Blog Archive
31 August 2006
It’s been a while since my last post because there’s not been anything worthwhile to report on. I wouldn’t really say that this was even worthwhile to report on either, but it’s something new that I found so I thought I’d share it with you...
Cast your minds back to the 20th December 2005, when Google’s Time Warner’s AOL and Google to Expand Strategic Alliance press release mentioned something called AOL Marketplace (the emphasis being mine):
Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said: “ [...] Today’s agreement leverages technologies from both companies to connect Google users worldwide to a wealth of new content. We’ve also created a simple way for AOL Marketplace advertisers to buy and place search-related advertising across the AOL network. [...] ”
...
The agreement’s broad range of new features for users and advertisers include:
- Creating an AOL Marketplace through white labeling of Google’s advertising technology – enabling AOL to sell search advertising directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties;
...
AOL and Google have also agreed to extend the term of their existing European relationship, and, subject to mutual agreement, they may extend the AOL Marketplace internationally. In addition, Google, AOL and Time Warner may choose to expand the new partnership to Time Warner’s other advertising opportunities.
Whilst I was doing some ‘routine’ interrogations of Google’s services, I just saw the following for the first time:
You’re probably already used to seeing something similar, which would usually look something like this:
So, what’s an AOL Marketplace account? I’m assuming that it’s simply a Google Account by another name so that the AOL Marketplace users don’t get too confused. But that raises a couple more questions. What is the AOL Marketplace? And how do you access it?
Does anyone know...?
(Just for the record, at the time of writing this, a Google search for ["AOL Marketplace account"] returns zero results, so I’m guessing that nobody really knows just yet...)
Update: 13 September 2006 (00:26)
I’ve just noticed that AOL Marketplace account has now been updated to AOL Search Marketplace account instead:
Still no more clues as to what this is though...
(And just for the record, at the time of writing this update, a Google search for ["AOL Search Marketplace account"] returns zero results...)
Labels: aol, google
14 August 2006
Last Tuesday, I said:
Just when I was starting to actually believe that Google had abandoned all development on Blogger, I noticed something that could possibly mean that they haven’t forgotten about their free blogging service after all...
On Friday, I suggested that Blogger was going to be migrating to Google Accounts. And today they’ve launched Blogger Beta!
As well as migrating Blogger to use Google Accounts, they’ve also (finally) added loads more features:
- Customize your template by dragging and dropping page elements; there are also new templates from which to choose).
- Create a private blog by editing your permissions to control who can view and contribute to your blog.
- Add category labels to your posts – at long last!
- More feed options are now available, including RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 (instead of just Atom 0.3) – and also feeds for your blog comments, even on a per-post basis!
- Updated Dashboard to check our blog’s activity and make managing your blog easier.
- Instant publishing whenever you make a change.
You can take the tour here.
(I wasn’t able to migrate my Blogger account to my Google Account, so I just created a new Blogger Beta account using my usual Google login.)
So, there we have it. After all this time, Google have finally made some changes to the Blogger service that everyone thought they’d forgetten about! Will it be enough? Of course not! Users always want more...
(One final thought – I wonder why they’ve named it “Blogger Beta” rather than “Blogger 2.0 Beta” instead. “Blogger Beta” indicates that it’s a predecessor to Blogger, which it obviously isn’t...)
[Thanks to Pierre S in the Google Blogoscoped Forum.]
Update: 14 August 2006 (21:35)
View this post on my Blogger Beta blog here, which nicely shows off some of the new features including a nice new format for the archive menu, which is fully customizable, although still very buggy!
Also, on closer inspection it appears that you can’t:
- publish to a non-Blog*Spot domain (at least for the time being)
- edit the templates by hand – “Raw template editing functionality coming soon.”
Labels: blogger, google
12 August 2006
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-08-11-n67.html
Since stumbling across Google Base almost a month before its release and more recently uncovering some more secret Google services, several people have asked how I go about finding these new services. By way of a response, here’s a quick guide to just some of the many different ways you could use to try and find new services that Google are working on.
