Googler Jake Brutlag recently published a short study, "Speed Matters for Google Web Search"which looked at how important it is to deliver and render search result pages quickly.
Specifically, Jake added very small delays (100-400ms) to the time to serve and render Google search results. He observed that even these tiny delays, which are low enough to be difficult for users to perceive, resulted in measurable drops in searches per user (declines of -0.2% to -0.6%).
Please see also my Nov 2006 post, "Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0", which summarizes a claim by Googler Marissa Mayer that Google saw a 20% drop in revenue from an accidentally introduced 500ms delay.
Update: To add to the Marissa Mayer report above, Drupal's Dries Buytaert summarized the results of a few A/B tests at Amazon, Google, and Yahoo on the impact of speed on user satisfaction. As Dries says, "Long story short: even the smallest delay kills user satisfaction."
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-google-study-on-speed-in-search.html
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Google Account Recovery Via SMS
Google added a new password recovery option: you can now associate a mobile phone number with your Google Account and Google will send a recovery code by SMS.
"Since most people use cell phones these days, we decided text messaging would be an easy, convenient addition to our password recovery options. To set up password recovery via your mobile phone, just sign in to your account and click Change Password Recovery Options. Enter your mobile phone number and current password and then click Save. If you lose access to your account for any reason, you'll be able to regain access by entering a code we'll send in a text message."
For now, the options is only available in the US, so you need to use a us proxy to see it. Google also updated the password recovery settings page to include all the account-recovery options: secondary email addresses, text messages and the security question.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Google increases Maximum attachment size to 25 MB
Now you can send bigger attachments in Gmail, as Google increased the maximum attachment size from 20 MB to 25 MB.
"With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 25 megabytes (MB) in size. Please note that you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use other email services with smaller attachment limits. If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail, suggests Google.
For some reason, Gmail's Flash uploader doesn't allow me to upload files that are larger than 10 MB. The error message is "attachment failed" and Google's suggestions aren't very helpful. Switching to the basic uploader in the settings solves the problem, but it's more tedious to upload multiple files.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jacksons Death slows down Google
The all powerful Google and their impenetrable server farms took a major hit last night, when the news about Michael Jackson suffering a cardiac arrest and ultimately passing away broke. As CNN and News.com shows, Google was displaying one of those Google "We're Sorry" pages to searches trying desperately to find out the fate of Michael Jackson. Even Search Engine Land was suffering from the news, as the tweet confirms.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tips for Making Website run faster
Installing a fast browser is not always enough to have a good experience when you browse the web: many web pages aren't optimized for performance. To help webmasters improve their sites, Google launched a new section as part of Google Code:
Let's make the web faster" which includes useful articles, videos and downloadable tools.You'll learn how to optimize CSS declarations, how to optimize JavaScript code and avoid memory leaks, how to use the best image format and prefetch resources.
Google also released a Firebug plug-in for Firefox that evaluates web pages and provides suggestions to improve them.
Google Unveils AdSense For iPhone, Android Apps
Google (GOOG) today announced AdSense for Mobile Applications, a service that allows developers to display text and image ads in applications for the Apple iPhone and Google Android operating systems.
Google says it has been testing the system with a small number of partners for the base few months, and is not ready to open up the beta to a larger number of developers.
“In order to continue growing the mobile application market, developers need to make money to fund their projects,” Google said in a statement. “We hope AdSense for Mobile Applications will encourage iPhone and Android developers to keep making new, innovative mobile applications.”
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
New options for translating webpages
Google Translation service has more options when you translate web pages. You can now set a different destination language and translate a new web page by entering its address in the persistent input box. There's also a new interface that displays the translation in tooltips, so you can still read the original text.
Bing Translator Microsoft's translation service, has an interesting option that shows the original page and the translation side by side, much like in Google Translator Toolkit. This interface is very useful for those who are familiar with multiple languages and Google should add it as an option.
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