Help Desk Hangouts: Getting to know Chromebooks

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.


In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we introduced you to Chromebooks — a fast, secure, netbook (did we mention fast?). During the hour-long Hangout, Google product specialists Adam Naor and Will Paulus walk us through the basics, and Chromebook user Eric Hunter shares his firsthand experience using it at his business. Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google Business YouTube channel. And, if you’re interested in learning more about Chromebooks, fill out this form to stay up to date on all the latest news and product announcements.




Check out the video description on the YouTube page for a minute-by-minute breakdown.


Some of the questions we answered during the Hangout:


I'm a big Word/Office suite user. How do I make the switch to a Chromebook? Can a Chromebook work with these files? 
They can be viewed in Google Docs, or even converted to the Docs native format. Or, if you’d like to run Office on a Chromebook, you can do so through our Citrix Receiver App (and a Citrix server), or try on of the Chrome webstore Apps like InstallFree Nexus.


What's does Google’s support for Chromebooks look like? 
If you are a business user, you have access to 24/7 email and phone support. If you’re a consumer user, you can contact a Chromebook ninja M - F between 5:30am - 7pm PST. Here’s some additional information.


What happens with a Chromebook when internet access is limited, slow, or spotty?
The moments when you’re offline are increasingly rare. But with Chromebooks, we wanted to ensure that you're constantly connected with WiFi or 3G. Chrome also supports HTML5 offline functionality that allows applications or websites that support these features to run offline. Hundreds of apps in the Chrome Web Store today work offline like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, NY Times, Kindle, NPR, Angry Birds and more.


Where can I get a Chromebook?
If you represent a Business, School, or Non-profit organization, please fill out the form here, and a member of our team will get in contact shortly. If you are a consumer, you can obtain one here.


How does a Chromebook work with Google Drive?
Google Drive is going to be a core part of the Chromebook experience. We're building it to work seamlessly with your file manager and it will be coming very soon.


Would you recommend ChromeBooks as a software development platform?
Definitely as they have a terminal shell built in.


Be sure to join us for next week’s Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday May 2, when we discuss AdWords. We’ll be collecting your AdWords questions early next week on the Google+ Your Business page.


Posted by Toby Stein, Google+ community manager

Joining forces to support computer science majors

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

A few weeks ago, I attended the annual SIGCSE (Special Interest Group, Computer Science Education) conference in Raleigh, NC. Google has been a platinum sponsor of SIGCSE for many years now, and the conference provides an opportunity for thousands of CS educators to come together, share ideas and work on significant challenges that have emerged over the last five years.

Five years ago, the Advanced Placement Computer Science course and exam almost died. Due to lack of student interest, the B part of the AP CS was discontinued and there was a risk that the A part would also be discontinued. At that time, the number of CS majors at the undergraduate level also hit an all time low. Specifically, the number of students taking the AP CS exam fell 15 % between 2001 and 2007, and the number of college freshmen intending to major in CS plummeted more than 70% during the same period. This was a paradox for CS educators. They knew (and know) that advancing U.S. students' understanding of the principles and practices of computing is critical to developing a globally competitive workforce for the 21st century.

Rather than be defeated, a commission of ten secondary and higher education faculty came together and used this as an opportunity to reinvigorate interest in CS. They re-invented the AP CS into a course that not only introduces students to programming, but also gives them an understanding of the fundamental concepts of computing, its breadth of application and its potential for transforming the world.

The NSF generously funded the development and piloting of this new CS Principles course two years ago. This academic year, the NSF has funded several high school pilots as well. The pilots have been so successful that the College Board has now committed to developing a new state-of-the-art exam for the course. This is a critical accomplishment. The AP CS is the only standardized computing course we have in high school. The high school curriculum is packed—it’s nearly impossible to get any new course from any domain into the curriculum, and the AP CS is our stake in the ground.

