The Secret History of the Google Logo

Roughly 3.5 million Google searches happen each day. With stats like this, it's not unlikely that the average person might see the Google logo anywhere from one to 30 times per day.

Throughout the past two decades, the Google logo has been iconic and easy to recognize. And across all of its evolutions, it has stayed misleadingly simple. 

What many don't know is that there's a fascinating backstory to the most well-known design on the internet. It all started in 1996.

Below is a full timeline of Google logos over the years.

Google Logo History

1996: The First Google Logo

The search engine's very first logo actually predates the name "Google." Larry Page and Sergey Brin originally called their web crawler "BackRub." Brin and Page chose this name because the engine's main function was to search through the internet's back links.

Luckily, by 1997 they'd changed the company's name to the much less creepy "Google" -- a misspelling of "googol" -- a Latin term that literally means 10 to the 100th power (written out, that's one followed by 100 zeros). The idea behind the name was that Google's search engine could quickly provide users with large quantities, or googols, of results.

1998: First (real) Google logo

Some sources credit Page with the creation of the first Google logo, while others say Brin designed it with a free image editor called GIMP. Whomever it was, their design wasn't exactly the most polished. 

Want another little fun fact? An exclamation point was supposedly included in Google's rebranded design because Yahoo!'s logo also had this punctuation. All tech companies followed each other's leads back then, it would seem.

 

1999-2010: Ruth Kedar's logo designs

A mutual friend introduced Brin and Page to Stanford assistant professor Ruth Kedar. Because they weren't in love with their logo, they asked Kedar if she'd design a few prototypes.

She started with a mostly black logo using the Adobe Garamond typeface. She also removed the exclamation point that was in the original logo.

Page and Brin like this logo because the mark in the middle looked like a Chinese finger trap, Kedar says.

The graphic designer's next attempt used the Catull typeface (which should look familiar). The logo was meant to evoke accuracy, like a target.

Then Kedar got a bit more playful, experimenting with color and interlocking Os. Those Os ended up becoming the basis for the Os at the bottom of every search engine results page.

Between the crosshairs and the magnifying glass, Brin and Page thought this design was a little visually overwhelming.

The next few iterations appear more like the Google logo we know and love today. These designs feel younger and less serious than their precedents.

Kedar makes the letters pop off the page with shadowing and thicker lines.

The eighth design was the simplest yet. Ultimately, Kedar wanted to show Google's potential to become more than just a search engine (hence the removal of the magnifying glass). She also changed the traditional order of the primary colors to reemphasize how untraditional Google was.

This version's colors and the slanted angling make it feel youthful and energetic.

The final design is one of the most minimal. It was Google's official logo from 1999 to 2010.

On May 6, 2010, Google updated its logo, changing the "o" from yellow to orange and removing the drop shadowing.

2015: A new logo for Google

In 2015, designers from across Google met in New York City for a week-long design sprint aimed at producing a new logo and branding.

Following the sprint, Google's logo changed dramatically. The company preserved its distinctive blue-red-orange-blue-green-red pattern, but changed the typeface from Catull to the custom schoolbook-inspired Product Sans.

At the same time, Google also rolled out several variations on its logo, including the rainbow "G" that represents the smartphone app and the favicon for Google websites, and a microphone for voice search.

The new logo might look simple, but the transformation was significant. Catull -- the former typeface -- has serifs, the small lines that embellish the main vertical and horizontal strokes of some letters. Serif typefaces are less versatile than their sans-serif typefaces, since letters vary in weight.

Product Sans is a sans-serif typeface. That means it's easy for Google's designers to manipulate and adapt the logo for different sizes -- say, the face of an Android watch or the screen of your desktop computer. As Google's product line becomes more and more diverse, an adaptable design becomes essential.

The logo is also meant to look young, fun, and unthreatening (read: "I'm not like other massive tech corporations, I'm a cool massive tech corporation.") This was a prescient move -- since Google unveiled this design in 2015, concerns about data privacy have reached a fever pitch.

A Dynamic Logo

Google's logo is also now dynamic. When you begin a voice search on your phone or tablet, you'll see the Google dots bouncing in anticipation of your query.

As you speak, those dots transform into an equalizer that responds to your voice. And once you've finished talking, the equalizer morphs back into dots that ripple as Google finds your results.

"A full range of expressions were developed including listening, thinking, replying, incomprehension, and confirmation," explained a Google design team blog post. While their movements might seem spontaneous, their motion is rooted in consistent paths and timing, with the dots moving along geometric arcs and following a standard set of snappy easing curves.

