New Google Ad Extension: Ad Sitelinks
The new Google ad extension Ad Sitelinks is now available to all adwords advertisers, exciting stuff, more opportunity for people to click on your ad. Just one question though; if everyone has ad sitelinks surely it is just going to add to the clutter? Well lets test and see.
First how do you set up Google Ad Sitelinks?
Ad Sitelinks Setup
Ad Sitelinks are an adwords campaign level setting which reinforces the need for well structured campaigns; your ad sitelinks should be relevant to all ads in that adwords campaign.
Under your adwords Campaign >> Settings scroll down to Ad extensions
Simple, now all you need to do is define the additional sitelinks you want to display below your ad. All you marketers get out there and give your opinions, I know you will all give your opinions anyway, so …
Google Search Redesign and New Features
Google today launched a whole new looking search results page, this is the official announcement. Not that any announcement is really needed given that Google search results are looked at regularly by web users, kind of like someone rearranging your bunch of keys. The question is do people like it? is it any better, what new features were launched?
Google is trying to encourage users to interact more with their search space; last year they added the expanding left “search tools” bar for users to filter their searches, but because it all looked the same most of the people I chatted to about this had not noticed that you could now reorder your search results by date or exclude older stuff. I mean that wonder wheel is loads of fun!
Another thing is the search results are occupying more browser window width, as screen resolutions have generally trended wider in the last 10 years.
But what of the new features? None really, just making the stuff they have already built and added more visible for the end user.
Pages / visit ==> UP ==> More Google search ads served ==> Google makes more money ==> Google happy 
jQuery for Web Page Sprites: Spritely
Years back I tried to code my own JavaScript to get snowflakes to descend gracefully down the screen. Besides crashing the browser repeatedly I had limited, frustrating success at successfully creating and replicating independent sprites to move on the screen.
Well Artlogic have managed to create a jQuery plugin that is at version 0.1 but looks beautifully elegant, just go to spritely.net.
My expectation was that the birds in the header would stay in the header, being so used to Flash where the sprite is bounded by the box it is in. So I was surprised when I clicked further down the page and the bird came to the mouse, Fun stuff!
No Google Buzz for Google Apps Users?
Well it is disappointing that Google Apps users have to wait until Google Buzz is released for them. Reading the text on the official announcement it appears that Buzz will be: “We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps”
It remains to be seen if this means that only premium Google Apps clients will get this feature. This would be strange however as in my experience it it precisely businesses who are for ever trying to stop their staff from using sites like Facebook, YouTube and such like, so they would not be interested in enabling a Google apps feature that distracts staff from their work.
Google Social Search Experiment
Blogged a few thousand times already, but social search and Google’s take on social search is an important development in SEO and SMO at the same time.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/search-is-getting-more-social.html
jQuery Mouseover for Inline Images
I was hoping to find a WordPress plugin for creating a mouseover or hover effect on an image that is not a hyperlink, but none is available. So what I wanted is for my client to be able to post an image on a page and in a simple way, swap the image onmouseover.
Here is what I did, when inserting an image into the web page I give it the class “swapper” and ame the mouseout or default state of the image -OFF:
<img class="swapper" src="http://xyz.com/coffee-OFF.jpg" />
Then the jQuery function to do the swapping:
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
// do this on hover for images with the class swapper
$("img.swapper").hover(function() {
//Get the src attribute of the default image
rollSRC = $(this).attr("src");
//Replace -OFF with -OVER for the rollover version
rollOVER = rollSRC.replace('-OFF', '-OVER');
$(this).attr("src", rollOVER );
}, function() {
//revert to the original image
$(this).attr("src", rollSRC );
});
});
</script>
If you are using this on WordPress change all the $ signs to jQuery (eg jQuery(document).ready(function()...)
Now I should be able to explain to the client that they need to:
- Upload the two image states coffee-OFF.jpg and coffee-OVER.jpg into the same folder (case sensitive)
- Insert the default image with the class=”swapper”
So Simple how can it go wrong!
Of course I did not come up with this entirely on my own, the following articles all helped me:
http://www.atlantajones.com/web-dev/even-easier-jquery-rollovers/
http://bavotasan.com/tutorials/a-simple-mouseover-hover-effect-with-jquery/
http://www.frodesigns.com/2009/07/wordpress-jquery-image-rollovers/
Google Chrome for Linux
Google now have Google Chrome for Linux out there in Beta, which opens up the web browser options for Linux users http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/w00t.html. (they never fail to ack their geek roots, the page is named w00t! Got to love that)
I am in online marketing and find that I often need to be logged into Three different Google accounts at the same time. Firefox, Opera and IE on Windows gives me two relatively responsive browsers and IE, so that is enough. On Linux I have had Firefox, Opera and Konquerer? Sorry it just does not cut it, it kind of reminds me of old versions of IE which were web browser and file browser all-in-one.
So Google Chrome is a great addition, why do I like it? Google Chrome is lightweight and stable; no plugins or OS hooks, so it loads really fast. It is also standards compliant, so page rendering is not a problem. And that Incognito mode is really great if you do not trust a site (or have other browsing needs you do not want recorded 
)
Cleaner Google Homepage + Cookie Monster Doodle
Perhaps I have been slow on the uptake here, but the Google search homepage is elegantly simplified, until you move your mouse.
This morning when I arrived I saw Cookie Monster staring back at me, but also nothing other than the Google search input box:
Well I say it is less busy but Cookie Monster is certainly getting busy chewing his way through Google. Then once you move your mouse some Javascript fades in the missing clutter on the Google homepage that we have grown used to:
What do you think of the cleaner Google homepage? I love it (I am assuming when the monster is gone it will remain like this).
I took a look around and it seems to only give me the cleaner Google homepage in Firefox on google.com and google.co.za but not google.co.uk. Other browsers are displaying as they always have (except of course for Cookie Monster). The code doing the reveal in Firefox is using an event in the <html> tag:
<html onmousemove="google&&google.fade&&google.fade()">
For the Google story on the Week’s Sesame Street Google Doodles, and all the Doodles in one place.