

Google changes logo - traffic to our site spikes - chexov

Was wondering how our little app could see 100 fold increase in uniques just overnight. Simple reason: Google changing logo to depict an ITF bar code - tons of people going to wikipedia articles on bar codes. We have some referral links originating from wikipedia (mostly submitted images of EAN and UPC bar codes).<p>Too bad the bar code logo will go away - these are our Andy Warhol threw a "15 Minutes of Fame".<p>http://barcoderobot.com
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chexov
Obviously the comments on the site are most welcome ...

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blantonl
What is your revenue model? I can't initially tell if you offer premium
services, or if the service is totally free.

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chexov
(vector) EPS files are sold over PayPal - no subscriptions yet, was a side
project really but seems to break even the hosting charges etc ...

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jazzychad
As an exercise with PHP and the gd library, I wrote a couple of scripts a
while ago that would generate UPC-A and UPC-E barcode images on the fly. I've
always been fascinated with barcodes and scanners that read them.

<http://jazzychad.com/barcode/>

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chexov
Nice, most complicated part for me was getting images "up to the spec.", since
I am mostly competing with desktop software, that pre-install drivers and
fonts my EPS files needed to embed OCR fonts (it took tons of time to produce
them accurately).

Here is the proud result (rasterized back from PostScript):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ean-13-5901234123457.png>

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alanstorm
I've assumed half the reason Google's been on a custom logo binge is to drive
users towards specific search terms and boost AdWords revenue. Show an obscure
geeky thing one week to keep the baying nerd masses happy, show Michael
Jackson the next.

It's nice to see "the little guy" getting a boost as well!

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chexov
what is really amazing is what amount of traffic goes directly to Wikipedia
(just deducting from the spills that we are getting today).

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strongsauce
From: <http://stats.grok.se/en/200910/Barcode>

Went from 24.6k hits to approx 1.3m

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chexov
Very nice link - many thanks!

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oneplusone
So, what does the logo say exactly? Just "Google"?

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jrockway
Yes. Yay for cell phones that can scan barcodes.

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Torn
Are there any iPhone apps that will read traditional barcodes such as the one
on the Google homepage?

All the ones I've seen seem to either only read the fancy 2D datamatrix-type
ones, or go off to some price comparison webservice and don't actually tell me
anything about the barcode.

Edit: Just tried zXing from the app store, and it failed all of the pictures I
took in good light conditions...

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jrockway
"Barcode Reader" on Android, which uses the zXing library, worked for me. (I
don't know how the iPhone app works, but Barcode Reader continuously takes
pictures until it recognizes a barcode. It seems to work quite reliably.)

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Torn
Ah, it seems the iPhone one 'barCodes' based on zXing only supports QR
barcodes. Eep.

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joubert
Interesting - type in barcoderbot in google search. (I misread your URL so
stumbled on this google nugget).

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chexov
Yes, actually finding a good domain name for this purpose is difficult - so
ended up with the long one. Best written in camel case: BarcodeRobot

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dlnovell
What encoding is it using?

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runner29
Google's? Code 128