Implementation and Growth of the Google Doodle

In 1998, Google started playing with the Google Doodle -- a temporary modification of the traditional Google logo.

The first Google Doodle originated in 1998 -- before the company was technically even a company. Page and Sergey were attending the Burning Man festival. As a kind of "out of office" message, they put a stick figure drawing behind the logo's second O.

As the years progressed, so did the detail of the featured doodles.

In 2000, Brin and Sergey asked then-intern Dennis Hwang to come up with a doodle for Bastille Day. Users loved it so much that they appointed Dennis "chief doodler."

Today, doodles are often used to commemorate holidays, special occasions, and birthdays of scientists, thinkers, artists, and other important people.

The first Doodles tended to mark well-known holidays, like Valentine's Day, Halloween, and Indian Holi (in India). But as time has gone on, they've become more and more global and creative. For example, on September 1, 2017, this Doodle celebrated the first day of school (or mourned it, depending on who you ask.)

To decide which events, figures, or topics get doodles, a team gets together periodically to brainstorm. Doodle ideas can also come from Google users. After an idea or doodle pitch gets the green light, the actual doodles are designed by illustrators and engineers.

Google reported in 2015 that they'd launched more than 2,000 doodles for various homepages around the world. While Google hasn't shared more recent stats on its doodles, PRI noted that they'd climbed over 4,000 by 2016.

Google has continued to embrace doodles with a verified Twitter account devoted to updating its audience about newly-published doodles. The account has over 127,000 followers.

Google also invites people to submit ideas for doodles at proposals@google.com.

There's more than meets the eye to Google's logo. As people and technology evolve, the design has too. At the rate things are changing, we'll probably see a new version in a few years.

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The 13 Types of Landing Pages & How to Pick One for a Campaign

You know them, you love them, you lay awake late at night thinking of them. Yes, marketers, we’re talking about landing pages. Those lovable lead drivers we optimize, tweak, update, and test.

Whether you’re a blogger, social media marketer, or paid marketer -- you have a healthy relationship with the landing page. Sometimes, you might go through rough patches where you wonder why landing pages exist. But they’re always there for you, increasing conversions, netting new leads, and driving traffic to the offers you’ve worked so hard to create.

But, to be honest, there are a lot of different types of landing pages. It’s a little hard to keep track of them all. So, let’s round up the top types of landing pages and discuss how to pick the one that will make your next campaign successful.

1. Squeeze Page

79% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel for demand generation, so it’s not surprising that squeeze pages are one of the most important and effective landing pages out there.

A squeeze page is one in which the goal is to capture the user’s email address. Once you have the address, you can begin to nurture that lead with relevant content and other offers.

The most common type of squeeze page is gated content or a prompt to enter your email address to receive a newsletter, ebook, whitepaper, or other content offer.

Make sure your squeeze page is simple, your CTA is tempting enough to get your user to give up their email address, and you make it easy for users to click out of the page and onto the content that brought them to your site.

Image source: Neil Patel

2. Splash Page

A splash landing page doesn’t always have lead capture as the main goal. These pages are often used when someone clicks a social media or content link. Instead of being sent directly to the article or social media destination, the user is sent to an intermediary page: the splash page.

This page might share an announcement with the user, such as “We’ve just unveiled new dates for our 2019 marketing conference!” It might also ask your user for a language preference or to enter their age. The splash page might also present an ad, which the publisher benefits from, if the user clicks on the ad.

Image source: Variety

The splash page above does two things really well: First, it offers a countdown to the end of the ad and the ability to easily click to the article once the ad is done. Second, it serves a clear purpose -- to show the user an ad.

3. Lead Capture Page

A lead capture page is similar to a squeeze page, but generally sources more information. Name, business name, email address, job title, and industry are just a few things these landing pages seek to earn.

The information you request depends on the goals for the page and those of your sales and marketing teams, as well as where the customer is in the funnel. If your lead capture page is top of the funnel, step away from the eight-lined form, please.

If, however, your customer is landing on your lead capture page after demonstrating real interest in your product/service (i.e., they downloaded two case studies) you should be able to ask for more information to help qualify and direct them.

Image source: HubSpot

4. Click-Through Landing Page

Every marketer knows you must provide value to your customer before asking them for money. A click-through landing page provides that value without pummeling your customer with a “Buy Now” button before they’re ready.

Often, this looks like a landing page that shares the benefits and features of your product/service with a CTA button encouraging your customer to try a free trial. Once they click on that button, they’re taken to another landing page which provides pricing details and requires payment information to begin the trial.