Concurrent with the AP CS development, the ACM has pushed forward on two fronts that are also making significant impact. The CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) now has 11,000 members with 2300 College Board-certified to teach the AP CS Part A (which is still being offered). Membership and interest is rising, and this community plays a key role in professional development, CS standards definition (another critical stake in the ground) and scaling of the new AP CS.

In addition, we have the Computing in the Core Coalition, which is a non-partisan advocacy group of associations, corporations, scientific societies and other nonprofits that is working to elevate CS to a core academic subject in K-12 education. The Coalition does this through advocacy with government agencies and Congress, and by raising general awareness through CSEdWeek.

The good news is we are starting to see positive indicators of change. CS majors are rebounding at the undergraduate level.

The latest Employment Projections for 2010 to 2020 (Bureau of Labor Statistics) show a 6.9% increase in employment from 2006-2010 in computer and mathematical occupations, and a projected 22.0% increase from 2010-2020. This is in comparison to a 14.3% increase, on average, for all other growing occupations.

Students, parents, teachers, administrators and government officials are starting to hear the message:

• There is an exponentially growing demand in computing job opportunities
• Computing is inherently creative, innovative and team-based
• Technology and computing are transforming the world

Of course, we still do not have nearly enough supply coming out of colleges and universities to meet the demand, but the situation has improved in the last two years.

We believe that computing and CS are critical to our future, and we support CS education through many programs including CS4HS, App Inventor (just re-launched from MIT), our Exploring Computational Thinking curriculum, and other outreach programs and partnerships. Computing is at the foundation of all things technology, and computer science is at the foundation of computing.

Google Apps keeps music companies humming

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Enterprise blog.)

Music is a huge part of our culture at Google, and I’m really excited that the music festival season is just getting started. If you were at Coachella (which we livestreamed on YouTube this year) or have plans to go to go to another festival, you're probably just as excited.

Musicians, record labels, and music companies are using technology to do some amazing things, like producing on-stage holograms or experimenting with new online distribution models. It’s common for artists to launch their careers on YouTube, broadcast a performance on Google+ Hangouts, or connect with their fans using social media. But beyond the tech-coolness we hear a lot about, the music community is also taking advantage of technology behind the scenes - or rather, in the cloud - to develop their businesses.

I’m proud to say that some of today’s musical entrepreneurs are using Google Apps for Business. Whether it’s having the freedom to run a new indie record label, the flexibility to manage up-and-coming music artists on tour, or the ability to collaborate across the globe, Google Apps helps these teams focus on what they love the most - the music. We want to share three stories about awesome music companies using Google Apps to grow and evolve:

Music Clout is a startup formed by a group of guys with a die-hard passion for music. The idea is simple: create an online community that connects independent artists with music industry contacts and opportunities. They launched their company with Google Apps to make it easier to work together internally and with their team of contractors. Since their web development team works from Turkey, the combination of chat in Gmail and Hangouts allows them to instantly discuss website programming and other technicalities, while saving the team from high phone bills.


GHouse, a Boston-based record label, works with musicians from various genres, including electronic, reggae, rock, and country. Beginning as a side project by a college music student, it’s evolved into a full-time business. Initially, the team relied on a remote server and legacy software that were always stalling or crashing on them. They switched to Google Apps so that they could easily work together anytime, anywhere online, and on any device with Internet connectivity. With Google Docs, the team can easily share music tour dates and track all of their profits from the shows.

Founded in 2007, Fly South Music Group is an artist management firm out of Orlando, FL with satellite offices in Nashville and Los Angeles. The company set up Google Apps because it wanted a common platform for company email, calendars and documents that could be shared between all their clients, families, labels, tour managers and promotion coordinators. Today, it’s become essential to their workflow from scheduling to budget management with access to information from anywhere. This accessibility provides a whole new layer of transparency that keeps everyone in sync, especially while traveling around the world.

Google Apps has given these companies the built-in collaboration they need to communicate better, work smarter, and stay focused on bringing new talent and fresh ideas to the music industry.

