About www.google.hu

Update: Google Inc. acquires google.hu

No, http://www.google.hu does not belong to Google Inc., neither to its Hungarian subsidiary, Google Számítástechnikai Szolgáltató Kft.
Google Inc. was not quick enough (or simply didn't care) to claim this domain name way back in 2000 when the .hu ccTLD liberalisation took place. Since then this name had been owned by many. It landed at Hírek Média és Internet Technológia Kft. in 2003. This company used this address to provide web search service based on Google search results until this May, when they deployed their own proprietary engine which provides surpisingly good results. So this address nowadays redirects to http://kurzor.hu, which is a quite usable Hungarian web search engine. Many surfers don't even realize that they are using an other service than Google's, although the user interface of kurzor.hu does not resemble the famous design made in Mountain View, CA. (Using the .co.hu TLD is not as usual as in th UK or in Yugoslavia for instance.) If you check out the Hungarian pages Google has indexed, you will see 122 000 mentions of google.hu which is a huge number if you consider that the "real" URL - http://google.co.hu - is mentioned on 655 000 web pages altogether. Nevertheless this domain has not been banned, it appears as the second page right after google.co.hu, if you seek for "google" restricting the search to Hungarian pages. (which is considered highly competitive under the .hu domain too)

AdSense for Content International

So far I know what happens if the system cannot display targeted ads in context with the content of a page written in English, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian. As far as I could see English pages display non-profit organization ads, while in other languages Google does a kind of self-advertisement: Different quiz like questions are displayed and linked to specific Google query. So the visitor lands on an informative Search Engine Result Page which has the answer for the question. Thus Google promotes the vanilla Google Web Search feature, and manifests how useful tool a search engine can be (instead of showing ads of local NGOs). All in all it' obvious that this feature in other languages is not the same as defined here.

If you know the right keywords you can push a snippet of your page to these SERPs, thus getting a few extra visitors. That's the reason why these questions can be interesting for webmasters too, even if PSAs don't pay for CTR.

The AdSense for Content is available for webpages written in the following languages, so I will have to seek for some more PSAs to make this collection complete. Stay tuned or comment this post if you have spotted PSAs in other languages!

• Chinese (simplyfied)
• Chinese (traditional)
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Norvegian
• Polish
• Portugal
• Russian
• Slovakian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish

Datos curiosos Google - Spanish Public Service Ads

The following AdSense Public Service Advertisements appear on a Spanish site if Google cannot deliver appropriate ads. Note that these type of ads are called: approx. "Interesting Google Data" The corresponding search queries are listed in bold, after the English translation.

¿Quiere saber quién inventó el papel? Google tiene la respuesta.

Do You want to know who invented the paper? Google has the answer. - inventor del papel

¿Quiere saber dónde se producen las células rojas?

Do You want to know where are the red blood cells produced? - celulas rojas produccion

¿Por qué el cielo es azul? Lo que siempre ha querido saber. En Google encontrara la respuesta.

Why is the sky blue? What you always wanted to knod. You will find the answer with Google. - porque cielo es azul

¿Sabe qué ciudad es la capital de Sicilia? La respuesta a solo un clic.

Do You know which city is the capital of Sicily? The answer is only a click away. - capital de sicilia

¿Quiere saber qué profundidad tiene el océano? El Google tiene la respuesta.

Do You want to know what is the depth of the ocean? Google has the answer. - profundidad del oceano

¿Cómo murió Cleopatra? Una pregunta que quiere resolver. Google tiene la respuesta.

How did Cleopatra die? A mystery you want to solve. Google has the answer. - como murio cleopatra

¿Quiere saber cuál es la estrella más cercana? La respuesta a solo un clic.

Do You want to know which is the closest star? The answer is only a click away. - estrella mas cercana

¿Quiere saber cuál es la temperatura del sol? En Google encontrará la respuesta.

Do You want to know what is the temperature of the Sun? You will find the answer with Google. - que temperatura tiene el sol

¿Sabe en que época aparecieron los dinosaurios? En Google encontrará la respuesta.