By the time your customer lands on this page, however, they're primed and educated on why they should move forward with the trial. In the examples below, you see the click-through landing page, and then the payment landing page customers are sent to when they decide to embark on a free trial.

Image source: Dropbox Business

5. "Get Started" Landing Page

A “Get Started” landing page should lead with your offer above the fold. Take this page, from Mailchimp, which explains their overarching benefits: tools that turn audience data into insights that will guide campaigns.

Hooked already? Great, because a “Get Started” button awaits. Need more convincing? Well, the details follow as you scroll a feature- and benefit-laden landing page.

Image source: Mailchimp

6. "Unsubscribe" Landing Page

Obviously, you’re not going to build a campaign around your unsubscribe page, but it’s important not to neglect it. Make sure it successfully unsubscribes your users, offers them a chance to manage their preferences or adjust the cadence, and consider including links to other areas of your website, like this example from Whole Foods.

Image source: Whole Foods

After all, just because they don’t want to receive your emails, doesn’t mean they might not want to browse your site. Consider adding a “second chance” button that prompts users to resubscribe, just in case they get cold feet.

7. Long-form Sales Landing Page

On a long-form sales landing page, brevity is not your friend. You want to think of every question your customer might have for you, every barrier to purchase they might face, and every benefit they’ll enjoy by making a purchase when they scroll to the bottom of the page.

Take this example, from Seth Godin’s altMBA.

Image source: altMBA

It starts with an informative video that tells you why now is the right time to apply. Then you see the names of companies and pictures of students who have benefited from the course.

Quotes follow, along with links to join mailing lists, learn more about the program, and read testimonials. Finally, at the bottom of the page is a CTA button for the application, and program dates that add a sense of urgency.

A sales landing page should be detailed and lack the minimalism of, say, a squeeze page, simply because your goal for the page is to close business.

8. Paid Advertising Landing Page

If you’re not sending customers who click on your paid ads to the right landing page, you’re throwing money away. Generally, you want to generate leads from these ads -- not necessarily sales.

For example, while scrolling through Facebook, I clicked on this ad from Airtable.

Image source: Airtable

When I clicked on the ad, I was taken to this squeeze page:

Image source: Airtable

The ad didn’t take me to a pricing or plan page, and it didn’t take me to a page packed with features and benefits. It landed me strategically on a page that asked for one thing: my email address.

It also featured a live demo of the project management tool that instantly grabs my attention and shows rather than tells me why Airtable is different and valuable.

9. 404 Landing Page

404s are never a good look, but it’s important you make them look as good as possible -- and work for you a little as well. Get creative with 404s, using humor to offset the error, and always direct your audience back to your homepage or other neutral landing page.

Then, put your 404 landing page to work as a lead generation tool. Take our own 404 page, here at HubSpot. We offer the user three options: visit our blog, learn more about our software, or sign up for a free demo.

Image source: HubSpot

10. "About Us" Landing Page

Your “About Us” page doesn’t have to be a dead end. Make this landing page a lead generation page as well. Take this example from makeup company, Glossier.

They pack their “About Us” page with plenty of history, vision, and mission, but they also let the reader know how to move forward. The bottom of the page offers a reminder (and links) to shop, follow, email, and join the company, and an email subscription offer captures emails.

Image source: Glossier

11. "Coming Soon" Page

Launching an exciting new product soon but aren’t quite ready to reveal the full offer -- or the incomplete landing page? Set up a simple “Coming Soon” landing page instead.

Tease your offer, provide a launch date if you have one, and add a CTA that asks them for their email address in exchange for an email notification when your product or service is live.

Image source: MiEvent

12. Pricing Page

If you’re unveiling new pricing or product tiers, you might consider pushing customers to your pricing landing page. Regardless, your pricing page should be one of the most heavily optimized pages on your site. Take this one, from Wistia, which clearly outlines their three tiered packages, with links to more information or to get started.

What I really love about their pricing page, however, are the two boxes right after a list of features and before a carousel of testimonials. They offer special callouts for interested parties who might not fall within the needs of one of the three boilerplate pricing templates.

And if even those additional CTAs don’t speak to your needs, scroll down to the bottom and find a CTA that offers customers the ability to “Choose your own adventure.”

Image source: Wistia

13. "Thank You" Landing Page

Too often, a “Thank You” page serves no real purpose. It tells you what you already know, “You’ve downloaded the greatest whitepaper in the world! Access it here.” Put your “Thank You” page to work by including additional offers or gifts.

You’ve been given an incredible opportunity to provide more value to a highly motivated, already-interested customer. Don’t waste it.

