Announcing a new Google Ads Hangout on Air series - “Happy HOAlidays”

(This post has been cross-published from the AdWords blog)



The holidays are crunch time for many advertisers out there, so we’re introducing a new holly, jolly Hangout on Air series on the Google Ads +Page. In this three-part series, AdWords specialists from the 866-2-GOOGLE support team will cover three important topics surrounding your AdWords performance during the holiday season.

December 6 at 11 AM PDT: How to keep your ads from going dark during the holidays
We’ll discuss tips and tricks for how to manage your account effectively when you might be out of the office on holiday break.

December 13 at 11 AM PDT: How to create stand-out ads during the competitive holiday season
We’ll share the best strategies for setting yourself apart from your competition.

December 20 at 11 AM PDT: How to maintain the holiday momentum
We’ll tell you how to assess your holiday performance and engage your new customer base into the new year.

To join the Hangouts, just sign into Google+ and add the Google Ads +Page to your circles. Each week we’ll put up a post soliciting your questions. Then, on Thursday, navigate to your Stream where you’ll be able to view our Hangout live with just one click. See you there!

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Build Your Digital Brand with Google+ Webinar



The Google+ platform provides a fresh canvas for building and strengthening your digital brand, tying into all the marketing you already do with Google. From launching a new product using Google+ pages to engaging with your community of enthusiasts over Hangouts, join our Learn with Google webinar this Thursday for a look at ways your company can build its brand using social. Sign up on our webinar page to attend: Building a Digital Brand with Google+ (Thurs, Dec 6, 10am PT / 1pm ET)

After the Hangout, we’ll host a live Q&A with members of the Google+ team to answer questions about building a brand with Google+. RSVP on the Google+ Event page and add your questions as comments on that page.

With more than 100 monthly million active Google+ users, the time is right to focus on building your digital brand presence via the platform. Google+ has seen a wealth of brands engaging with users in creative, interactive ways. In fact, brands created more than 1 million Google+ pages in just a few months. For instance:
  • H&M -- The retail clothing company, with more than 2 million Google+ followers, uses tailored content, images and video to bring its fashions and lifestyle to life on the platform. They’ve also utilized Ripples to identify their trendsetters and saw a 22% clickthrough rate boost after implementing social extensions in AdWords.
  • Cadbury -- The chocolate maker has reached a following of nearly 3 million users with a combination of creative posts, Hangouts on Air and even the launch of their Dairy Milk Bubbly bar. They’ve also installed the Google+ badge on the company’s web homepage, making it easy as chocolate to follow the brand.
Like the ideas here? Log on Thursday to learn more about how to create, capture and sustain demand for your brand using Google+. And if you’re going to miss this while you’re at SMX Social in Las Vegas next week, check back at the webinars page later for a recording of the webinar.

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A free month of advertising from AdWords Express

(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords blog)

The holidays are a busy time for everyone, and small businesses are certainly no exception. To help businesses reach new customers this season and keep the holiday spirit rolling into 2013, we have a special offer for new AdWords Express users in the U.S. If you sign up for AdWords Express before December 16, 2012, you’ll receive a free advertising credit in January worth what you spend between now and the end of this year.*

Since AdWords Express launched in July 2011 in the United States, we’ve seen businesses from toy stores to tree farms use AdWords Express to get their businesses discovered online. After 16 busy months, AdWords Express has expanded its borders to 12 additional countries and 9 languages, so that gift shops in Germany, heating contractors in the U.K., and surf shops in Australia can get on the map in front of potential customers in time for the holiday season.

Watch these businesses talk about how they use AdWords Express to maximize sales in the busy season:


Remember, the sooner you start advertising online, the more holiday customers you can reach and the more free advertising credit you can earn, so visit google.com/adwords/express today.

Happy holidays from the AdWords Express team!


*Terms and Conditions
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Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

(Cross-posted from the Gmail blog)

Since Google Drive launched in April, millions of people have started using Drive to keep, create and share files. Starting today, it’s even easier to share with others: you can insert files from Drive directly into an email without leaving your Gmail.
Have you ever tried to attach a file to an email only to find out it's too large to send? Now with Drive, you can insert files up to 10GB -- 400 times larger than what you can send as a traditional attachment. Also, because you’re sending a file stored in the cloud, all your recipients will have access to the same, most-up-to-date version. Like a smart assistant, Gmail will also double-check that your recipients all have access to any files you’re sending. This works like Gmail’s forgotten attachment detector: whenever you send a file from Drive that isn’t shared with everyone, you’ll be prompted with the option to change the file’s sharing settings without leaving your email. It’ll even work with Drive links pasted directly into emails.
So whether it’s photos from your recent camping trip, video footage from your brother’s wedding, or a presentation to your boss, all your stuff is easy to find and easy to share with Drive and Gmail. To get started, just click on the Drive icon while you're composing a message. Note that this feature is rolling out over the next few days and is only available with Gmail's new compose experience, so you'll need to opt-in if you haven't already.

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Five for Drive: Tips for Sharing and Collaborating with Google Drive

Editor’s note: In November, we’re sharing tips on how your business can get the most out of Google Drive. Our final post features 5 ways you can share your files. Previously we’ve featured Google Drive basics and tips for creating and editing the documents your business needs.

