REA Group and Google Maps

Posted by Richard Suhr, Enterprise Team

You probably know a lot about Google Maps, our free online Australian mapping service. We've written about the many great new features on this blog.

But did you know that we also have an enterprise version of Google Maps, for businesses that want to use Google Maps on their websites, with full enterprise-level support? A great example is when you visit a real estate site - by using Google Maps, the website owner can show you the property location, with the ability to zoom in or see satellite views.

We're thrilled to announce a new Enterprise Agreement with REA Group, which runs www.realestate.com.au and 16 other sites in 9 countries. REA Group uses Google Maps on its property details pages to show home hunters where properties are located. See an example here (nice property - we can all dream!)

Under the new agreement, the REA Group will begin using Google Maps in all its websites around the world (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom) and will continue to use Google Maps in Australia and New Zealand.

We're looking forward to developing our relationship with REA Group and to playing a small part in helping home-hunters find (literally) the house of their dreams.

Hosted site searches for Australian businesses

Posted by Deepak Ramanathan, Marketing Manager

Australian businesses, like their global counterparts, spend a lot of effort and energy creating and promoting great websites for their products and services, but quality search is often missing. As a result, businesspeople often ask us why they can't use Google to power search on their sites.

Today we've released Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE) to do just that. CSBE is a hosted site search solution that provides Google-quality results for your website. It's fast, relevant, reliable, and flexible, so that users can quickly find what they're looking for through search results customised and integrated into your business website.

CSBE builds on the Google Custom Search Engine, a hosted search solution we introduced last October that allows organisations to create a search engine and search results that are tailored to their point of view. This is all well and good, but businesses have asked us for greater flexibility and support - and we're addressing these needs through CSBE.

Businesses that want further control over results presentation and integration with their website can obtain results through XML. Now those of you with business sites have the option to turn off ads and have further control over branding. In addition, CSBE provides options for email and phone support. The pricing starts at US$100 per year for searching up to 5,000 pages.

This offering should be a great help to all the Australian businesses that have a web presence but don't offer users any way to search the site. Instead of being left on their own to navigate content, visitors to CSBE-enabled sites will be able to navigate through search results without ever leaving the site. We hope an improved customer search experience will translate into more referrals, more opportunities for e-commerce, and more satisfied online customers for these Australian businesses. Here's more about CSBE.

Google Australia at MGSM

Posted by Jared Evans, Account Coordinator

Despite the GPS's best efforts to send us into the depths of Chatswood's woodlands (we should have checked Google Maps first), a team of Googlers arrived at MGSM last week to present at a careers information session for MBA students and alumni.

(Google was last week named the No. 1 preferred destination for US MBA students and we hope to emulate that in Australia!)

The aim of the evening was to promote the many career opportunities available at Google Australia and to create awareness of the nature of our operations here. Australian Googler #1, Kate Vale, Head of Sales and Operations, outlined Google Australia's foundations and gave an insight into our activities in Australia, our company culture and our aspirations for the future. The key message for the evening? "We've got a long way to go toward achieving our mission. We need your help to get there."

The audience of full time "MBAers", managers and professionals studying part-time yielded many job-seekers, which our recruitment team are quite excited about!

During the networking session afterwards, the attendees revealed a very keen interest in what Google Australia does beyond search, consumer products and providing an advertising platform. Many were pleasantly surprised to learn that Google provides business solutions.

We are extremely pleased with the positive feedback from those that attended and will endeavour to bring the presentation to similar arenas in the near future.

Thank you to all of you who gave your time last week. If you have any further further feedback to add, we'd be very interested to hear it!

Google Australia at CeBIT

Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Last week, amid a sea of 100" plasma screens and innumerable cool gadgets, Google Australia took its place at CeBIT, the large information and communications technology show held in Sydney.

Google's presence at the event was headlined by Dave Girouard, our Vice President, Enterprise. Dave's keynote speech focused on the opportunity that Google Apps (calendar, e-mail and office software) and other Google Enterprise products offer in the workplace. Over 1,000 Australian businesses have started using Apps since its release. Glen Speckert, also from the Enterprise team, spoke about Google's role in providing geospatial services to Governments.

The Google stand gave us the opportunity to meet some of the estimated 30,000 attendees who went through the event. Our AdWords online team members, who spend a lot of their time answering requests via email or the phone, got a fantastic face-to-face opportunity to walk clients through the sign-up process and, in the course these sessions, provide advice on how to get the most out of AdWords.

We received plenty of great stories about how AdWords has worked for different clients. We're going to continue to reach out and communicate with our Australian users and partners. And, of course, our engineers are always working to develop and roll out new innovations.