or will coordinate on these fees and on the disclosure of their combined effect.

Original Article: Google made big waves in the mobile industry early in the year, and the effects of those waves are being felt quite hard by some users. The Nexus One’s release has gotten off to kind of a rocky start.

The issues plaguing customers of the much-anticipated Google phone have been widely publicized. Most of the gripes have dealt with Google’s customer service (or lack thereof) for the device, and trouble with 3G connections. More recently, however, complaints of outrageous early termination fees have popped up.

The trouble for users is that if they got the Nexus One with a two-year contract from T-Mobile, they end up having to pay about $550 to terminate early. The thing is, they have to pay T-Mobile’s regular fee, but they also have to pay Google a fee. Needless to say, that has caught some people off guard.

Google’s fee is a $350 "Equipment Recovery Fee". It applies to customers who cancel their contracts within the first 120 days.

According to Niraj Sheth with the Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog, "A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the fee is "a way for the company to recoup the subsidy it gives to contract customers."

"’This is standard practice for third-party resellers of T-Mobile and other operators,’ she said. A T-Mobile spokesman said that the carrier’s early termination fee is standard for its customers on contract."

While the combination of the aforementioned problems may not bode well for Google’s reputation in the mobile industry at the moment, the good news for the company is that they are projected to come out on top in the smartphone race eventually. Crunchgear says Google and Android will "own the smartphone market" eventually. Time will tell if that is an accurate depiction of things to come, but for now, people just seem upset.

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