Google Page Creator

Oh, and by the way, it looks like Google has released a tool to make mini-websites. The Google Page Creator at http://pages.google.com/ lets you throw up a quick set of pages without a ton of hassle. Looks like a bunch of different look ‘n’ feel choices:

Page Creator Templates

I only showed a few templates; there’s a couple cool retro ones. It’s late, but I’ll play around with this some and be ready to talk about it at SES NYC next week. If you’re planning on doing a ton of pages or regularly updating content, you’d be better off with Blogger/WordPress/TypePad/etc. But if you just want to put up some relatively static pages or a small site, this could fit the bill. I like that you don’t have to fiddle around with FTP/scp to upload images or change a page.

126 Responses to Google Page Creator (Leave a comment)

  1. Wow, thanks for the heads up. Looks really good that Google is pushing new stuff out (though some might argue that they should be improving current products)! It would be interesting to see where they take this, and if this catches on.

  2. Will this tool be free forever?

  3. Thanks for the premiere, by the way, will there be anti-spam measures, in order to not end like blogger ?

  4. I promise that we’re still focusing hard-core on search quality too. We’re not going to let up on that.

  5. How is this different from blogger?

  6. seems like they forgot the “insert keywords as hidden text” button. that makes this tool pretty useless from a seo-perspective 😉

  7. Ben: It’s clearly targetted at more novice users and is used for the creation of websites (not blogs!).

    I think it’s a great idea, I won’t use it but I’m sure folks who just want a website to put a few pictures and a bit of text on will love it.

  8. Hi Matt,

    I have been using the Google toolbar since you posted about it recently, I really like it; especially the ability to make a web page into a word doc… much smoother than my old cut and paste method.

    I will take a look at these webpages too, and imagine I will like them as well, thank you for the info. I have gone on a domain name buying spree lately and would like to be able to put up a simple page at each one, rather than having them point to my current site as they do now; maybe these will make that much easier! And it is free!!! I like that!

    Question:

    What can you tell me about type in traffic. I just learned about it today when I was trying to buy a website name from someone, and they told me that instead of using a search engine to find what they are looking for, some people will just type in the thing they want into the url bar, ie someone looking for pet food would, rather than entering the term into google search box , just type “petfood.com” into the URL box. I just tried that and got page not found, but I also looked it up at my registrar and the name is not available, so someone has it and would I imagine eventually be selling petfood there!

    I had not heard about this, but started reading a bit about it, and especially liked the part in this article http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060105-110049
    in Search Engine Watch (how do you make a hyoerlink in this text box??) where they talk about the 14 drunken Yahoo execs who got into a stretch limo with one of the leading type in traffic people, and headed to a strip club, where they were ushered back to a private room with a velvet curtain, red I think… anyway, when the “ladies” came back to discuss business (before pleasure) and informed them that the fee for the room was $1000, all the Yahoo guys start looking at each other, hemming and hawing, each one thinking…. how the heck do I write this off on my expense account?? and the type in traffic guy finally pulls out his wallet and give the lady her $1000k!! (I thought he was the client!) I’m sure nothing like this would ever happen with you nice young men from Google! (and if it does, please make sure no reporters are watching!)

    Bottom line, somehow someone, a nameless Yahoo exec (I imagine they were ALL nameless that night!!) let slip that Yahoo estimates 15% of the traffic is now coming from “type in traffic”, rather than searches.

    It never has occured to me to look something up this way rather than search for it, but apparently I am not in the know and many people do this..

    I am curious if this figures into your search algorithm? I have reported several sites I thought were spam, meaning they were just a collection of Google ads, and I thought that was against the rules, and these sites would be removed, but they are still there. Now I wonder if they are still there because the URLS just happen to contain my keywords, and I found out today from a lady (the one I talked to about buying the site name) that she makes money from Google every day for having these sites.

    Not sure what this means for the future of serach engines and SERPs, and would appreciate your or any other readers’ comments.

    Thanks,

    Kathy 🙂

  9. Hey cool tool 🙂 Thx
    I like it!
    Is there something that Google doesn´t do?
    Are Google making adult films 2 with the title “Spam spanker 6” and so on…

  10. Looks like a good move for Adwords / offline SMEs / landing pages.

    Will be interesting to see how you join it up with the Adwords interface, assuming you plan to…?

    c.

  11. Damn Google. They just ROCK!

  12. Google is making new features too fast, some of them is still needs some work as Gmail and SiteMap. You should tell your folks Matt to concentrate on search, especially with Microsoft’s extreme desire of taking the lead.

  13. Hello Matt,

    what about duplicate content? When you click on the ‘Insert Link’ button, and insert a link to your homepage, the Page Creator creates a link to /home, which is the same page as yourgmailaccount.googlepages.com. Will this be fixed?

