Google ‘products’ touted at World Trade Week presentation

The presentation at World Trade Week last week was entitled “Identifying and Keeping International Visitors on Your Website,” but it was really about how to use Google to advertise around the world.

John Kelley, manager of Google’s online sales and operations based in Ann Arbor, revealed that Google has more than 100 “products,” all of them free to use, apparently, except for Google AdWords.

Kelley said 220 million Americans are online, and they do 14.5 billion Internet searches a month. Around the world, there are 1.2 billion people online doing about 60 billion searches a month.

Kelley said one in three people would order a product from another country if it was better or cheaper. He concluded that means about 400 million who are online are potential customers for any company that wants to export its products.

Kelley talked about Google Insights for Search, which can show, for example, how many Internet searches are for hybrid cars versus searches for electric cars. Other Google products show the global “hotspots” for almost any particular market. Other services include translation, analysis of an advertisement’s performance, estimates of traffic on keywords, etc.

Google purports to have it all figured out when it comes to Internet searches.

Google now owns YouTube, which also got a plug from Kelley. It’s the No. 2 search engine after Google, he said.

It’s now packed with ads, too, not just the short videos for which it is mostly known. “YouTube is something to consider,” he told the business people in his audience at World Trade Week. He noted that it’s a visual medium, which can do some things words just can’t do as well — such as showing people how to make a cat’s cradle with a piece of string.

A member of the audience asked Kelley if it was still possible to advertise on Google to people in China. Google has closed its Chinese-language google.cn portal, over concerns about censorship and hacking by the Chinese government. Kelley said searchers in China can still find Google, however. “The answer is, yes,” he said.

A Reuters news service report last week said that the Chinese government could decide to increase its attempts to force international Internet companies to adhere to Chinese censorship restrictions. The government might also block access to other Google services from China, including the main google.com site.

Google is all about business. The recorded greeting at the Google switchboard in Ann Arbor gets right to the point: Callers who are interested in Google AdWords and have an advertising budget of $5,000 or less per month are directed to one extension; those with budgets over $5,000 are directed to another.