Is your business looking to increase internal collaboration and share files on the web? Below, you’ll find 5 tips on how you can use Google Drive to collaborate on your documents and share them with the right audience.
  1. Click on the Share button in the upper right corner of any document to make sure the right people have the right access. By setting the visibility options, you can share your documents with a specific group, anyone with the link, or anyone on the web. To give access to a specific group of people, you can add collaborators and decide if each person should be able to edit, comment on, or just view your files.
  2. Transfer ownership of a file or folder to let someone else manage it for you. The new owner can then add or remove collaborators, share the file with others, and change visibility options and access privileges.
  3. Download the Google Docs App in Hangouts to open, discuss, and add comments to a document, all while you’re in a Hangout. This way, you can review a file face-to-face in video chat with a co-worker, even if you’re away from the office.
  4. Publish your documents and get a URL that you can share with the whole world. Use the publish feature to email your customer base a link to your most recent newsletter or to send a presentation of your business’s most popular products to a potential client.
  5. Share files to your Google+ stream publicly or with a specific circle of clients, and let your followers flip through one of your business’s presentations or fill out a feedback form all without ever leaving the stream. For each document you share on Google+, you can set access rights so your audience can edit or simply view it.
Looking for even more tips about Google Drive? Check out the Help Center, the Google Apps Learning Center, or Drive’s Google+ page.

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Feast your way through Google business tips

Want a feast this Thanksgiving without crashing into a tryptophan-induced slumber? Work your way through three courses of business tips that we’ve rounded up from our 10 in 10 series.

If you want more detail or links to learn even more, check out our full posts on ways your business can use Chrome, Gmail, Google+, and Google Calendar.


Posted by Jacinth Sohi, Google and Your Business Blog Team
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Get Your Business Black Friday Ready with Google Offers

Is your business Black Friday ready? After a hearty helping of turkey and lots of sides, folks often have a hankering for some serious shopping. It’s a great time to showcase value and offer some irresistible deals. This year, Google Offers is here to help small businesses run deals and get discovered. Best of all, it’s a deal for you, too. Getting started is free.



Get Started 
It’s easy to make a Google Offer right from the Google Places for Business dashboard. Verified business owners already using Google Places for Business, skip on ahead to Create an Offer. Get started on Google Places for Business by entering your business’ phone number here.

Create an Offer 
Ready to create your offer? You can customize whether you want to offer customers a percentage off their sale, a flat amount of money off, or a free item. You’ll also need to know how many offers you want to make available, for how long they’ll run, and a few other details. We’ve got a gallery of photographs, too, to make sure your offer looks great.

Meet New Customers
Your new customers will be able to discover nearby offers on Google Maps for Android. We’ve got some offer management tools, too, so you can see and control the duration of your offer. Offer going well? You can extend the offer, or, limit its availability if needed. You’ll also be able to see how many people have redeemed or are planning on redeeming the offer. Happy savings!

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Five for Drive: Tips for Creating and Editing in Google Drive

Editor’s note: In November, we’re sharing tips on how your business can get the most out of Google Drive. Our second post features 5 ways you can create, edit, and enhance your files. Previously we’ve featured Google Drive basics. Check back next week for tips on the many ways you can share and collaborate on the documents in your Drive.

Businesses looking for pointers on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more, keep reading! This week, we’re sharing 5 tips on how you can use Google Drive to create and edit the documents you need to keep your business running smoothly.
  1. To create a new document in Google Drive, simply hit the ‘Create’ button to choose which type of file you’d like. To collaborate on your business’s existing documents like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, you can upload them to Google Drive for easy editing and sharing.
  2. Use a template to create the specific types of documents your business may need, such as letterheads, sales presentations, inventory trackers, or customer feedback forms. Browse the template gallery to find examples best suited for your business.
  3. Make your presentations more compelling by embedding YouTube videos into your slides. You can play the video from directly within the file as long as you have an internet connection.
  4. View the revision history of your document, spreadsheet, or presentation to see the changes made by you and any other collaborators. You can also revert to earlier versions of a file and see edits made to any of these versions.
  5. Use other apps in Drive, such as Forms, Drawings, and Fusion Tables. You can also download third-party apps from the Chrome Web Store that allow you edit images and videos, fax and sign documents, manage products, create flow charts, and more.
Looking for even more tips about Google Drive? Check out the Help Center, the Google Apps Learning Center, or Drive’s Google+ page.

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Five for Drive: Tips for Getting Started with Google Drive

Editor’s note: Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing tips on how your business can get the most out of Google Drive. This week, learn the basics, and check back for our next posts highlighting some of Drive’s key apps and features.

Businesses wanting to streamline their files and folders, look no further. With Google Drive, you can instantly create new documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. This week, we’ve got 5 tips on how your business can use Google Drive to store, edit, and share all of your documents. Learn about how you can access your files from anywhere and collaborate with colleagues in real-time.
  1. Install Google Drive on your computer to free up space on your hard drive and keep all of your business’s documents in one place. Simply drag and drop all your files and folders into your Google Drive folder to begin syncing items. Any file you sync to your Drive will be accessible on the web via your Google account (in My Drive) as well as on any phone or tablet where you have Drive installed.
  2. Download the Google Drive app for your Android or Apple device to access your files on the go. Any changes you make on one device are automatically synced with the rest of the places you have Drive installed, as long as you have an internet connection.
  3. Use the share feature in Drive to share files or entire folders with anyone. You can share a document with just one co-worker, or make it accessible to an entire group. You can also set editing rights and choose whether others can view, edit, or comment on your stuff.
  4. Work simultaneously on the same document with colleagues, and see changes appear as they happen. Use the Comments feature in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to add notes and discuss content with your collaborators. In documents, you can even chat about a file in real-time.
  5. Set up offline access using Chrome, so you can continue working in Google Drive even when your computer isn’t connected to the internet. This way, if you’re on the go and find yourself without wifi, you can still view documents and spreadsheets, move folders around, and make edits to documents. When you reconnect to the internet, your changes will automatically sync to all your devices.
To get started with Google Drive, visit drive.google.com/start. Looking for even more tips about Google Drive? Check out the Help Center, the Google Apps Learning Center, or Drive’s Google+ page.

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SMB Hangouts on Air: Is My Ad Showing?

AdWords Specialists hosted a Hangout on Air yesterday as the first of two installments of the SMB Frequently Asked Questions Hangouts On Air series.

During the Hangout, we talked about how you’ll want to use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to see if your ad is running. We also gave you some common reasons why your ad might not be showing: budget, ad rank, location targeting, and approval statuses.