Take this example -- another one from HubSpot. I downloaded a guide on user-generated content, and the “Thank You” page provided me an additional offer to receive free advice on leveraging user-generated content.

The form I fill out to receive this advice asks for different, more detailed, information about my business needs, allowing HubSpot to better craft the next offer they send my way.

Image source: HubSpot

How to Choose the Right Landing Page for Your Campaign

Now that you understand the most common types of landing pages, the question remains: How do you pick the right one for your next campaign?

Begin by asking yourself these questions:

1. "What are the business goals I’m trying to achieve with this landing page?"
2. "How are my competitors achieving these goals?"
3. "What are my audience’s goals when they land on this page?"
4. "How did my audience get to this page (i.e., what action or motivation brought them here)?"
5. "What do I want my audience to do when they leave this page?"

Once you understand the page's goals, consider whether it should be a short- or long-form landing page.

Short-form landing pages lend themselves well to squeeze landing pages, “Thank You” landing pages, and “Unsubscribe” landing pages. These pages require a small ask or provide a small service to the customer.

Long-form landing pages are best reserved for sales landing pages, click-through landing pages, and pricing pages. If you have a big ask of your customer, you should probably design a long-form landing page.

So, what does this look like in practice? Let’s say I’m creating a brand-awareness campaign for my new startup that facilitates puppy snuggles for tired office workers (a girl can dream, right?). The business goals I have for this campaign are to capture new leads (email addresses) and drive impressions.

My competitors are running social media campaigns driving customers back to a sales landing page. But since impressions and leads are my goal (not purchases), I might choose to run social media ads featuring big images of snuggling puppies.

When customers click my ads, they’re wondering what these cute puppies are about, so I’ll take them to my “About Us” page to tell them more about SnugglePups Inc.. Because I’m also hoping to drive email signups, I’ll include a link to our weekly newsletter, which promises a roundup of the best puppy pics available.

Ready to put all of this knowledge to use? Check out this list of best landing page builders. And if it’s inspiration you’re looking for, look no further than this roundup of landing page examples you need to see.

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The Best Forum Software for Creating an Online Community in 2019

In the Internet's 40-year history, forums haven't lost their importance. Today, forums are still significant opportunities to build an online community, and allows your audience to connect in a place where they know their interests are shared.

The importance of creating and growing an online community is becoming more and more apparent for businesses -- in fact, increasing engagement through communities can result in up to a 25% increase in revenue.

This is where forum software comes into play. Forum software can be particularly useful because it allows your customers to interact with each other in a smaller circle than they could via social media.

For instance, let's say one of your customers has a very unique problem with your product or service, and posts about it on your forum. That post is much easier to find on your business' forum than in the Twittersphere, where millions of users are talking about a million different things.

Even better, maybe another forum user has faced that same problem and can answer their question before your service reps even see it.

There is an incredible amount of value in reaching and building your community using a forum. Here, we're going to explore the best forum software to get you started.

1. HubSpot

Price: Free to start

HubSpot is a CRM platform that offers a full stack of software for marketing, sales, and customer service to help you grow your business. Along with hosting your website on HubSpot's platform, you can also install forums to cultivate a stronger online community.

You can easily install a forum on your HubSpot-hosted website or blog. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to apply one of the third-party forum applications, Tal.ki.

Additionally, to see the power behind forums, take a look at HubSpot's Marketing Hub forum, which displays topic boards full of useful tips and tricks from some of HubSpot's 60,000+ customers.

2. WordPress

Price: Free to start, or $25/month for businesses

Using a multi-purpose platform like a CMS to power your online community allows you access to many different software options in the form of plugins and applications. For instance, you might use the bbPress plugin to create multisite forums, and maintain them from one dashboard within your WordPress site. This is a great option if you want to set up a regular website and forum together.

There are many options to choose from using WordPress, all of which will provide you with the basic forum features you need, plus plenty of useful extras.

Image courtesy of WordPress.org

3. phpBB

Price: Free

PhpBB is a forum platform that has a typical and intuitive board set-up where users can post public or private messages. With phpBB, you can create as many internal messaging boards as you want without any additional costs.

Additionally, you can use extensions to add new options to your forum community. This makes the software very customizable, and allows you to adapt the software to the growing needs of your audience.

Among other things, phpBB lets you create password-protected forums for added security, sub-forums, the option to display active topics at the top of your forum, and the ability to add forum rules at the top of a forum to ensure your community abides by set guidelines.

Image courtesy of phpBB

4. Joomla!

Price: Ranges from $700-$6,500

Joomla! Is a CMS software like WordPress, but requires more attention to detail and management. This is a robust CMS that will power your forum plugins like Kunena or EasyDiscuss, which are specifically created for Joomla!'s system. The price point comes from the open-source content management system, which will allow you to build powerful online applications alongside your forum software.

