Google PageRank Explained

Google PageRank Explained
by Matt Foster

Google PageRank Explained

There is much discussion surrounding Google PageRank, what it means, and how to improve it. With the advent of the Google toolbar, anyone willing to perform a short, free software installation can easily view the PageRank of any page on the Internet. But what does this all mean?

PageRank, in a nutshell, is determined by an algorithm loosely explained as follows: the more sites which link to any given site (site A), the higher the PageRank of site A. This does come with a couple of caveats, however:

1) The PageRank of the sites which link to site A determines the importance of their link - in other words, sites with higher PageRanks cast votes with more weight than sites with lower PageRanks

2) Regardless of the PageRank of the external site linking to site A, a one-way, inbound link will carry more weight than a reciprocal link.

3) PageRank is only one of over 100 factors used to determine a site's organic search ranking - so, while a high page rank is desirable, it is not the determining factor in achieving top rankings - which can only be achieved by a quality, thorough search optimization performed by a trained professional.

The first caveat above is relatively straightforward: if you look at a link to a site as a "vote" for that site, greater credence is given to sites which Google considers more important (higher PageRank). So, it is always best to seek links from sites with a relatively high PageRank. Of course, these links are harder to obtain, because sites with high PageRanks are less likely to want to "bleed" PageRank to lesser important sites.

The second caveat may come as a bit of a surprise to you - reciprocal linking does little, if anything, anymore, in determining the PageRank of a site. While at one time any link to a site was considered a "vote" for that site, Google soon realized that in the case of reciprocal linking (where two sites link to one another), the existence of the link was not so much a vote for that site as it was indicative of an agreement between two web site owners to exchange links for the purposes of artificially inflating their PageRank. The omnipresence of link exchange schemes is evidence of the flawed thinking that any links, no matter what, are valuable.

Reciprocal linking is wrought with perils, not the least of which is that while you cannot control who links to you, and are not punished for it, if you link to an external site which engages in known search engine spamming techniques (such as link farming), you will be penalized for linking to a "bad neighborhood". Google especially does not like attempts to manipulate its ranking algorithms, and it deals harshly with sites which engage in practices which are a violation of its Terms of Inclusion, or sites which link to these sites. I have seen many, many well intentioned individuals end up greylisted or blacklisted by Google because of innocent efforts to improve their PageRank through link exchanges or other schemes. It is important to remember that, 9 times out of 10, you are not smarter than Google. Therefore, anything you do to try to artificially increase your ranking will likely get you penalized - because they know all of the tricks in the book, and even some that aren’t in the book.

This is why one way, inbound links are so important. You are not at risk of linking to a bad neighborhood, and your links are not discounted due to reciprocity. But, how can we obtain one way, inbound links? Well, the answer, in the abstract, is fairly simple - give people something to which they will want to link. This is known as content.

Rich, quality, unique content not only makes search engines very happy, but it generates interest in your site, which generates the ever so valuable one way, inbound links. The most ethical, effective and quick way to obtain these quality inbound links is through the use of a weblog coupled with an outbound Atom XML or RSS site feed.

A weblog is simply a means by which you can add fresh content to your site on a regular basis, say once per week, by spending thirty minutes or so writing a brief article about what it is you know about - it can be your product, your industry, whatever. The important thing is that you are providing fresh, rich, unique content on a regular basis. This is powerful, as Google also has implemented a new "freshness" algorithm, by which sites with regularly updated, fresh content rank higher than stale, static sites. Additionally, when you implement an outbound XML or RSS feed, coupled with content syndication, your content then automatically appears on third party web sites who subscribe to your feed. Each time you update your site, their site is automatically updated as well with your new content. The most amazing thing about this technology is that, by default, when your content appears on a third party site, it automatically generates an anchor text link back to your site, for which you do not reciprocate. That is your benefit as the content provider - you get the one way, inbound link, and the third party site gets to use your content! You can quickly build hundreds or thousands of one way, inbound links by using this technology, and under the guiding hand of a trained search engine optimization professional, who will perform the necessary installations and site optimization, then train you on how to write your articles and syndicate your content.

I know this all sounds confusing â€" but it is really quite simple, and takes less than thirty minutes per week! Many people say, "I am not a writer," or "I don’t have thirty minutes a week". Well, how much are you already paying for your pay per click or other marketing campaigns? Would thirty minutes per week be worth your while if it would eliminate the costly, recurring fees of paid inclusion and other marketing schemes, by allowing you to appear in the organic search results for your relevant keyphrases? Most certainly, it usually is worth it!

As to the third caveat above, by all means, do seek to improve your PageRank. However, perform any search on Google and take a look at the sites listed in the top ten or twenty results, and you will see that they are not ranked according to their PageRank. So, to insist on increased PageRank as the defining factor of a quality search engine optimization is missing the point. Search engine optimization should only be measured by increased traffic over time - not the performance of any one particular keyphrase or PageRank.

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About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks Business Class, http://www.arteworks.biz, and is an expert in search engine optimization, regularly achieving top rankings for his clients. Mr. Foster has been active in the industry since 1995. For further information, or to begin the process of optimizing your site for search engines, please contact Mr. Foster toll free at 877-812-2217, or by email to matt@arteworks.biz.

Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing

Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing
by Ian McIntosh

Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman's products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant's website and the other being the affiliate's site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate's site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer's ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site's visitor would only have to visit the advertiser's site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser's website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant's side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

Getting Indexed, A Little Patience?

Getting Indexed, A Little Patience?
by Erich Sweaney

Newbie's and Expert Internet Marketers all have one thing in common: Trying to get their websites indexed through the top three major search engines quickly. For larger websites the task is even more daunting, and there are a few small but effective techniques that can assist in the indexing process. Patience is a virtue and in today's internet marketing world patience and planning is a key.

Smaller one or two page websites, also known as sales pages, are the easiest and quickest to get indexed in the three major search engines almost anyone can generally succeed by just manually submitting through each search engines submission process. Websites with a considerable number of pages will often only immediately get their first page indexed which therefore requires small effective planning strategies and a little bit of patience to become completely indexed.

Effective Key Planning Strategies:

(1) Prior to submitting your websites to the search engines or establishing link partners which will cause the search engines to start indexing in your website. Start planning out the basic website structure so that search engines robots can easily flow through your website and index each page.

(a) Have an sitemap linked from you main index page that thinks through out your website.

(b) If possible, ensure that each page is linked together, not just back to the main index page. This is not possible depending on what type of website you have, the number of pages, or your website design and structure. But this has been a successful technique in the past.

(c) Build and submit a Google Sitemap.

(2) Test your websites design and structure using Google Sitemap Software such as SOFTplus GSiteCrawler (Freeware) that will try and index your entire website. If your unsuccessful building a index of your entire website, then further planning and design changes maybe in order to index your entire website. If the software can not index your entire website, how will the search engine robots index your entire website?

(3) Instead of manually submitting your websites, submit your website through directories and establish link partnerships. This will improve how often your website is crawled by the search engines and how fast your website is indexed. Also, when establishing link partnership and directories higher the Google Page Rank, the quicker your website will be indexed and how often your website is crawled.

(4) Lastly, Patience. The process the search engine will go through while indexing your website is: First, the search engine will have to find your website (Hence, establishing partnerships with high Google Page Rank), then crawling through your website and absorbing all the information contained, then ranking each individual page and finally your website will appear in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

BackLinks - What They Mean to You

BackLinks - What They Mean to You
by Addie Scott

Do you have a new website? Are you new to the whole website scene? Perhaps you've heard talk about backlinks or inbound links. What are they, and just how important are they?

Well, let me say this: they can be the one most important factor when it comes to your Google PageRank. If you don't know what that is, it is a way that Google has of "grading" your site, for lack of other words. When your web page gets ranked it is with a value of PR1 to PR10, with the 10 being the highest.

If you aren't familiar with the Google PageRank, download the Google Toolbar from their website. Once that is done, if you look to the right of the Google search button, you will see a green bar with the word PageRank above it. You can gage a web site's page rank by where the green bar is within that space; half way would be a PR5, while all the way would be a PR10. You probably won't see too many of the latter, but that is exactly what you want to strive for.

What you want, as a webmaster/webmistress, is to have a high quantity of high ranked websites linking back to yours. These are backlinks. Their linking to you is tantamount to their voting for you. And the higher their PR, the more weight their "vote" holds. So, what you want is to have a large number of high ranking websites link to yours. Once this is accomplished, your site will be seen as having votes from websites that have already proven their importance. Consequently, this will move you up in rank. It's sort of like osmosis. Or being guilty by association, but in a good way.

Now you can go about the acquisition of these backlinks in a variety of ways.

Some believe that the best way to accomplish this is to study your competition. Do a search for websites using your keywords. Take a good look at the top five results. This is your direct competition. There are numerous ways and tools to help you look at the sites that link to your competitors (these are the same sites that you want to link to you). One easy way is to use your Google Toolbar. Simply type in: link:(your competition's URL), i.e. link:www.theirsite.com. The results will determine who you will contact regarding linking back to your site.

Once you have the results, what you will do in this scenario, is to find a contact for each website. If you find none, you can try to address your correspondence (which we'll get to in a moment) to webmaster@(URL), i.e. webmaster@ theirURL.com (I have put an unneeded space there for editorial purposes). Sometimes this works and, honestly, sometimes it doesn't.

Once you have a list of contacts, you want to write a nice little email asking them if they would be so kind as to link to your website. The truth is that most will want you to return the favor. This isn't as good as a one way link, but better than no link at all!

When you contact them it is best to be both complimentary and courteous. Let them know that you have visited their site, why you like it, and that you would like for them to link to your website. You will find that quite a few of the sites you visit will have a page or two already dedicated to link exchanges. That's fine, it saves you some time. Keep a record of who you have contacted. Many webmasters believe that it is looked upon more kindly if you place their link on your website first. You can always remove it if they are not interested. Your email might say something like this:

Dear Webmaster/Webmistress:

My name is (your name), and I am the webmaster/webmistress of (yoursite.com). I have noticed your website, because it is so similar to mine. My site is also about {whatever topic pertains). I was just wondering if you would be interested in exchanging links (I say this because it is easier to get them to respond if you are going to return the favor, but you don't have to). In the event that you are interested, I have already placed a link to your website on mine. You will find it at: (exact location of where you have put their link) i.e. http:// www. yoursite/links.htm, or whatever the location ends up being (note that again I have placed a couple of unnecessary spaces).

At this point you can either ask them to get back to you or you can provide them with the information that they will need, in the event they take you up on your offer. You will need to supply them with the title of your website , a description, your URL and perhaps the html code you would like them to use. Make sure to ask them for a response.

Again, you need to keep track of all of this, and the sooner you do it the more likely you will be to make it a habit. If you fall behind, you may be forever catching up

Now, the next thing that you want to do is to take every site that accepts your invitation and submit said site to Google. By doing this, you get Google to crawl that site and see their link to you. Brilliant! Does this sound like a lot of work? You bet it is! But it doesn't cost you a thing (except, of course your time, which can be very valuable). I haven't mentioned yet that, depending on the subject matter, your competitor could have thousands of links, and so far you've only tackled the first site on your list. Whew! I'm getting tired just telling you about it .