1. Finding a new service
The details of new services can sometimes be leaked accidentally. Other times, they’re kept secret right up until their release. Here are a few things to look out for if you want to discover new services before anyone outside the Googleplex has even heard about them:
- New domain names
While Google tends to use their google.com domain to host new services, they often register new domain names well in advance of new services being released in order to stop domain cybersquatters snapping them up first. Gary Price has made a couple of posts about this recently. Whilst reverse DNS lookups can help, don’t get fooled into thinking that Google owns all the domain names that are resolving to its IP address ranges or servers. New domains can sometimes give useful hints about new services but can’t be relied upon. (Google has owned GBrowser.com for years, yet we still haven’t seen an official release.)
- New subdomains
When I found the base.google.com subdomain, I simply used a script and a large list of around 65,000 English words to send requests in the format *.google.com to see which ones resolved. It’s probably also worth checking subdomains in the format of *.l.google.com as sometimes these are active well before the normal subdomain, as Garett Rogers pointed out when he found the writely.l.google.com subdomain was resolving back in June 2006 (whereas the writely.google.com subdomain still doesn’t resolve at the time of writing this).
- New subfolders
Google has also been known to just use subfolders instead of subdomains when launching new services, including Google Notebook. Using a similar word list technique as I did for sniffing out subdomains, you could query all Google’s domains and subdomains for new subfolders. Be warned though – if you send too many requests to Google’s servers in a short period of time, you may get temporarily blocked!
- New Google Account service names
Back in May, I tried a new approach to finding new services. I’d noticed that services requiring a Google Account used a series of similar URLs for creating new accounts and signing in. By appending various words to the end of these pages – i.e. https://www.google.com/accounts/Login?service= – I was able to find several new services such as Google Weaver (known back then as M Scrapbook), Google RS2, SSD, Mobile Download Console and LH2 (now known to be Picasa Web Albums). More recently, I tried a similar approach with the sandbox.google.com version of Google Accounts and found even more services, which Google swiftly removed. (I try to maintain a list of these Google Account service names on my website.)
- Clues in JavaScript / HTML code
Another technique often used by Garett Rogers involves sifting through the JavaScript source code used by Google services such as Gmail and Google Calendar. This can reveal new domains, subdomains, links, labels and other hints at new services or features for existing services.
- Changes to Google’s robots.txt files
Google try their best to not index their own SERPs, so when they create a new service that could clutter up their index, they’ll usually add a new entry to their robots.txt file. (One of the most recent additions to the file was www.google.com/call, as Garett Rogers discovered.) By scheduling a simple script, you could easily monitor this file and be alerted of any changes. Don’t forget that each Google domain and subdomain may have its own robots.txt file, so to do this thoroughly you would need to monitor all those for changes too!
- Changes to Blogger profile pages
Since Google don’t use standard naming conventions for their official blogs, it’s hard to detect when a new official blog has been created. One of the best (if not only) ways to check if a blog is official is to see whether it appears on any Blogger profiles belonging to Googlers (such as Eric Case, for example). Quite often, the titles of new official Google blogs appear on these profiles pages before they (or their related services) are officially released. Monitoring these pages for changes could give clues about the names of any new services.
2. Waiting for the new service to be released
Once a new service is discovered, everyone always wants to be the first to confirm a sighting and post exclusive screenshots. Here’s what you can do if you’re expecting a service to be released:
- New logos and images
Sometimes it’s possible to discover new services by making educated guesses about the image and logo URLs. Logos often follow similar naming conventions, which makes it easier to guess the location of a new service logo once you already know the name. (This technique can also be used to find new Google holiday logos.)
- New support pages
Sometimes Google puts the support pages online before releasing a service. Since the Google Help URLs often follow similar conventions, it’s relatively easy to check a few URL combinations to see if the new service’s help pages are online.
- Updates to other pages
Sometimes, Google starts rolling out new services by quietly adding links to various pages, in particular Google Labs, the More Google products page and the Google Site Map page. By monitoring these pages for updates, you could be one of the first to know when a new service has been released, meaning you could be one of the first to sign up (before the number of signups get restricted) and get those all important screenshots if the service is taken offline again!
3. What to do once you find something new
When Corsin Camichel snooped around the Google servers, he accidentally hit on Google Platypus aka Gdrive (and took a screenshot, of course).
