New tools for Google Services for Websites

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 11:05 AM

Webmaster Level: All
(A nearly duplicate version :) cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Earlier this year, we launched Google Services for Websites, a program that helps partners, e.g., web hoster and access providers, offer useful and powerful tools to their customers. By making services, such as Webmaster Tools, Custom Search, Site Search and AdSense, easily accessible via the hoster control panel, hosters can easily enable these services for their webmasters. The tools help website owners understand search performance, improve user retention and monetize their content — in other words, run more effective websites.

Since we launched the program, several hosting platforms have enhanced their offerings by integrating with the appropriate APIs. Webmasters can configure accounts, submit Sitemaps with Webmaster Tools, create Custom Search Boxes for their sites and monetize their content with AdSense, all with a few clicks at their hoster control panel. More partners are in the process of implementing these enhancements.

We've just added new tools to the suite:

• Web Elements allows your customers to enhance their websites with the ease of cut-and-paste. Webmasters can provide maps, real-time news, calendars, presentations, spreadsheets and YouTube videos on their sites. With the Conversation Element, websites can create more engagement with their communities. The Custom Search Element provides inline search over your own site (or others you specify) without having to write any code and various options to customize further.
• Page Speed allows webmasters to measure the performance of their websites. Snappier websites help users find things faster; the recommendations from these latency tools allow hosters and webmasters to optimize website speed. These techniques can help hosters reduce resource use and optimize network bandwidth.
• The Tips for Hosters page offers a set of tips for hosters for creating a richer website hosting platform. Hosters can improve the convenience and accessibility of tools, while at the same time saving platform costs and earning referral fees. Tips include the use of analytics tools such as Google Analytics to help webmasters understand their traffic and linguistic tools such as Google Translate to help websites reach a broader audience.

If you're a hoster and would like to participate in the Google Services for Websites program, please apply here. You'll have to integrate with the service APIs before these services can be made available to your customers, so the earlier you start that process, the better.

And if your hosting service doesn't have Google Services for Websites yet, send them to this page. Once they become a partner, you can quickly configure the services you want at your hoster's control panel (without having to come to Google).

As always, we'd love to get feedback on how the program is working for you, and what improvements you'd like to see.

Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager