Google Services for Websites

Google Services for Websites Successes

Goal: Simplify and automate the engagement of valuable website tools

Business Name: FatCow
Business Type: Web hosting provider and market leader
Title: FatCow web hosting service integrates Google Services for Websites directly into their hosting control panels to make customers more successful with their websites.
Case Study: FatCow (www.fatcow.com )

Business Description

Founded in 1998, FatCow has focused on delivering the best value and customer service experience in web hosting to small business users. They aim to make their services easy to own, easy to use and most importantly, provide real business value.

Goal and Approach

In line with its mission, FatCow was looking for high-value, free web tools to help their customers build highly visible and successful websites. At the same time they wanted to ensure that these tools were easy to use and could be installed automatically through the hosting control panel. By using Google Services for Websites they were able to successfully integrated new tools including Webmaster Tools, Custom Search, Site Search and AdSense with miminum installation for their customers. The availability of these tools increased visibility, enhanced website functionality, and helped monetize their customers' sites all at no added cost.

With Webmaster tools, customers are now able to see how Google.com views their websites, and automatically submit sitemaps to help Google discover and index their pages. This allows them to drive traffic to their websites by making them more visible in search results. Webmasters are also able to analyze different issues that affect their current website visibility, pinpoint any problems, fix them and optimize their websites.

With Custom Search and Site Search, FatCow wanted to provide additional utilities that really helped their customers fulfill their need for search functionality within their sites. A key element was to provide a search experience that kept visitors within their website and to provide their visitors with a consistent look and feel. With Custom Search or Site Search they felt that they were able to provide this consistency. Customers have the ability to monetize search by displaying relevant ads alongside the search results through an AdSense partnership. Customers can also choose to upgrade to Google Site Search, which provides additional customization, optional ads, and other enhanced features.

In order to build these automated services for their clientele, FatCow used the APIs within the Google Services for Websites program. As a pilot customer, Google and FatCow's team worked closely together to make this integration work. After successfully integrating the APIs, they created a Google branded portal within the hoster’s control panel so the various services could be found and added quickly. A key value for FatCow customers is that Google Services for Websites exists in a centralized location for all of a website owner’s Google applications and is accessible through just a single sign-on. (See Figure 1)

Results

As one of the first providers to integrate all of these services, FatCow has shown that the integration process is straightforward and provides "on the fly" services for their customers. The value proposition for the customer was that all these Google resources are created automatically through these APIs.

“With Google Services for Websites, setting up an account, creating a Sitemap, and submitting it are now simple and straightforward tasks for our busy customers. They can also automatically create a customizable search engine for their site, which is an invaluable tool that Web site owners were asking for,” says Corey Prince, senior product manager for FatCow. “Another great value is that customers aren’t just looking to build their Web site, they also want to monitor performance. These tools give them insight into ways to increase visibility. It also helps them optimize how Google views their site--so they can continuously reap the benefits of having their business [or organization] online.”

For FatCow, integration of APIs was quick and the process was organized and straightforward. For customer, once the services were available there was rapid adoption and high uptake due to pent up demand for these types of services. Working together has shown how companies like FatCow and Google can truly enhance and enable the webmasters ability to create great websites.