Even if you’ve not followed the previous steps, Google sometimes adds references and links to pages either accidentally or without announcing them. This is what you should do if you see something new:
- Take plenty of screenshots
Google has been known to make new services and features live for short periods of time before removing them again. If you find something new, make sure you take screenshots of all the pages you can find in case the pages disappear again.
- Make copies of the source code
Screenshots are great but they only show you what’s on the surface. By saving the HTML and JavaScript source code, you will be able to search for any references to other new services even if Google take the new service offline. (Analyzing links and code for new services shortly after release can also sometimes reveal “secret” URLs that were meant only for testing and these can be useful in discovering new services in the future.)
- Let others know about what you’ve found
No matter how thorough you think you may have been, someone else will probably be able to find something you didn’t. By sharing your findings, you can help others find out even more about the new services. If you have a blog, make a post about your findings including any screenshots you managed to grab. (And don’t forget to email Philipp Lenssen or create a thread in the Google Blogoscoped Forum!)
And here endeth the lesson. Others will probably have their own ways of doing things and new methods will emerge all the time.
Of course, you could just try bribing a Googler or one of their ‘Trusted Tester’ friends... [added: Just kidding!]
Labels: blogoscoped, google
11 August 2006
I recently questioned whether Blogger was finally going to use Google Account logins. Well, here are some screenshots of pages I just discovered that suggest this is highly likely to happen sooner rather than later...
This is what we see before we sign in now
This is what we will start to see soon
This is what we will see if we’re already signed in to our Google Account
In the last screenshot, the ‘Switch now’ link takes you to this page – blogger.com/migrate-login.g – which currently returns a 404 error but will presumably migrate or link your Google Account to your existing Blogger details.
So the only question now is, “When will this happen?”
Labels: blogger, google
8 August 2006
Just when I was starting to actually believe that Google had abandoned all development on Blogger, I noticed something that could possibly mean that they haven’t forgotten about their free blogging service after all...
As regular readers will know, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research into Google Account service names recently. As well as periodically checking for new service names, I’m also checking for any changes in behaviour of existing services.
Today I realised that the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages – which always seem to be identical – no longer generate the usual “The page you requested is invalid.” error when appending the word blogger to the service parameter. Instead, you get this message (when already signed in to your Google Account):
(If you’re not already signed in, you’ll get the usual “Create an Account” page but customized for the Blogger service.)
This behaviour usually only occurs for services that you can sign up for using your Google Account. So, either someone’s introduced a bug that allows this to appear or Google are working on migrating Blogger logins to use Google Accounts.
Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ends for now because clicking the ‘Continue’ button appears to just reload the page whilst submitting the data to the CreateServiceAccount page. Oh well. Maybe all that will change in the next few days... or weeks... or even months!
Anyway, let’s hope this small change means Google are actually going to start developing new features for Blogger again!
Update: 12 August 2006 (09:16)
It seems that the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages both return the standard “The page you requested is invalid.” error again.
(BTW, I’ve since realised the difference between the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages; the ‘CreateAccount’ page will always show the full registration form, whereas the ‘NewAccount’ page will show a “Welcome back ... Get started with ...” page if you’re already signed in to your Google Account. When you’re not already signed in, they always seem to be identical.)
[Thanks to Sankar Anand in the Google Blogoscoped Forum.]
Labels: blogger, google
3 August 2006
As many of my readers will already know, Matt Cutts has recently been publishing Q&A video sessions to his blog in order to answer various questions about SEO, spam, indexing and other Google stuff in more detail.
His latest post references my recent discoveries.
TOMHTML asked:
“What are Google SSD, Google Guess, Google RS2, Google Mobile Marketplace, Google Weaver and other services discovered by Tony Ruscoe?”
Matt answered:
“I think it was very clever of Tony to try to do a dictionary attack against our services check-in... but I’m not gonna talk about what those services are.”
You can watch the video for yourself below. I’m even using Google Video’s new “Embed videos with a specific start point” feature, so you should be taken to the exact point where I’m mentioned, which means you don’t have to watch the entire thing if you don’t want to:
For more videos from Matt, check his following posts:
Or you could read Philipp’s partial transcripts:
Labels: google
