Introducing Google Web Elements

Looking for ways to spice up your website with dynamic content? You may know from our optimization tips that you can help increase your AdSense revenue by incorporating other Google products into your site. We're happy to introduce a new, easy way for you to do just that with Google Web Elements.

Web Elements let you easily add richness and interactivity to your site simply by copying and pasting a snippet of code. Inspired by the convenience of embeddable YouTube videos, each Web Element is built upon existing Google products. For example, the Google News element, introduced on this blog earlier this year, dynamically pulls in content from Google News based on news topics you select and displays within an embed on your site. With the official launch of Web Elements, you can choose to include Web Elements from products like Google Custom Search, Calendar, Docs, Friend Connect, and more.

Need more inspiration on how to integrate Web Elements into your site? Here are a few ideas:

• If you're using a Custom Search Engine on your site, the Custom Search element can help you integrate search results much more seamlessly with the look and feel of your pages. You can continue to earn revenues from searches while offering a better user experience to your users with better results styling.
  
  Who's using it: The Mayo Clinic uses the Custom Search Element as their main search function. The look and feel of the search results blends in smoothly with the rest of the site.
  
  
  
• To enable your visitors to post comments and links on your site, use the Conversation element. The element also lets visitors participate in conversations via Friend Connect.
  
  Who's using it: St. Simons Blog uses the Conversation element to let users in St. Simons Island and Georgia's Golden Isles connect with each other.
  
  
  
• The YouTube News element displays the latest YouTube videos from a number of news content partners including the Associated Press, CBS Online, Washington Post, Bloomberg, NY Times, Russia Today, Al-Jazeera English, and more.
  
  Who's using it: CitizenTube is YouTube's official news and politics blog. They display the YouTube News element on the right-hand side of the homepage labeled as "Latest News Videos".
  
  
  
• The Spreadsheet element allows you to display a table of information to your users which pulls from any Google Spreadsheet you choose. Whenever you update the Spreadsheet, the element will also update automatically. This is an easy way to keep dynamic content on your site fresh.
  
  Who's using it: Metal Italia is an Italian heavy metal fan site. The site uses the Spreadsheet element to display album information for heavy metal artists.
  
  
  

To get started, all you need to do is go to http://www.google.com/webelements, select the element you want on your site, and copy and paste the resulting code into your website source code. If you're interested in tinkering further with the Web Elements, you can further customize any of the elements as you please, since they're all powered by Google's developer APIs.

Using a Web Element on your site (or two, or seven)? We'd love to hear what you think and how they've been working for you. Just leave a comment on this blog post!

Posted by Christine Tsai - Google Web Elements Team