Search by image and new Chrome for Android gestures

If you use Chrome, you might notice we’re always making small adjustments to simplify and streamline your browsing experience. Starting this week, all Chrome users will be able to search by image and Chrome for Android users get some new gestures to quickly navigate open tabs and access the menu.

Right-click on an image to use it as a Google search 

In Chrome for Android, you’ll be able to:

• Swipe horizontally across the top toolbar to quickly switch tabs.
• Drag vertically down from the toolbar to enter into the tab switcher view. 
• Drag down from the menu to open the menu and select the item you want without having to lift your finger.

Swipe your way between tabs and into the menu

These updates to Chrome for desktop and Android will be rolling out to all users over the next few days, so if you don't see them yet, you will soon. Happy browsing!

Posted by Kibeom Kim, Software Engineer and Swift Swiper

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Like Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Arcade Fire? Announcing the first-ever YouTube Music Awards

We get it. You love music. From propelling unknown artists to the top of the charts, to cheering on established artists as they reinvent the music video, to remixing and reimagining your own, music fans have turned YouTube into the world’s go-to music destination. Now, to celebrate music fans and the music you love, we’re announcing a new kind of awards show--one powered by you.

On Sunday, November 3, YouTube will host the first-ever YouTube Music Awards, a live-streamed event honoring the artists and songs that you have turned into hits over the past year. Lady Gaga, Eminem, and Arcade Fire will join other top artists and some of YouTube’s biggest stars including Lindsey Stirling and CDZA in performances and musical collaborations from Seoul, Moscow, London and Rio, culminating in a live event in New York City. Music-video visionary Spike Jonze will be the creative director and acclaimed actor Jason Schwartzman will host with VICE and Sunset Lane Entertainment acting as executive producers.



And we’ll need your help. In mid-October, YouTube Music Awards Nominations will be announced based on the videos that you watched and shared over the past year. We’ll then call on you to determine the songs and artists honored, by sharing the nominees across social media so the awards are judged in full view of everyone.

There will be a whole lot more music to enjoy on YouTube around the Music Awards. In the days leading up to the November 3 event, nominees will share official music videos, covers, parodies, concerts, interviews and fan videos on YouTube--so you can stay in the loop, find your faves and discover new music you didn’t even know you loved! Stay tuned for lots more info, and get ready for a nonstop week of music on YouTube.

Danielle Tiedt, Vice President, Marketing, recently watched "Lady Gaga - Applause (Official)," "Eminem - Berzerk (Official) (Explicit)," and "Arcade Fire- Here Comes the Night Time."

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Content & Color: An updated look for Docs, Sheets & Slides

Starting today, things are about to get cleaner—and more colorful—in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Apps Script. First, you’ll notice each editor’s product icon displayed in the header, which doubles as a quick link back to all your files in Drive. Next, you’ll see that the header is more streamlined and compact, helping you to focus on what matters most—your content.

We hope these updates make your creation and collaboration experience just a bit more delightful. Enjoy!

Posted by Sarah Cooper, User Experience Designer

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Data at your fingertips: A new version of the Google Analytics App for Android

At Google, we want to build tools that help you stay connected no matter where you are. Whether you’re in the boardroom, at a live event, or even during a day at the beach: having access to Analytics at your fingertips is important. That’s why we previously launched an Android app for Google Analytics that we’re excited has been downloaded more than 700,000 times to date.

We’ve been listening to your feedback and hear you loud and clear: the Google Analytics Android app should do more. So today we are pleased to announce the launch the latest version of the Google Analytics App for Android devices.

Visit Google Play to download and install the app to keep up with your data anytime, anywhere. Like what you see in the new version? Review it in Google Play!

We’ve added more reporting tools and enhanced the functionality of this version, so you have a first-class Google Analytics experience on every device. What’s new, specifically?

• A completely redesigned look and feel, ideal for tablets and phones
• New visualizations that automatically resize to fit your screen size and orientation 
• Side navigation that mirrors Google Analytics on the web for quick access to reports
• Specialized reporting for web and app views (profiles)
• An Overview screen summarizing key metrics from each report 
• Deeper analysis via dimension-based drill down in most reports
• Better Real-Time reporting
• Advanced Segments to further analyze your data

See an overview of your important metrics on one screen

Bringing the robust features of GA on the web to your fingertips

With the Google Analytics App, you can access all of your data - for both web and app reporting views (profiles) - so you can keep track of all of your important data with reports that are optimized for whatever device you’re using, ensuring a beautiful and intuitive experience. 

We’re also introducing new visualizations designed with tablets and phones in mind. Rather than getting overwhelmed with too much information on a small screen, you now see just the most relevant metrics on cards, so you decide when you want to drill-down for details or just get a quick update on your performance. 