If this sounds too time consuming for you, there are tools that automate the process. True, they will cost you, but they sure will speed up the process.

You can also purchase links. Sometimes this is the only way to get a link from a website with a high PageRank. This can be quite expensive. But regardless of your time or your budget, this whole backlink thing can, in fact, be accomplished. How long it will take is the question.

Some believe that it is better to accrue these backlinks slowly; that achieving too many backlinks quickly will be frowned upon by the search engines. Others believe that the only that matters is getting the most links in the least amount of time. I think it is something that you must decide for yourself. Quickly or slowly, no cost or high cost; these are the questions you need to ask yourself. Once you've decided on a game plan, you simply have to implement it. Don't be afraid. The worst that can happen is that your invitation gets rejected. So, you move on to the next one. It can, in fact, be a never ending process, but what a learning experience!!

Good Luck!

For an ABSOLUTELY AWESOME and FREE SEO eBook, click here.

Combining The Power Of Google Adsense And Email Marketin

Combining The Power Of Google Adsense And Email Marketing
by Scott Patterson

In the past year, Google Adsense has become the "It" way to make money on the Internet.

But even if you already use Google Adsense on your site, you are probably leaving money on the table. Let me explain why...

Most people create a site, slap some content and then wait for people to click on their ads.

But once people click on an ad, they are gone....probably forever!

One method that smart Internet marketers use to maximize their Google Adsense is to harness the power of their email list. By getting people to subscribe to their list, website owners can continue to make money from their readers.

By utilizing the power of their email list, website owners can dramatically increase their Adsense income.

Here is how you can do the same. In the following article, there is a step-by-step list of how you can harness the power of your list to create a steady stream of Adsense revenue.

The first step is to create a topic that is in high demand. A good topic would be something that people have an interest in, or information that can help your readers personally or financially.

Your next action would be to create content for your site. The idea is to write or use information that would provide value to the reader. All your articles should help improve their life in some manner. You can create content for your site in a large numbers of ways. This can include:

· Your own web articles · Guides, product evaluations, and "How To's" · Blogs and RSS Feeds · Public domain works · Private label rights · Hiring a freelancer to write your content

Obviously creating content for your site is an ongoing process, so once you've created at least 10 pages of quality information for your readers, you should create your web pages and optimize them for Google Adsense.

As you are designing your pages for Adsense, you should keep one thing in mind- Your primary goal is to get people to click on your Adsense ads.

So don't give your readers too many options. As a result, it is important to keep your web page simple. To do this, you should include do the following:

· Place the article on the web page · Ad all three Adsense blocks in prominent places · Make sure that the ad blocks look like standard text, with the no borders and blue links · If you have to have other links on this page, include them at the bottom where there is a less chance of being clicked on

After designing your web pages, you need to create an autoresponder sequence for your email list. The primary focus for each email is to get people to click on your Google Adsense pages. So it is important to create and intriguing title. Then in the email, write a little bit about the importance of the article and tell your subscribers how they can learn more by clicking over to the site.

Once you've created your sequence of bringing readers to your Adsense pages, you should start promoting your lists. You can do this by articles, PPC, ebooks, viral marketing and SEO. The more people usually means more money, so you have to continuously work at marketing your website.

Once you have finished creating your Adsense and email system, you should go back and continue to add more content and market your site. By having a large selection of information and more readers, you'll discover that your Google Adsense income will grow exponentially.

?Google's new look on links?

?Google's new look on links?
by James Trivolette

What is "it" that Google has been looking for now? I'm sure by now you have read too many articles about the wicked Jagger Aftermath. Many things seemed to have changed and yet what has really changed? We still add relevant content and links, don't forget the links.

The idea of a good link, is what I think has changed the most. Nothing you read can be taken for the hardcore truth unless it is a leak from Google themselves and even then... (who knows?) So, what I have to say I will not say is the truth but in our work with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) along with what some other SEO companies are writing, this is what seems to be the case:

Inbound links carry more weight then outbound links. It doesn't hurt to have a few outbound links however for relevancy, but that is all they will get you. Reciprocal links are about as worthless as outbound links, good for relevancy nothing else. (you may and will need a little relevancy) What Google is looking for now, is almost impossible for the normal webmaster to obtain. The golden egg that Google is looking for is the inbound link you get from a big, well trusted website that has very few outbound links. So how do you get a backlink from a well trusted site that doesn't give out links to everyone? Ummmm...... you can't!!!

When and if the sites were to give you or you and someone else a link from there site it degrades the value of the backlink and their link becomes no better then any other sites backlink.

The only way to combat this is to try not to have too many outbound links yourself just a couple to establish your market relevancy and add as many "inbound only links" that you can. These inbound links must have your chosen keyword (hyperlinked to your site) in the middle of your description text. This is what is called anchor text. Any other way can degrade the value of the link somewhat.

Sure, this is a good way for Google to fight against people that own or use link farms. It is also potent at stopping people from using reciprocal links as a means to get high rankings. But, if you are determined to get ranked on Google, it is safe to say it can still be done. After studying how the Jagger Aftermath has struck the population a murderous blow back in November, we have implemented some new SEO techniques that has really brought up Google rankings. Further proof that Google can still be a relevant search engine. However, they still show too many non relevant results for my liking. Most of the common people are still going to Google to do their searches. Right now you can take all of Yahoo's and MSN's user searches and still not get the number of searches Google gets.

What is stated in this article is not to be taken word for word this is just from my experiences and it only applies to Google so far as I have seen. If you are looking to get MSN and/or Yahoo the above does not apply. REPEAT THE ABOVE INFO IS BETTER USED TOWARD GOOGLE ONLY!!

Google Launches In-Browser Video Player

Google Launches In-Browser Video Player
PC Magazine

Google on Monday introduced two new elements to its Video Search beta: a plug-in application that lets users watch videos in the browser and access to user-uploaded videos, which the company has been collecting since April.

For the average Web user, the Google Video Viewer is designed to make video accessible in a way never seen before, said Peter Chane, senior business product manager for Google Video.

Google wanted to make the viewing of videos "a very simple, consistent experience," Chane said, adding that the company wanted "to allow people to watch video today and, over time, to watch more video integrated into the platform [with] very interesting, diverse results from users—from TV, from organizations large and small, and from individuals."

The browser plug-in can be downloaded for free from http://video.google.com, and is specifically designed to play content exclusive to Google video. After installing the viewer, users can enter keywords into the search box and the results will show up with still-screen captures and small bits of text next to each.

Those with video available will have a small, triangular "play" icon next to the text. Once a user clicks on the video they want to see, five still-screen captures will be displayed in the browser–the top will be the full video and the rest will capture small parts of video that are most relevant to the specific search.

Click the play button, and the still image will spring to life within the browser. The plug-in currently works with the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Web browsers.

Google has yet to report how many user-uploaded videos it has gathered in the past few months, but some of them that the company recommends to users came from UNICEF and Link TV, which include David Beckham helping the organization in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a 25-minute news clip showing Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Chane said the user-uploaded videos go through a light screening test to make sure they don't violate submission rules, which bans any kind of pornography or other adult-oriented materials. And he said they've been keeping watch for copyrighted materials as well.

"Surprisingly enough, we haven't seen a lot of that," he said. "We've had a real resonation with organizations who want to upload video and want to get their voice out."

Google based its plug-in on the cross-platform VLC media player, and the company plans to make its code available to the open-source community as part of its Google code project.

"We're generally supportive of open-source efforts and thought the VLC work was especially high-quality and had good engineering," Chane said.

Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said the Video Viewer combined with Video Search expands far beyond being a nifty way to upload and view videos online. Instead, he said, it shows that Google will be a company that can provide an "end-to-end system for an ecobusiness."

"If you upload a video, there is a metadata file that asks whether or not you want to charge for your video," Weiner said. "Then consider the new Google for-pay services announced last week. It's apparent the company is headed to deliver video services that can then be delivered into business models."

Weiner also mentioned that he thinks Google eventually will create a more customized video player, like that used on CNN.com, which will make way for ad-based video content.

"If these videos are indexed well–and they are–you can play very poignant ads in the right content," he said.

Google Earth 3.0

Google Earth 3.0
PC Magazine

When the Keyhole satellite-imagery Web service debuted last year, we were impressed with the technology—so much so that we gave it our award for technical excellence. The folks at Google saw the potential too and used some of the company's IPO booty to snatch up Keyhole. The result is Google Earth 3.0: the same wide-ranging, detailed aerial images provided by Keyhole, combined with Google's excellent local search capabilities. And since the formerly $299 service is now free, we're even bigger fans. Whether you're traveling or just geographically curious, this new service presents map information using an intuitive, interactive virtual globe.

To get started, you download and install the 10MB Google Earth client, which provides access to the company's digital imagery servers. Type in an address and the on-screen view zooms in to it with a satellite's perspective in real time. (A 128-Kbps network connection is required.) You can use the convenient buttons to navigate in any direction, zoom in and out, and tilt the terrain for a true 3D effect.

In this version, Google has beefed up its collection of satellite imagery for worldwide coverage and has added 3D views of about 40 American cities. Buildings are rendered in gray blocks only, but that's enough to give a perspective of each city's skyline.

As you scroll around and zoom in and out, the animation is seamless and simply a joy to experience. Services like TerraFly present satellite imagery, but they don't offer such smooth movement. (It remains to be seen whether Microsoft's announced MSN Virtual Earth will offer the same sort of animation when it debuts this summer.) The easy-to-use client app also features panels for displaying maps, as well as for searching and cataloging your favorite places. You can annotate any location using a placemark (akin to a bookmark), and even add a live URL link. You can save and share annotations as XML files, and also e-mail or print any image on the site. And as with the original Keyhole service, you can mark two locations on the map and the service will calculate the distance between them.

Beyond marking individual points of interest, Google Earth gives you over 100 available geographical and business overlays to choose from, ranging from restaurants and other businesses to weather, crime statistics, and geology. In a big city like New York, these annotations can quickly become overcrowded, but the service had no trouble pointing out Italian restaurants in Manhattan, for example.

For any point of interest or business, Google Earth lets you link to the Google Local search feature, as well as to Google Maps. By default, linked pages are displayed in the embedded browser showing detailed information about a restaurant or business. One nit here is that cross-referencing satellite imagery (in Google Earth) and a standard road map (in Google Maps) was a bit awkward. Putting additional detail into pop-up windows on the actual satellite map (an approach that is apparently in the works for MSN Virtual Earth) seems like a better idea to us. And for getting driving directions, we actually preferred the driving locations in Google Maps for clarity. The animated flyover option inside Google Earth give you a bird's-eye view of your route, but the animation can be disorienting, especially for city driving. Luckily, text-based directions are available in both Google Earth and Maps.

A Plus version of Google Earth ($20 per year) adds the ability to draw shapes on maps and to import data from common GPS devices. The business-oriented Pro version ($400 per year) increases resolution for printing and lets you save your fly-by tours as video files for animations. But the vast majority of users will be well served by the free version. Its ability to provide smooth virtual flyovers is the best we've seen to date, and the integration of Google's search technology makes it even more useful.

