Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team The
definition of "googol" is a number, and Google lives by numbers. So how else should we look back over the year but with numerical bits? Here goes: This post marks the 294th time this year you're reading a post from us -- nearly 100 times more often than in 2005. In the last 12 months, we unveiled 24 new products here. We wrote up 128 product upgrades, new features and how-to-use-it items. We told you about 7 acquisitions. We blogged about policies or issues 23 times, on subjects including Google in China, how Book Search works, click fraud, and Net Neutrality. Google.org yielded 7 posts, and 29 times we said various services are available in many countries and languages. Then there was a
pug, Google's custom
It's It, our compelling
matchmaking service, and a nearly-cosmic
Stardate.
More for the numerically inclined: 7.6 million unique visitors generated nearly 15 million pageviews this year. Aside from the U.S. and UK, readers come from India, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and the Netherlands. Which sites send us the most readers? The top non-Google referrers this year are the influential
Digg.com and
Slashdot.
But we didn't just hope that readers would come to us. We also launched company blogs in
China,
Japan,
Italy,
Brazil,
Mexico,
Poland, and
Russia (and more are coming in 2007). We also launched AdSense-specific blogs for publishers who speak
Dutch,
German,
Portuguese and
Spanish. Product teams also started up quite a roster of new blogs covering everything from
Custom Search Engines to
Google Book Search to our
Mac and
Enterprise endeavors. If you want to keep current with nearly 40 corporate blogs we now publish, here's the
Atom feed, the
Google Reader share option, and the
OPML file (English language blogs only).
Which posts caught your eye? Apart from the front page, these were among the most popular:
It wasn't all fun, though; there was the time the blog
disappeared. (Of course, that was before the
recent Blogger revamp.) But even if real-time, all-too-human goof-ups make it a bit harrowing on occasion, the fact is a company blog is the fastest way to reach out. So we hope you continue to enjoy the rich stew we aim to serve. And before long, perhaps you can begin leaving comments directly. We're working on that. Meanwhile, our very best for a satisfying 2007 to you and yours.