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A Closer Look at the Free Google Pages Service - continued

The Google Pages URL Syntax is "username.googlepages.com/pagename" (starting with http://). Make sure that you give a new page a title that reflects the desired file name, and change the title of the page to its real title afterwards. The inability to rename a page renders the "copy page" feature more or less obsolete. The copy of the original page is simply named "originalpagefilenameX" with X being a number starting with 2 for the first copy.

Accessing the uploaded images and deleting them is simple. The user must be careful though, because there is no indicator if an image is used in a "published" (i.e. live) page or not. Deleting an image that is in use creates a broken image on the public site.

Static Content is not an Option

You can not incorporate anything to your site template. This means that you have to recreate the static content for every page manually. If something changes, you have no choice but must update every single page of your site manually one by one. This is a major shortcoming that practically assures that some pages will be inconsistent with the overall look and usability of the site.

No JavaScript or iFrames

You can also not use any JavaScript to improve site usability.

General Tools are Simply Absent

The ability to place AdSense Ads on those Pages should be of high interest by Google since it allows them to increase their advertising revenue. Any built-in function to place AdSense Ads somewhere into Google Pages is not in sight anywhere. I assume that this will be coming at some point because Google Pages is simply perfect for Google AdSense.

The ability to create any type of forms or, in general, ANY interactive content does not exist, which severely limits the use of Google Pages. This is something the Google Pages team should work on.

Providing features like a contact form that integrates with Google GMail, the publishing of feeds from Google Reader or the integration of Google Maps and Google News would be perfect for Google Pages. Google Analytics can't be added to the Pages either.

Indexing of Google Pages by Google Search

Conclusion

Google Pages does also not interface with any other existing Google Service, although Google Pages is a perfect candidate to exploit and showcase a wide variety of existing Google Services (live and beta ones). Google has still a long way to go with this service to provide a useful tool for the general public.

I see its use today as a place where you can create some static pages with content to link to from your blog at Blogger or other blogging services. It is certainly not enough for most people to create their complete Homepage/Presence on the Internet via Google Pages.

It might also be an alternative for some Geocities users since Google Pages does not show any 3rd party advertisement anywhere on the pages.

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