Google, Skype Race Toward Next IM Frontier

Google, Skype Race Toward Next IM Frontier
PC Magazine

This week may well be the pivotal point in the emergence of instant messaging as a tool for the enterprise, as well as for consumers, according to experts.

Instant messaging plans were unveiled this week by Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies S.A, joining the IM offerings of Yahoo Inc. and other leading computer industry players.

There are believed to be 1 billion instant messaging users today, worldwide.

And, though nearly 90 percent of corporations have PC users who utilize IM, only 12 percent today have a corporate IM policy and an IM platform selected by IT, rather than by individual users, according to research by Omnipod Inc., a New York-based IM software developer.

"There are a staggering amount of accounts in the enterprise," Gideon Stein, chief executive officer of Omnipod, told Ziff Davis Internet.

"Young people are coming into the workforce, and this is the way they communicate. These announcements are going to create an opportunity for IM to really make it in the corporate enterprise."

That's because, right now, the IM space is somewhat akin to what the Internet itself was about 10 years ago. "It's the Wild West," said Mike Neumeier, a spokesperson for Atlanta-based Web hosting firm Interland Inc., in an interview with Ziff Davis Internet. "It has a legitimate place inside the enterprise."

A key feature of the new wave of IM offerings is that voice may be a component.

Google Talk is said to go beyond text-based instant messaging, enabling users to employ a PC keyboard to hold voice conversations with other computer users.

Microsoft's MSN Messenger 7.5 offers a number of back-end improvements to boost performance, but now also allows for the exchange of audio clips of up to 15 seconds.

The real killer audio app, though, is said to be coming from Skype.

Google Prepares to Take On Microsoft on the Desktop

Google Prepares to Take On Microsoft on the Desktop
PC Magazine

Google is poised to compete with Microsoft and produce an alternate computing platform for PC users, analysts contend.

Google Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., on Monday launched a beta version of the forthcoming upgrade of its desktop search tool, and on Wednesday the company is expected to unveil a "communications tool" that is said to be a step beyond the company's current search-related business focus.

The beta of Google Desktop 2 "is a new, easier way to get information—even without searching," said Marissa Mayer, director of product management for consumer products at Google.

"You can think of it as a personal Web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present Web pages, news stories and photos that it thinks you will be interested in."

One analyst, Gerald Flournoy, vice president of IT solutions at the consulting firm The Millennium Group, located in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., told Ziff Davis Internet that the computing industry has been eyeing the doings at Google for the past several months, anticipating major technology announcements, and news of a $4 billion stock offering.

"With this quantum leap forward, Google is stepping deeper into territory held by Microsoft—which has its own notepad and search features—and Yahoo, with its My Yahoo personalization efforts," said Flournoy.

Microsoft has made significant changes in the beta version of its new Vista operating system, including desktop search features, which seem to many to be created to compete with Google.

Yet, the very idea of what a desktop is—considered by many to be the "dashboard" that controls the PC today—is now changing, due to the competition between Google and Microsoft Corp., based in Redmond, Wash.

"New [desktop] search tools aren't just about serving up information, but rather quickly analyzing and digesting the meaning of that information," said Shannon Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters company, a key player in the information business.

"Effective role-based search applications will use technologies that uncover trending, comparison, discovery and determination of sentiment, which will then feed into applications that present the information using visualization and analytics."

To be sure, Sullivan said, the end result will only be as good as the underlying content that drives it.

"This means the most effective business search applications will be those that help users quickly navigate huge volumes of data and efficiently produce the most trustworthy information to the user," she added.

According to Flournoy, the new Google technology promises to be a new and easy way to get information.

If Google delivers on that potential, "now that would be a coup," said Flournoy.

Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Google Prepares to Take On Microsoft on the Desktop

Google bypasses browser to search PC drives, Web

Google bypasses browser to search PC drives, Web
PC Magazine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. unveils a computer and Web search tool on Monday using self-updating navigation and personal information software that puts it in more direct competition with Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.

The creator of the world's most popular Web search system said it was branching out beyond pure search to help users manage e-mail, instant messages, news headlines and music.

Google Desktop 2, as the new search software is known, helps users locate information stored on their own hard disk, on office network drives they may use and on the Web. Details can be found at desktop.google.com.

The heart of the system is a tall, rectangular "sidebar" with a set of panels that provide glimpses into the latest "live" information of interest to the user. It actively learns from each move a user makes to personalize what is featured.

"We really want to have people be able to sit back and watch the Web come to them," Nikhil Bhatla, product manager of the Google Desktop product, said, adding that: "We have tried to provide a lot of information in a small amount of space."

Innovative features include a headline syndication system that adds Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds of frequently visited sites, without any special user intervention. Aside from searching the Web, Google will trawl Outlook e-mail and PC program data like Word, Excel, Adobe PDFs and instant messages.

"All this information is available at one glance," Bhatla said. "You don't have to manually do anything," he said. Still, each feature is designed to be easily customized when desired.

SUBTLE PRESSURE

Step back from the screen and increasingly desktop applets, instant messaging windows, mobile phone browsers and interactive TV menus all look alike. Lines are blurring between different ways of navigating computers, phones and television.

Google is moving beyond "Coke Classic" - the basic experience of searching the Web through the browser for which it is known. In ways not always apparent to the user, Google is seeking to control more of a users' computer experience, the way Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online do.

Increasingly for Google, this means that users of its information management tools will not need such tools from Microsoft or Yahoo, and vice versa.

The downside is that Google Desktop's powerful information-vacuuming capabilities can compete for a computer's resources with these rival programs.

"There seems to be parallel development going on among all the major players," said Greg Sterling, a Kelsey Group analyst. The major Web media players all are creating "invisible walled gardens" that are less open than they first appear, he said.

Google's strategy remains focused on search and information management, but in small yet vital ways, users are being nudged to choose sides.

Just last week America Online introduced a new version of its popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) that emphasizes e-mail, radio, Internet phone-calling, text messaging with mobile phone users, even Web-based TV.

AIM targets people keen on all the new-fangled Internet communications. Yahoo lures entertainment fans and socializers. Microsoft attracts office workers. Google draws the Web-based information worker, but covets the other audiences too.

Yahoo offers its own "sidebar" within a user's browser, which manages music, photos and instant messenger conversations alongside whatever Web page Yahoo users are viewing. Yahoo recently acquired Konfabultator, which first popularized the modular programs it calls Widgets among Apple Macintosh computer users. Google's sidebar is similar.

In a challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the computer desktop, users of the Google Sidebar are encouraged to bypass the Windows desktop and "start" navigation menu. The Quickfind feature allows one to return to recently used applications or Web sites without extra mouse clicks.

Google Talk (Beta)

Google Talk (Beta)
PC Magazine

The new Google Talk Beta doesn't do much, but what it does, it does well. Google's long-awaited communication client offers instant messaging and Voice over IP—nothing more. You won't find video conferencing, file-transfer utilities, games, search boxes, stock tickers, or any of the myriad other tools available with its three primary competitors: America Online's AIM client, Microsoft's MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger. But if you're merely interested in sending instant messages and making the occasional online voice call, Google Talk is as slick, simple, and easy to use as any other Google app.

Available as a free download to anyone already using Gmail, Google's online e-mail client, Google Talk offers an interface much like any other IM client. As it launches, a small window appears in the corner of your desktop, and from there you can build a list of contacts. In order to add someone to what is commonly known as your "buddy list," you must first send them an invitation. You can do so simply clicking on the client's Add friend button and keying in their Google ID, or you can select names from your existing Gmail contact list.

If you invite people who haven't installed Google Talk, your invitation shows up as a message in their e-mail inboxes. If they're not already Gmail members, accepting the invite gets them a new Gmail account, as well. Otherwise, the invite automatically appears in the Google Talk client. In this case, the invitations aren't as obvious as we'd like them to be—some of us failed to realize we'd received an invitation until we were told it was waiting for us—but friends and colleagues can accept these invitations with no more than a mouse click. Once they do, you're ready to chat.

Simply click on a buddy's name, and up pops a window where you can trade instant messages. You can't do much in the way of formatting your messages or inserting emoticons and other graphics. Google Talk's answer for emoticons is to take keystroke combos like this " ;> " and convert them automatically to bold, blue text. But if all you want to do is send straight text, the client is more than adequate. Once you open an instant-message window and start a conversation, it tells you when the person on the other side is in the midst of typing. If your IM window is minimized when someone sends you message, an alert pops up above your Microsoft Windows task tray, complete with the full text of the message. And if you close an IM window after a long conversation with someone, the conversation will reappear if you click on the same buddy for a new conversation.

If you're talking to multiple people, it carefully stacks the multiple windows so they don't overlap. And if you like, you can talk to at least some non-Google users. Google Talk is built on the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), allowing it to trade IMs with other XMPP-compliant third party clients like Gaim, Jabber, and XChat.

Each IM window also includes an Email button and a Call button. The Email button lets you send your buddy an e-mail message, instantly launching your Gmail account inside a browser, while Call lets you initiate a voice call. Even with notebook PC speakers and a cheap microphone, the client's VoIP tools work wonderfully well—just as good as, if not better than, tools available with competing clients. We never had any firewall issues, and sound quality was crisp and clear.

It would be nice if Google added video to match its audio capabilities, but the company has yet to say whether it plans to add video or any other tool to the Talk client. There's little doubt, however, that this is just a beginning. Outside of the tools already described, the main buddy window offers an Inbox button that launches your Gmail inbox, a status indicator that lets people know whether you're online or not, and a settings menu where you can block incoming instant messages, save conversations, and manage notifications. And that's it.

Obviously, the Gmail user list as the starting point for potential Google Talk buddies is somewhat self-limiting. Google puts the number of Gmail users in the millions, but industry watchers say that number is far less than what you'll find on AIM, or the Yahoo! and MSN messengers. Some people want more buddies to pick from and more features to play with. But Google Talk Beta's initial release has a certain utilitarian charm to it. And since it dovetails so well with Gmail, current Google users are sure to be pleased.

Google Talk Tackles Chat, VoIP

Google Talk Tackles Chat, VoIP
PC Magazine

Barely a day goes by without a rumor that search engine giant Google is entering yet another client software and online service arena. In a relatively short time, we've seen the company release products for desktop search, e-mail, mapping, news and shopping info aggregation. Now Google tackles instant messaging and VoIP, with the introduction of the Google Talk Beta.

Starting today, Gmail (which is still in beta itself and invite only) users can download, install and run the client for free. According to Georges Harik, Google's Director of Product Management, "millions of users" and all Gmail member swill find their existing contact lists instantly ported to the new instant messaging client.

There's isn't much to the Google Talk interface. In stark contrast to America Online's instant message AIM client and Microsoft's MSN Messenger, Google's instant message interface includes no ads, search bar, scrolling stock tickers, videos, or even links to content from Google's numerous sites. This makes for an extremely lean interface and little but effective functionality. So while Google Talk Beta offers no emoticons, video or file transfer capabilities (features found in MSN and AOL clients), it does install and work smoothly. It also offers presence indicators in the form of colored buttons and contact name roll-overs that feature more info about the contacts status. Also notable is the inclusion of easy-to-use, full duplex—and free—VoIP that works with any PC that has a microphone and speakers.