  14. This is a pretty neat feature.. I just made my first personal website in 15 minutes with pictures and everything, and the choice of skins is pretty large also.

    Simple, easy to use and free. I already love it.

  15. This is cool. I just checked it out, and it looks like something even my mom could use — and that’s saying a lot!

  16. No support for Opera! Shame on you, Google.

  17. An open invitation to create spam pages from Google.

    Whatever is the search world coming to?

  18. Looks interesting

    Unfortunetly I don’t have a Gmail Acount

  19. elementary school teacher can use it to show how to make a web page and ask each student make 10 pages as their homework. Is it a spam? 🙂

  20. I’ll send you an invite if you leave me your email address.

  21. Cool! Just created a new page with it. Funny thing – every time I tried to do something in Homepage Creator it said the page was locked by another user – but i’m the only user.

    I’m sure Google will work the bugs out. Will pages and mini sites created this way be treated differently by Google? Just curious. Maybe I’ll ask you at SES next week.

    Thanks,
    WebMetricsGuru
    Marshall Sponder

  22. It’s cool but not worth gushing over. Anyone ever hear of Geocities ?

    It reminds me of how people forget that Apple did not invent the portable mp3 player. I had a 32M Rio years before the ipod was around.

  23. Hi Matt,

    I´m like all you hardcore search engine, SEO, computer wizards like probably everyone that reads your blog, but I do look every so often. Well away from this subject, I tried contacting google by leaving an e-mail but no reply…My sites ranking is going up and down like a yo-yo, one minute it´s a 3, then 0, and keeps changing all day. And i´ve seen that different google IP addresses or data centers have ranged my site completely differently, do you know what´s going on and what will happen? Please, i´ve been looking all day, what a waste of a day!!!

  24. Well they have stopped taking new accounts at the Web Page Creator. I was able to get in last night and right a review with screenshots.

    http://www.ogletreeseo.com/68.html

    I do like it. By the way if you want to put the page you created on your own domain all you have to do is create the page visit it do a view source and save it with a .html extension and upload it to your hosting. Of course delete the page you created on Google so you don’t have a duplicate. You could also just set up a cname in your dns to point to your free url.

  25. Michael Martinez really has a point. This tool is going to be under constant pressure by webspammers.

  26. Is there going to be some sort of homepage for the googlepages, with search functions to search all the googlepages? And also a submit page where we can submit our own designs to the existing ones?

  27. Sounds interesting. Went to look, and it’s throttled – no surprise. But when I put in my e-mail for the notification, Google’s using an expired certificate. Now THAT’s surprising.

  28. err, umm..Google web based designer with some hosting (as a subdomain for now ). I really have to wonder how this will impact the web hosting industry?

    Correct me if I am wrong Matt, but if Google decides to take this all the way and go from a subdomain to allowing users to transfer thier domains, would Google would offer that as a free service?

    That would kill the hosting industry in a half a heartbeat. Not good 🙁 and Google would lose allot of advertisers.

    But, it is not really that far of a stretch, you have gmail which soon you will be able to use you full domain for you email address (instead of a gmail.com addy) , Google is already a domain registrar, then you have blogger which is a type of hosting and now Google is creating a way to build pages on a “subdomain”…the natural evolution is to move to hosting..

    And Matt as you told me before “Google will never charge for a service”…

  29. Nice –

    Matt I hope you and your gang looking for ways to integrate things like this with ranking issues. Some who often post here would protest this, but I think most publishers would prefer having CLOSER scrutiny from Google in the effort to avoid collateral damage.

  30. So I go to check out the service and it’s unavailable. Why does Google do this? I’m sure you know that many people will be interested in checkking it out on the 1st day

    Also, what about using your gmail address as a page ID tool and a new way for spammers to get addresses. This is a popular topic on the forum right now.
    http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Page-Creator/browse_frm/thread/956681825a02c14f/32d9b694deb51ca7?lnk=raot#32d9b694deb51ca7

  31. I don’t think it would kill the hosting industry at all, Ben Fisher.

    The thing with the service that Google is offering is that it’s specifically for static pages (assuming I’m reading this correctly…Matt, please step in and say “Adam you dumbass, you’re wrong” if I’m not.)

    Static pages use up nominal resource and generally don’t generate a lot of traffic anyway. So this, IMHO, amounts to a PR move for Big G (this isn’t a complaint, just a statement of “it is what it is.”)

    Not only that, many of us are very loyal to our hosts…once we find a good one, we stick with it. I’ve been with mine for nearly 4 years now, and I don’t want to move, even if big G does offer service for free.

