Google Tool Shows Where the Eyeballs Go on Your Site

Google has launched a new Google Labs experiment called Browser Size, which is a tool aimed at helping webmasters see how others view their site. Google's official description of the tool says:

Ever wondered what parts of your site can't be seen without scrolling? Browser Size shows you what portion of users can see a give spot on the screen. This is not screen resolution but the area available to the browser - as gathered from www.google.com users.

Here is what it looks like:



"In a newspaper, the most important story is featured on the front page," says Google Senior Software Engineer, Bruno Bowden. "If it's a really important piece, then it's placed 'above the fold,' which means you can find it on the top half of the first page — the bottom half is folded behind and isn't readily seen when you first look at the newspaper."

"The same concept applies to browsers as well," he adds. "There's no clear line for "above the fold" on a browser — there are many different sizes of monitors, browsers are not always full screen and other things like toolbars can take up space. Consider a 'Donate' button on a non-profit site. If it's far down the page, you may not see it when you first view the page. You can of course scroll downwards, but many people don't scroll and will miss it entirely."

To use the tool, simply enter your URL and it will insert your page into the graph showing the percentage of people who are likely to see each area. Don't be surprised if a lot of websites suddenly start shifting to the left.

The tool was one of Google's "20% time" projects. A post on the Google Code blog has some interesting details about how the project came about and grew to what it is.


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Google Pushes Chrome With Newspaper Ads

Google is a master of online advertising, and in recent days, has more than ever been vilified as an enemy of the newspaper industry.  People were understandably surprised, then, to find ads for Chrome plastered all over a UK newspaper this morning.

The Metro is a free paper targeted at commuters in 16 cities.  It's supposed to be the world's largest free paper and the UK's fourth largest paper of any sort, with 1.3 million copies distributed every weekday.

Then here's the interesting part: today, the Metro is sporting a wraparound cover promoting Chrome.

Martin Bryant wrote, "The ad's front page . . . describes Chrome as 'A fast, new browser. Made for everyone.' . . . .  Inside, the ad explains why Google made the browser and details its features such as the unique way it handles tabs and its Incognito mode . . ."

Finally, "The rear of the ad lists items such as 10 days of holiday left, about to expire; 27 emails between my wife and I hatching travel plans; 7 potential travel plans generated on 4 travel sites, 3 playlists generated on Spotify.'  It then goes on to read '6 tabs open, 0 crashes, 1 browser.'"

If this wraparound is successful, we may see more real-world ads from Google in the future.

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Google Pushes Chrome With Newspaper Ads

Google is a master of online advertising, and in recent days, has more than ever been vilified as an enemy of the newspaper industry.  People were understandably surprised, then, to find ads for Chrome plastered all over a UK newspaper this morning.

The Metro is a free paper targeted at commuters in 16 cities.  It's supposed to be the world's largest free paper and the UK's fourth largest paper of any sort, with 1.3 million copies distributed every weekday.

Then here's the interesting part: today, the Metro is sporting a wraparound cover promoting Chrome.

Martin Bryant wrote, "The ad's front page . . . describes Chrome as 'A fast, new browser. Made for everyone.' . . . .  Inside, the ad explains why Google made the browser and details its features such as the unique way it handles tabs and its Incognito mode . . ."

Finally, "The rear of the ad lists items such as 10 days of holiday left, about to expire; 27 emails between my wife and I hatching travel plans; 7 potential travel plans generated on 4 travel sites, 3 playlists generated on Spotify.'  It then goes on to read '6 tabs open, 0 crashes, 1 browser.'"

If this wraparound is successful, we may see more real-world ads from Google in the future.

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> Google Chrome For Mac Beta Arrives

> Microsoft Throws IE Rivals A Bone In Europe

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Facebook Sends Cease And Desist To Friend-Seller

uSocial is a controversial advertising company that specializes in social media.  For a fee, it promises to get stories on the front page of Digg, direct followers to a Twitter account, and/or find someone Facebook fans (among other things).  But Facebook's put at least a temporary stop to the sale of friends.

The BBC reported this afternoon, "Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to USocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm."

As a result, "USocial defended itself against Facebook's claims, saying that it did not spam users or use web tools to gather information about profiles. . . .  However, in response to the legal letters, USocial said it would delete the login information it had collected and broadly stop offering to sell Facebook friends."

This is an interesting development insofar as, three months ago, Twitter also tried to crack down on uSocial.  Its back-channel methods apparently didn't succeed, but now that Facebook's established a precedent, we might see another attempt.  Delicious, Digg, and Reddit could well join the fight, too.

Of course, the hubbub around such a scuffle would act as free advertising for uSocial and might spread the notion that these social media sites can be gamed, so it's also possible that absolutely nothing will occur.

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