Google Australia: google.com.au : Google Oz, Map, News, Jobs, Immigration

google.com.au has an Alexa Traffic Rank ranging between #80 and #85 with a reputation score of over 68,500, based on the number of sites linking to the site. Google Australia ranks #1 in Australia, #91 in the Philippines, #133 in India and #676 in the United Kingdom.

Once visitors arrive at the site, not normally through search engine referral, 98% utilize Google Australia homepage for search, googlemaps, Australian News, adwords and personal accounts. The top search queries on the search homepage are 'Google', 'Google maps', 'maps', 'translate', 'Google Australia' and 'Google search'.

Visitors to this Google search engine homepage clone are more likely, than the internet average, to be in the 35 to 65 age bracket, with no college education, but less likely to be browsing from a school location. The visitor-by-country statistics show that ~86% of visitors are from Australia, 4.5% from India, 1.4% from China, then from 1% down to 0.5% from United States, United Kingdom, Philippines and Japan.

Australia, the world's smallest continent, is a vast and sparsely populated island in the southern hemisphere. It has coastlines on the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with the Tasman Sea separating it from New Zealand and the Great Australian Bight, on the south coast, being linked with the great southern ocean.

The centre and west are vast areas of desert or semi-desert; to the north lie tropical forests; to the east there are sub-tropical mountain ranges; and to the south lie plentiful grasslands.

The most mountainous region is the Great Dividing Range which runs down the entire east coast, with the Great Barrier Reef off the north-east coast.

Much of Australia's wealth comes from agriculture, with huge sheep and cattle stations extending over large parts of the interior. These have helped Australia's position as the world's leading producer of wool. Cereal growing is dominated by wheat, a major export. Other exports include meat, iron ore and much of its mineral wealth.

The capital of Australia is Canberra.

The currency of Australia = Australian Dollar.

Because of its great size, Australia's climates range from tropical monsoon, in the north, to cool temperate, in the south.There are also large areas of desert, particularly centrally. Central and south Queensland are subtropical while north and central New South Wales are warm temperate.

With the progress of global warming and the disintegration of the ozone layer over Australia, come extremes of temperature and weather conditions. In recent years Australia has seen more than its fair share of natural catastrophes related to heat and precipitation. It has become clear that more flooding and wildfires will hit the Australian continent in coming years.

The National language of Australia is English. That and the indigenous languages are:

• English (~17.4m) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=en
• Torres Straits Creole (~23.5k)
• Kriol (~10k)
• Angloromani (~5k)
• Dhuwal (~3.5k)
• Wahlpiri (>2.5k)
• Pitjantjatjara (>2k)
• Tiwi (~1.8k)
• Alyawarr (~1.5k)
• Gunwinggu (~1.5k)
• Murriah-Patha (~1.5k)

These are the indigenous languages with over 1.500 speakers. There are many more indigenous Australian languages with < 1,000 speakers, made up of many with < 100 speakers, more with < 10 speakers and many that are now extinct, with 0 speakers.

Over the period of time that Australia has been colonized, the English speaking population has been dominant. In the last 50 to 60 years immigration, although controlled, has seen increasing numbers of immigrant languages being spoken. The most prevalent of these (with > 10,000 speakers) are:

• Italian (~500k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=it
• Arabic (~250k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=ar
• Chinese (~190k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=zh-CN
• German (~135k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=de
• Greek (~107k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=el
• Spanish (~78k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=es
• Serbian (~39k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=sr
• Korean (~37k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=ko
• Vietnamese (~35k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=vn
• Aramaic (~30k)
• Latvian (~25k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=lv
• Polish (~14k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=pl
• Afrikaans (~12.7k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=af
• Japanese (~12k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=jp
• Kurdish (~11k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=ku
• Persian (~11k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=fa
• Lithuanian (~10k) http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=lt

Google Australia can be accessed in each of the languages above, using the URL placed next to them.

Functions available at the top left of Google Australia are:

1. Search - search for sites that have an Australian bias
2. Images - pictures from the Google picture database
3. Videos - Google videos
4. Maps - Googlemaps
5. News - Australian, regional and world news
6. Shopping - the Google shopping experience
7. Gmail - access your account or set up a new e-mail account
8. Documents - create and share working documents across the web
9. Calendar - schedule your life.

The [more] link has further Google functions: Translate, Books, Scholar, Blogs, YouTube, Calendar, Photos, Documents, Sites, Groups and Reader.

Links at the bottom of the screen are:

• Advertising Programmes 
• Business Solutions
• About Google
• iGoogle
• +Google

+Google is Google Australia Google+ (websites and info shared on Google+) for Australia. When you click the +Google button at the bottom of the homepage the following page is shown, as in the screenshot below. There you have sections for 'post', the page you land on, 'about', 'photos' or 'videos'. These pages give you everything that has been shared on Google+ for Australia.

You can get to Google Australia, as follows:

• Type 'http://www.google.com.au/' for the Google Australia homepage.

Note: the URL for Google Australia is www.google.com.au NOT www.google.au OR www.google.co.au

Australian pages are available from Firefox browser, using the Firefox URL:

• http://www.google.com.au/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-AU:official

Ensure Search 'pages from Australia' button is on, in place of Search 'the web' button.