The Value of Google Gadgets

Post by Adam Sah, Google Gadgets Team

The past year has been very exciting for Google Universal Gadgets. We've seen developers create nearly 4000 gadgets that can be syndicated, enabling users to do anything from monitoring their water intake to checking their location on a map. These gadgets can be added to any page on the web, not to mention the Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, Google Page Creator, and most recently the Windows Vista Sidebar and Mac OSX Dashboard.

In order to promote a more transparent and open ecosystem for gadget developers, we have introduced a new feature in the Gadgets For Your Webpage directory detailing the approximate number of gadget views each gadget receives per week. We expect that gadget developers (and potential gadget developers!) will be able to use this information to better understand the reach of their gadgets. A quick check will show that hundreds of gadgets are getting tens of thousands of pageviews each week -- and many are even getting millions.

And now, the technical stuff: These numbers are approximations, representing the number of times each gadget is rendered across all places Google Gadgets can be viewed. The pageview count is aggregated weekly to smooth out the normal daily fluctuations and we have filtered out automatic page refreshes. Individual gadget authors who want to know more specific information about their gadget's traffic should make use of the Google Analytics library.

As always, we're listening to your feedback on the Google Gadgets Developer Forum -- and if you want to get started writing gadgets, you can dive right into our API Docs. You can have your first one out the door before you know it.