Google for Non-Profits Newsletter - February, 2009

[Galen Panger]

Google for Non-Profits Newsletter - February, 2009

Did you know Google can now translate between languages read by 98% of the world's Internet users? This and more in February's update from the Google for Non-Profits team.

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The next chapter for Google.org
Video makes all the difference
Recorded and future webinars from the AdWords team
Build virtual tours in Google Earth 5.0
Breaking down language barriers with Google Translate

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The next chapter for Google.org

Google.org was formed three years ago by Google founders Larry and Sergey, with the mission "to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age." They committed to devoting 1% of Google's equity and profits to philanthropy, and structured Google.org so that in addition to traditional grant making, it can also invest in for-profit companies, advocate for policies, and tap into Google's core strengths: its employees, products and technologies.

On Monday, Google.org announced that it would be taking better advantage of these core strengths by aligning more closely with Google as a whole. As a first step, more engineers and technical talent will be assigned to Google.org, and long-time Googler Megan Smith will take over the day-to-day management of Google.org, joining as General Manager, in addition to her existing role as Vice President of New Business Development. Current Google.org head Larry Brilliant will take on a new role as Google's Chief Philanthropy Evangelist, helping to identify new "big ideas" and raising awareness of society's biggest challenges.

All of this stems from the belief that Google.org's greatest impact has come when we've attacked problems in ways that make the most of Google's strengths in technology and information; examples of this approach include Flu Trends, RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter.

The latter project, PowerMeter, is the recently-announced prototype product that will allow you to see detailed information about your home energy use right on your computer. Learn more about PowerMeter in this video. For the full story on Google.org's next chapter, visit the Google.org blog.

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Video makes all the difference

The Google blogosphere brims with all kinds of new videos every month in an effort to make it easier for everyone, including non-profits, to understand how to make the best use of our tools and technologies. Not only do we produce a lot of videos, but our users contribute to the effort, too.

Back in December, the Google Analytics team launched their own YouTube channel to help everyone get a better grasp of the useful metrics Analytics can provide for your website, like what keywords visitors use to find your site, or where your traffic is coming from. Not too long after, a user from Portland, Maine created a whole video series of his own, explaining how you can use Google Analytics to enhance your online marketing efforts. Check them out:
 

Google Analytics: How People are Behaving on your Site
Where Does Your Traffic Come From?
Using Google Analytics Filters for Better Traffic Reports
The Google Analytics Dashboard

Jumping into the ring this month are the Webmaster Central and Website Optimizer teams, both of whom announced new YouTube channels to better communicate with website managers. Non-profits should take advantage. Matt Cutts, on the team at Google charged with purging our search results of spam, discusses how to keep spam off your site on the Webmaster Central channel. Over on the Website Optimizer channel is a great video that explains the basic value proposition for running experiments on your site to discover the best designs.

There's more. Our friends on the Custom Search Engine team explain the importance of monitoring what visitors to your site search for when they arrive so that you can do a better job of organizing your content and helping them find it (of course, we encourage you to use our free site search tools for this very purpose).

And Ramya Raghavan at YouTube this month drew attention to videos from a group called Howcast that explain how to use social media to build movements around you cause. Read more about the video series here.

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Recorded and future webinars from the AdWords team

In case you're not overwhelmed yet by the huge amount of video content ready to teach you more about Google tools, the AdWords team also has a dedicated site that lists upcoming and recorded webinars about AdWords advertising and other products from Google. Webinars are great because they are presented live online by a Google product specialist, with plenty of time for questions. Check out the full list of available AdWords webinars here.

As you may know, Google's flagship non-profit program, Google Grants, offers free advertising via AdWords for non-profits. But did you know that there are differences between a Grants account and normal AdWords accounts? If not, a blog named Search Marketing Gurus explains the difference in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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Build virtual tours in Google Earth 5.0

Google Earth this month was upgraded to version 5.0, bringing along with it a whole new world of ocean exploration (yes, you can now dive into the oceans!), historical imagery, and 3D terrain maps of Mars.

Perhaps the most useful new feature is something called "touring," which allows non-profits to build narrated tours of the places they care about. So now, in addition to being able to create layers of information, photos and videos over the Earth terrain, you can now tour your users through all of it. Creating a tour is straightforward—all you do is hit a "record" button and start navigating. Learn more about how to create a tour on the Google LatLong blog.

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Breaking down language barriers with Google Translate

Google Translate recently added support for Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese, and Galician, bringing our automatic translation technology to 41 languages. That means there are 1,640 language pairs that Google Translate allows you to work with. And as a result, Google can now translate between languages read by 98% of Internet users.

For more on Google Translate and the many tools we offer to take advantage of our translation technology, visit translate.google.com.

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That's it for this month's newsletter. As always, please send any suggestions for the newsletter or Google for Non-Profits site our way.

Have a great weekend!

Galen from the Google for Non-Profits Team