New sharing features in Google Docs are rolling out this week that not only make it easier to share your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online but also give you more control over who you’re sharing those materials with and how. Simply put, there will be three levels of sharing: private, viewable by anyone who has been given a specific link, and public on the web. But that’s not the only change –
Google’s made a couple of videos (see below) to introduce the new features and the new simplified interface you’ll find at http://docs.google.com, but here are some highlights worth noting:
Private is the default: All documents start out as private – you are the only person with access when you first create a document, and you have to make a conscious decision to share it with selected others. That should save some of us a good number of awkward oops moments...
Visibility on every document: Visibility options now appear next to every document title and in your Docs list. Click on the Visibility option next to any doc’s title (or on the Share button) to see the full list of those who can view and/or edit your document. Convenient!
Resettable doc URL: If you change your mind about sharing a document for which you’ve sent out a link, you can reset the doc’s URL at any time. That’s a bit of fine-tuning of control you may never need or want to use, but what a great option to have, just in case.
Have a look:
YouTube: Sharing in Google Docs
and
YouTube: Sharing
Bonus: Publishing Google Docs has SEO Benefits
Here’s one more point about sharing your materials via Google Docs that you may not have noticed when it kicked in late last year – any document that’s fully public can be crawled by Google Search. How is this useful? Exposure! Share your nonprofit’s reports, brochures, presentations, and promotional materials – use the 'Publish as web page' or 'Publish/embed' option – and link to them from your website or in social media (any publicly crawlable web page will do, in fact). Google Search robots will then crawl your published-and-linked Google Docs, so your document’s contents become available in search results – one more way for small nonprofits to boost the odds they’ll get found online!