Here's the full 25-minute Hangout on Air, from the Google Business YouTube channel:

 

To learn more about how to get started with AdWords, visit our Help Center, check out the AdWords Community forum, or call us at 866-2-GOOGLE if you already have an AdWords account.

And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout on Air at 11 a.m. PDT, November 15th, when we discuss how to diagnoses causes of performance fluctuation in your AdWords account.

Stay tuned!

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Help Desk Hangouts: Get Your Business Online

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 chatted with the Get Your Business online team. We talked about how important it is for businesses to have online presences, and the team highlighted a special promotion. U.S. businesses can set up a free website for a year with Get Your Business online with just a Google account. The team also walked us through how businesses can accelerate their online presences after making this website.

Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google and Your 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:

What is Get Your Business Online?
Get Your Business Online was designed to make it easy, free, and fast to for any business to get online. We think that small businesses are vital for the future, and we want to see small businesses connecting with customers using modern technologies. Get Your Business Online gives small businesses the opportunity to grow through creating an online presence.

How can I get my business online?
Just visit http://gybo.com in the United States and get started right there. We’re offering a free domain name and hosting for a year, so all you need’s a Google account. You can use the Intuit site builder to make your business’ website, so there’s no HTML knowledge required. Don’t forget to publish your website after building it!

Can you share some tips for jumpstarting your online presence?
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Halloween and businesses on Google+


Happy Halloween! Has your business done anything special for today? We’ve rounded up some creative ways that businesses have gotten in the spooky spirit using Google+ features to interact with their followers.

  1. Using photos: It’s pretty hard not to want a cupcake after looking at these festive photos on Food Network’s Google+ page. Food Network not only shared ideas for decorating desserts, but also a variety of other recipes for Halloween-inspired dishes, all with images. Photos help share your products with customers, especially if you’re in the food business. You can learn more about how to add photos here.
  2. Posting videos: Travel Channel shared video clips of its latest episode of Ghost Adventures so followers could get a sneak peek and know when to watch. Videos provide another way to share even more information in an engaging format. Own a boutique? Create a short video showing clothes in your shop and ways to style an outfit. Have an auto repair shop? Post a clip of an interview with a customer sharing a positive experience.
  3. Regular posts and sharing content: Scoot & Doodle created a weekly challenge where they asked users to draw their Halloween costumes, design and send Halloween e-cards with “spooky stamps,” and sketch out plans for pumpkin carvings. Regular posts keep your followers coming back to your page, and using hashtags (Scoot & Doodle used #weeklychallenge) makes it easy for others to find related content. Sharing photos, videos, or posts created by your customers also lets them feel more connected to your business.
  4. Ask followers questions: Zoo Atlanta posted Halloween-themed animal trivia and shared information on “creepy” animals like tarantulas. Posting questions is a great way to not only interact with your followers, but also to get customers engaged in conversations with other customers.
  5. Share promotions: Have a special sale going on at your store? Get the word out by creating a post on Google+. Google Play shared its Halloween sale on its Google+ page to get the word out to even more users. You can even create different circles for your followers and pick who can see your post, so you can share special deals with your most loyal customers.
You can learn even more about how to use Google+ by visiting the help center.

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Take your social strategy to the next level with Learn with Google Hangouts and Webinars

Over the next few weeks, we’re offering five opportunities to learn more about Google+ for your business. We kick off with a Learn with Google Hangout on Air with bestselling author +Chris Brogan on November 5th at 10am PT / 1pm ET. Chris will cover tactics for successful social marketing and discuss his new book, “Google+ for Business: How Google's Social Network Changes Everything.” RSVP for the Hangout on the Google+ Event page.


Learn Chris’s recipes for how to grow and engage your Google+ community to build your brand and drive your business’s visibility and conversions. Hear about Chris’s own experiences helping companies succeed in their content marketing and social projects. Chris Brogan is a New York Times bestselling author, CEO of Human Business Works, and advises companies on marketing, business strategy, communications and more.

If you have a question for Chris, leave your question as a comment on the Google+ Event.

Boost your success with Google+

Want to learn more about using Google+ for your business? Sign up for our Learn with Google webinars. Here are some great upcoming webinars to help you get the most out of social for your business:
  • Social Media Best Practices for a Successful Holiday Season (Wed, Oct 31, 10am PT / 1pm ET)
  • Social that Adds Up: Performance and Measurement (Thurs, Nov 8, 10am PT / 1pm ET)
  • Supercharge your Social Media Initiatives with Video (Wed, Nov 14, 10am PT / 1pm ET)
  • Building a Digital Brand with Google+ (Thurs, Dec 6, 10am PT / 1pm ET)
Posted by the Learn with Google Team
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Introducing the new compose in Gmail

Editor's note: This post has been cross-published from the Gmail blog. For more ways on how your business can use Gmail efficiently, check out our Gmail tips post.

We're always trying to make Gmail faster and easier to use, so today we're introducing a completely redesigned compose and reply experience that does just that.

Faster
How many times have you been writing an email and had to reference something in another message? Saving a draft, opening the old email, and then reopening your draft wastes valuable minutes. The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger).



This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later.

Easier to use
The new compose is designed to let you focus on what's important: your message. The controls are still there when you need them but get out of the way when you don’t. We’ve even added some new features like the ability to easily insert inline images and have more to come.

And, when you add recipients to your message, you'll see profile pictures of your contacts in autocomplete helping you find the right person faster. You can also drag and drop the new address chips between to:, cc: and bcc:. When you’re done adding recipients, the address area collapses automatically to get out of your way.


You’ll also see these same changes when you respond to a message. The reply experience has been designed to fit better inline as part of your conversation -- replies take up much less vertical height, intelligently expand to fit your content, and always keep the recipients and other controls in view no matter how long your message gets.