Do You know in which period did the dinosaurs appear? You will find the answer with Google. - epoca de dinosaurios

¿Quién fue el segundo hombre en llegar a la luna? La respuesta a solo un clic.

Who was the second man on the Moon? The answer is only a click away. - el segundo hombre en la luna

Czech PSAs: Nekomerční reklamy Google.

These are the Public Service Ad "quiz questions" I spotted on my site despite that it was a Hungarian site, and Hungarian has nothing common with Czech language. The translations are rather rough, since I don't speak this language, but some Croatian knowledge and Image Search helped to figure out what these questions were about.

Kdo vynalezl papír?

Who invented the paper?

Proč je obloha modrá? Google Vám najde odpověd'.

Why is the sky blue?

Kdo byl první člověk ve vesmíru? Google to ví přesně. Klikněte a dovíte se odpověd'.

Who was the first man in Space?

Co je "fotosyntéza" ?

What is photosynthesis?

Jak se jmenuje hlavní město USA?

What is the capital of the USA?

Kdo objevil Ameriku? Vyhledejte odpověd' na Google.

Who discovered Amerika?

Jak se jmenuje české národní jídlo? Rychlou odpověd' najdete na Google.

What is the national speciality of the Czech cuisine?

Kdo byla "Marie Terezie"? Klikněte a najděte odpověd' na Google.

Who was Maria Theresa?

Který je největší ostrov světa? Vyhledejte odpověd' na Google.

Which is the biggest island on Earth?

Který je nejlidnatější stát ma světe? najděte odpověd' na Google.

Which is the most populated state of the World?

Kdo napsal knihu "Malý princ"? Odpověd' je na Google.

Who wrote the book "The Little Prince"?

Kdo napsal román "Dobrý voják Švejk"? Google to ví. Klikněte a dovíte se odpověd'.

Who wrote the novel "The Good Soldier Svejk" ?

Co znamená "panta rei"? Google to ví. Klikněte a dovíte se odpověd'.

What does "panta rei" mean?

Kdo vynalezl žárovku? Odpověd' je na Google.

Who invented the light bulb?

Jak se jmenuje nejvyšší vrchol světa? Nejvyšší vrchol světa je... Najdête odpověd' na Google

What is the highest mountain peak of the World?

Kdo byl prvnim československým prezidentem? Google Vám vyhledá odpověd'.

Who was the first president of Czechoslovakia?

Public Service Ads in Hungarian

The following quiz-like questions appear on Hungarian websites as Google AdSense Public Service Advertisements. The search queries associated to these ads are also included. There are only a few sites optimised for these keywords though (at time of writing), so the SERPs for these quieries are not polluted as for the Spanish equivalents for instance.

Ki találta fel a papírt?

• Who invented the paper? - papír feltalálása

Ki volt a második ember a holdon?

• Who was the second man on the Moon? - "második ember" a holdon

Honnan ered a csokoládé?

• Where did chocolate originate? - csokoládé eredete

A létező legnagyobb szám Létezik ilyen? A Google megkeresi Önnek a választ.

• The biggest number. Does it exist? Google finds you the answer. - "a létező legnagyobb szám"

Hol van Timbuktu?

• Where is Timbuktu? - timbuktu

Hol él a varrómadár? És miért hívják így?

• Where does the ashy tailorbird live? And why is it called like this? - varrómadár

Ki volt Vuk hangja a rajzfilmen?

• Who was the voice of Vuk for the cartoon? - vuk magyar hangja

Miért kék az ég?

• Why is the sky blue? - miért kék az ég

Milyen régi a legősibb dinoszauruszlelet?

• How old is the earliest dinosaur fossil? - legrégebbi dinoszaurusz

Mikor készült az első Guiness-rekordok könyve?

• When was the first Guiness Book of Records published? - Guiness féle rekordok

Mi a legközelebbi csillag?

• What is the closest star? - földhöz legközelebbi csillag?

Carcharodon carcharias Melyik állat neve ez?

• Carcharodon carcharias Which animal is this? - állat Carcharodon carcharias

Milyen hőmérsékletű a nap?

• What is the temperature of the Sun? - mennyi a nap hőmérséklete Celsius