    Besides, the last thing Google wants to do is get into hosting as a paid service. It’s already a cutthroat industry as it is…throw Big G into the mix and my God, what a mess.

  32. Tried to sign up, but got the same response as with Analytics – too much demand. Any word on how long before Analytics will start serving up new accounts?

  33. Well, that was a short-lived introduction….

    Matt, if you don’t mind taking requests for the next blog entry, I think there are a growing number of enquiring minds who want to know what Google started doing with its main search index this week. If it’s just another Big Daddy data center rolling out, you could possibly head off the stampede of “OhmygodmysitedisappearedfromGoogleIAMDOOMED!” posts that will soon be whelming SEO forums everywhere.

  34. Not sure I care for the source code, Matt. But it’s beta so I’ll wait and see.

    Got to disagree with Adam Senour though, static pages are search engine friendly and what you want now. Dynamic pages are not as SE friendly.

    I suspect this will have an impact on the hosting service industry. Free hosting (or any service) that is highly used means expenses will be covered with advertising revenue. Will we see Adwords on GooglePages soon, Matt?

  35. wow this is really cool, nice and clean, a great wya to get small businesses on the web!

  36. Ouch, is it just me? Those templates look terrible!! Right out of the 90’s. Anyone else think that?

  37. I want that soon…hope they will invite me soon 🙂

    wishes,

    Samiha Esha…:)

  38. But the layout same as Blogspot……:) It should be new…:)

  39. Firstly, I’m not sure if you read Philipp Lenssen’s blogpost but he mentions the duplicate pages that Google seems to be creating to allow domains to contain any number of dots in the domain name.

    Hence matt.cutts.googlepages.com and ma.tt.cu.tts.googlepages.com would return the same content.

    Now personally I think its done with a redirect system but it still does manage to somehow break either the webmaster guidelines or the pagerank system as people may link to the same content via different URLs.

    My other key question is this. How do you think Google will avoid falling into the trap that sites like Geocities fell into? How can they Web-2.0-ify this to jump ahead of the competition. Remember that companies like Coca Cola only ever go into Industries with the intention of getting #1 spot. If they dont within a set period of time and resources they pull out. I suppose Google is doing the same by innovating in what are thought to be closed problems (like search was thought to be)

    I think on a broader level that Google is going after the lucrative small business market. They already offer a beta version (well an alpha beta) version of Gmail for multiple domains for small businesses or schools and want to get into the complete package.

    By getting static web pages up and running they can get the college kids in first…perfect their service and then offer dynamic/database driven sites with the promise of adding content to Google Base, Froogle and Google Local for small local businesses who currently dont have a site or have a simple one that they pay for.

    Just my 2 pence worth.

  40. Oops..forgot to link the blog post

    http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-02-23-n47.html

  41. Yeah, those templates are great, much better than Frontpage 1.0, though. (or what was it called back then?) They probably also produce better code than using Word, perhaps.

    When is Google adding their own adwords? Or will they let the spammers add their own?

  42. So, it’s a simple, free tool… and it’s automatically indexed?

    Sounds like a perfect tool for google-bombing?

  43. Are there some sample-sites ?

    I heard, that the site where on “googlepage.com” ?

    Is this right ?

  44. —————————————–
    Please allow Naked HTML and Javascript inclusion in an easy to find place – some hand coders may not want to use a cookie cutter

    Please allow Domain Names to be used – the domain Googlepages is just too much like Geocities
    —————————————–

    Surely if you want that much control you’d just get a normal website?! It seems like you’re being a bit picky about what essentially equates to a nice free service for people who can’t be bothered with complicated coding or registering etc etc.

  45. Aah, don’t say that, now the “service” had to be closed…

    >> Due to heavy demand, we are unable to offer new accounts for today. If you’d like to be added to our waiting list, please enter your email address.

  46. way to offer something then take it away on the same day… Google you tease!

    what’s up with the pagerank? Google toolbar at work gives me one answer… Google toolbar at home gives me another.

    A quick script to hit the different datacenters and get a PR show that it keeps changing on different servers..

  47. Kinda Bloggerish without the Blog. 😉

  48. Page Creator is a wonderful idea, down the road I look forward to seeing how the finished program is implemented. Of particular interest is advertisement display integration. Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, etc. have been forcing pop-ups and obnoxious ad frames on their users for years. Google text ads would certainly be much less intrusive and perhaps even visually appealing. Not to mention hard web traffic limits, modest storage space, and poorly conceived kiddie-grade page templates.

    I just signed up for the Page Creator waiting list and look forward to taking it for a test drive soon!