Adding chat friends is easy and integrated with Gmail. You can search your Gmail contact list via the Google Talk client to look for people to add. Once selected, an invite is sent via Gmail. Gmail notifications have also been upgraded through Google Talk and now appear as graphical pop-up boxes on your taskbar. Gmail integration does not, however, extend to presence indicators in Gmail. So while Google Talk knows your Gmail contacts, it cannot tell when one of them is online and running the Google Talk Beta client.

Custom controls can be found under Google Talk's "Settings" menu. Here you can, among other things, add to your blocked "friends" list, decide whether Google Talk should launch at start up, save your recent chat history, and manage notifications.

Google Talk is also open. Built on the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), it works with Gaim, Jabber and XChat. Harik says Google hopes to "federate" with other clients and services and expects Earthlink to join in the near future. "[We] have outstanding calls to all other networks to help us all make an open IM service that protects all users, but lets anyone talk to anyone just like the phone service and just like e-mail."

AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft have attempted to tackle interoperability in the enterprise instant messaging space, but have yet to open the doors for cross communication between consumer clients. Still Harik is optimistic, "There have been times in the history of the Internet where things have taken off very quickly. Things have a way of moving from an open to closed network. We hope this will be the case here."

Google is also working on making the invite-only Gmail more open. Starting today, anyone in the U.S. who has a phone with SMS text capabilities can visit the Gmail site, enter their phone number, and receive a text invite and code from Google for a Gmail account. This also means they'll have access to Google Talk Beta. While this should increase Gmail membership, some still question why Gmail isn't simply an open service like Hotmail. Google's Harik promises that this is to protect the end user, "We've been slowly rolling it out to get more and more people. We want to maintain this as a system where people can't do odd things like send out thousands of spam mails or take up lots of names."

Stay tuned for a full review of Google's new Google Talk Beta service and client.

Google Desktop 2.0 (Beta)

Google Desktop 2.0 (Beta)
PC Magazine

Google surprised everyone in 2004 with the release of Google Desktop Beta, a desktop application that let computer users search the contents of their PCs as easily as they searched the Web. Google ups the ante with Google Desktop 2.0 Beta, a significant upgrade that includes a heavily customizable sidebar for bringing Internet content straight to your PC, along with better filtering for searching your photos, e-mail, and documents. We gave the latest version a whirl to see if the improvements are as good as the company claims.

Google Desktop 2.0 installs quickly. Indexing your system, however, takes quite a bit longer, and happens, at least initially, while your system is idle. So while you can get started with the Google Sidebar right away, your computer will need an hour or two of alone time (with you not working on the system) to index your system before you can run local searches. After that, Google updates the index in the background as you're working, so Web sites you visit and e-mails you receive are available almost instantly for searches. On our admittedly fast AMD Athlon 64 3500+ test machine with 1GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM SATA drive, we didn't notice much of a performance hit. CPU usage fluctuated between 2 percent and 8 percent while the machine was at idle. The same system showed fluctuations between 0 percent and 5 percent at idle without Google Desktop loaded.

Version 2.0 can search across old MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Message chats. In addition, the entire search index can now be encrypted using the Microsoft Windows Encrypted File System (EFS) under Windows XP Professional. As before, Google Desktop works with both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox, something MSN Desktop Search still can't boast.

The default sidebar—more or less a series of stacked windows that pop up over your task tray—contains a number of useful items, such as an e-mail box that can work with Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, or any other mail client you choose, news from sources such as Forbes and Business Week, a scratch pad, a continuously cycling thumbnail window that displays photos from your "My Pictures" folder, and a weather outlook for your zip code. The Web Clips window automatically picked up RSS feeds from Web sites that we had recently visited. (You can turn off autocapture.) Finally, the ubiquitous Google search box resides at the bottom of the sidebar. You can also bypass the sidebar interface in favor of two smaller, search-box-only options: the Deskbar, which stays in your taskbar, and the Floating Deskbar, which you can place anywhere on your desktop.

As you type characters in the search box, results begin appearing in a pop-up window. You can filter the results by clicking on "Web pages," "e-mail," and the like, and it will bring up the appropriate results page. These look just like Google search pages, so the interface is familiar. Clicking on an Outlook e-mail brings up the contents of the e-mail in the browser. It doesn't fire up the Outlook application, which means you can read the results instantly (even if the formatting looks slightly different in the browser window from how it would look in an actual Outlook window). You still have the option, however, of viewing the message in Outlook. Also, if you use Google Desktop 2.0's integrated Outlook toolbar, you can search for e-mail and read the contents directly in Outlook. As with Yahoo! Desktop Search's integrated Outlook searchbar, Google's search results are not real-time and can only be launched by hitting Enter.

If you're a news hound, you can enlarge the Web clips and news feed portions of the sidebar, and minimize something else you're not as interested in (e.g. stock quotes), or vice versa. Unfortunately, although Google Desktop adjusts the news items it shows you based on your surfing habits, there's no way to configure them yourself. In addition, recent e-mails (from Gmail, Outlook, and so on) appear in the sidebar. In our tests, Google Desktop was able to find recently received Outlook messages within seconds of their appearance in our inbox, matching the company's claims.

Using the new Quick Find feature, we were able to bring up an application just by typing a few letters of its title in the search box—it's certainly faster than navigating to the application through the Windows Start/Programs menu and even beats Microsoft's anticipated operating system update Windows Vista, which will offer an embedded search box in its new Start menu that lets you search for program names. Google Desktop still doesn't index the contents of ZIP files like Yahoo! Desktop Search, though it can, of course, locate the archive on your hard drive if you know its name. It will then find ZIP archives files that match your queries, and a simple click will show the files' contents in Windows XP. Also there is a plug-in that will let Google Desktop index ZIP files. You can download it here.

As in version 1.0, the Google Desktop API allows programmers to develop new tools that take advantage of Google Desktop. You can search for available plug-ins at the following link: desktop.google.com/plugins.

Other notable pluses include the use of advanced Google search operators and the ability to thread e-mail searches into conversation views. Unfortunately, Google Desktop doesn't support Macs, and only an English-language version is available (for other languages, the full release of version 1.0 is still available).

As a desktop search utility, Google Desktop generally stands almost level with Yahoo! Desktop. Both automatically index new and changed files and e-mail, and search Outlook contacts, tasks and notes. However, Yahoo! Desktop Search still benefits from its X1 roots, with support for over 300 file formats. Yet Google's no slouch. It can, for example, preview and index PDFs, which the other key competitor in this space, MSN Desktop Search, cannot do without a plug-in. Google Desktop also has wider support for search-while-you-type than MSN Search. It uses it in all the main locations—the Sidebar, the Deskbar, and the Floating Deskbar—while MSN can only search-while-you-type in its own Deskbar.

For purists, Yahoo! still offers a better desktop search tool, but Google Desktop 2.0's sidebar offers a compelling new way to navigate both your own computer and the Internet. It's a step closer to a tantalizing future ideal where the desktop interface would disappear entirely, and anything you wanted would be available immediately with a few keystrokes or mouse clicks. Google Desktop doesn't take you all the way there, but it makes finding things on your computer both faster and easier.

Google's Ad Network Spreads the Wealth

Google's Ad Network Spreads the Wealth
PC Magazine

Keeping Kuro5hin members happy is easy. As a collaborative discussion site on technology and culture, with members numbering in the tens of thousands, Kuro5hin has a community that moderates itself. When a user submits an article to the site, it eventually has to run the gauntlet: All Kuro5hin's members have the opportunity to vote yea or nay on whether and where the article will appear on the site. But try to advertise to Kuro5hin members and the response may be less structured. "Our community is one of those where if there was going to be any opposition to an ad format, they would let you know about it," says Rusty Foster, Kuro5hin's founder. "A lot of them are rabidly opposed to advertisements."

Still, Foster turned to Google's AdSense program in late 2003 as a way to increase revenue for the site, and the text-based advertisements—still running today—have paid off in more ways than one. In general, members have accepted the ads, which are now an important facet of Kuro5hin operations alongside the site's in-house text advertising and blog ads.

Kuro5hin is just one of thousands of Web sites that participate in Google's AdSense, an advertising program that helps even the smallest sites bring in revenue through clicks on site-placed advertisements from Google's massive ad network. "It's good. It's definitely an essential piece of the overall strategy. I know a lot of people rely on it entirely for their revenue, but I'm wary of that," says Foster.

After you set up an AdSense account, you just copy and paste a block of Google HTML and targeted ads start showing up on your Web site. You can elect to run ads based on content or to establish an advertisement-filled Google search on your site. If your Web site is about cars, for example, the AdSense software is smart enough to display advertisements about cars. Or, if you set up a Google search box on your site, the results of visitors' searches will also feature advertisements matched for relevance. When a user clicks on an ad, you get paid. Google is mum about exactly how much money per click it pays sites.

The money comes from the dollars advertisers spend in Google's AdWords program, which is designed for Web advertisers. AdWords members' advertising campaigns are based on keywords; members decide on the amount they're willing to pay Google every time their keyword advertisements get clicked. They can increase the advertisements' potential by increasing the amount they're willing to fork over. For example, if you pay Google $50 a click, your advertisement will be more likely to appear than if you pay $0.05 a click. But the ad's success will still depend on its keywords and overall click-through ratio.

"By showing relevant ads, Google ensures that users continue to find them useful, continue to pay attention to the ads, and continue to click when they are interested in products and services," says company spokesperson Barry Schnitt.

Though Web sites are adopting AdSense in increasing numbers, "click fraud" is a growing cause for concern with the AdWords system. Users can fraudulently click on a competitor's advertisements to jack up its advertising costs—and possibly force the ad off-line, if the cost of the day's clicks hits a set limit.

"Competitor A wants to stick it to competitor B just out of spite, and that can be in a small mom-and-pop type competitive landscape, or that can be some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies out there," says Jessie Stricchiola, president of the search-engine marketing firm Alchemist Media. "Every time they visit Google, they just want to search and click once or twice on a competitor's ads, just to stick it to them."

It's estimated that at least 10 to 20 percent of all clicks are fraud-based. Google detects and refunds money lost from fraudulent clicks, but advertisers who independently monitor AdWords' performance have found additional activity that costs them money.

As Google works toward increasing the competitiveness of its advertising programs, it plans to intensify its efforts at combating click fraud. Advertisers and aspiring moneymakers end up choosing AdWords and AdSense for the strength of the programs, says Schnitt; in the Google model, he adds, click fraud will eventually correct itself.

Google Hires 'Father of the Internet' Vinton Cerf

Google Hires 'Father of the Internet' Vinton Cerf
PC Magazine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)—Google Inc. said on Thursday it hired Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf to become its "chief Internet evangelist," the latest high-powered engineer to sign up at the Web search leader.

Cerf, 62, is widely known as the "father of the Internet" for his role in developing the TCP/IP standards that form the structure of the Internet.

He was hired away from telecoms company MCI Inc. and tasked with helping to develop new Internet applications for Google. MCI is in the process of merging into Verizon Communications Inc.