Posted by Barbara Yang, Google Apps Team

FinalBuilder trigger problem

I discovered that the continuous integration using FinalBuilder didn't run because of an error on the triggers that check the SubVersion repository.  When checking the Windows EventLog, I saw many errors from the EventSource "Userenv":

• Windows has backed up this user's profile. Windows will automatically try to use the backed up profile the next time this user logs on.
• Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.
• Windows was unable to load the registry. This is often caused by insufficient memory or insufficient security rights.
  DETAIL - A required privilege is not held by the client.  for C:\Documents and Settings\TEMP\ntuser.dat
• Windows cannot load the user's profile but has logged you on with the default profile for the system.
  DETAIL - A required privilege is not held by the client. 

FinalBuilder is configured to use the local user "builder" to execute its triggers, but the 3 finalbuilder services were running as "System".

Initially, I thought that the problem was because of a corrupt user profile of the user "builder".  So I recreated the user profile, using these steps:

• First, I removed the existing user profile for "builder":
• Log-in as an administrator (that is not the user that you want to delete the profile of)
• Right click on "My computer", and select "Properties"
• Go to the tab "Advanced", and under "User profiles", click the button "Settings"
• You get a list of all profiles that are present, with some information such as size on disk and the last log-in time.
• Select the profile that you want to delete, and click "Delete".
• Second, recreate the profile by logging in once using the user "builder"

This solved all the existing EventLog errors, but I got a new one:

• Windows cannot unload your registry file. The memory used by the registry has not been freed. This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.
  DETAIL - A required privilege is not held by the client. 

To solve this, I configured the 3 FinalBuilder services to run as the user "builder":

• Start "services.msc" to see all services, and locate the 3 FinalBuilder services:
• FinalBuilder Server 7 Build Service
• FinalBuilder Server 7 Logging Service
• FinalBuilder Server 7 Management Service
• For each of these services:
• Right click on the service and select "Properties"
• Open the tab "Log on"
• Select "This account" and enter the user name and password (twice) of the account.

The combination of the two actions above (recreate the user profile, and change the service log on) eliminated all the events, and consequently the trigger problems with FinalBuilder.

Typing international characters on a US keyboard

I often need to log-in on machines all over the world using RAdmin, and those machines all have a US keyboard layout.  My laptop has a Belgian keyboard layout (azerty), but for easier access to those remote machines, I connected an external keyboard with a US keyboard layout.

This makes life much easier... unless I have to write French or Dutch words which are full of accents (grave accent, acute accent, circomflex, tréma, ...).

The easiest way to type these special characters on a US keyboard is to install the "International" keyboard layout instead of (or beside) the "US" keyboard.  You can do this by going to the keyboard layout settings in the Control Panel:  (instructions are for Windows 7, but it is very similar on other versions)

• Go to the "Control Panel", follow the link "Clock, Language, and Region", and click "Change keyboards".
• Click the "Change keyboards" button.  You get a list of languages, with for each language the installed keyboards and other input services.
• Click the "Add" button
• Locate the tree item: "English (United States)" => Keyboard => "United States-International"

After enabling the International keyboard, you can type a "ë", simply by typing a double quote first (which doesn't do anything), and type a regular "e" afterwards.

One drawback of the International keyboard layout, is that you cannot type regulare single or double quotes anymore using one keystroke.  You need to press the double quote first, followed by e.g. a space.  This can be a burden when you have to type text with many single and/or double quotes like programming languages (C++, C#, Java, ...).  That's why I keep both keyboard layouts (US and International) installed.

When you install both keyboard layouts, you can easily switch between them using the "Language bar" that you can add by richt clicking on the taskbar, opening the "Toolbars" submenu and enabling the "Language bar" menu item:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and...Re-think

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Enterprise blog.)

There are about 9,000 community curbside recycling programs and 3,000 community composting programs in the United States. I’ve been recycling since I moved to California in the 90's, and in the U.S. we’re lucky that many communities have recycling and composting services. But there’s still more to be done – we only recycle or compost 33% of the 243 million tons of trash generated each year.