    Re: Marcus Westberg’s comment “Is there something that Google doesn´t do?”
    … well, I haven’t heard of G-Dating yet! 😉

  49. I really wish all websites would look simple and not a cluttered mess – once again Google gives us a “simple” solution that really does look good.

    It looks ‘bot friendly too 😉

    Thanks

    David

  50. I would like naked HTML and JS so I can put adsense code on my page. Doesn’t that make sense?

  51. Will Google use monotize off of this service at some point? Such as adding adsense to the websites that get created?

  52. Awww.

    Please ask the design folks to make a “nocheckbrowser” option like there is for Gmail. I use the latest version of Mozilla which works just as well as Firefox. Honest!

    At least give us the chance to try it with our untested browsers. 🙁

    MV

  53. Hey Matt, here’s a canonical url problem that google hasn’t seemed to fix:

    Noslang.com has a PR of 0
    But, noslang.com/index.php has a PR of 6

    Obviously, these are the same thing..

    How does one fix that? Google should know better in this case.

  54. Scott M. Stolz Said,
    February 24, 2006 @ 7:11 am

    Kinda Bloggerish without the Blog.

    Yes, exactly I agree. I can’t really see the point. This is the first new tool that Google has launched that I think is crap. And why whenever they launch stuff like this do they run out so quick and close it off? Not like they don’t have enough bandwidth or storage space.

  55. Well thats google…as always…changes for them are the only permanent thing in this world…

  56. Been waiting for this to happen. We got out of the hosting business two years ago as I saw this coming. I kept thinking — somebody like Google is going to come along with a fully automated package with templates and overwhelm the market and here you are. If you allow domain names that would complete the picture.

    Nice work Matt. Now if you could just figure out a way to get caught up on banning those web spammers with hidden text…

    KJ

  57. Kelly – Yahoo!’s been doing it for years without holding back other hosts from emerging / continuing. While Google’s got “reach”, I don’t think they’ve got so much mor than Yahoo! that they can undercut the hosting industry.

    While Google Page Creator is .. limited .. it isn’t going to be anything more than a spam/playpen.

  58. All those wanting more features added should DEMAND a refund 🙂

    I just hope it doesn’t encourage spam like Bloggs do.

  59. It’s a nice service for personal user.
    Thanks againg Google for your incredible offer every time.

    In Italy many companies think often only how to make money as the first target, but they don’t think what type of services can develop…..!

    Bye

  60. Google Geocities-Base 2.0

    Welcome to “nothing new” 🙂

    And I thought (naivly) that Google is working to FIGHT web spam, not offer them free hosting as well? (confused)

    Matt — instead of just posting the PR-blurb on the new services, what would be much more interesting (seeing how the people here are probably not going to be the user-group this is for) would be to get some background information about why this service was put online. Tell us something new – something from “inside Google” – something interesting! I’m sure there is a good reason for this, tell us more!

    John

  61. How come Ireland is not on the list for the G-mail sign up?

    Mike

  62. Wow! – Goooo Google!

    Looks like theres nothing google cannot achieve. By the looks of things that google is really going to take the hosting industry by storm.

    The big thing about them is that they can reach suh a wide audience which means generating sales wont be a problem

  63. I can’t register it now.

  64. The Google Page Creator Link is DEAD

  65. Geo Cities? You have to be joking.

    This really is very nice as I said in a prior post.

    Clean and tidy interface too – exactly how a decent web presence should be.

    My opinion is that a decent webpage should be not much more than a Word document – It’s here.

    David

  66. i own a googlepage.
    i am worried about putting adsens there. i am awaiting official release on this.
    this is the term 8 . is it against putting adsense?
    what do u think>?

    8. NO RESALE OF SERVICE

    You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or
    exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion of Google services,
    use of Google services, or access to Google services.

    http://pages.google.com/-/terms_of_use.html

  67. “Oh, and by the way, it looks like Google has released a tool to make mini-websites.”

    You do work for Google right? Sounds as if you’re promoting a remotely familiar little something, but you’ve actually dedicated day and night to it….

    You still doing corporate espionage over at Ask ?

  68. I agree with SEORookie, this is very reminiscent of Geocities. And I agree with the comment about Apple and the mp3 as well…people forget that there are others out there that have all the same features, etc. The whole ipod thing is the result of very good marketing, and good timing (with the RIAA crackdowns on file-sharing).

    Anyways though, what I’d be most interested in is Google hosting for your own domain. I don’t want to be julie.googlepages.com, I want to be myownname.com. Nor do I really need the web design features – I’d rather make my own designs. Templates are elementary. So if Google ever came out with hosting, I’d sign up, especially if it allowed you to do multiple domains on one account…. I’m always looking for a better host. Just make sure Google Hosting is better than Yahoo hosting…Yahoo is not bad, but it has a lot to be desired, which is why I tried them and left them awhile back.