"The title is amazing," Cerf said in a phone interview.

"It's Chief Internet Evangelist, which suggests I should go from three-piece suits to some sort of ecclesiastical robes."

Cerf, who as a child was raised as a Congregationalist, quipped that his religion is "geek orthodox."

He grew up in Southern California. He was an undergraduate student at Stanford University and went on to co-develop the Internet's basic protocols with Bob Kahn in 1973. Cerf has remained an active inventor for more than 30 years.

He developed MCI Mail, an early commercial e-mail program between 1982 and 1986 then left to work on a digital library project with his colleague Kahn that involved an intellectual property rights protection system.

For the last 11 years he has been working on Internet infrastructure projects at MCI. Moving to Google will allow him to return to developing applications, a Google executive said.

"We expect Vin to work on new applications, to worry about where the Internet is going, and how to keep it healthy," said Bill Courghan, 52, a vice president of engineering at Google.

"These are all things which are good for Google," he said.

Since 1999, Cerf has served as chairman at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

He has acted as a peacemaker in an organization riven by controversies over the constitution of its authority by Internet activists, domain name entrepreneurs and governmental organizations outside the United States.

He said he hoped to retain the role in ICANN and avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Google serves as a registrar of Internet domain names and technically has business interests governed by ICANN.

Cerf joins other high-profile engineers Google has hired recently. These include Adam Bosworth, Google's vice president of engineering, known as one of the pioneers of XML, for Extensible Markup Language, which ungirds many modern Web applications.

Louis Monier was an early developer at AltaVista, which was the Web's most powerful search engine in the early years of the commercial Internet. Mark Lucovsky was part of the team that developed Windows NT at Microsoft Corp., while Andy Rubin was a founder of Danger Inc. which developed the Sidekick Web phone.

"These people just don't know you can't do that. So they just go out and do it," Cerf said of working with a generation who came of age in the Internet era. "That's the great thing of working with all these new folks."

Google Prepares to Launch WiFi Service

Google Prepares to Launch WiFi Service
PC Magazine

LONDON, Sept 20 (Reuters)—Online search leader Google is preparing to launch a wireless Internet service, Google WiFi, according to several pages found on the company's Web site on Tuesday.

A WiFi service, which offers a high-speed connection to the Internet, would take Google even further from its Internet search roots and move it into the fiercely competitive world of Internet access providers and telecommunications companies.

The Google Web site has several references to Google WiFi but provides few details. One page refers to a product called "Google Secure Access", which is designed to "establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi."

A separate page offers a free download of Google Secure Access, carrying the headline: "Your wireless connection is almost ready to use."

Google declined to comment. The company has already launched a sponsored WiFi "hotspot" in San Francisco's Union Square district in April with a start-up called Feeva.

Speculation about a forthcoming Google WiFi service has been rife since August following an article in Business 2.0 magazine, but the company has refused to discussed its plans.

Analysts have voiced concerns that Google could extend itself too far beyond its core business, while acknowledging its vast financial and engineering resources could produce results.

"Becoming a service provider would be quite a stretch for Google, but considering the billions of dollars Google could throw at the problem it could become a reality," Ovum analyst Roger Entner wrote in the wake of the Business 2.0 article.

"Depending on how Google can adapt to these challenging areas and how committed it is to the space, it could become a home run or could break the bank."

WiFi is an increasingly popular technology that is used to provide high-speed wireless Internet access in homes, business and public spaces like airports and coffee shops. WiFi connectivity is built into many new laptop computers, as well as some handheld devices and Sony's PlayStation Portable.

The FAQ says that the Google Secure Access service is in "beta", meaning that the company does not consider it a fully finished product—standard operating procedure for services like Gmail.

Google, which is rapidly expanding beyond its core Internet search service, introduced an instant messaging and telephony service called Google Talk in August.

Its shares were up 1.6 percent to $308.64 in morning trading on the Nasdaq exchange.

"I think strategically it absolutely makes sense but its profit and loss impact remains unclear," said Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali.

Google Proposes Free Wi-Fi for San Francisco

Google Proposes Free Wi-Fi for San Francisco
PC Magazine

SAN FRANCISCO—Marking its biggest step into the wireless communications market to date, Google Inc. said Friday it has proposed to provide free wireless Internet services across the city of San Francisco.

The Web search company said it has responded to a request for information by the City of San Francisco to test local Internet services via Wi-Fi, the short-range wireless technology built into most new laptop computers.

"Google has submitted a proposal to offer free, wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) to the entire city of San Francisco," Google said in a statement.

The Wi-Fi access could be funded through online advertising, a Google spokesman said.

The service aims to test a range of new services and applications around the hilly city, which is home to more than 700,000 residents.

Offering free wireless communications could thrust Google into competition with entrenched local suppliers of broadband Internet access, including telephone network SBC Communications Inc. and local cable operator Comcast Corp.

An effort by the city of Philadelphia to offer municipal Wi-Fi Internet access services has met with stiff opposition from phone company Verizon Communications. Chicago and New York are among other cities considering similar plans.

"This proposal is limited to San Francisco and we don't have any plans to expand this community service beyond the (San Francisco) Bay Area," the Google statement said.

Confirmation of the Google proposal came after a public "request for information and comment" by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for ideas on creating a universal, affordable, city wireless network.

The wireless proposal aims to reach handheld organizers, computers or mobile phone devices, from the financial district to low-income neighborhoods, the city said in a statement.

In July, Google confirmed that it had began a limited test of a free wireless Web service, called "Google WiFi" with tests at a pizza parlor and gymnasium near its Mountain View, California headquarters.

The company began sponsoring a Wi-Fi "hotspot" in a downtown San Francisco shopping district in April, working with a start-up outfit called Feeva.

If it is chosen for the project, Google is working with a variety of partners to help it set up and manage the wireless service, said Google spokesman Nathan Tyler.

Google would work with partners to build and operate the wireless service, including Wireless Facilities Inc., a San Diego company that helps run networks, the Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

Other companies that responded to San Francisco's request for information include Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. of Atlanta, the Journal said.

"If accepted, we believe Google can bring to bear its expertise managing complex computer networks combined with years of online consumer product development, to benefit the people of San Francisco," Google said of its proposal. (Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York)

More Classifieds for Google Local?

More Classifieds for Google Local?
PC Magazine

Search giant Google appears to be aggressively moving to include more classifieds listings in search results, a market analyst said Wednesday.

In the past few months, Google's been courting major providers of classified advertisements, including online listings of employment opportunities, and may have already signed deals with some of them, according to Classified Intelligence, an Orlando-based classified advertising consultancy.

The classified ads would presumably show up in Google's local search results, which are designed to hunt for goods and services in a particular town or city.

Local search and classified advertisements share the common purpose of connecting providers of services and goods with consumers habitually near their stores or offices, which helps to understand Google's apparent interest in them. Yet, very few classified ads seem to show up in Google local search results, according to Classified Intelligence Founding Principal Peter Zollman.

Google's competitors already have classifieds, typically organized as separate subdomains.

Read more here about Google local search.

The local search market continues to become a more important element of the overall Web search industry.

A recent survey of nearly 4,000 Internet users by The Kelsey Group and BizRate.com found that one in five of the searches were focused locally, and that three-quarters of those surveyed used the local searches from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and other major search engines.

Google Merges Maps, Local

Google Merges Maps, Local
PC Magazine

Who says Google tools never come out of beta? Today the company removed the beta tag from both Google Local, where you can search for businesses and services in a particular area, and Google Maps, where you get local maps and driving directions. Plus, it has decided to combine the two services and serve them both up under the name Google Local.

"Google is all about search efficiency," says product manager Bret Taylor. "And I think we've made a lot of strides in terms of efficiency by combining the two services."

Now, when you query Google Local (local.google.com), a map pops up, displaying the many businesses and services that match you query. If you search on "Pizza in San Francisco," for instance, it displays a map of San Francisco sprinkled with red tabs pointing to various pizza parlors. It also lists each restaurant down the right side of your browser. When you click on a restaurant a small window pops up on the map, providing address, phone number, and other information.

The idea is that you're no longer forced to jump back and forth between separate Local and Maps sites. Everything is in one place. But Google has retained all the nifty tools that made these two services so useful. Most notably, you can still click on a map, drag your mouse, and instantly pan to new locations. If you're looking at a map of San Francisco, for instance, you can immediately drag Oakland and Berkley into view. Each map also still includes a "Satellite" button that ties into Google Earth, letting you instantly display satellite photos of the area. And you can just as easily bring up driving directions.

Tips and Tricks for Hacking Google

Tips and Tricks for Hacking Google
PC Magazine

We all live in Google. It's more than merely the one of the best search sites on the planet; it has become a constellation of sites and services, from desktop applications to Internet-based applications and destinations, and it's even branching out into offering free Wi-Fi service.

In short, Google is its own universe—and like the universe after the Big Bang, it's constantly expanding.

That means that becoming Google-savvy is as important, and possibly even more important, than becoming Windows-savvy. After all, Microsoft Windows is just an operating system. To do anything useful with it these days, you need Google or one of its many services.

To help you get the most out of this brave new universe, we're presenting more than 30 Google tips and tricks. They'll help you get more out of the Google Desktop search application; Gmail, Google's unique and useful free online e-mail; and a variety of other Google services, such as Google Video, Google Maps, Froogle, and more. Oh yes, we forgot . . . Google is a search engine too, isn't it? So we include tips for better Google searching as well.

So drop into Google's world of services, open this article beside it, and happy Googling.

Other Google Services

Other Google Services
PC Magazine

Browse Froogle's Hidden Directory

Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) is a great place to find deals on just about anything you want to buy online. Type in a product name or type of product, and you'll find links to the products for sale, allowing you to compare prices and features. But Froogle has one problem compared to other price-comparison sites such as PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com) or NextTag (www.nextag.com). It apparently doesn't have a directory, so you can't browse for products—you can only search using the usual bare-bones Google search.

In fact, though, there is a hidden Froogle directory you can browse. Get to it at http://froogle.google.com/froogle/?cat=0, pictured in the nearby screen.

The directory works like any Web directory. Click to categories and subcategories to find the products you want. What makes the directory particularly useful is that when you browse through it, you can do highly targeted searches. When you're at a category or subcategory and you do a search, you're searching only within that category or subcategory, instead of all of Froogle, making it easier to find your desired product quickly.

Turn Your Google Homepage into an RSS Reader

Google's new Personalized Home page is a departure from the classic, bare-bones Google screen. Similar to Yahoo!'s My Yahoo feature, it includes customized news, stocks, weather, and other information. But its best feature may be its ability to become a simple-to-use RSS reader so that you can keep up with your favorite blogs and other RSS feeds.

If you haven't yet created your Google Personalized Home page, go to Google and click "Personalized Home" at the top of the page. If you have a Google account, you'll have to sign in. If you haven't yet created a Google account, you'll be prompted to do so.

Once you create your account, go to www.google.com. It won't be the usual bare-bones screen. There will be a variety of news and content there. To add new sources of content, click "Add Content" and click the category and type of content you want to add, for example, news from the New York Times or Movies information. But the amount of content you can add like this is relatively limited compared with all the information available on the Web. The real power of the page is in its ability to display RSS feeds.