I’m encouraged to hear about some of the cool ways that people and organizations are coming together to re-think how we can recycle, reduce, and reuse. In honor of Earth Day, we’d like to share the stories of three organizations that take recycling to the next level, using Google products to help.



Andrew Sell started out as a personal hunter/gatherer of “upcycled” products. There are a lot of companies that manufacture recycled products by recovering difficult-to-recycle materials from landfills and turning them into useful items, and the market continues to grow. Recognizing a need to connect the growing number of manufacturers with consumers, Andrew created an e-commerce website, HipCycle, almost a year ago in Ocean Township, New Jersey with the budget of a typical startup. 

Andrew, or Chief Hipcycler, chose to manage his new company with Google Apps due to low costs, ease of set up, and the ability to provide custom email addresses @hipcycle.comto employees, contractors and bloggers. HipCycle also uses Google Docs to track order statistics and share them with manufacturers, Google Calendar to keep the social media team aligned on topics and timing, and Google+ Hangouts to communicate directly with customers. Google Analytics provides data on site traffic and activity.



Not far away in Brooklyn, New York, Eva Radke identified another opportunity to eliminate needless waste. Having spent 15 years working in film, Eva saw two trends: a growing amount of waste and a general desire for environmental responsibility in the industry. After film shoots, large, awkward items like furniture are brought to landfills and Eva became passionate about finding a better way to use the waste.

In 2008 Eva’s passion became a full-time non-profit organization that collects waste from the film industry and sells or donates the goods to students and partner charities. For example, a women’s shelter receives bedsheets and towels from Film Biz, allowing them to free up their non-profit dollars to spend on education and therapy for its residents. Eva says she doesn’t know where she’d be without Google Apps. Since day one, she’s been using Gmail to stay up-to-date while traveling and Calendar to schedule everything from set clean-outs to school trips to donation drop-offs. Google Docs allows her team to edit documents together and they rarely need to use paper, which helps them stay even more green.



As the name would indicate, Cell Again buys and sells used mobile phones. With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices - and trend of consumers purchasing new phones every couple of years - there’s a seemingly endless quantity of second-hand cell phones. Tucker Nielson wanted to keep these phones out of landfills so he started CellAgain with just a few employees in Salt Lake City. The company has been so successful that there are now eight stores and 87 employees, which he expects to double this year.

With rapid company expansion plus growing franchise and wholesale operations, Tucker says that Google Apps has been his savior in terms of staying organized. Tucker set up Google Apps for CellAgain.com on his own and uses Gmail to stay connected to his management team from his own cell phone. He also hosts nearly everything in Google Docs, including company manuals, shift schedules, timesheets, job descriptions and more. And Google AdWords helps CellAgain make sure that consumers looking for a refurbished cell phone can find their local franchise or kiosk.

Each of these companies help keep environmental impact low and Google is working to do its part as well. We’re a carbon neutral company, and Google Apps (and all the products in our cloud) have a "net zero" impact on the environment.

Happy Earth Day.

Posted by: Chris Farinacci, Senior Director, Google Enterprise

Helping your business play big on YouTube

With a global audience of 800 million monthly visitors to YouTube, every day can feel like you’re advertising in the Super Bowl, and one video can launch a business. To celebrate a growing number of businesses that have grown with YouTube, we are introducing our first-ever class of YouTube Marketing Ambassadors and making Google AdWords for video available to all.  

Our Ambassadors represent a group of 9 entrepreneurs who have used YouTube to “play big” alongside major brand advertisers. By creating videos that demonstrate their products, share what their customers say about them, or simply showcase how their business works, they’ve been able to drive sales and connect with new customers.   

