Google Gadgets & SEO

• There are billions of Google gadget pageviews per week. (reported in the official Google gadget blog)
• There are single Google gadgets getting hundreds of millions of page views a month.
• They have millions of different users, and the iGoogle homepage is being displayed at least one out of every five times Google is visited. (The number is bigger than that actually, but Google refuses to put out new figures. The 1 in 5 number was put out months ago in the gadget documentation on Google. I have asked repeatedly for updated numbers from several Googlers, but they won’t budge. I have a feeling that better numbers will come out soon.)

Gadgets are simple. They provide simple functions. Whether it be displaying the news, searching, or providing quotes.

I made a few gadgets a month and a half ago, combined they are now receiving over a million pages views a month.

Is there anything on the web where a simple guy like me can make some thing one month and then the next month it has been displayed a million times?

Aaron Wall posted “Too Smart For Your Own Good” where he highlights the importance place that simplicity has in projects meant to reach the masses. He uses an article from 1924 to illustrate it. Very interesting read, and topical to Google gadgets because the fact is that the masses use them and the gadgets that are used most are, well, simple.

Wikipedia isn’t exactly a happy subject with those who work in SEO, but should we consider the over 80 million page views that this SIMPLE Wikipedia search box Google gadget gets every week?

With the iGoogle page spreading to the masses, and with the enormous success of Google gadgets, I would venture to say that it would be wise to understand what makes gadgets so popular and how to use it for your advantage.

Don’t care about the Wikipedia gadget? Well consider this. There are affiliate based gadgets that have over 2 million users. Would you like your affiliate ads being used on 2 million homepages?

Adam Sah, who heads the Google gadget team highlighted simplicity as well in a video a couple months ago…

I see gadgets as as one of the largest things that has ever changed user behavior online. With changes in user behavior comes changes in the ways things are promoted or marketed online.psst…. tens of thousands of gadget developers are learning the Open Social API as you read this.

Update: Right after I posted this article, I saw that Hamlet Batista just posted a great article about gadgets in the marketing world.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 1:06 am and is filed under google, google gadgets, widgets.

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