Blogger and Other Google Products - an oveview

This is a listing of other Google products that may be helpful to Blogger users.  Each product is briefly described, with links to the help centre, help forum, and other useful hints-and-tips article.

Introduction

Once upon a time, Google made a search engine, and Pyra Labs made Blogger  (or at least that's what Wikipedia says).  Then Google figured that it could be handy to own a blogging tool themselves, so they purchased Blogger in 2003, leading to even more confusion about the difference between Blogger and bloggers, Google and googling.

They also purchased a number of other products, and build a few (eg AdSense) themselves, too.

In general, using products from the same company is a good idea, because there are engineers whose job it is to make sure that they work together well.   They're not always 100% successful, but even so, two Google products are more likely to play nicely than two products from competing companies.

The list below doesn't show all Google products, just those that  are particularly useful to Blogger users.

Always see the official Google documentation for official answers.

Product / Application	What it does	Where to get help
Gmail	Email. Mail can also be used for receiving comment notifications, and for tracking use of the the Mail2Post feature.	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: Mail2Post - knowing who posted what
Picasa	Manage photographs and other image files. Blogger puts pictures uploaded using the Post Editor into a folder in your Picasa-web-albums account. You can also work separately with Picasa (on your own PC) or Picasa-web-albums (on the internet) too.	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: Picasa - an overview
AdSense	Selling advertising space on your blog (or any other web-site).	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: Setting up AdSense on your Blog Troubleshooting Adsense
Analytics	Measuring visits and visitors to your website/blog: this tool give you information about who they are, where they're coming form and what they're looking at. Some people say that it's more suitable for small businesses than individuals, but I say if you're savvy enough to make Blogger sing, with is the tool to go for.	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: Setting up Analytics on your Blog
Maps	Creating and sharing maps	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: Putting a custom-map in your blog
YouTube	Sharing videos Note:  though YouTube is linked to Google, your Google account doesn't work quite as seamlessly as it does with the other products listed.	Help centre Help forum
AdWords	Getting your website/blog included in the sponsored-links section of Google search-results, and in Ads-by-Google in various places.	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: AdSense and AdWords - understanding the difference
Google Docs	For creating, editing and storing documents of all types.	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT: File hosting opttions
Calendar	Managing schedules and calendars on the internet	Help centre Help forum
Web-elements	Application for ...	Help centre Help forum
Webmaster Central	Monitoring your blog / website, and controlling some aspects of how Google's search engine relates to it.	Help centre Help forum
Custom-Search	Creating and managing custom-search engines for your website	Help centre Help forum
Google Apps	Managing custom domains	Help centre Help forum Blogger-HAT:  Setting up your custom domain
Feedburner	Application for managing feeds	Help centre Help forum
Google Feed API	"With the Feed API, you can download any public Atom, RSS, or Media RSS feed using only JavaScript, so you can easily mash up feeds with your content"	Developer documentation Help forum group

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