Take Rokenbok Toy Company, for example. When owner Paul Eichen noticed that specialty toy shops were shuttering their doors, he started looking for a new way to introduce customers to his construction toy sets. Paul filmed and uploaded his first video to YouTube, and now it’s become his most effective form of advertising with 50 percent of all customers introduced to his products through YouTube.

To help even more businesses play big with video, today we’re introducing a number of new products, resources, and tools:

Google AdWords for video now available to all. Similar to search advertising - where you pay for clicks and set budgets with bids - we created a new model for video advertising. With Google AdWords for video, you only pay when someone chooses to watch your ad and you can create and manage video campaigns from the same platform as your search and display ads. You can create an account and start promoting your first video in less than 5 minutes. With AdWords for video you can:

• Find the right audience: AdWords for video provides a range of options to reach the right audience. For example, you can promote your video by keyword to appear in YouTube search results, or you can choose to show your ad against content your customers are most interested in - such as sports or music. Connect with your audience on YouTube and the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites. AdWords for video links to your YouTube account so you can easily start a video campaign with your existing videos.

• Measure the effectiveness of your spend: On average, we’ve found that YouTube video ads drive a 20 percent increase in traffic to your website and a 5 percent increase in searches for your business (Google Campaign Insights, 2011). With AdWords for video you can find out how viewers are engaging with your brand during and after they watch your ad. You can see how many viewers watched your entire video, visited your website, stayed on your channel to watch another video, or subscribed to your channel, after viewing your ad.

• Only pay for engaged views: With TrueView video ads you only pay when viewers choose to watch your ad so you aren’t charged when viewers skip your ad if they aren’t interested or have already seen your video. This means your ad budget is focused on viewers interested in your video. By displaying a call-to-action overlay on your video you can talk about a sale or specific offer to your viewers, share more information about your business, or drive traffic to your website.

$50 million in free advertising. We’re giving away $50 million in free Google AdWords advertising to help more than 500,000 businesses get into video. If you are new to AdWords, you can receive a $75 credit when you sign up. To put that into context, with $75 your video campaign can reach more than 1,500 of your most valuable customers on YouTube for one month. Request your free credit here.

Advertiser Playbook and support. To share best practices and tips on how video can be a core part of your business toolkit, we created a YouTube Advertiser Playbook. The Playbook covers everything from creating interesting content to promoting your video with ads. If you need help making a video, our My Business Story is a free tool you can use to create your first video. AdWords advertisers can also call our free phone support line, 866-2-GOOGLE, to get started with AdWords for video.

YouTube Ambassador program. To learn more about the YouTube Ambassador program please visit us on the Official Google Blog.

Hear more from Rokenbok Toys, one of our YouTube Marketing Ambassadors

If you have a video you want to promote, get started with AdWords for video. And, join our YouTube for Marketers page on Google+ to stay up-to-date on our latest video marketing innovations. Posted by Baljeet Singh, Group Product Manager, YouTube

Help Desk Hangouts: Engaging with your customers using social media

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.

In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we discussed how your business can benefit from engaging with customers via social media. A few of Google’s community management superstars — Jacky Hayward, Sarah Price and Brian Rose —  shared best practices for building great content, collecting feedback and communicating with frustrated customers. Miss it? No to worry: You can watch the full hour-long Hangout on the Google Business YouTube channel:

Check out the video description on the YouTube page for a minute-by-minute breakdown.

Some of the questions we answered during the Hangout:

Why spend time using social media?

First, think about your goals. Sarah, who works on the Gmail team, says she doesn’t see social media as “an end in and of itself,” but rather as a tool to help her reach her goal of connecting with users: “I want to help users learn more about Gmail, [so] I use social media as a tool to share information. I have a goal that I want to have relationships with the users, that they have a relationship with the company and each other, so I use social media as a tool to facilitate those relationships.”

How do you attract new followers to your social media content?

There’s no trick or gimmick. Post interesting, useful content. Be real, honest, genuine, open — and the followers will come!

What kinds of content work?