    Just imagine this as well…. for those wanting to host e-commerce sites with Google, you could have a little check off box for them to automatically be included in Froogle results.

    On another note…anyone interested in googlepages.us? 😛 haha.

  69. I had a little play with the page creator, and although it didn’t seem to want to function for me in all areas [perhaps it’s an IE7 issue], I think that the idea is great, especially for children to learn the basics, aswell as doing projects, and of course for novices who want a no-frills, no-complications experience.

    Criticising Google for offering a free service is not the way to go. It’s so much more satisfying to reacct positively 🙂 And let’s face it, if Google can get the kids at school and college to think ‘Google’ at an early age, then it makes sense for them too 😉

  70. Why is Google giving this away? Should we read between the lines and think that Google is going into hosting and domain registration next?

  71. Andre- Haven’t you heard of Geocities? or Angelfire? Or any of the numerous “free” web hosting offerings on the net? It’s like a 1995 thing. Any serious designer or business would never in a million years host a site on any of them, not even GooglePages. I think its for the kids and novices who don’t really care about their own domain or projecting themselves professionally.

    I’d be all for Google having paid hosting though…. I mean, why not? I’m sick of these shit hosting companies. No one’s criticized Yahoo for having hosting, so why attack Google? Especially when its not even a service that they offer yet?! I think people get off on speculation and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

  72. Julie, must you muddy the conspiracy waters with facts?

    On a serious note, Google hosting would be a great move and I’m sure it’s in the pipeline. You bet your bottom dollar that most that would host with Google wont be spammers.

  73. I think this new Google page creator is great. I can’t wait to teach my family how to use it so they can finally publish all their holiday photos on the web without needing any HTML skills. I even created a small page creator tutorial (with screen shots) if anyone wants to find out a bit more:

    http://paul.maunders.googlepages.com

    The only problem I have found so far is that it doesn’t seem to support Google Analytics… I tried adding the tracking code, but it doesn’t seem to show on the site.

  74. Yes, I must 😛 I hate when people jump to conclusions without knowing the full story.

  75. I would normally agree that Google should get into hosting, but for two factors:

    1) Hosting is a very cutthroat business and Google would have to devote some heavy resources to it to make it work.

    2) An extension of 1, those same resources come out of making the SE better.

    Therefore, I’d personally rather not see it.

  76. bet your bottom dollar that most that would host with Google wont be spammers.

    What makes you think that Dave? Blogger is inundated with spam, and Google Pages will be a spam-filled mess within 6 months.

    Typical shared hosting sees anywhere from about 400 to 4000 sites thrown on each server, and Google’d have a whole lot of servers. They wouldn’t be in a position to manually check sites any more than any other host.

  77. NFJSPY

    Yes, but other host could not careless in a client in SE spamming.

    RE: Google Pages will be a spam-filled mess within 6 months.

    Why do you say that?

  78. I don’t know about u guys, I have two email accounts on gmail, one is my personal one and one belongs to the company, and I can NEVER access these new features from Google! Like Google Sitemaps and Google web page creator, they always say: leave your email address and we’ll tell you when there is a slot available, blah-blah-blah. Looks like u guys are doing just fine using these new features from Google, but how can I also use them? Just gimme’ a hint or smth.

    10x

  79. Compared to the thousands of small hosting providers around here in Europe, at least struggling with access-time and up-time could be over. Adding the possibility of domain name, ftp e.t.c. would make the whole thing another success story for Google, even if they charge for hosting.

  80. Hi Matt,

    forbs comments “Individual pages will be hosted at “username.googlepages.com” and each user will be able to store up to 100 megabytes of information, including images. Pages created with Page Creator will be crawled by Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) within a few hours, making the content immediately searchable. This is an advantage over other web-site hosts, which can take days to be included in Google’s search results.”

    This mite force black hat SEOs to flood the service with spam.

  81. HI MATT,

    Well, Why it is forbidden to use google.googlepages.com .

    I have noticed that even if you had emails containing Google, it will be impossible to choose it as your googlepages.com.

    Did you notice http://www.googlebrins.com what do you think….

    ELIAS KAI
    Sweden

  82. That Googlebrins.com is violating the terms of use of the Google Logo…I know that much for sure.:

    From http://www.google.com/permissions/guidelines.html

    About Our Logos

    One of the conditions for all uses is that you can’t mess around with our logo. Only we get to do that. You must ensure the presentation of the Google Brand Features will be consistent with Google’s own use of the Google Brand Features in comparable media. This means, for example, that if Google uses certain trademark or service mark notices with its Brand Features (e.g., “SM”, “TM” or “®”), you will be required to use such notices when you use our Brand Features. In addition, you must include the following statement in any of your material that includes such Brand Features: “____________ is a trademark of Google Inc.”