We built our app using Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps. As a result, it’s highly configurable and we can add new reports, change navigation, update visualizations all without having to update the app.  We’ve made several improvements to the app based on your feedback and have more planned, so please keep it coming. Learn more about how you can make your own apps highly configurable with GTM.

Posted by Russell Ketchum, Lead Product Manager, Google Analytics for Mobile Apps

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Stan Winston School is September’s On The Rise partner!

Congratulations to the entire team at Stan Winston School, our featured “On The Rise” partner for the month. Their videos are in the spotlight on the On The Rise homepage and the YouTube Spotlight channel today.

Founded more than four years ago, the Stan Winston School of Character Arts in many ways carries on Stan’s own legacy as a contributor to some iconic films including "Jurassic Park," "Iron Man" and "Avatar." The school’s various courses, webinars and workshops are led by some of Hollywood’s best artists and technicians. Whether you’re interested in seeing behind-the-scenes effects from "Terminator 2" or you’ve always wondered about the evolution of "Jurassic Park"’s raptor suits, this channel has content that’s bound to entertain and educate. And Halloween is just around the corner--if you need costume ideas, you might want to check out this Iron Man suit built by a 16-year-old!

 

Here are a few words from Matt and Erich:

Thank you from all of us at Stan Winston School! We're honored to have been selected as a YouTube "On the Rise" Channel and it wouldn't have been possible without the support of our awesome community of Creature FX fans. We hope this spotlight brings even more awareness to the magic behind the movies, and inspires a new generation of artists to create their own fantasy characters. Long live monster making!

If you’ve enjoyed this monthly blog series and are interested in learning more or participating, we encourage you to visit our On The Rise homepage. You can check out all of our past featured partners on the Featured Partners tab, or nominate a YouTube partner to be considered for the program on the Nominate tab. Feel free to submit nominations for your own channel, or for channels you follow that you think deserve more attention or could be the next YouTube sensation. We’ll continue to feature promising partners who drive YouTube watch time, have fewer than 100,000 subscribers, and produce engaging content on a regular basis.

Christine Wang and Devon Storbeck, YouTube Partner Support, recently watched "Spencer’s Home Depot Marriage Proposal."

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How Certain Affinity used Google’s Mobile App Analytics to improve game design

Certain Affinity, an experienced independent game developer has recently been working on their first mobile title, Age of Booty: Tactics. Age of Booty: Tactics is an asynchronous turn-based tactics game hybridized with a collectable card game. Certain Affinity wanted a solution enabling them to measure and analyze specific metrics to improve both the pre-release and post-release designs of the game. They researched a number of analytics solutions, but were frequently frustrated by the cost, size, and limited flexibility offered.

Ramping Up Reporting

Certain Affinity has used Google Analytics for website analytics since 2005, and began talking to mobile partners after becoming aware of Google Analytics’ (GA’s) application in mobile gaming. Given their existing experience, the relative cost of the platform, and the extensive feature set, Certain Affinity quickly and easily integrated GA into the game. The early inclusion of GA into the design process resulted in easy access to analytics to assist in influencing direction across design, art, and ultimately production.

UI Optimization

Google Analytics provides an intuitive way to understand engagement across multiple screens and events. By leveraging engagement flow and average screen time analytics, Certain Affinity understood when specific areas within the UI were either too complex or buried to drive the desired behavior. They identified that the storefront was overly complex and required significant streamlining to become easily accessible. Additionally,they found that a number of options within the menus were too complex and lead to users looping within the UI prior to engaging in an actual game. They also were able to reduce screens per session from 15.5 to 8, resulting in a cleaner UI as well as less back and forth in the game.

Gameplay Duration

Certain Affinity wanted to better understand the average duration of play to optimize the experience on mobile. Given that users tend to spend less time gaming on their mobile devices than in the console space, it was vital to ensure the game was consumable and enjoyable in the “bite sized” engagement window.

Certain Affinity leveraged session durations to understand the existing top-level behavior. In analyzing the data,they found that the typical session was over 25% longer in length than was ideal. They tracked events such as turn submission, undo, and return to main menu to identify any behavior that was artificially extending the average duration of play. Certain Affinity then specifically targeted optimization to the areas requiring the most work.

Custom Dimensions

By leveraging Google Analytics Custom Dimensions, Certain Affinity could measure analytics across a number of key metrics in the mobile gaming space including retention, virality, and monetization. While this data was not widely used until launch,the ability to verify collection was instrumental in ensuring a successful soft launch.“The flexibility GA provides is quite amazing. While no analytics provider will ever have everything you need out of the box, it is great to have a solution that allows us to implement our own requirements [through custom variables], so easily!” explains Certain Affinity’s Lead Server Engineer.