Don’t underestimate fun. Eye-catching rich media (photos, videos) are always engaging. Be mindful of time zones and when you’re sharing (do you usually get more engagement in the morning, at night?). Also, people love having a connection with you and your brand, which you can do with something as simple as highlighting or resharing content by a customer.

Why is identifying influencers important?

Whatever your area of expertise, research who's producing great content and starting conversations among that field’s community. Find out what your customers are interested in and get involved in those conversations. Figure out who the people are that drive those conversations and build relationships with them. Connect your customers to other customers when you can — engaging them with each other will help them learn more and engage more with your product and brand.

Any time management tips?

The stream of social media content being produced every minute is infinite, so again, be sure to focus on your goals. Ask yourself what is most important for you to do first and start there, rather than trying to do everything at once.

Be sure to join us for next week’s Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday April 25, when we discuss how to get started with Chromebooks. We’ll be collecting your Chromebook questions early next week on the Google+ Your Business page.

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Google Places community manager

Protect your business by understanding common phishing techniques

Last week we introduced you to the concept of Social Engineering - manipulating people’s trust to gain confidential information. Phishing is a type of social engineering that can also be targeted towards businesses. We recommend you educate yourself and your employees to safeguard against this threat.

Recognize the signs
Phishing is a technique used to obtain personal information. The most common way a phisher obtains this information is through a spam email which appears to come from a legitimate source (e.g. a bank, a credit card company) requesting certain action to be taken. The email will usually have a link which will lead to a fraudulent web page and may have a form requesting you to enter personal information.

What many small businesses don’t realise is that phishing can happen over the phone, too (called ‘vishing’). In this type of scam the ‘phisher’ will try and get the information they want over the phone by making some kind of false claim (e.g. your IT department has requested you update your security software). Once the caller has gained the consumer's trust, they may ask the person on the phone to log onto a website to download a file to help solve the problem. The file may be infected with a virus which would give the Phisher access to your personal information.

Once scammers have 'phished' out your information (or potentially even customer information), they could use it in a number of ways. Credit cards could be used for unauthorized purchases, or information might be gathered for an identity theft scam.

Keep your Google account secure
As a Google product user, remember Google does not send emails asking you to update your personal information. We also never call customers asking for their passwords or requesting they download any programs. If you think you've received a phishing email that's trying to trick you into thinking it is from Google, don't reply to the email itself. Instead, report the phishing email to us.

To add an extra layer of security to your Google account, you can enable 2-step verification (and see video below). You will enter a code from your phone, as well as your username and password - when you sign in. If someone steals login information through phishing or social engineering, the potential hijacker still won’t have access to your phone.



For even more tips on keeping your business safe online, check out our Good to Know website.

Posted by Katrina Blake, Risk Analyst

Working with your Data: Easier and More Fun

Posted by Rebecca Shapley, Fusion Tables Team

The Fusion Tables team has been a little quiet lately, but that’s just because we’ve been working hard on a whole bunch of new stuff that makes it easier to discover, manage and visualize data.

• A new way to look at your Fusion Table - Try the “Experimental” version of our Fusion Tables web application. The new design helps you explore and collaborate better on data. Faceted search make it easier to dive into a big data set and specify what you want to see. Multiple tabs let you experiment, trying different views of a table. And the new card layout lets you give a row of data your own custom layout. Give it a spin.

• More visualizations on lots of data - People love using Fusion Tables to put data on a map, but there are new visualizations available in our Experiment menu.Try the Zoomable Line chart. Playing with social network data? Try out the Network Graph visualization.

• New Fusion Tables API works great with javascript - Our new API, currently available to trusted testers, is more powerful and easier to use. The API can now return data in JSON so it’s easy to get data and manipulate it with javascript, right from the browser. You can now also RESTfully modify tables, templates and map styles. Want to try it out early and give your feedback? We’re looking for Trusted Testers... just join this group to become one.

