The Value of Google Gadgets
Post by Adam
Sah, Google Gadgets TeamThe past year has been very
exciting for
Google Universal
Gadgets. We've seen developers create nearly 4000 gadgets that can be syndicated,
enabling users to do anything from
monitoring
their water intake to
checking
their location on a map. These gadgets can be added to any page on the web, not to
mention the
Google Personalized Homepage,
Google
Desktop,
Google Page Creator, and
most recently the
Windows
Vista Sidebar and Mac OSX Dashboard.
In order to promote a
more transparent and open ecosystem for gadget developers, we have introduced a new feature in
the
Gadgets For
Your Webpage directory detailing the approximate number of gadget views each gadget
receives per week. We expect that gadget developers (and potential gadget developers!) will be
able to use this information to better understand the reach of their gadgets. A quick check
will show that hundreds of gadgets are getting tens of thousands of pageviews each week -- and
many are even getting millions.
And now, the technical stuff: These
numbers are approximations, representing the number of times each gadget is rendered across
all places Google Gadgets can be viewed. The pageview count is aggregated weekly to smooth out
the normal daily fluctuations and we have filtered out automatic page refreshes. Individual
gadget authors who want to know more specific information about their gadget's traffic should
make use of the
Google
Analytics library.
As always, we're listening to your feedback on the
Google Gadgets Developer
Forum -- and if you want to get started writing gadgets, you can dive right into our
API Docs. You can have your
first one out the door before you know it.
