Google changes logo - traffic to our site spikes | Hacker News Reader

Google changes logo - traffic to our site spikes

44 pointschexov21 comments

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).

Too bad the bar code logo will go away - these are our Andy Warhol threw a "15 Minutes of Fame".

http://barcoderobot.com

View on HN

Obviously the comments on the site are most welcome ...

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

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

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/

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

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!

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

From: http://stats.grok.se/en/200910/Barcode

Went from 24.6k hits to approx 1.3m

Very nice link - many thanks!

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

Yes, just "Google". http://zxing.org/w/decode?u=http://www.google.com/logos/barc...

Yes. Yay for cell phones that can scan barcodes.

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...

I heard about Red laser barcode scanner, but did not try. The problem with EAN/UPC (grocery) symbols is that they are optimized for laser scanning - flat bed, one laser pass, poor light conditions etc ... QR, 2D barcodes are optimized for imaging where a complete (or incomplete) picture is analyzed.

"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.)

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

RedLaser from Occipital (a techstars company, I think) is in the iphone app store.

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

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

What encoding is it using?

Google's? Code 128

Reply on news.ycombinator.com