We're rolling out a preview of the new compose and reply today. After we've added some finishing touches over the coming months, we’ll enable it for everyone.

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SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air: Increasing Your Business' Video Exposure

Editor's note: This is our sixth post in a series on SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air, where experts on the AdWords support team are hosting short Hangouts on Air to walk SMBs through AdWords-related topics. Here on the Google and Your Business Blog, we'll be providing a wrap-up of the Hangouts. This particular post is cross-published from the AdWords Google+ page.

Google AdWords Specialists hosted a Hangout on Air last week as the sixth installment of the SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air series.

During the Hangout, we talked about how businesses can expand their video reach by keeping their targeting groups broad and separated by targeting type. We also discussed different video ad formats, which ad formats align with different business goals, and the benefits of linking your YouTube and AdWords accounts.

To watch the full 25-minute Hangout on Air or previous topics, visit the Google Business YouTube channel.



To learn more about how to get started with AdWords, visit our Help Center, check out the AdWords Community forum, or call us at 866-2-GOOGLE if you already have an AdWords account.

And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout on Air at 11 a.m. PDT, Thursday November 8th, when we discuss one of the top issues you talk to us about: what to do when you can’t see your ad.

Stay tuned!

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10 in 10: Google Plus

Editor’s note: For the 10th month of the year, we’ll be sharing 10 tips each week for using a different Google product. Our final post features 10 ways your business can get the most out of using Google+. Previously we’ve featured tips on Gmail, Chrome, and Calendar.

Businesses getting savvy with social, stay tuned. This week, we’ve got 10 tips on using Google+ for your business, from posts with pizzazz to happening Hangouts. Learn about using features like Circles and Events and pick up some general social media tips, too.
  1. Use circles to segment your audience and reach the right people. For example, if you sell sporting equipment, you might have different circles for bicyclists, swimmers, and runners.
  2. Add photos, videos, or links to your posts by dragging them directly to the share box. To add a link, drag the icon next to the URL from the address bar to the share box.
  3. Share behind-the-scenes photos. You can can edit your photos directly in Google+ and share animated GIF photos--a great way to draw attention to your page.
  4. Check out the drop-down arrow at the top of Google+ posts. You can manage the way people interact with your own posts, like disabling comments or editing your post. You can link to, report abuse, or mute other people’s posts.
  5. Want to add style to your posts and make them more visually appealing? To add italics, use underscores around your words: _ italics_ → italics. Asterisks make words bold (* bold* → bold), and hyphens will add a strikethrough (- strikethrough - → strikethrough).
  6. Create a posting schedule to post at least once a day. Engage your community with questions and +Mention your community so they feel the love and share your post with more people. Try posting at different times of the day to see what best engages your audience.
  7. Create an Event to drive foot-traffic to a sale or new product launch, and to drive attendance for your Hangouts. With Events on mobile, guests can RSVP, get directions, and even have their photos and videos uploaded to the Event page if Party Mode is enabled.
  8. Host regular Hangouts or Hangouts on Air to have real face-to-face conversations with your followers. Consider behind-the-scenes tours, launch new products in person or simply say thank you to your supporters.
  9. Get creative and stay current with your Google+ banner. We’ve seen some delightful use of animation and fun seasonal banners, too, that keep a page fresh and fun.
  10. Have your whole team help with the page--add managers by navigating to Pages on the navigation ribbon on the left, hovering over the page, clicking on Managers, and adding more people there.
Get even more tips on how your business can use Google+ by checking out the help center or the Google+ Your Business page!

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10 in 10: Google Calendar

Editor’s note: For the 10th month of the year, we’ll be sharing 10 tips each week for using a different Google product. Our third post features 10 ways your business can use Google Calendar. Previously we’ve featured tips on Gmail and Chrome.

The daylight hours are getting shorter, but the work day is as busy as ever. If you use Google Calendar to schedule your business’s days, weeks, and months, check out our tips for organizing and using your calendar more efficiently.
  1. The Google Calendar Android app lets you manage all your calendars in one place--including those from your Google accounts and other synced calendars--right from your mobile device.
  2. Use keyboard shortcuts to make and manage your events quickly. For example, when you’re on your calendar, try typing c to create a new event, d to display your calendar in day view, or n to see the next date range.
  3. Collaborating on events with co-workers using Google Calendar? Pass on the torch and transfer ownership of the event to the new coordinator. When you're editing event details, visit the "More Actions" dropdown then click “Change owner.” You'll have the option to send them a note letting them know this change is effective now.
  4. Unclutter your calendar by auto-hiding events once you've declined them, letting you to focus on the more important parts of your day/week/month. Just click the gear icon at the top of any Google Calendar page, go to Calendar settings, and then the General tab. Select "No" in the “Show events you have declined” section and then save.
  5. Tired of the white grid look on your calendar? Add a photo to personalize your background.
  6. Planning on meeting with people in another time zone? Enable the world clock in Calendar Labs to find a convenient time. Out of town and not by your computer? You can automatically decline events during times when you’re busy. Check out other Labs features you can try.
  7. Create a to-do list that will appear right next to your calendar. You can even assign calendar dates to tasks, and then sort by the due date.
  8. Want to share special events happening at your business with your customers? Create a separate calendar and then embed it on your website.
  9. Customize your notification settings for events. You can choose to get reminders between 5 minutes and 4 weeks before your event, and pick whether you want the reminder delivered as a pop-up notification, email, or text message. You can also add multiple reminders for an event.
  10. Organize your calendar by color-coding different events or calendars and make it easier to get an overview of your schedule with a quick glance.
Find even more tips on ways to use Google Calendar by checking out the help center!

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Measure Your Success: Call Reporting Now Available in AdWords Express

Editor's note: This article is cross-posted from from the AdWords blog.

