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First launched nearly three months ago as part of Google Apps, Google Sites was Google’s rebranding of JotSpot. Late yesterday, Google Sites, designed to allow users to easily create and edit websites, launched for all:
Now we’ve made it easy for anyone to set up a website to share all types of information — team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it — in one place, for a few people, a group or the world. You can securely host your own website at http://sites.google.com/[your-website] and add as many pages as you like for free.
Google Sites pages offer easy-to-use WYSIWYG text editing, which the official Google blog likens to Google Docs’ interface. The blog also says it will be easy to embed calendars, documents, videos, photos, and gadgets “with the click of a button.” (Think it’ll be Google Calendars, Google Documents, Google Video/YouTube, etc. etc.?)
Google Sites also allows for collaborative pages, where you can invite anyone to contribute and edit a page, and user comments on pages. The program also features several page templates, including regular web pages, announcements pages and more.
Google has premiered an official blog for Google Sites as well as a three-minute explanatory video:
Obviously, this could be useful for individuals and small groups (not looking for search engine visibility). Anyone else planning on using it? And do you think the fact that it’s a Google-owned site would actually help search engine rankings?