• New open-source tools library welcomes your contributions - Fond of Fusion Tables Layer wizard? Just recently discovered the chart creator? These great point-n-click tools and more for working with Fusion Tables are now available in the Fusion Tables open source library. Please contribute your tools and enhancements!

You’ll notice a bunch of our new things are “Experimental”....that’s because we need you to use them and tell us what you love and what could be better. But we didn’t want to keep them secret any longer! On behalf of the Fusion Table team, thanks for all you do with Fusion Tables, and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback.

Help Desk Hangouts: Get found on Google with Places for business

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.

In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we introduced you to Google Places for business, a tool to help you manage your local business information on Google. Joel Headley, one of our in-house Places gurus, showed us how to get started, shared some best practices and answered your questions. If you missed it, you’re in luck: You can watch the full hour-long Hangout on the Google Business YouTube channel:

Some of the questions we answered during the Hangout:

When a business simply relocates, what is the best way to set up the new address in Places?

You should report the listing with the old address as closed via the Report a problem link on the listing itself (under the “more” dropdown). Our team receives that report and puts a “This place is permanently closed” label on the listing, so that customers who know your business to be located at that old address will know not to go there. And then, create and verify a brand new listing for the business’s new location.

What are the gray labels on the map itself, and how do I get one for my business?

The little icons (fork and knife, etc.) on the map are called Place labels, and because those are generated algorithmically, there’s no way for you to manually add one for your business.

How do I get my Places listing to appear for certain keyword searches?

We don’t offer advice on how to do this, but here’s a great video about how we approach local search ranking.

What should I put in the description field of my page?

Think of the description as your elevator pitch. Keep it short and sweet, and valuable to customers looking to learn more about your business. Don’t stuff it with a bunch of keywords — it won’t help you and it definitely won’t help potential customers.

When are Google Places accounts going to be connected to Google+ pages?

A popular question! We’ve heard your feedback, and we’re continuing to evaluate how these tools might work together in the future.

I went through the owner verification process, but for some reason user-generated content still appears on my page. Why?

Think of a business listing as a search result, featuring information pulled together from sources around the web (third party data providers, end-users, and, of course, business owners). When you owner verify your listing, this just means you now have access to other features complementary to the listing — like analytics or offers — and editing abilities via the Places dashboard. We allow the most recently verified edit to display on a listing — whether it’s from a user via the “Report a problem” feature or a third-party provider — in an effort to maintain an accurate and up to date map.

What are “at a glance” terms, and why are they appearing on my owner-verified page?
These descriptive terms are meant to give users a quick snapshot of what a particular business is known for. We generate these terms algorithmically, from various sources around the Web. There’s no way to add or edit these terms in your Places dashboard. See our article on reporting inappropriate terms.

I don’t have a storefront and serve customers at their location. Can I list my business on Google Maps?

Absolutely. These types of businesses are what we call service area businesses, and we have a whole Help guide on how to create a service area listing. Note that if you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must hide your address per the Google Places quality guidelines. In your Places dashboard, while editing a listing, look for the “Do not show my business address” checkbox under the section “Service Areas and Location Settings.”

I’m having an issue with my listing, how do I contact support?

We have a support team that works with users to correct bad listing data and verification issues. Visit the “Contact Us” section on the Help Center homepage and you’ll see two options: Listing issues and Verification issues. Click the link that applies, answer the questions, fill out the short form, and hit Submit. Give a member of the support team a few days to investigate your issue and get back to you via e-mail.

To learn more about how to get started with Google Places for business, visit our Help Center or check out the Google and Your Business forum. And join us for next week’s Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday April 11, when we discuss how to get started blogging using on Blogger. We’ll be collecting your Blogger questions early next week on the Google+ Your Business page.

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Google Places community manager

Protect your business by understanding common social engineering techniques

Social engineering is the manipulation of the natural human tendency to trust. A social engineer’s main goal is gaining unauthorized access to systems or information in order to commit fraud. In most cases the social engineer never comes face to face with the victim. Social Engineering is steadily increasing as cyber criminals exploit people in tough economic times. Anyone can be a target for social engineers, including small businesses.