How did you find us? There's a good reason so many business surveys include this question: understanding how people connect with your business is important. When people search for local businesses on Google, they may want to check out a website, but there's a good chance they'll want to just give you a call. That's why we initially launched call reporting for AdWords customers—to help businesses use search to connect with people over the phone. Now, we're expanding this feature to AdWords Express customers so local businesses can benefit as well. Call reporting allows you to quantify the offline value of your ads by seeing how many phone calls your ads generate.

How search ads can make your phones ring
When you sign up for call reporting, we will replace the phone number in your Google Search ads across desktop, mobile, and tablet with a toll-free Google forwarding number. When customers call this number, we’ll automatically forward the call to your business and report in your dashboard that the call was made. This allows you to keep track of how many calls your ad is generating for your business. You can see it all right in your AdWords Express dashboard.



Okay, I’m in! How can I do this?
To edit your call reporting preferences, go to your AdWords Express dashboard. Click the ‘Manage your ads’ tab and you’ll see a checkbox for call reporting. If this is selected, on your dashboard you will see calls in addition to clicks and views for your ad.


Currently, call reporting is available for US businesses using AdWords Express. For more information on how it works, set up, and pricing, please visit the AdWords Express Help Center.
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5 Characteristics of a Healthy Local Google+ Page

We know your business’ presence on Google, Google+ and Google Maps is important to you -- it’s important to us, too. Here are some tips and tricks for keeping those pages healthy. Simply sign in to your Google Places for Business account (or Google+, for the upgraded pages) to make any of the necessary changes to your listing.



Service Area Businesses without Storefronts Must Hide Their Addresses 
If you serve customers at their location, we ask that you hide your business’ location on Google Maps. A good test to know if you should be hiding your address: could a customer arrive at your location without an appointment and expect to conduct business? If not, your address should be hidden.

If you operate a service area business without a storefront, you must use Google Places to hide your address. Unfortunately, this feature is not yet supported for local pages made in Google+ with social features.

Address Formatting 
If you need to specify where you receive mail within your physical address, put a mailbox or suite number on the second address line. Your address may end up looking reformatted in Google Maps, but it’s important that this information on the second address line in your Google Places for Business dashboard for data processing purposes. There’s no need to put any information other than the address and mailbox number when entering your address.

Real Location and Phone Number 
We don’t accept mail-receiving agencies, like P.O. Boxes or UPS Stores, as business locations. Even if your business normally receives mail like this, please input your actual location into Google Places for Business account. If you do not want to show that address (for example, if that is your home address), there is an option to hide your address and instead specify a general area of service in the Google Places for Business dashboard. The location that you list should be staffed by your business during its operating hours.

Spelling and miscellany 
We’re all for keeping your copy fresh, but you should avoid switching 0ut ©hara©ter$. If your listing is in English, keep the letters you use to the standard alphabet, and so on.

And remember, please do not include any URLs in your title, unless it’s actually the name of your business.

Multiple Businesses
If you manage multiple businesses, remember that you are responsible for keeping all of your listings in compliance with our quality guidelines.

These are just some common mistakes we often see with business owners’ listings. Please review our guidelines in detail and make sure your listing is as healthy as it can be and ensure that your prospective customers are finding your relevant listing information. If you have additional questions or concerns, contact our support team under Fix a Problem.

Posted by Roger Chen, Google+ Local Search Quality
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SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air: Driving foot traffic

Editor's note: This is our fifth post in a series on SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air, where experts on the AdWords support team are hosting short Hangouts on Air to walk SMBs through AdWords-related topics. Here on the Google and Your Business Blog, we'll be providing a wrap-up of the Hangouts. This particular post is cross-published from the AdWords Google+ page.

AdWords Specialists Courtney Pannel, Cassie Shamey, and Steven Ness hosted a Hangout on Air yesterday as the fifth installment of the SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air series.

A lot of advertisers are trying to drive visits to their storefront in addition to visitors to their website, so we chatted about AdWords features to help you accomplish that goal. We discussed how to target local users with location targeting and ad scheduling and how to showcase your store location with ad-level and campaign-level location extensions.



To watch the full 25-minute Hangout on Air, visit the Google Business YouTube channel here.

To learn more about how to get started with AdWords, visit our Help Center, check out the AdWords Community forum, or call us at 866-2-GOOGLE if you already have an AdWords account.

And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout on Air at 11 a.m. PDT, October 25, when we discuss how to optimize your account to drive video exposure.

Stay tuned!

 Courtney Pannel, Cassie Shamey, and Steven Ness, Adwords Team
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10 in 10: Google Chrome

Editor’s note: For the 10th month of the year, we’ll be sharing 10 tips each week for using a different Google product. Our second post features 10 ways to get the most out of using Google Chrome. Last week, we featured Gmail tips

Want to get even faster at work? Use Google Chrome shortcuts to start working as fast as you browse the web:

  1. While reading online, have you ever seen a word or phrase that you wanted to learn more about? Next time, just highlight the term(s) and then drag it to your tabstrip to the right or left of your current tab--a new tab will open with search results for the highlighted text. You can also try the Dictionary extension so when you highlight a word the definition will hover over it. 
  2. Have a site (or a few) you always keep open, like Gmail or Rdio? You can pin those tabs so that they open the next time you launch Chrome. To pin a tab, right-click on it then select “Pin Tab”.  
  3. Sign in to Chrome to access your bookmarks and quickly sync your tabs on any of your other gadgets where you’re signed into Chrome. Just go to the “Other devices” menu when you open a new tab to find them. The back and forward buttons will even work, so you can pick up browsing right where you left off. 
  4. Try using incognito windows to browse in stealth mode. With Incognito Mode, pages you view won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window 
  5. Want to hide your bookmarks bar? You can also use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Shift+B (Windows and Chrome OS) and ⌘-Shift-B (Mac) to toggle the bar on and off. 
  6. To save a webpage as a PDF, press Ctrl + p (Mac: Cmd + p) to bring up the print dialogue, then Destination > Change. 
  7. Need even more space to browse? You can toggle full-screen mode with these handy keyboard shortcuts: Fullscreen Key on a Chromebook, F11 on Windows & Linux, and Cmd+Shift+F on a Mac. 
  8. Accidentally close a window? Just use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+t to open the last tab you closed. Keep using this shortcut to open your previous tabs. 
  9. Bookmarks are just a click away. Like a page? Click on the Star next to the omnibox, and the page is automatically bookmarked. 
  10. Use apps from the Chrome Web Store to do things like get notifications, take notes, edit screenshots, and more. 
You can learn even more tips for using Google Chrome by checking out the help center or Chrome’s Google+ page.