To add an RSS feed, click "Add Content" and then "Create a Section." If you know the URL of the feed, type it into the box and click Go. The feed will now automatically be added to your Personalized Home page. Under the feed will be the headlines of posts; click on any head to see the full article in the Web site where it originated.

It's easy to rearrange feeds on your page; you can drag the entire feed to any location on the page by moving your mouse to the right of its name until a four-headed arrow appears, then dragging it to where you want it to be. To change the number of headlines that appear on your page from the feed, click "edit" next to the name of the feed and select the number of headlines you want displayed (you can choose between one and nine).

What if you don't know the URL of the feed, or you want to search for feeds? Click "Create a Section" and then type in the term that describes a feed you're interested in. A list of feeds appears, as shown in the nearby figure. Select a feed and click "Add," and the feed will be added to your page.

Search Through and View TV Shows with Google Video

As we were preparing this story, Google was testing yet one more amazing search tool: a way to search through and then view TV shows, including news, entertainment, and more, for free. The search includes not only national networks, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, but also local programming and shows from around the world.

At press time, no link could be found to the service from Google, so you may not be able to get there unless you know the URL for it. By the time you read this, the URL may have been added to the list of Google's visible services, but if not, here's the secret URL: http://video.google.com.

When you type in a search term, Google Video searches through closed-caption transcripts of TV shows, then displays a list of shows that contains the term in the transcripts. Click the show for more details, including the date and time it was broadcast. In some instances, you'll only be able to see stills of the show and a transcript. In other cases, you'll view the video when you click it.

There are several ways to fine-tune your video search. You can, for example, search only through a particular network, by typing "channel" in front of your search, then the channel you want to search, and then your search term, like this:

Channel:CNN Iraq

(For a list of channels you can search, go to this Web page: http://video.google.com/video_about.html#channels)

You can also search only through a specific show, by typing "title" in front of your search, then the title of the show, and then your search term, like this:

Title: Nightline Iraq

If you want to make sure to also search through local news, you'll have to tell Google Video where you live. To do that, click Preferences, then type your zip code in the Location box and click Save Preferences.

Extreme Google Local

Extreme Google Local
PC Magazine

Think Google Local (formerly Google Maps) is cool and useful? As Al Jolson used to say, "You ain't seen nothing yet!" There are many amazing applications that layer information on top of Google Local, such as live traffic information, crime maps, and so on. All this is made possible because Google freely publishes an Application Programming Interface (API) that lets people create applications on top of Google Local.

Here's a short selection of some of the best:

Google Traffic Maps (http://traffic.poly9.com/) Want to make your morning or afternoon commute a little easier? Before you leave home or the office, head to this site, then type in your city and state or zip code, and you'll see a map that shows you a Google map of your area, with traffic hot spots superimposed on top of it. Click a spot to get details of the holdup.

NYSee (www.nysee.com) If you live around New York City, you can do even better—this site shows you locations of live traffic cams throughout the metropolitan area. Click on any to see the live view of traffic. The page also includes traffic advisories for specific locations.

Zip code finder (http://maps.huge.info/) Having trouble finding a zip code for a location? Just head to this site, click a location on a map or do a search, and you'll be shown the zip code. It's also a reverse zip code finder, so you can type in a zip code and it will show you where it is.

Find cheap gas (http://www.mywikimap.com/) One thing you can count on—gasoline isn't getting any cheaper. But driving from gas station to gas station trying to find the least-expensive prices is self-defeating, because you'll spend so much extra time and money driving around. This site solves the problem. Head to it and search for cheap gas using the "regular" tag, include your zip code, and you'll be shown locations of the least-expensive gas within five miles.

Update Blogger from Anywhere

Google owns the big blogging service Blogger (www.blogger.com), which makes it easy for anyone to create their own blogs for free. And a couple of free tools from Google make it easy for you to update your blog without having to visit the Blogger site.

To update your blog wherever you are on the Web, first download and install the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com). Then turn on its Blog This! feature by clicking the Options button, clicking the More tab, checking the box next to "Blog This!," and clicking OK. The Blog This! button now shows up in your toolbar.

When you're on a Web page that you want to write a blog entry about, click the Blog This! button, type in your Blogger user name and password, and a small window opens that already contains the title and URL of the page you're visiting. Type in your blog entry, and you can use built-in tools for formatting text and creating links. When you're done, you can save a draft or publish the entry right away to your blog, by clicking "Save as Draft" or "Publish."

Another free add-in lets you update or edit your blog when you're using Microsoft Word. Go to http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html and download the add-in. It installs new buttons that let you post to your blog straight from Word. After you write your post, click the "Publish" button to publish it, and click the "Save as Draft" button to save it as a draft. You can also edit posts you've already created. Click the "Open Post" button to open your last 15 posts right into Word, so you can edit and post them. You'll of course need to be connected to the Internet to do all this. The add-in requires Windows 2000 or higher and Word 2000 or higher.

Dig Deeper into the Web with Google AutoLinks

Google's search technology makes it easy to find untold amounts of amazing information and maps. But it often takes too much typing or too many clicks to get there. If you're visiting a page with an address on it and want to map that location, for example, you have to copy the address to the Clipboard, head to Google Local, and paste the location into Google Local before you see the mapped results.

The Google Toolbar AutoLinks feature eliminates all those steps. A little-used feature of the Google Toolbar, it searches every page you visit, looking for addresses, VIN (Vehicle Information Number) numbers, book ISBN numbers (every book is identified by a unique ISBN number), and more. Then it creates a link on the page itself for each piece of information it finds. Click an autolinked address, for example, and you'll immediately be sent to a map of the location in Google Local. Click an ISBN number, and you're sent to the Amazon page about the book.

To use the feature, download and install the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com). Then turn on its AutoLink feature by clicking the Options button, clicking the Browsing tab, checking the box next to AutoLink, and clicking OK.

Now whenever you're on a page in which you want to dig deeper, click the AutoLink button. It creates links to whatever it can and highlights those links on the page. It also creates a list of every AutoLink on a page, as shown in the nearby figure.

Google Search Tips

Google Search Tips
PC Magazine

Personalized Google Searching

Google gained popularity primarily because of the accuracy and speed of its search. The new Personalized Search feature promises to improve its accuracy even further.

To use the feature, you'll need a Google account. Create one, or if you already have one, sign in to it. (To create an account, go to https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount.)

Once you have an account, go to Google, and click "Search History" in the upper right-hand part of the page. You'll come to a blank Search History page. Click "Resume." From now on, Google will keep a record of all your searches and which pages you clicked from those searches. As it learns what you click on and what you search for, it will begin to shape its search results to your search behavior. At first, that most likely won't be noticeable, but over time, you should notice that your searches return more accurate results.

The feature does more than fine-tune your searches, though. It also lets you easily revisit pages and searches you've already done, and to search only through your previous search results. This is particularly useful when you remember that you once performed a Google search that gave you good results, but you can't remember the query or the site you visited.

When you turn the feature on, all your searches are saved, as shown in the nearby figure. To get there, go to Google and click "Search History," or else go to http://www.google.com/searchhistory. Once you're on the page, to revisit a site or search, click it. You can also revisit all the searches you performed on a given day by using the calendar on the right side of the screen.

What makes this page particularly powerful is that you can search only through your search history instead of the entire Web. To do it, type in a search term and click the "Search History" button. You'll search only through your previous results.

There's really only one problem with this feature—it can quickly become cluttered. To clean up the page, you can remove any searches or sites. Click "Remove items," and from the page that appears, check the boxes next to any item you want removed, and then click "Remove."

Google by the Numbers

Modern life is filled with numbers—zip codes, area codes, UPC (universal product codes) Federal Express tracking numbers, and more. One of Google's least-known capabilities is its ability to ferret out information based on numbers you type into it—and in most instances, you don't even need to tell Google what kind of number it is. It will figure it out for itself.

For example, let's say you're considering buying a used car. You'd like to find out whatever you can about the car before buying. Look on the front of the windshield and find its 17-character Vehicle Information Number (VIN). (The VIN number may also be in the owner's manual.) Type the VIN number into Google as you see it, without hyphens or spaces (for example, 1g2pm37rxfp271693), and you'll find a link to a page on the Carfax service, which gives you basic information about the car, including year, make, model, body style, engine type, and the country in which it was manufactured. If you want a complete history of the car, you can pay $19.99 for a complete report, including a record of accidents, whether it was in a major accident, and so on.

There are a lot of other numbers you can type into Google to find information. Here's a short list:

Type in a product's UPC code and you'll be sent to the UPC Database, which gives you manufacturer information about any product. Type in a Federal Express tracking number, and you'll be a FedEx page that supplies tracking information. Type in a U.S. Postal Service tracking number, and you'll be sent to a page with tracking information. You can only do it on packages that you can also track through the U.S. Postal Service site, which means only for letters or packages that you've sent via a means that allow tracking. So, for example, if you simply have a USPS number from having shipped a package, but haven't paid for a service that offers tracking, such as registered mail or certified mail, it won't work. Type in the flight number of an airplane, including the airline, such as Delta 1098, and you'll get a list of pages from which you can track the status of a flight. Type in the tail number of an airplane, and you'll see its full registration form for the plane. Type "Patent" and then a patent number (like this: "patent 5123123") to get information about any patent.

Map Relationships Among Web Sites

The Web got its name because it is a giant spider web of invisible connections among sites. If you could see the relationships, it would, in theory, be much easier to find information you're looking for.

The TouchGraph Google Browser maps out those invisible connections and in doing so, makes it easier to find information you want. Beyond that, it's a great way to meander through the Web, following logical connections until you end up in unforeseen places.

To use the browser, go to http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html. then type in a URL, for example, www.pcmag.com. A new window will open, and after a bit of screen pyrotechnics, the site you searched for will be in the middle of the screen, connected to related sites—with those sites connected to related sites, and so on, as you can see in the nearby figure.

Click on a site, and a small green info box appears. Click that box, and you'll get a snippet of information about the site. If you want to visit the site, click the URL inside the snippet, and the URL will launch in a new browser window. If you want to map the connections from any site on the map, double-click it and it will become the center of the map, with all the relationships to it displayed.

Better Google Image Searching

You most likely know that Google Images (http://www.google.com) is a great place to find pictures on the Web. But if you've ever used the site, you know that it's tough to narrow your search, and you usually end up with far too many results.

To solve the problem, use Advanced Search and extra search syntax. Clicking "Advanced Image Search" brings you to the pages shown in the nearby figure, which lets you narrow down your results by filtering by file type, file size, domain, and coloration (black and white, grayscale, or full color).

There are other ways that can help you quickly find the picture you want. You can use other Google search syntax (although not all of it) in Google Images.

The most useful is "intitle:" When you use this syntax, it finds the keyword or keywords you're looking for in the page title. This may be the most useful search syntax of all. So to look for paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, you might use this syntax:

Painting intitle: Bosch

Note that you can combine this with the Advanced Image Search. Type the syntax in the "related to all of the words" search box.

