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17 May 2006

Google Account Service Names

This post isn’t about the actual service names – like Google Base, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, etc. – it’s about the name that’s passed around by Google Accounts when creating a new account or logging in; the value that’s usually appended to URLs like these:

If you append just any old word to the end of those URLs, you get the standard error for services that do not exist, which looks something like this:

Google Accounts: The page you requested is invalid.

As a pointless exercise, below is a list of values that don’t show that standard error. No fancy scripts were used to create this list – I simply rummaged around for them. (If you’re aware of any that aren’t listed, let me know.)

Update: 11 June 2006 (10:52)

The list of service names has now been moved to a more permanent home where I shall continue to update it as I find new services:

So what’s the point to all this?

Well, I figured that this could be yet another way to try and guess what new Google services are being worked on. For the more recent releases, Google hasn’t been setting up any subdomains, so my Google Subdomains script wouldn’t even have found anything new in advance.

When Google Notebook was first announced at Google Press Day, people set up scripts to monitor the www.google.com/notebook URL so that they could be the first to break the news when it was finally released.

I would guess that before any content pages go live, Google would ‘switch on’ the service in Google Accounts so that people could sign up for the service and login. Having said that, trying to append ‘notebook’ to the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘ServiceLogin’ URLs the day before Google Notebook was actually released still returned the standard error, but for other services – namely Google Base – you were able to try to login months before the service was launched. (For more on discovering Google Base, read my previous post.)

Does anyone fancy setting up a script to randomly test what other services they might be working on?

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18 Comments

Fun. And apparently Google doesn't exclude the accounts path via their robots.txt, so you can do happy googling for:

site:www.google.com/accounts

... which returns 141 pages at the moment.

Do you plan to run a dictionary script on this URL? Might reveal some new services!

Great post, Tony. I think you missed Google Analytics.

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?service=analytics
by Anonymous Anonymous  

Sorry that last post was mine. :-) My bad. Kirby

Kirby: Of course! Analytics has now been added too. :-)

Philipp: Thanks for the hint - how could I have forgotten to do that!?! This also found print, sitemaps and warehouse.

I would run my dictionary script against it, but last time I tried to do this for subfolders I got temporarily banned from Google because of the number of requests!

I think when you use not too many request a time, with pauses inbetween you ought to be fine... I'm doing lots of screenscraping from my server but only when I'm doing too much too fast do I run into "blocked" pages. Not sure what parameters make this work/ break... I was OK doing approx. 1000 requests to Google.com for my popular words script (the rest was done via the Web API).

So what's the point to all this?" asks Ruscoe.

Exactly. Buy a puppy and get out of the house. Sort it out Ruscoe, sort it out.
by Anonymous Anonymous  

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by Anonymous S Crayon  

Great stuff tone, but just cause the registration page is there doesnt mean you can use it. Google analytics for example will just say "invitation only" when you try and log in

Knowledge Search's code name is Confucius.

https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=

Can i create my service to..?

I want to costomize my login pages. Like putting my Logo to google login pages.

https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=

Can create service value to.?
for example
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=test

as result to customize the google login, like putting my Logo.

lover, you can only customize the logo shown on the login screens for Google Apps services.

i already create a Google Apps but i cant find how to customize?

i sign-up to google Apps for teh Standard Edition this can be done there?

Can you suggest what apps must i to use?

lover, try these support articles:

www.google.com/support/a/bin/topic.py?topic=14593

Thanks for the Support, but i can get this url
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=testas the URL when i log-in to google.
i'm basing by idea to this URL.

https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=orkut

that it can customize the left part of Google login.

Like I said before, you can only customize the logo shown on the login screens for Google Apps services.

Perhaps I don't fully understand what you're saying, so I may have misunderstood, but I don't think it's possible to do what you're asking.

How can i register a google service account Name?

Example
orkut.com use service name orkuthttps://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin=orkut

youtube.com use service name youtubehttps://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin=youtube


Can i create one too for our site?
google service account name.

named: mygoservice

winzter123, no you can't.