Google Sites Open To All

[engine]

A few months ago we launched Google Sites exclusively as part of Google Apps for companies and organizations that wanted to use the service on their own domains. Now we've made it easy for anyone to set up a website to share all types of information -- team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it -- in one place, for a few people, a group or the world. You can securely host your own website at [sites.google.com...] and add as many pages as you like for free.

Google Sites Open To All [googleblog.blogspot.com]

[sites.google.com...]

[pageoneresults]

Nice! That should really help quite a few get their groups, orgs, etc. online. That whole editing interface is awesome. Kudos to Google for making it readily available.

Connecting the World one Social Community at a time...

Watch the Short Tutorial
[google.com...]

[engine]

I tried it, and it's so easy. I doubt there will be any link love. ;)

[mikedee]

Has anyone noticed that now they have 2 products which are similar but different and easily confused?

Google App Engine and Google Apps, hopefully they will integrate App Engine into Apps once it is ready. I have a few sites which I would like to try building with the complete Google package, but at the moment it is still a bit fragmented.

[Turbosho]

I bet the popular keywords are gonna go fast huh..

[Kelowna]

I tried it, and it's so easy. I doubt there will be any link love. ;)

I just tried it and they have rel="nofollow" on any out bound links.

[Turbosho]

Well it also says in the terms "we don't allow websites that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website"

[dakuma]

While this is great for many, I'm starting to wonder if I made a mistake by signing up for Google Apps Premium. I paid $50/user per year and Sites was one of the reasons why I did so. Does this mean the Apps premium will see a price reduction? Anyone can also sign up for Apps standard edition and get up to 25 users for free! Sure we get 25gig/mailbox with the Premium but there are many times where you still need a seperate Gmail account to access other Google services.
If I want to use Google Chat, I have to use the embedded option in the Apps Premium email, if I want to use the stand alone Google Chat, I can ONLY sign in with a traditional GMAIL account username. The same goes for Google Analytics, Google Webmasters Central, Google Reader.. it's more than a little annoying.

Personaly I feel Google needs to rethink the Apps Premium strategy, stop reducing its benefits by giving more and more of it's functionality away for free. I believe that it was reported somewhere they sold in the range of 250,000 Premium accounts? at $50 each that's not too bad! Is that not enough to making it a priority to make it more funtional? more integrated with additional Gmail services?

[moheybee]

Dear Google, I just have one suggestion. Can you please include the word "site" one more time in the URL? Three just isn't enough.

[sites.google.com...]

[ergophobe]

It reminds me of the early days of the net when the root address for most sites looked like

[zagros.example.[b]edu[...]

(OCF, by the way was the open computing facility @berkeley which gave accounts to anyone affiliated with teh university).

Most of those sites didn't care about link love either, but if you weren't at a university, you were out of luck. A friend who was on a URL like that for ten years was getting over a million page views per month.

I think it's great. My only reservation is that it makes me uneasy that my hosting, analytics, ad revenue, ad publisher, search engine, email provider, etc etc etc would all be one company who has no real contract with me, charges nothing and can terminate any of the above ervices at any time for any reason without any real explanation.

Not saying it isn't their right, just that it would make me nervous.

[lexipixel]

I grabbed up six "sites"... then it told me I couldn't get any more now but to try later.

Anyone know if (6) is the limit ?

[directwheels]

lexipixel, i also got cut off at 6

[directwheels]

does anyone think these pages could actually rank well in google?

[oddsod]

Just tried creating a page and posting some content.

Guess what?!

Google displays my full email address at the bottom of the page to all and sundry! If that isn't a SPAM invitation...

It also makes a full history of all changes to the pages public.

2 minutes ago John attached 123.jpg to articlename
3 minutes ago John deleted abc.jpg from articlename
4 minutes ago John attached abc.jpg to articlename

etc

What's the point of that? This isn't a wiki

[southernmost]

In the settings, you can remove the link for edit history

[oddsod]

I tried that but it still shows history for images. And there seems to be no way to get rid of the other stuff - like the public display of the one single gmail email address they like you to have.

[pageoneresults]

Does anyone think these pages could actually rank well in google?

Oh boy, the cogs are turning. Let's see how long this will last.

[Propools]

OOOOHH, Real Quick Question.

If a Google site is caught "black hatting" will Google ban itself?

{:)}

[Propools]

So, using a Google search operator it may look something like this:

site:sites.google.com/site/companyname/

;)

Now, since Google is only allowing 6 names per day per account, how many people do you think are out there creating new Google accounts, creating 6 names, creating another Google account, creating 6 names, etc. etc.

[edited by: Propools at 9:54 pm (utc) on May 22, 2008]

[scraptoft]

Isn't this just Googles version of groups.msn.com or am I missing something?

[Propools]

Is this Pandora's box? What would happen if someone were to use this to make a revolving link farm?

[joelgreen]

What's the point of that? This isn't a wiki

I think history would allow you to see who changed what in case you gave somebody permissions to manage your site.

[Alcoholico]

Very nice....

By submitting, posting or displaying the Content you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service...

could it be otherwise?

[ildarius]

[sites.google.com...]
;)

[menial]

Finally I'll have my 3-year old niece to keep busy with something.

[night707]

Why doesn`t Google simply licence all interesting content and present it anyway they want ? Webmasters and publishers are more and more getting lost in the Google dance.

[workingNOMAD]

Many decent travel relate keywords have gone

[oddsod]

I think history would allow you to see who changed what in case you gave somebody permissions to manage your site.

If that were the intention Google would have show the history to only the site owner or manager.

[JamieBrown]

Its amazing how quickly those site names have been grabbed up - especially the SEM related ones!

As for these sites ranking well in Google - no evidence, but I can't see it doing any harm. Certainly the quality score should have no problem with server response speeds and the like I would have thought?

[rushglen]

OK I created a site made it public (accessible to everyone) and saved it, how do I find it - I mean what is the url - I tried [sites.google.com...] and got a 404 ("mywebsitename" is not the site name)

Andrew