Today, Google.com sent me an interesting press release. They’ve announced that their service “Street View” is now available in Montana. At first glance, it appears that a great deal of ‘metropolitan’ Montana is included in this release.

What is Street View anyway?

Street View is a part of Google Maps. There are 3 main types of views in Google maps that include:

1. The standard map view (similar to looking at an atlas)
2. A satellite/aerial view that shows all the topography
3. A hybrid view that shows the satellite view with street names overlayed.

Now, with the introduction of Street View for Montana you can also see 360-degree street level images of cities, towns and regions in our neck of the woods. Previously Street View was only available in larger cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

You can activate Street View from any Google map by dragging the small orange “pegman” icon (located at the top left, above the zoom slider) over the map. Blue outlines will indicate where the street level vantage point is available.

Here’s a brief video overview of Street View and how it works…

So why should you care?

You should care because it introduces some unique aspects for your Bozeman, Montana website design. Let’s say for example that you are a hotel here in Montana. You’ve written about some of the tourist attractions nearby your lodge and you’ve shown the location using a traditional Google map. Now you can also show a virtual tour of sorts of nearby parks, attractions, shopping… the list goes on.

• Integrate it with your driving directions to make it easier to see the streets that accompany your directions.
• Show ease of access to those who may have disabilities (think medical office), to industrial partners (think delivery access), or if your business is located in an area of town that is considered difficult to get to or park at.
• Offer it as a tool to online users. If you’re a realtor, property developer, chamber of commerce or other community organization use Google Street View to let your web visitors explore neighborhoods, parks, business locations. Business associations can let their website visitors “walk” the downtown area where they are located.
• Here are ten other Street View Business Tips from Google.

Instead of me just telling you about this service, I’ve put together a few links to show you.

• Downtown Bozeman Map (Tracy and Main St.)
• Map of MSU – Bozeman (Grant and S. 11th St.)
• Old Faithful – Yellowstone National Park
• Going to the Sun Rd. – Glacier National Park
• Montana Capitol Building – Helena, MT
• Flathead Lake (as seen from Bigfork, MT)

Major Montana cities included in this release:

• Bozeman, MT
• Belgrade, MT (Just a little bit of Jackrabbit Ln.)
• Missoula, MT
• Billings, MT
• Great Falls, MT
• Helena, MT
• Butte, MT
• Kalispell, MT

Notably absent however is the ski resort destination of Big Sky, MT. While certainly not a major city, it is one of the most beautiful drives in Montana up Highway 191 to Lone Mountain.

How do I add Google Street View to my website?

Incorporating Google’s Street View is very easy and quite inexpensive for casual uses such as showing your business location. More advanced uses, such as using Street View to browse real estate listings, will require integration of your website with the Google Maps API framework.

Contact us for a few quick tips on setup and a free estimate.

Thanks for checking out this post. Consider subscribing if your enjoy our Montana internet marketing articles.

I’ve set up a simple site to show you a few of the advertising options available to site owners through Google’s Adsense/Adwords program.

With my love for kayaking, rafting and everything else whitewater, I felt it was appropriate to develop a site with that theme. The site is located at www.allwhitewater.com. It is primarily a textual site (no flashy graphics or cute layout here) to demonstrate how Google’s ads can be displayed in-line with other content.

First, a brief overview of the Google advertising program. Advertisers set up an account with Google and choose how much money they are willing to pay for each user who clicks the ad – usually just a few cents per click. They set up the content of the ad, choose the link where they would like the ad directed to, and in some cases even choose which website(s) they would like their ad displayed on. The advertiser then selects keywords that they would like their ad to be associated with. When the content of a website, or a search performed through Google, matches the advertiser’s keyword, the ad is displayed.

On the converse side, website owners sign up with Google and choose the types of ads they would like to display. They can also choose to filter out ads from competitors if they wish. The webmaster chooses the “look and feel” of the ads – colors, ad style, etc. so that they are not overly intrusive in the site’s layout. Google’s ads automatically search the content of the page and do their best to match that content with ads it believes will be relevant to the user.

Now, on to my example… Along the top of the page (in the grey bar) you’ll see my page title “Whitewater Paddling Resources” and a Google search bar. The Google search is the first example of both a useful tool and an advertising opportunity. When the user performs a search, Google pays the referring site if the user clicks any of the sponsored links on the results page.

As we progress down the page, you’ll notice two other ad units. One is displayed in the middle of the text, the other is in a more columnar format along the right side. You’ll also notice that each of the ads is similar to the theme of the website – whitewater. Google determines this based upon the density of certain keywords throughout the page/site… In this case, I’ve purposely used the word whitewater many times to ensure the relevancy of the ads.

Continuing down the page further, you’ll see a new program instituted by Google that I think is pretty cool. With Google’s recent acquisition of the online video site YouTube.com, they’ve also introduced a new way to display ads with more of “blended content” feel. Here’s how it works:

First, the site owner decides what type of video player they would like to show on their page – mini, medium or large (as shown on allwhitewater.com). From there the advertiser and webmaster sides work virtually identical as the AdWords program. The advertiser chooses keywords, content and the videos they would like their ad displayed on. The webmaster has control of size, color and other site integration options. But, that’s where the similarities end.

Instead of the ads being shown in the pages content, they are actually displayed over the bottom corner of the video as it’s being shown. Even though the ads are relatively unobtrusive, the viewer is required to minimize the ad periodically to make the ad disappear.

Now, YouTube claims to target the content of the videos to your website (in my case whitewater), and even offers an area to suggest keywords. However since the time that I created the simple site, (Jan. 20, 2008) I have yet to see a single video similar to my content being shown.

In conclusion… Do with this information as you will, perhaps file it away for a rainy day. I’ll continue to inform you of unique advertising programs that are available for site owners and for those wishing to drive traffic to their site.

If you would like Manifest Creative to perform a thorough analysis of how your site could benefit from the AdWords/AdSense program, please do not hesitate to write.