    If you are using the Google logo on a web page, there must exist a minimum spacing of 25 pixels between each side of the logo and other graphic or textual elements on your web page, and the Google logo must appear by itself in a manner that does not in any way indicate to viewers of the web page that Google endorses the products, services, or information provided on that web page.

    Things You Can’t Do

    You can’t (and agree not to) do any of the following:

    Display a Google Brand Feature as the most prominent element on your web page;
    Display a Google Brand Feature in any manner that implies a relationship or affiliation with, sponsorship, or endorsement by Google, or that can be reasonably interpreted to suggest editorial content has been authored by, or represents the views or opinions of Google or Google personnel;
    Display a Google Brand Feature on any Web site that contains or displays adult content, promotes gambling, involves the sale of tobacco or alcohol to persons under twenty-one years of age, or otherwise violates applicable law;
    Display a Google Brand Feature in a manner that is in Google’s sole opinion misleading, defamatory, infringing, libelous, disparaging, obscene or otherwise objectionable to Google;
    Display a Google Brand Feature on a site that violates any law or regulation;
    Frame or mirror any Google page (including the page that appears in response to a click on the Google logo or Google search box); or
    Remove, distort or alter any element of a Google Brand Feature.

  83. Google wouldn’t get into hosting.. there’s service involved.

    Look at the google business model.. Deliver services to people, without having to deal with people.

    No tech support, no phone systems, no interaction.

    Stuff so simple it works…. by itself.

    That seems to be the model they’re going after.

    As for the pages, I’ve played with it.. I don’t see a point to it though. What’s different between this and my blogger account? It seems to me that this is just a scaled down version of that.. What’s the point?

    I agree with Dave.. it’ll be porn pills and poker in 6 months. (anybody got any good ideas for a pornpillsandpoker.com domain name? hehe)

  84. My question is: How did http://www.googlebrins.com get adsense. Isn’t he violating some of the copywrite policies using that Google Beta logo?

  85. Yeah this is just screaming out for:

    – a domain name (along with provided email accounts with GMail)
    – integration with blogger so you can set up a blog on the domain in a few clicks
    – AdSense account option built in
    – Support for hosting videos on Google Video being imported simply (with a drag and drop object where you just enter the URL or docid of the video)
    – Analytics supplied and on by default
    – Site search
    – Some sort of Google Base integration (need to think about this one a bit more)
    – A Google maps object as well that they can just drag in

  86. You might also want some sort of ‘classification’ section, which would give them an area to classify it under, and it would get added to the Google directory under this section.

  87. Hey, I tried to put adsense in and it won’t let me! It lets me insert the code when I click “edit html”, but it wipes it out everytime I publish it. Evil.

    It also needs the ability to allow you to use a template, or use your own template. You can upload your own designed pages and they work great, but you can’t do it for your “Home” page. YOu also can’t delete the home page, or specify another page as the “home” page. grr.

    I like options. It needs more of them.

  88. What a pity!
    It’s now impossible to test it :
    “Due to heavy demand, we are unable to offer new accounts for today…”

  89. Well I made an entire website out of it. I cretaed a home page, copied the code, then created a bunch of pages uploaded them and now there you have it a whole website, and I only used 33 MB. There is a limit of 100MB, but did you know there is also a limit of 100 files uploaded.

  90. seems good but when i tried today, it says no more accounts for today and i’m on the waiting list. lets see when will be turn. can i stop paying for my homepage after google. my homepage is: http://www.virtualdarpan.com

  91. Any idea how backed up the invites are? I registered the same day I found the post here about it and haven’t gotten an invite. Poor me :/

  92. I personally think this is a GREAT idea. Microsoft is doing it with their Office Live service…though, that’s mostly targeted at biz people.

    I would *love* to see this whole thing integrated build a (personal or SOHO) webpage with the same look and feel as your blogger blog…add a photo gallery from Picassa…store/share/collaborate with document created with Writely (a new Google aquisition).

    It could all come together in a nice little package for personal websites and the countless lawyers/accountants/etc. who work from home and have no web presence and still use aol.com and hotmail.com and yahoo.com for their email addresses.

    As for the sub-domain/domain issue. I would go back to my GoDaddy account and setup myowndomain.com as a forwarding account and send it to my name.googlepages.com account. That’s as simple as checking a box.

    Of course their will be spam…but there is spam today without googlepages. Don’t let the scum dictate what products and services are available to the rest of us. Scum will always be scum and find scumtastic ways to stay scummy.