Jacky Hayward, Google Chrome Team 
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Case Study: Scoot & Doodle Sparks Creativity With Their Google+ Hangout App

Cross-posted from The Google+ Developers Blog.

San Francisco-based startup Scoot & Doodle brings people face-to-face in a shared online play space in real time. Scoot & Doodle chose to launch their first product as a Google+ Hangout app, and since launching built a user base of 100,000+, achieved strong engagement with returning users averaging 28 minutes per session, and increased their Google+ followers to nearly 900,000.

Scoot & Doodle chose to launch their first product as a Google+ Hangout app because the platform offered advantages to gain traction in the crowded, competitive online social space. Those advantages included:
  • Access to 400 million highly engaged Google+ users already connected through
  • Circles, Gmail, YouTube, and Calendar
  • Easy, streamlined discovery of Scoot & Doodle on Google+, through viral channels such as Notifications
  • Quality, strength, and reach of face-to-face on hangouts, which let Scoot & Doodle users connect, create, and collaborate with up to nine people, simultaneously, worldwide
  • Relatively simple development in the Hangouts API, they went from concept to launch in just three months

Scoot & Doodle has seen extremely high engagement with its product in Hangouts. The average visitor spends 22 minutes per session, and returning users spend 28 minutes per session. They’ve also found their users are engaging in ways they hadn’t expected, like anime artists collaborating daily with each other and with Japanese writers to create and design characters for online games. Also, students from junior high school to college use the app to illustrate, collaborate, discuss, and solve problems for their class work; for fun breaks, they doodle and play Pictionary-like games together.


U.S. and Japanese artists use Scoot & Doodle to collaborate on anime projects like this one.

“We’re seeing users engage with the product in creative, diverse ways. As a result, Scoot & Doodle has captured far more user communities than we initially envisioned,” says Patty Chang, company cofounder and product lead. “Scoot & Doodle on Google+ Hangouts has pushed the bounds of how we look at our product and where we’re going with it.”

Scoot & Doodle has identified new uses for its product from its followers, and connects with them regularly in hangouts and via Google+. The company also conducts focus groups using Hangouts. Its latest features—talk bubbles, stamps, and scrapbook—arose from discussions between users and customer reps on Google+.

We think Scoot & Doodle is a good example of a company who has built a strong audience on Google+ through its use of Circles, content rich posts, interactive Hangouts, and creative promotions. These promotions have focused primarily on community building and engagement, with good results from encouraging users to create with the app, then share and engage with others in their Circles.

Follow Scoot & Doodle on Google+ and download the full case study here. To learn more about Google+ Hangout apps, visit: developers.google.com/+/hangouts.

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Help Desk Hangouts: Chrome 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 chatted with the Chrome team, who gave us 11 reasons to use Chrome at work. We learned about productivity on the web and the power of web apps, and we chatted about how Chrome reaches the lightning speeds it does. We got a tour of how businesses can tweak and customize Chrome to fit their needs, and we also answered your questions, live, during the Hangout.

Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google and Your 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:
Can I configure Chrome to fit my needs as a business? How would I do so?
Sure. We’ve built an MSI installer for Chrome for business to make the transition easier. You can manage group policies easily using our pre-built templates, too. We don’t recommend it, but you can turn off auto-updates, too. Aside from these special business tools, Chrome comes with all of its standard customization features, too.

Can I still have the benefits of using Chrome (like speed, security) on an older computer?
Definitely. We think Chrome’s speed and security are particularly noticeable on older computers, in fact. Give it a try!

How is Chrome a more secure browser?
Sandboxing on Chrome adds an extra layer of protection between your computers and malicious websites that try to install unwanted programs or take your personal information. Chrome also protects you against what may be malicious websites by displaying clear warnings. Keeping up with auto-updates helps keep your browser prepared to keep your computer safe, too.

Help Desk Hangouts are hosted on the Google+ Your Business page every other Wednesday. Don’t miss our next Hangout at 11a.m. PDT on Wednesday, October 17. Look for the topic announcement on the Google+ Your Business page.

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Win Moments that Matter with Learn with Google Webinars

Editor's note: This post is cross-published from the Inside AdWords blog

As we’re nearing the end of 2012, we’ve all got business goals to meet. Some of you might even be prepping for your busiest season. Today, we’re announcing our next series of Learn with Google webinars, which will arm you with the tools you need to get the most out of your holiday ad dollars. We’ve got a special series on remarketing as well as a few holiday-specific strategies to help you navigate the season successfully. Over the next couple of months, 20 webinars will teach you tips and how-to’s to help make the web work for your business.

