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Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Partner Programs Manager

As the number of great SaaS-based business applications increases, its becoming easier for companies of all sizes to run their entire business in the cloud (or even across clouds). The canonical example of this is the recent release of Salesforce for Google Apps, a deep integration of salesforce.com's CRM solution and the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools. We're happy to see a growing number of enterprise and commercial developers working in the cloud and building applications that jointly leverage Google's open APIs and salesforce.com's Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. Solution providers and independent software vendors (ISVs) like CODA, Appirio, Astadia, and VerticalResponse have all also recently built innovative applications leveraging this multi-cloud application architecture.

Today, this type of multi-cloud development is getting easier as salesforce.com is making freely available the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs. This toolkit helps developers of Force.com projects easily and securely access data from Google Apps in order to create new business applications or extend Salesforce for Google Apps. Specifically, developers can now read and write spreadsheet cells, calendar events, documents, and contacts as if they were native to the Force.com platform.

On Monday, salesforce.com's Tour de Force event series is circling back to Silicon Valley for a free conference where developers can learn more about the how and why to build enterprise web applications at the intersection of Force.com and Google's open APIs using this new toolkit. There will be exciting technical and business focused tracks with sessions led by both salesforce.com and Google as well as opportunities to get practical hands-on training from experts from both companies.
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Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

The Google Docs Team just shared a user-written guide (published using Google Docs in fact) with examples of how businesses can start working together more efficiently with online documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Like hosting a remote training presentation, sharing a draft document without spawning multiple versions of the same email attachment, and tracking team member work hours.

Check out the guide, 6 Ways Google Docs Can Improve Your Team's Efficiency, or head over to the Google Docs blog to read their post.
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by Alex Rodriguez-Torres, Associate Product Marketing Manager

For millions of businesses, the company website is fast becoming the most important touchpoint for prospects and customers. But, what may be less obvious is that having high-quality, easy-to-use and intuitive website search increasingly determines how positive a potential customer's site visit will be -- and whether they'll return.

More specifically, we've found that most users of online websites are getting impatient with endless navigation options and are increasingly looking towards search to interact with the site. In fact, research suggests that when navigation attempts fail, 50% of users turn to search1.

Yet most sites aren’t equipped to meet these expectations – 85% of site searches don’t return what the user sought2, and 22% return no results at all3. The cost to companies is clear: 80% of visitors will abandon a site if search functionality is poor1.

Ultimately, providing quality search on your website can point your visitors to the most relevant products, and turn your visitors into customers. For instance, leading distributor WaterFilters.net implemented Google Site Search to enhance customer experience. “Our bounce rate decreased by 4%. Our conversion rate increased by 11%.”, reports Jamin Arvig, their director of business development.

Increasing your web conversions – or the percentage of visitors that become sales leads – is a key predecessor to increasing sales.

The success of EMC and Google Site Search on EMCInsignia.com also underscores this point. A website featuring six software products for SMBs, EMCInsignia.com had a large number of website visitors and no website search. Within a week of implementing Google Site Search, 10% of their visitors were using search. Within a short time, they witnessed a 20% increase in e-commerce sales.

We believe so strongly in the importance of website search that we're even offering giveaways to encourage businesses to adopt search. If your website doesn't have search, submit your website URL in our giveaway, and you'll be automatically entered to win a free Google T-shirt -- or free Google Site Search for a year!

Additionally, to learn more, register for a special webinar on June 10th, "Google Site Search: Increase Your Online Sales"

We hope to hear from you.

1 Jupiter Media Matrix
2 Jupiter Research
3 IDC

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Posted by Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager

Imagine bringing the experience of search on Google.com and the power of cloud computing to your website. That's Google Site Search in a nutshell.

Our hosted website search product now offers enhanced index coverage in addition to several other new features that improve usability and customization:

  • Enhanced index coverage: Google Site Search can now serve all website content -- even deep pages or frequently updated material -- as search results, ensuring relevant and comprehensive coverage of the website. To do so, we create special indexes that supplement pages already searched by Google.com. For even greater coverage, site owners can upload their Sitemaps.
  • Synonyms: Find documents with related terms without having to search multiple times. For instance, point out that "cd" stands for "certificate of deposit" on your administrative console and Google Site Search automatically returns results for both, whichever of the two terms is typed into the search box.
  • Date Biasing and Top Results Biasing: Fine-tune the relevance of search results by specifying a bias for newer documents or certain subsections of the website.

For businesses, this means your website visitors can now find relevant product information quickly, potentially leading to increased conversions and sales. For example, according to EMC Website Content Manager Rudy Layla, EMC Insignia experienced an approximate 20% increase in e-commerce sales after implementing Google Site Search.

Setting up Google Site Search takes just minutes. Website owners fill out a simple web-based form where you enter your site URL and a few customization specifications, and voila! Your site now features Google-powered, ad-free customized search. Google Site Search is a fully scalable solution, applicable to a broad range of businesses, small and large alike. Here are a few sites with Site Search: Business.gov, eHealthInsurance, and Techsmith.

If you're interested in learning more, we're hosting three webinars: June 3rd (Overview), June 10th (Business Benefits), and June 18th (Webmaster Focus). Feel free to sign up for the webinar of your choice.

Finally, try it today by entering your own website URL and typing in some sample queries. If you like what you see, you'll like this even more: we’re offering Google Site Search for a flat annual price, starting at just $100. Sign up for Site Search.