  93. Does Google have to wait 8 months for the client to write content and then use oversized digital pics provided by the client’s nephew.

    What does Google do if the client does not pay and says “Aaaw, I am not sure if I am happy enough with it to pay for it yet. But keep it live while I think about is some more.”

  94. I have just signed a account with google page creator, but I found the tools provided by google have very limited function. Is there a tutorial like msn space out there for google page creator? thanks!

  95. Google Pages is really nice because they are one of the few(if not only) who do not place banner ads on your free site. However, you have to use your email for the address.

    I recomend using a free no ads url masking service. http://v2w.org will let you mask any web site to http://WhatEverYouWant.v2w.org

    So for instance, if your gmail is johndoe@gmail.com and your google page is johndoe.googlepages.com you can sign up for free with V2W and basically change the address of your google page to JohnsPlace.v2w.org, for example. And you still won’t have to display any banners or ads.

  96. Hi Matt,

    I need a little explaination here regarding Google Pages and how they are indexed by the Main Search Engines.

    I had to blog about it (on my private Artist Blog) because what happened was conflicting anything I know about SEO and how Google works (thanks to (still unresolved) issues with Google and my main business site since fall last year).

    How can a 1 week old Google Pages Account with 5 Pages created about 5 days ago be in the SERPS since yesterday and outrank almost another 100 sites, ending up on rank #17 (and estimated 487,000 pages matching the keyword)?

    Details here:
    http://www.cumbrowski.com/roysac/blog/2006/04/google-pages-fast-lane-into-google.html

    Thanks, I appreciate it.

    p.s. and when you have time, I would like to know what google’s problem is with my other site, because I can’t fix it, if I don’t know whats broken. You can also email me, if you like.

  97. Hi

    I’ve figured a way out to add Adsense to GooglePages. Just use my configuration found at:
    http://niels1982.googlepages.com/

    If you do it right it’s not tricky!

    Good luck making profit!

  98. Nice templates!

    However, I already purchased several at http://www.web-site-templates.org quite cheap.

    Now I’m working to create the website

    Alicia

  99. Is that the way google want pages to be done… with lots of words in sidebar ?

  100. Will there be some more templates in the future?

  101. Hello,

    I think the templates in the blogger are very few so only u guys have shown up the way of google pages for your customers, i love google pages it is quite nice and interesting…….

  102. These look awfully (no pun intended) like the Blogger templates.

  103. Why not just sign up for a blogger account instead? It lets you set up a simple web page while allowing you to add more features as you go along.

  104. I’m a little perplexed as to why Google wants to promote mini-websites. Many of these sites are spammy and generally do not contribute much content to the net.

  105. I am excited about making my own website for my new business, I am such a novice and webmaster are pricey so I wanted to do something myself. I have a gmail address in my business name. I love google and would like to support it anyway that I can. I can buy domain names out there but if I have to buy them I would prefer to buy them through google – is that possible? I have searched trying to find this out but no luck – unless I am missing it somewhere!

  106. I am a sucky designer, but like internet marketing and SEO so this will make my life easy. I can also use it to teach SEO class without having to waste time having students design web pages. I hope these use CSS, but i’m sure they probably do. I will definately check it out.

  107. Hi Matt,

    I have recently been using the googlepages, of which I have to say is great. I am curious as to how effective these pages are from an SEO point of view. I have tried to incorporate SEO best practice to ensure my pages are fully optimised.

    I am keen to set-up googlepages for my clients as an additional factor for SEO. Create specific conent pages and have them link to specific content on the actual client site.

    Thanks

    Shahid

  108. I would have loved it very much if Google would have provided more facility to tweak with their templates. Though I am using this for my personal use but I would be surely delighted to have more templates to choose from.

  109. Google is working on too many projects. I feel like every day something new comes out.

    Some very good things too!

  110. Just wondering about Google Apps and Google Page Creator – I’ve looked all over (help, FAQ, Google groups) but can’t seem to figure it out.

    By using Google Apps with GPC, we can set things up so that the pages we create with GPC get displayed as http://www.example.com and correctly get indexed by Google as http://www.example.com

    Now, http://www.example.com-a.googlepages.com is still accessible by humans by typing the address into a browser (or looking at previews), but at least for my site so far doesn’t show up in Google search results – which is the right behavior as the preferred domain is http://www.example.com.

    Does anyone know whether Google automatically “knows” that http://www.example.com-a.googlepages.com should never show up in the index? Or do Google Apps webmasters using GPC need to worry about http://www.example.com-a.googlepages.com showing up as duplicate content at some point (and getting penalized for duplicate content)?

