Tech giant Google has just launched an India-exclusive app called ‘Blog Compass’, catering to Indian bloggers to help them manage their pages, track insights, as well as finding new ideas to write about. The app is currently only in the beta version in English and Hindi.
“Google wants to organize the world’s information, and that means helping everyone share their voice. Blogs are an important way people can do that, and add to the vitality of the web in India and elsewhere,” said a statement on Google’s blog.
The app is only available to Android users, and how it works is that Blog Compass is integrated with WordPress and Blogger.com, two of the largest blogging platforms in India. Once the blogger has logged in with their WordPress or Blogger.com account, Blog Compass also connects to Google Analytics and Search Console, letting bloggers see viewer numbers, traffic sources, demographic information, Google Search status, and popular Google searches that lead to their respective blogs.
Blog Compass will also analyse post history and bloggers’ interests to provide detailed Google Trends data that is tailored to each blogger. This helps them in finding the next topic to write about. Initial tests have revealed that a majority of bloggers were able to post more often when using Blog Compass.
The app also includes courses on things like getting started with SEO and analytics, and getting your website listed on Google. Navigation via tabs at the bottom of the screen enables users to move through sections like Home, Activity, Topics and Badges. Google has also said that further features are being introduced or bugs are being fixed based on the feedback of the new users.
BlogCompass is just one of the many initiatives taken by Google for the Indian market. They had introduced ‘Neighbourly’ in India which provides local information like garage or salon nearby, from the people living in the same locality.
‘Google for jobs’ was launched in India to help people search for jobs more efficiently, and had bigwigs like Aasaanjobs, IBM Talent Management Solutions, LinkedIn and many more as their partners. Google’s ‘Navlekha’ initiative helped Indian authors publish their content in regional languages.
A study by KPMG on the impact of the internet and digitization in India says that India is predicted to have nearly 735 million Internet users by 2021. It is expected that these India-centric projects and initiatives by Google may boost the usage in India.