You can check out the full case study here.

Posted by Aditi Rajaram, Google Analytics team

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Introducing an all-new DFA: DoubleClick Campaign Manager

The following post originally appeared on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog.

The phase of adolescence is a transitional one, and this year, on the 15th anniversary of DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) we find ourselves celebrating a big milestone: an entirely rebuilt campaign management platform for marketers and agencies, the coming of age of DFA. In June, we announced that DoubleClick Campaign Manager would be available to all advertisers in the coming months, and today I’m excited to announce that we’ve launched globally.

DoubleClick Campaign Manager is at the core of our DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform. It re-imagines how marketers and agencies manage the entire scope of their digital marketing efforts - from planning and executing, to measuring and optimizing their campaigns.

Intuitive workflows that give you back time. With DoubleClick Campaign Manager, we started by building new, time-saving features into a noticeably more beautiful and responsive user interface. This means the time gained from speeding things up can free up opportunities for you and your team to work on higher-value activities.

A new trafficking interface loads up to 5 times faster than before, and ads and ad changes now go live in just 2 minutes. You can also view campaign information centrally from a single page, rather than flipping across tabs. With in-line and bulk editing, we’ve greatly reduced the number of clicks to perform common trafficking tasks.

Easy tagging. Floodlight, DoubleClick’s universal conversion tag is integrated with Google Tag Manager. Now, you can push Floodlight tags directly from DoubleClick Campaign Manager to Google Tag Manager (and your site), reducing the time it takes to implement tags from weeks, to minutes.

Programmatic and reservations in one place. With one unified UI and reporting system across DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager, you get access to accurate, de-duplicated conversion data. Creatives and tags are shared, and remarketing lists are synced so you can engage your audience seamlessly across every part of your buy.

Seamless support for mobile/HTML5, video, and rich media formats. DoubleClick Campaign Manager makes it easier to produce, scale, and traffic creative formats - from mobile and video, to rich media and dynamic.

A mobile-first approach. Mobile is built into the fabric of our platform. Support for IAB-compliant HTML5 creatives means a single creative can render on any device and help you take advantage of the engaging, rich-media capabilities of HTML5. We’ve ensured that your tags work everywhere too. There is no longer a separate mobile tag, and mobile targeting and reporting dimensions are automatically available in all served tags.

Powerful video features. An intuitive approach to video trafficking allows you to share and re-use companion ads across videos, and get a detailed performance breakdown. And support for the next wave of video formats - including interactive video and dynamic VPAID - helps you deliver more engaging videos. Additionally, you can now track your YouTube TrueView campaigns alongside all your other placements, allowing for more holistic insights.

Easier Rich Media. Integration with DoubleClick Studio allows you to easily sync creatives into DoubleClick Campaign Manager, saving you time and effort. New preview functionality allows you to test and QA creatives without relying on your creative agency. And you can create ads that are tailored to your audience with dynamic creative that optimizes the best combination of variables to serve the “perfect ad” for every impression.

New audience features help you surface key insights and optimize campaigns for better performance.

Create powerful remarketing lists based on custom Floodlight variables. Your lists are automatically shared with DoubleClick Bid Manager and updated in real-time, helping you establish second contact with your audience quickly.

New audience reporting gives you strategic insights. Audience is now a new dimension in standard reporting, so you can understand the segments with which your message best resonated. If you use DoubleClick Bid Manager, audience composition reporting shows you how your first party lists overlap with your third party lists. We will be bringing this capability to all customers soon.

Enhancements in reporting for better decisions. Reporting has always been the backbone of the DoubleClick platform, with de-duplicated reporting across channels. We built on this foundation last year with Report Builder, Multi-Channel Funnels, and DoubleClick Verification. Now, with DoubleClick Campaign Manager, we bring you even more insightful reporting tools:

Powerful attribution with Multi-Channel Funnels helps you better understand your customers’ journey from initial interaction to final conversion and more accurately credit the channels and touchpoints that contributed to your conversions. With the Attribution Modeling Tool, you can choose from several basic models of assigning credit for impressions and clicks, or you can create your own model in a way that makes the most sense for your business.

Integration of Wildfire’s social technology platform with the DoubleClick attribution suite means you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns in driving social conversions. Additionally, social ad impressions and clicks can be tracked directly in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, allowing you to measure your social programs alongside the rest of your efforts.

When DoubleClick for Advertisers was founded in 1998, we invested in the promise that digital can forge connections and bring value to advertisers, publishers and users. Today, as we celebrate its 15th anniversary, we’re excited to be investing in the next wave of digital marketing where we are even more connected than ever before.