If you're a fan of using the basic Google search box, and don't want to have to use the Advanced Image Search form, you can use Google syntax there for some of the advanced image-searching features. Use "filetype:" to narrow the search to a specific file type; and "site:" to narrow it to a Web page or domain. So, to search for paintings by Bosch in the .jpg format in the www.mystudios domain, you'd type this syntax:

Google: King of the Tech World

Google: King of the Tech World
PC Magazine

Google is now the most important technology company in the world. Microsoft? Yesterday's news. Intel? An also-ran. IBM? The day before yesterday's news.

If you're looking for evidence, take a look at PCMag.com's homepage. Lately, it's been overrun by Google. As I write this, there are two Google-related stories stacked on top of each other. There's nothing on Intel or IBM. Microsoft's Windows Vista is there, but it's the only Microsoft story anyone really cares about. The technology page of CNN.com has three Google headlines. If someone at Google burps, people care.

The company nearest to Google in terms of hipness and being a true alternative to the big guys is Apple. But most of its products serve a small and truly passionate user community. Google's user community is, by contrast, everyone on the Web. There's really no comparison.

Right now I feel for Bill Gates. It must be so frustrating running the company that was at the center of the technology universe. Microsoft had that distinction in the 1980s and part of the 1990s, although it transformed, in many people's minds, into "the evil empire" in the late 1990s. These days it's viewed as established, a big business for big business, and generally stodgy. Now Gates and Microsoft know how IBM must've felt in the 1980s.

Google, like Microsoft circa 1986, has earned its place in the pantheon of technology gods. It's built a rock-solid search business and expanded expertly into e-mail, satellite imagery, news, shopping aggregation, and browser toolbars. Recently, Google added instant-messaging and Voice over IP apps. Each of these products is well done, if not market-leading. When we write about or review any of them, the traffic is significant. Stories about how to get more out of Google search explode.

Google is, right now, the center of everything, online at least. More than once, I've been asked if Google is taking on too much, expanding too far into categories it can't handle. Usually I answer, "No." Google's line extensions have dovetailed nicely with its existing products and fit not only the Google brand, but its basic approach to product development and release: Build light, simple, and effective apps, and remain in an "underdevelopment" beta mode for as long as possible to shield the young products from criticism. This is one rock-solid strategy. Google rarely, if ever, varies from this. I defy you to find a cluttered or complicated Google product—and it's also just as hard to find a final version of anything.—Continued...

Google is not invincible, however, and the first chinks in the armor are quite visible. Some of what Google does in search, especially ranking results, is seen as manipulative, and its way of delivering contextually relevant ads is viewed by some as an invasion of privacy. The company is making its way, ever so slowly, into "evil oligarch territory." That, as Bill Gates could surely tell Google's Larry Page, is the next logical step in the Google evolution. All world dominators are ultimately viewed as evil. People either knuckle under to them or seek to overthrow them—and sometimes they succeed.

Google execs have been, for the most part, much smarter than Microsoft, avoiding binding licenses and grabby deals that smell of too much global ambition. Virtually every tool it offers to consumers is free, and the company persona is one of good times and corporate casualness. No one really expects Google to end up like Microsoft—an unhip company that's only interested in money (heaven forbid a business should operate on a revenue and profit motive). Google is the counter culture.

Still there is a dissonance at work in Google's world. The best evidence we have is from the remarkable CNET vs. Google incident. There were reports a few months ago that Google has banned CNET for a year—no one from Google is supposed to talk to anyone at the technology Web site, and this, I believe, includes cluing them in on upcoming product developments. Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face. We compete with CNET, but even I know that you want to talk to them if you plan on getting the word out. What's more alarming about this development is why Google banned CNET. The Web site's news division apparently used Google's own tools to research and report on one of Google's key execs. It then reported its findings on the CNET Web site. Someone at Google went ballistic.

This is not the kind of response we expect from Google-Land. They're happy, cool, playful, willing to make and take jokes. Look at the whimsy we sometimes see on the Google homepage when it changes the logo for a holiday or special event. Few other big businesses would do that. So why is Google acting this way?

It's inevitable really. Google is acting this way because no company can stay small, young, and hip forever. The leadership ages and changes, more traditional corporate types arrive as the company grows, and soon Google's just like anyplace else. I mean how can it not be? The company has tolled out a multibillion-dollar IPO. That means the quiet, private do-it-your-own-way company is answering to a lot of more traditional shareholders. People who, regardless of how liberal they are on the outside, must push the company hard to make bigger and bigger profits any way it can.

Again, the template has been set. Most of us remember how everything revolved around Microsoft in the early and mid-1980s, and we recall the phenomenon of all the "Microsoft millionaires" produced by its first IPO. Here was a company that was beating the pants of uptight, always "Thinking" IBM and making millionaires at the same time. The company was so, how can I put it? It was. . . That's right. Microsoft was cool once, too.

Google Desktop

Google Desktop
PC Magazine

(Note: For the tips in this section, you'll need Google Desktop, Google's free desktop search application. Get it at http://desktop.google.com/)

Change the Location of Your Google Desktop Index

Depending on how many files you have on your PC, the search index Google Desktop creates can get pretty substantial—easily 1GB or more. If you don't want the index clogging up your main drive, you can easily move it to a different drive. To move it, follow these steps:

Exit Google Desktop. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search, where USERNAME is your user name. (Note: Local Settings is a hidden folder, and you might not be able to see it. If you can't, you can unhide it. To unhide it, In Windows Explorer, choose "Folder options" from the Tools menu. Click the View tab, and under "Hidden files and folders," click "Show hidden files and folders." Then click OK.) Move the entire Google Desktop Search Folder to a different drive. You don't have to replicate the entire original folder path—you could, for example, move it to D:\ Google Desktop Search. Open the Registry Editor by choosing Start->Run, typing regedit, and clicking OK. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop. In the right-hand pane, double-click "data_dir" and change its value to the new location of the Google Desktop index, for example, D:\ Google Desktop Search. Exit the Registry editor. Restart Google Desktop search.

Google Desktop search will function as it normally does, except that the index will be in its new location.

Revisit the Past with Google Desktop

Have you ever wished you had a diary of your computing workday—a detailed rundown on every file you opened and saved and when you did it, every Web site you visited and when you visited it, every e-mail you received? Perhaps you need that information because you're a consultant or get paid by the hour. Or maybe you want to retrieve a file or e-mail, but only remember what day you worked on it or opened it, but not much else about it.

In those cases, you can revisit the past using the Google Desktop's Browse Timeline feature. This nifty tool will show you, for any day, all the files you opened and saved, the sites you visited, and the e-mail you received, in a minute-by-minute breakdown, as shown in the nearby figure.

To browse your timeline, double-click the Google Desktop icon, and from the screen that appears, click "Browse Timeline." You'll be brought to today's timeline, with your most recent events at the top. (For the Google Desktop, everything is an event—a file, an e-mail, a Web site, and a chat.) To open a file or e-mail, or to visit a Web site, click on it, and it'll open in your application, browser, or e-mail software. Navigate to earlier parts of the day by clicking "Older" or "Newer." Jump to different days using the calendar and drop-down list on the right side of the screen.

You can also filter the events, so that you could, for example, only view documents, or e-mails, or Web sites. To do so click "emails," "files," "web history," or "chats" at the top of the window.

The timeline has one drawback: For those who use their PCs frequently (which means most of us), it gets very cluttered, with hundreds of events and files every day. There's a way to cut through the clutter, though. You can remove any event from the timeline. When you remove an event, you don't delete the underlying file, e-mail, or whatever. You only remove it from the timeline. To remove events, click "Remove events" on the right side of the screen. All the events shown on your screen will be displayed, with boxes next to them. Check any you want removed, and click "Remove."

Power Up Google Desktop with Plug-Ins

Google Desktop does plenty, but there's a lot it can't do. Wouldn't it be nice, for example, if it would sort your results by name and date? How about the ability to index and search more file types than Google Desktop can normally do?

You can do that, and a lot more—even including controlling your iTunes player—with Google Desktop Plug-Ins. They're free and they install right inside Google Desktop. To get them, go to http://desktop.google.com/plugins/. Here's a list of some of the more useful and intriguing ones:

Google Desktop Extreme

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/gdsextreme.html

This is the ultimate tool for power searchers. It lets you sort your results by name, date, file type, or relevance, and offers auto-complete for faster typing of searches and to recall previous searches. It'll also show thumbnails when you browse images. There's more as well, including the ability to use skins.

Archives plug-in for GDS

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/archives.html

One thing that Google Desktop Search won't do is index and search inside archives, such .zip, gz, tar, and rar. So if you have archive files, you won't be able to find what's in them. This plug-in solves the problem. It indexes and lets you search through 7z, arj, bz2, cab, gz, tar, rar, and zip archives. It also will search through nested archives as well, so if you have ZIP files within ZIP files, you'll be able to find them.

Google Desktop Extra Images Plug-in

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/extraimages.html

Google Desktop indexes and finds many standard image files, including jpg, gif, bmp. But what if you've got .tif, .pcx, .wmf, or other file types? Turn to this plug-in, which indexes dozens of graphics file types, and lets you find them with Google Desktop.

System Monitor

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/sysmonitor.html

This neat little applet runs in the Google Desktop sidebar and monitors and displays information about your system—the amount of CPU being used, input and output performance, virtual memory being used, and other things at which uber-geeks like to stare.

gdTunes

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/gdtunes.html

If you use iTunes to play music, give this sidebar applet a try. It lets you control the player, and includes controls for play/pause, next song, previous song, repeat one/all/off, shuffle on/off, show/hide iTunes, and song rating.

Manage Your Google Desktop Indexing

After Google Desktop installs and indexes your hard drive, it continually updates that index. By default, it indexes your C:\ drive, but no other drives, and no network drives.

You can, however, change all that—you can add new drives, including network drives, and you can tell it to exclude specific folders, URLs, entire domains, and file types. And you can turn the indexing on and off at will.

Most of this is controlled from the Preferences page. To get to it, right-click on the Google Desktop icon in your System Tray, and choose Preferences. You'll see a screen like that shown in the nearby figure.

To add another drive to index, or to add a network drive or folder, click "Add drive or folder to search," browse to the drive or folder you want to index, and click OK. You'll have to do this each time you want to add a new drive or folder. Click Save Preferences, and the new drive and folder will be indexed when Google Desktop does its normal indexing.

To exclude a folder or even an individual file, from the index, click "Add file or folder to exclude," browse to the drive, folder, or file you want to exclude, and click OK. You'll have to do this each time you want to exclude a new drive, folder, or file. To exclude a URL or domain, type it into the box next to Add file or folder to exclude, and click Add URL. Make sure to include the http://. If you add a domain, all the pages and subdomains underneath it won't be indexed. Click Save Preferences, and the folder, drive, URL, or domain will be immediately excluded from the indexing.

To exclude entire file types, go to the Search Types section, uncheck the boxes next to any file types you don't want to be searched, and click OK. The files will be immediately excluded from the index. When you choose this, files already indexed aren't actually deleted from the index. Instead, Google filters them out when doing a search. So if you decided to include that file type, those files already indexed will show up in your search results.