  111. Hi,

    I have been reading Google SEO tips. It sounds very confusing as some states that Google will penalise for creating or lik swoping and in another it states that it is good to get links from directories and other pages. This is very confusing? Can you please tell me whether Google penalizes for link swoping?

    Many thanks in advance
    Dolf

  112. Matt,

    Are Google Pages considered quality links? 😉

    Thanks,

    Paul

  113. hey google page makers guys … and users too! I vote that they should have a plain template… not like the “Simple” Template one they already have, but just completely plain white background and default colors, headings, no divs-tables-boxes or any css… just standard HTML…. I know you can upload your own html files as well as link to an external css stylesheet that cleans it up the ones used in the templates… However i would love just having clean code… it makes it easier to maintain & update.. the main reason i love google page maker is because its a great filemanager + lets you create pages from anywhere fast… if pagemaker put a feature where you could edit this or just let you edit the entire html page code that would be awesome X 10000. So if anyone feels like I do post a comment or discuss it in the google group… Peace to all the cool people in the interenet ! yo im out gotta get with all my honnies & lady friends after my shift is done at my computer tech job… you know how it is players
    XD

  114. Hi, page creator is real simple to use, though does seem to have a few teething problems when cutting & pasting.

    Do pages show in Google search results ?

    cheers
    Derek

  115. Can some one give me answer… Where can we add meta-tags in pages.google.com, as I need to add my page in google sitemap, i need to add verify tag in the page.

  116. Claire Johnston

    Luuuve the google page creator – my family geneology website is up and has lots of pages, links and photos. Soooo easy to use

  117. Hi Matt,

    First-of-all very thank for referring me to Google Page Creator. I’m very well aware of most of services offered by Google, But I didn’t happen to know about this service other than from your blog. Google page creator is very useful for people layman in HTML coding. it’s useful for me. Expecting to learn a lot from here. 🙂

  118. Hates google creator

    Am I the only one who absolutely hates Google Page Creator?
    I don’t find it simple to use at all. All I want is the ability to upload my pages 😛 But Page Creator forces me to create pages using their stupid editing tools which are clumsy to use and don’t offer any control. I also don’t need to use their design templates which don’t make any sense for the type of web site i’m designing. Who needs templates anyway for web sites – it’s not a powerpoint presentation for goodness sake!).
    While the ability to add html to the sites exists (albeit through a tiny little link on the bottom right which took me a while to spot) i find it unbelievable the way they’ve done it. Why can’t i just add the html of the page and save the page? I tried adding a tag and it saved it under an tag. I mean comeon. And what’s with the Ajax in the html editing text area? It takes forever to load on my browser. Why can’t it just be a simple html form?
    And it’s such an effort to make the tiniest changes to the site. If I wanted to add a news item on one of the pages for instance or even change a spelling error I’d have to through all the effort of logging in, editing the page and publishing it. Why can’t I do it with a command to an ftp client or something?
    Ok – this concludes my rant 🙂 Should probably mention that Google is great for everything else (just not this).

  119. http://www.weebly.com/ has essentially the same features, except that Weebly is cool, easier to use, standard compliant and just a lot better.

  120. Google Page Creator will be shut down this year and old GPC sites will be transitioned to Google Sites:

    http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/08/google-page-creator-to-be-closed.html
    http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/08/google-page-creator-to-be-closed.html

    And, yes, you can upload HTML files with Google Page Creator. But, no, you can’t upload HTML files with Google Sites. With GPC it was much easier to make your pages look exactly the way you wanted with uploaded HTML files and CSS files (or CSS in HTML).

  121. we can put in HTML by copying and pasting. By the way the tools are good ones.

  122. Hates google creator, it’s a cinch to upload files to Page Creator, link to them with a desktop html editor and upload that document to the Page Creator files. My domains all forward to files hosted in Page Creator.

  123. I have been trying to find out how to use google page creator for over a year now. they are going to change them to sites and I STILL have not been able to find the instructions to use them.I wonder if any of the sites that are listed as page creator sites are even real.

  124. My wife used this service. She was soo happy that she didn’t have to wait on me to get things going. She got a good feeling about it , i can tell. The templates could be a little more interesting but for the noob its happiness.

  125. I really don’t get it…How is possible that GOOGLE that can make so many amazing things can’t get right a simple mini Site generator and looks so awkward compared with many others out there.
    On the other hand, tons of Google engineers look quite childish when they try to put together a mini social network and launched Wave or Buzz.
    At the end of the day is good, you Google can’t have them all….and is clear that people that work in search development are nor the same as people that like other people and work in social networks development. Google buy Facebook you don;t have any other chance to get the LIKES of hundreds of million of people!!!

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