Check out the full schedule of webinars below:
  • 10/16 [Search] Drive Traffic to your Locations with your Online Campaigns
  • 10/18 [Video] TrueView Video Advertising Strategies for the Holidays
  • 10/23 [Mobile] Understanding your App Users with Google Analytics
  • 10/24 [Research] Real-Time Insights with Google Consumer Surveys
  • 10/25 [Display] Remarketing Series: Getting Started with Remarketing
  • 10/30 [YouTube] TrueView Video Advertising for Agencies
  • 10/31 [Social] Social Media Best Practices for a Successful Holiday Season
  • 11/01 [Video] Optimizing TrueView Video Ad Campaigns
  • 11/02 [Analytics] Attribution Modeling for Digital Success
  • 11/06 [Video] YouTube Analytics for Advertisers
  • 11/07 [Video] Remarketing Series: YouTube and Video Remarketing
  • 11/08 [Social] How to Make your Google+ Marketing More Accountable
  • 11/13 [Analytics] Getting Started with Google Tag Manager
  • 11/14 [Social] Supercharge your Social Media Initiatives with Video
  • 11/15 [Display] Remarketing Series: Getting Started with the New Remarketing Tag
  • 11/27 [Display] Remarketing Series: Getting Started with Similar Audiences
  • 11/29 [Mobile] New Research: How to Win on the Third Screen
  • 12/05 [Mobile] Capturing the Full Value of Mobile with Click-to-Call and Call Metrics
  • 12/06 [Social] Building a Digital Brand with Google+
  • 12/12 [Analytics] Remarketing Series: Remarketing with Google Analytics
All webinars are at 10 PT/ 1 ET.

Visit our webinar page to register for any of the sessions and to access past webinars on-demand. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding our Learn with Google Webinar calendar to your own Google calendar to automatically see upcoming webinars.

Learn with Google is a program to help businesses succeed through winning moments that matter, enabling better decisions and constantly innovating. We hope that you’ll use these best practices and how-to’s to maximize the impact of digital and grow your business. We’re looking forward to seeing you at an upcoming session!

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10 in 10: Gmail

Editor’s note: For the 10th month of the year, we’ll be sharing 10 tips each week for using a different Google product. Our first post features 10 ways to get the most out of using Gmail.
Is your inbox piling up like fall leaves outside? While they won’t help with raking, these Gmail tips will let you organize, clean up, and more efficiently manage your email.
  1. Find all the keyboard shortcuts you can use by typing ? when you’re in your Gmail inbox.
  2. Add color and organization to your inbox with different colored stars or exclamation points and labels.
  3. Use "in: anywhere" to search all folders, inboxes, Spam, and Trash when you’re looking for a message.
  4. Keep unauthorized users out of your account by using 2-step verification, which adds an extra layer of security when you’re signing in.
  5. Use sub-labels to organize your labels into groups that you can collapse and expand.
  6. Add a theme to customize your inbox or be festive for the seasons. Choose a stock option or upload your own photo by just clicking Themes under the gear icon.
  7. Set vacation responses when you’re out of town so people who email you don’t wonder why you haven’t responded to a message.
  8. Lists and notifications clogging your inbox? Sort them as they arrive with "Filter messages like this."
  9. Manage multiple email accounts? Use Gmail to send mail "from" your other email addresses while only being signed into one.
  10. Customize how you view actions like Archive and Mark Spam by picking icons or text.
Want even more tips for using Gmail? Check out the help center, Google Apps Learning Center, or Gmail’s Google+ page.

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Google's Economic Impact Across the Country

Through Google's search and advertising programs, businesses find customers, publishers earn money from their content and nonprofits solicit donations and volunteers. These tools are how Google makes money, and they’re how millions of other businesses do, too. In fact, in 2011, Google’s search and advertising tools helped provide $80 billion of economic activity for 1.8 million advertisers, website publishers, and nonprofits across the U.S. You can see Google's economic impact in each state on Google's Economic Impact site, along with the stories of local businesses who have used Google to help grow their businesses.


Posted by the Google and Your Business Blog Team
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SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air: Driving phone traffic

Editor's note: This is our fourth post in a series on SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air, where experts on the AdWords support team are hosting short Hangouts on Air to walk SMBs through AdWords-related topics. Here on the Google and Your Business Blog, we'll be providing a wrap-up of the Hangouts. This particular post is cross-published from the AdWords Google+ page

AdWords Specialists Courtney Pannel, Adam Anderson, and Morgan Price hosted a Hangout on Air yesterday as the fourth installment of the SMB Newbie Hangouts on Air series.

During the Hangout on Air, we discussed features like call extensions and call metrics that can help drive phone traffic for your business. Here are some resources to check out on call extensions and call metrics.

We also chatted about the benefits of having a mobile-only campaign (keyword + ad optimization, mobile site destination URLs, metrics split from desktop performance, etc.). Here’s a nifty resource about mobile ads, complete with videos and examples.

Here's the full 25-minute Hangout on Air, from the Google Business YouTube channel:



To learn more about how to get started with AdWords, visit our Help Center, check out the AdWords Community forum, or call us at 866-2-GOOGLE if you already have an AdWords account.

And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout on Air at 11 a.m. PDT, October 11, when we discuss how to optimize your account to drive local traffic. Stay tuned!

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Social that Adds Up

Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog

Earlier this week HootSuite Enterprise hosted Adam Singer, from Google Analytics, to share how you can use Google to measure social performance. With over half of people talking more online than they do in “real life”, digital social media is a critical platform for marketers, but how do we measure its impact?



Most marketers use platform metrics as performance indicators, but often they cannot be linked to sales. Engagement is the easiest and often the most measured social metric in terms of followers, fans and comments. However, revenue is often the more important (and more difficult to measure) metric that can help marketers determine an ROI for their social media efforts. Google offers two solutions that can help drive social media performance: Google+ and Google Analytics social reports.

Building relationships on Google+ may improve other parts of your marketing plan. Google+ is integrating social in all the Google products marketers already use, which can help them drive deeper engagement with their target customers, be more relevant by offering social recommendations when customers need them most and remain accountable by providing transparency of how their ad dollars are performing.

With Google Analytics Social reports you can tie your social media to metrics you care about. Here are some top tips Adam covered in the webinar:
  • Find something you can measure (micro or macro-conversions) and sprint in that direction. Focus on how separate channels can drive different types of site actions, which can be tied to a value you determine.
  • Measure success criteria directionally. Benchmarks are uncommon and do not necessarily translate across products, services or industries.
  • Create your social posts with a measurement goal in mind. Be sure to include a call to action to inspire your audience to act.
  • Understand and connect with your audience differently across the different networks. Try not to post the same thing on each platform, customize and use what works best.