If you’re an existing DFA customer, reach out to your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager today. You can stay on top of new updates by following us on our Google+ page.

Posted by Payam Shodjai, Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick Campaign Manager

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We hear you: Better commenting coming to YouTube

Quick taste test. Let’s say you’re watching a video from Justin Timberlake. What type of video comment would be awesome to see: one from JT himself, one from people you care about who love the video...or one from just the last random person to stop by?

When it comes to the conversations happening on YouTube, recent does not necessarily mean relevant. So, comments will soon become conversations that matter to you. In the coming months, comments from people you care about will rise up where you can see them, while new tools will help video creators moderate conversations for welcome and unwelcome voices.

Starting this week, you’ll see the new YouTube comments powered by Google+ on your channel discussion tab. This update will come to comments on all videos later this year, as we bring you more ways to connect with familiar faces on YouTube. Here’s what comments will look like later this year in a sample video from SoulPancake:

Here’s more detail:

• Comments you care about move to the top: You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles.
• Join the conversation publicly or privately: You can choose to start a conversation so that it is seen by everyone on YouTube and Google+, only people in your Circles or just your bestie. Like Gmail, replies are threaded so you can easily follow conversations.
• Better ways to moderate comments: You have new tools to review comments before they’re posted, block certain words or save time by auto-approving comments from certain fans. These can help you spend less time moderating, and more time sharing videos and connecting with your fans.

If you’re not yet using a Google+ profile or page on YouTube, you can sign up here or visit here to learn more.

Nundu Janakiram, Product Manager, and Yonatan Zunger, Principal Engineer, recently watched “A Capella Science - Bohemian Gravity!”

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More On Gmail’s Delivery Delays

Posted by Sabrina Farmer, Senior Site Reliability Engineering Manager for Gmail

On September 23rd, many Gmail users received an unwelcome surprise: some of their messages were arriving slowly, and some of their attachments were unavailable. We’d like to start by apologizing—we realize that our users rely on Gmail to be always available and always fast, and for several hours we didn’t deliver. We have analyzed what happened, and we’ll tell you about it below. In addition, we’re taking several steps to prevent a recurrence.

The message delivery delays were triggered by a dual network failure. This is a very rare event in which two separate, redundant network paths both stop working at the same time. The two network failures were unrelated, but in combination they reduced Gmail’s capacity to deliver messages to users, and beginning at 5:54 a.m. PST messages started piling up. Google’s automated monitoring alerted the Gmail engineering team within minutes, and they began investigating immediately. Together with the networking team, the Gmail team restored some of the network capacity that was lost and worked to repurpose additional capacity, clearing much of accumulated message backlog by 1:00 p.m. PST and the remainder by shortly before 4:00 p.m. PST.

The impact on users’ Gmail experience varied widely. Most messages were unaffected—71% of messages had no delay, and of the remaining 29%, the average delivery delay was just 2.6 seconds. However, about 1.5% of messages were delayed more than two hours. Users who attempted to download large attachments on affected messages encountered errors. Throughout the event, Gmail remained otherwise available — users could log in, read messages which had been delivered, send mail, and access other features.

What’s next? Our top priority is ensuring that Gmail users get the experience they expect: fast, highly-available email, anytime they want it. We're taking steps to ensure that there is sufficient network capacity, including backup capacity for Gmail, even in the event of a rare dual network failure. We also plan to make changes to make Gmail message delivery more resilient to a network capacity shortfall in the unlikely event that one occurs in the future. Finally, we’re updating our internal practices so that we can more quickly and effectively respond to network issues. We’ll be working on all of these improvements and more over the next few weeks—even including this event, Gmail remains well above 99.9% available, and we intend to keep it that way!

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'Access, Empower, Act' - Save the date for the 2013 Google Analytics Summit [#GASummit]

Our team is committed to keeping you at the bleeding edge of data. That's why we've continually made the content at our annual user summit more accessible. Last year we liveblogged the event on social and published a recap of key announcements. But we've heard you loud and clear: you want more. So we're excited to fulfill that request: this year, we're extending a virtual invitation to all our users.

Join us for a livestream of key sessions during our Google Analytics summit, on October 1 at 9:10a PT. Watch and hear about the future of marketing analytics from Google leadership: Paul Muret, Vice President of Google Analytics Engineering, and Babak Pahlavan, Director of Google Analytics Product Management. You will learn about new products we’re launching and hear three ways to take advantage of The Data Opportunity:

1. Connecting the right data to the right people.
2. Empowering every employee to analyze data 
3. How acting on insights drives organizations forward

Set the event reminder today, and be sure and join the conversation on Google+ and Twitter using the hashtag #GASummit. 

Posted by Suzanne Mumford Google Analytics Marketing

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