Image courtesy of Joomla!

5. Vanilla Forums

Price: $689 - $10,000+/month for enterprise

Vanilla has an abundance of features -- one of the most notable being the intuitive dashboard that lets you manage every aspect of your community forum. You can view stats, manage users, and use an advanced editor that recognizes HTML, BBCode, and Markdown using this software.

Additionally, Vanilla gives you the ability to adjust permissions of forums or members if you're looking to control access. The software enables customers to submit, view and vote on ideas to drive innovation for your business, or use the Q&A option to connect with and help each other get more out of your products or services. Best of all, Vanilla offers an on-boarding process with useful checklists, training materials, and help from one of their support reps.

Image courtesy of Vanilla Forums

6. Codoforum

Price: Free

Codoforum is new software that has a fresh UI with modern design. It's simple, clean, and easy to use. Codoforum is built with PHP using the latest coding patterns and is fully compliant with new PSR standards. This software provides a responsive layout structure for mobile and desktop, SSO and integration, as well as mention notifications for users.

Since it's free to use, Codoforum is a good option if you're still testing out forums or aren't sure whether they'll be useful for your own website and community.

Image courtesy of Codoforum

7. VBulletin

Price: vBulletin 5 Connect $249, $15/month

Over 100,000 websites are built on vBulletin -- including NASA, EA, and Sony Pictures -- so it's a popular option for hosting your forum. The software includes tons of great features, including built-in SEO, security, and responsive web design. With VBulletin you can have an unlimited hierarchy of forums as well as private forums.

Best of all, VBulletin provides fun and unique features for your community members, including private messaging, a friends list, members birthdays (shown on the Forum homepage), and the ability to see who's online.

VBulletin is not known for being the fastest forum, but its design is clean and it offers quality support for its users.

Image courtesy of VBulletin

8. Invision Community

Price: Varies for forum size/data needs, but starts at $45/month for 65 online visitors

IP Board was a very popular forum software that has since expanded to Invision Community, which includes a forum application in addition to its other offerings. According to the Invision Community website, the forums module powers hundreds of millions of discussions around the web, and Invision Community has many other community management apps to help you interact with your audience.

Best of all, the software allows your users to take control over their own online communities, which you can monitor at your discretion. For instance, Invision Community lets users create and manage their own communities, called "Clubs", which are fully integrated with your website -- these clubs get designated Club Leaders, who can add new forums, calendars, or galleries to the community.

It's important to note, Invision Community is best-suited for small businesses.

Image courtesy of Invision Community

9. Flarum

Price: Free

Flaurm is currently in Beta and has a streamlined design that is extremely easy to navigate. Flarum is fully responsive, and offers smooth animations and available swipe features for mobile optimization. The software was built by the developers of esoTalk and FluxBB, two of the fastest forum platforms, and has great performance reviews.

Image courtesy of Flarum 

10. MyBB

Price: Free

MyBB is a free and open-source forum software that powers thousands of communities. It features hundreds of plugins and themes for you to customize, and the users that exist on the forum will help you establish your own community. Users have also contributed to the translations available for the content on the software. Now, forums are available in over 30 languages to help you grow a more global community.

Image courtesy of MyBB

Ways to build your community using a forum software

People notice when brands listen to and converse with their customers, and they especially notice when brands foster their own communities. How? Through the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Customers who view themselves as valued members of your community are much more likely to talk about your brand to their friends.

Here's how you can build a strong community using your forum software.

1. Spread the word.

Nobody will join your online community if they don't know it exists. Spread the word about your new forum by including CTAs to join your forum in email newsletters or social posts. Ask your brand ambassadors or loyal fans to start posting about the forum, and post content on the forum so when other users join, you already have an established presence on the channel.

2. Listen to and check on your community regularly.

Reviewing your forum and responding to what your audience has to say is a crucial part of community building. Your customers are far less likely to continue to interact and engage on your forum if they feel as though they are being ignored. Responding to their feedback shows your users that you value their opinions and care about their experiences with your product.

Additionally, it's your job to make sure everything is running smoothly on your forum. Checking on your community regularly will help you dissolve any service escalations, and give people the support they are seeking.

3. Foster a helpful discourse.

A forum should be a safe place for your customers, prospects, employees, fans, and audience to interact, ask, and answer questions. By establishing a helpful ethos early on, or creating community guidelines that prioritize patience and kindness within responses, your community will grow without the need to constantly monitor it 24/7.

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