Thank you to those who could join, if you have any questions feel free to reach out to +AdamSinger on Google+ or watch the webinar recording here.

Source: Socialnomics, 2009

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Celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship with the new Google for Entrepreneurs



Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Startups and entrepreneurs have the power to build technologies and creative solutions that transform the world and move us forward. Innovation is happening everywhere: There are approximately 400 million entrepreneurs across 54 countries, and 69 million early-stage entrepreneurs offering new products and services. As Google turns 14 this month, we’re celebrating this creative spirit and officially launching Google for Entrepreneurs, the umbrella for our several dozen programs and partnerships around the world that support startups and entrepreneurs.
Our focus is threefold:
  1. Partnerships with strong organizations that serve entrepreneurs in local communities
  2. Google-led programs to bring our teams and our tools directly to entrepreneurs
  3. Placing relevant Google tools in the hands of startups as they are getting off the ground and ready to scale
We’re already on a roll, with current projects ranging from support for the annual journey of entrepreneurship through India by train, to partnering with a number of accelerator and incubator programs around the world, like iHub in Kenya and Le Camping in France. And, this week, we’re rolling out our newest partnership: teaming up with Women 2.0 to bring their Founder Friday events to more cities. These events bring together current and aspiring female entrepreneurs once a month to connect with mentors and one another to build community. We’re partnering to launch Founder Fridays in Detroit, New Orleans, Sao Paulo and Moscow over the next year.

To celebrate both our birthday and the spirit of entrepreneurship that’s helped get us where we are today, we are hosting our first annual Google for Entrepreneurs Week, which will bring together more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and Googlers around the world. We kicked off over the weekend with a Startup Weekend event hosted at the Google Ventures Startup Lab in Mountain View, Calif., where Bay Area entrepreneurs came together to create their own startups in 54 hours. Over the course of the next week, Googlers in 28 cities across 13 countries will be hosting an event in their communities to bring their passion and expertise to local entrepreneurs. We’re teaming with a number of partners to make this happen, including the Idea Village in New Orleans, Communitech in Waterloo, Tetuan Valley in Wroclaw, the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in Johannesburg and the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce in Iowa.

For more on these existing programs and to stay connected on upcoming events, visit google.com/entrepreneurs and follow us on G+.

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Help Desk Hangouts: Administrative Assistant Community

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 chatted with the folks who created the Administrative Assistant Community on Google. Administrative Assistants and other extreme users of Google Apps can trade tips and tricks about productivity, getting organized, and anything else. They’ve also got educational Hangouts (sounds familiar!) that highlight different Google products.

Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google and Your 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:

What was the inspiration behind creating the Administrative Assistant Community? 
After having worked with a number of Google Apps customers over the years, we realized that Admin Assistants are the real super users of Apps. They use Apps, and in particular Gmail and Calendar, in novel and exciting ways. This also means that they often come across problems or things that don’t work the way they need them to, and this will usually happen when they are under extreme pressure to get things done for their boss. So they are also a group that needs special attention and focus. There is already an internal Google Admin Assistant community sharing tips and tricks, and we thought it would be great to extend this into a more public facing community. Plus we aim to make the site itself a one stop shop for Admin Assistant related resources and materials.

Who can join the discussion? Is it limited to paying Google Apps customers, or “official” administrative assistants? 
Anyone can join. It is a free public website and community. Although it is particularly aimed at Administrative Assistants who use Google Apps, all are welcome to share tips and tricks!

 Help Desk Hangouts are hosted on the Google+ Your Business page every other Wednesday. Don’t miss our next Hangout at 11a.m. PDT on Wednesday, October 3. Look for the topic announcement on the Google+ Your Business page.

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Getting America’s businesses online

Editor's note: This article is cross-posted from the Google Official Blog.

The web is where we go to find things—somewhere to eat tonight, someone to cut your hair or someone to come quickly to tend to your plumbing disaster. Ninety-seven percent of Americans who use the Internet—pretty much all of us—are looking online for local goods and services. Businesses need to be where their customers are. In 2012, that’s online.

Yet, more than half of all small businesses in the U.S. don’t have a website. Many of those businesses are completely invisible in the one place people are looking for them. The impact of being online is real: Businesses that make use of the web are expected to grow 40 percent faster and are nearly twice as likely to create jobs. Since small businesses make up half of the U.S. GDP and contribute two-thirds of all new jobs, the potential impact of getting these businesses (more than 15 million of them) online is enormous. We wanted to help spur a new wave of SMBs on the web, and change the perception that getting online is hard, expensive and time-consuming.

In July 2011, we went to Austin to get Texas businesses on the web. Texas Get Your Business Online helped any business in Texas get a free, easy-to-build website as well as a free, customized domain name and web hosting for one year. The tools and resources made it fast, easy and free for any business in Texas to get online.

The response from the small business community in Texas was tremendous—thousands of businesses started to get online at events throughout the state and on the web. So we decided to expand the program, going state-by-state to get businesses online. At the end of August 2012, we went to Alaska and Hawaii. These were our 49th and 50th states. Just over a year after our experiment in Austin, we’ve brought America Get Your Business Online to all 50 states, with help from ASBDC, Score, Intuit and over 500 local partners. We’ve had more than 20,000 small businesses attend more than 200 events throughout the country.


This is just the beginning of our commitment to get businesses on the web and succeeding online. Today, small businesses throughout the U.S. can get online for free at www.AmericaGetOnline.com. Businesses get a free, easy-to-build website as well as a free, customized domain name and web hosting for one year. It’s fast, it’s easy and it’s free.

If you’re a small business, get your business online today. Or, if you know a great business that is not online, use this tool to invite them to the web. Getting America’s businesses online may very well be the fastest, easiest step we can take to grow our small businesses and our economy.

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