Educate yourself and your employees
As a small business, you may always update your anti-virus software, but what other actions do you take to keep your business secure? For example, have you educated your employees recently on what information is safe to divulge and to whom they can divulge it? Understanding social engineering techniques can help you develop a plan for how to protect your business from them.

Before you give any information away, think about the following:

1. Why are you you being asked for this information? Is it usual to be asked for this sort of information in this format?
2. Is the request coming from a known source?
3. What consequences might come from misuse of the information you've been asked to provide or the action you have to take?
4. Is there pressure to take action now?

Using this list can help you think carefully before providing a response and make you more confident in your decision before divulging sensitive information.

Recognize the signs
The list below describes some of the more common social engineering techniques:

1. Impersonation: They may pose as a repairman, helpdesk tech or trusted third party.
2. Name Dropping: They may use names of people from your company/family to make you believe they know you and gain your trust.
3. Aggression: They also may try to intimidate you by threatening to escalate to a manager / executive if you do not provide the information/access they have requested.
4. Conformity: They may tell you that everyone else has provided the information so it’s fine for you to provide the same.
5. Friendliness: Over time, they may contact you with an aim of building up a rapport with you. Eventually the social engineer will ask for sensitive information when he/she feels the trust has been built up.

Stay tuned for future posts on keeping your business secure, and check out online safety tips anytime on our Good to Know website.

Posted by Katrina Blake, Risk Analyst

A fast, accurate, and affordable way to do online market research

From international brands to local food trucks, every business wants to make important decisions with their customers’ feedback in mind. Which version of your new logo will people like better? How much interest do dog owners have in organic dog food? Is your brand awareness growing over time?

We now have a new option for companies looking to answer these types of questions and more: Google Consumer Surveys. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a local bike shop, Consumer Surveys makes market research fast, accurate, and affordable.



You can create an online survey in minutes, have responses within hours and fully analyzed results in days. We do all the heavy lifting for you, finding interesting nuggets of information (or “insights”) and providing you with tools for digging deeper.

Here’s how it works: people browsing the web come across your questions when they try to access high quality content like news articles or videos. Answering the question gives them near instant access to the page they want. All responses are anonymous; they aren’t tied to users’ identity or later used to target ads. This provides an alternative to the traditional paywall model: site visitors don’t have to pull out a wallet or sign in, publishers get paid as their site visitors respond, and you gain insight into what people think -- for just $0.10 per response for the general US population or $0.50 per response for custom audiences.

We’ve already been working with a number of companies researching everything from online shopping behavior (Lucky Brand Jeans) to gluten-free baking mixes (King Arthur Flour), and using Consumer Surveys to track brand awareness (Timbuk2) and inform product development (479 Popcorn). Check out google.com/insights/consumersurveys to learn more.

Posted by Brett Slatkin, Software Engineer

Get closer to your customers with Google+

(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords blog.)

When we launched Google+ Pages last November, we aimed to provide you with a way to post updates and news about your business, have engaging conversations with customers, and send tailored messages to specific groups of people.

We’re now excited to share that Google Ads will be joining Google+ Pages to provide you, our advertising partners, with the latest Google advertising product news, training, tips and Hangouts that can help make the web work for you. We hope it will become a useful resource for growing your business, reaching customers in the moments that matter, and making smarter decisions.

Click to view page

Here’s a quick peek at what you can expect from the Google Ads page on Google+:

• Stay ahead of the curve with the latest launches and updates for Google's advertising solutions, including search, display, mobile, social, YouTube and Google Analytics
• Receive how-to information, best practices, and recommendations
• Learn about upcoming trainings and events
• Attend Hangouts with product experts

Add Google Ads to your circles here. We look forward to connecting with you on Google+.

Posted by Christina Park and Katie Miller, Ads Product Marketing