Power Up the Sidebar to Read Blogs and RSS Feeds

The Google Sidebar is one of those features that you either love or hate. When you install Google Desktop, it's turned on by default and runs down the right side of your screen, and displays a wide variety of information in individual panels—news articles, e-mail, clips from the Web, photos, and more.

I've found that most people turn the Sidebar off, because it takes up screen space and is usually too confusing to use. But when configured properly, it's a great tool for displaying and alerting you when there are new blog posts, new e-mail, and more. Here we'll show you how to use the Sidebar as an RSS reader.

Start off by killing the clutter so that it'll be easier for you to read blogs and other RSS feeds. By default, the Sidebar displays far too many panels; it includes everything from photos to stock information, weather reports, e-mails, news, and even a "Scratch Pad" for taking quick notes. To remove a panel, click the down arrow at its far right, and select "Remove." To remove many at once, click the down arrow at the top of the Sidebar, select "Add/Remove Panels," and remove the ones you don't want. Make sure that you leave the Web Clips panel, because that's the RSS reader.

By default, the Web Clip panel picks up two RSS feeds—the CNN top-stories feed and the official Google blog. To add others, click the down arrow on the Web Clips panel, choose Options, then type in the URL of the RSS feed you want to add and click "Add URL."

What if you don't know the feed URL? No problem. As you browse the Web, Google Desktop automatically gathers the URLs of RSS feeds as you go. So head to the blog or page you want to read using RSS, and Google will automatically pick up its URL. Once you've visited the pages, follow the steps for adding an RSS feed from scratch, outlined in the previous paragraph. You'll notice at the bottom of the screen the names and URLs of all the RSS feeds associated with pages you've visited. Select the one you want to read in the sidebar, click Edit, then press Ctrl-C to put it into the Clipboard. Click OK, and then when you're back on the Web Clips Options page, paste it into the "Add URL" box and click "Add URL." If you're looking for an RSS feed for a site you've recently visited, click the Add Recent Clips button, highlight the RSS feed you want to view, and click OK twice.

Once you have the feeds you want, they'll automatically show up in the Sidebar. Click any you want to read, and it will expand out so you can read the entry in the Sidebar itself. Click the headline to visit the entry on the Web site.

If you want to see more than the handful of entries, click the double-headed arrow on the Web Clips pane, and a long list of entries will appear.

(Note: If you want to check out a Google service devoted only to reading RSS, check out http://www.google.com/reader.)—Continue reading

Google, Comcast Said to Eye AOL Stake

Google, Comcast Said to Eye AOL Stake
PC Magazine

NEW YORK (Reuters)—Web search engine Google Inc. and cable company Comcast Corp. are in discussions to buy a stake in Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, two sources said, in a deal reportedly worth as much as $5 billion.

An investment would set the stage for an alliance marrying Time Warner's trove of programing and Google's popular search and e-mail services with Comcast's high-speed Internet portal and experience in cable video distribution and telecommunications.

It would also create a powerful new challenge to Internet media company Yahoo Inc. and software giant Microsoft Corp.

Under one idea, Google and Comcast would jointly own half of the AOL web businesses, though Time Warner would retain a controlling stake, the Wall Street Journal reported in its Thursday edition.

Google and Comcast are valuing AOL's content business at about $10 billion, which implies a valuation of as much as $5 billion for the minority stake, the Wall Street Journal said.

One source close to the deal, however, told Reuters that Google and Comcast could make an investment in the entire AOL business, which would lift the deal value to more than $5 billion.

Google and Comcast face competition from Microsoft, which is also holding talks with AOL, one source told Reuters on Wednesday.

Time Warner and Comcast declined comment. A Google spokesman also declined comment, saying only: "Google and AOL have a healthy global partnership and AOL remains a valued partner."

Time Warner, which has faced criticism over its strategy from billionaire investor Carl Icahn in recent months, sees AOL as a centerpiece to its future growth.

Next Page: Talks at an early stage.

The talks between AOL, Google and Comcast progressed over the summer, but one source warned that the discussions were still in early stages and could fall apart.

AOL contacted Comcast earlier this summer and has held separate discussions with Google over potential investments, the sources said.

Google, which derived about 11 percent of its first-half revenues from a deal with AOL, has discussed with AOL interest in AOL's free Web-based services, such as instant messaging and programing. In addition, Google contacted Comcast last week over possible interest in executing a joint investment, one source said.

Since then Google and Comcast have discussed taking a joint minority interest in the online unit of Time Warner.

Google also has held discussions with Comcast on its high speed Web site strategy. Comcast aims to tap into the online advertising business as well as experiment in how it can translate its expertise in video distribution to the Internet.

Google and Comcast will have to move quickly as Microsoft continues its own overture to AOL. Comcast and Google have not yet drafted a formal plan to invest in AOL, the sources said. One source said the deal, albeit attractive to Comcast, was not "critical" to the company.

AOL's talks with Microsoft are much further along, one source said.

"Microsoft has had a head start," the source said. "There have been deal terms and term sheets."

Separately, myriad companies have contacted Time Warner over potential partnerships, including Yahoo Inc., but the Yahoo discussions have not progressed, one source said.

Yahoo was not immediately available for comment.

Publishers Line Up Against Google Print

Publishers Line Up Against Google Print
PC Magazine

n association of major American book publishers is suing Google Inc., alleging that the search giant's plan to scan books and make them available online violates copyright law.

The complaint takes aim at the Google Print Library project, which is in the midst of scanning book collections at several major universities plus the New York Public Library, and making some or all of the contents available to the general public through the Web site print.google.com.

On Wednesday, the AAP (Association of American Publishers) accused Google of a single count of copyright infringement, and also demanded that Google remove from its records potentially many of the books it has already scanned.

The U.S. District Court complaint was filed on behalf of five major AAP members: the McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster Inc. and John Wiley & Sons Inc.

"The bottom line is that under its current plan Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers," AAP President Patricia Schroeder said in a statement Wednesday.

Google Print goes to Europe. Read more here.

A Google representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

Google said it intends to resume scanning books on Nov. 1, ending a self-imposed hiatus on the project in order to sort out which authors would like their works scanned and which would not. Google has also just begun making available Google Print available in eight European nations.

Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Publishers Line Up Against Google Print

Search lite: you may think Google is powerful today, but it's still only using 5% of its brain

Search lite: you may think Google is powerful today, but it's still only using 5% of its brain
by Markos Kounalakis

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture By John Battelle Portfolio Cover, $25.95

What is Google if not opposition research for the rest of us? For years, we have dated, taken jobs, applied to schools, trusted sources, relied on friends, and done countless tasks requiring our time and effort without the aid of a reliable, fast, effective search engine to tell us if we are wasting our time and energies. It now takes fractions of a second to learn that Greenland is not really all that green and that the environmental policies of the Bush administration are not either.

John Battelle adds an important volume to the history of the Silicon Valley by documenting the development of Google. Like those before him, he has approached an obscure and intangible subject which affects the way nearly everyone lives, works, and loves. Battelle has done the long-term reporting required to give The Search the social and technological context of our time as well as a decent insight into Google founders (Wunderkinder Sergey Brin and Larry Page) and their motivations.

Battelle, who was the co-founder of Wired and former publisher of The Industry Standard magazines, is in a unique position to do this reporting. (Full disclosure: I know Battelle slightly.) He is personally passionate about where technology is taking us and how it is taking us there. And his passion was clearly what got him a book contract to write about something that most of us take for granted--the ability to type a few words into a small white box with a blinking cursor and expect to get relevant and interesting information. And to do this free, globally, and instantaneously.

We have seen this in-depth treatment of technologies in the past with the development of computing (e.g., The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder), gaming, software, the Internet ... the list is endless. The value of these books seems to be greater as historical documents and business case studies than as dynamic reads for the average electronics consumer.

This class of book will be good reading for those who want to know that "search" of any form is com posed of three specific functions: crawl, index, and serve. For search to work, it must "crawl" the web and find unique and connected data, it must then index that data in retrievable and presentable form, and it must serve that data in a simple, fast, and relevant fashion to he who seeks. To do this, Google has more than 175,000 computers, or as Battelle puts it, "more computers than existed on Earth in the 1970s!"

As with most new products there are "early adopters"--consumers who are fascinated by the technology and its promise and are willing to deal with the bugs, workarounds, and general imperfections--and there are "mass market" consumers--who expect the damn stuff to just work. They could not care less about the underlying code and hardware that makes it all function. For those who want to know no more about automobiles than where the key goes, this is not their book. For those who are interested in the electrical system, the internal combustion engine, and the changes in land planning and social structures as a result of the automobile, this is the book to pick up. Oh, and if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who purchased Google stock at its IPO and have watched shares rocket from just over $100 to over $300, chances are you will enjoy reading about how smart and savvy you are. Battelle lets you know that Google is the holy grail of modern computing and that it has currently only reached about five percent of its potential.

The remaining 95 percent is made up of things that only futuristic Star Trek computers can do. The kind of computing power that understands natural language and instructions and is able to deliver the most individually relevant information that is spatially and temporally appropriate and is based on previous collected and analyzed patterns of thought and behavior. No longer will you have to type in Google-speak ("Hemingway Spain Wine" or "Rove WMD Liar") to get a glimpse of an answer; as the technology evolves, it will have watched your every click, logged your every move, followed each of your queries, and developed its native sense of who you are, what you like, how you recreate, where you live, and when you are awake and it will do so with every little bit of technology that has a chip in it, whether your cell phone, your computer, your automobile (do you have On-Star?). As I write this, the thought of such ubiquitous computing and infinite knowledge of me becomes terrifying. Yes, it is the type of technology that arouses DoD's former information awareness czar John Poindexter. Privacy becomes ever more vincible and the Google corporate value "Don't be Evil" becomes more important, though more of a guideline than a regulable FCC standard.

Battelle refers to the search and Google as having come up with a "Database of Intentions," a phrase he has coined to summarize how Google's technology culls its worldwide usage to create a database of the "wants, needs, fears, and obsessions of humankind." Google has become the world's largest polling machine. While marketers use polling and consumer testing to see if "New Coke" is a better brand or political pollsters push to find out attitudes towards handguns, Google is able to summarize the real time concerns and interests of the mass of online mankind--whether Janet Jackson video footage, the latest Coldplay music release, or the next draft of the Iraqi constitution. It can collect this information and slice and dice it in myriad ways. Oops, there goes another flash of a smiling Poindexter.

While there are marketers and political operatives who are smacking their chops at the potential of such voluntarily given information, there are also entire authoritarian political structures that live in fear of the their populace having absolute access to free, independent, and open information. Search appropriately looks at this issue in a chapter titled "Search, Privacy, Government, and Evil" and concludes with a study of Google in China. Battelle notes that Google, the company, understands the business opportunity of operating in China, but that what Google, the search engine, does is provide a direct path to information that government opponents can use and propagate. Falun Gong, for example, is something the Chinese government wants to block. How Google tries to finesse this and still stay true to its corporate value of "Don't Be Evil" is an interesting dilemma that corporate leaders are unable to solve adequately.

One bit of advice that Battelle delivers is worth excerpting for those who do not wish to read through the entire book. It is something that many of us already do; if not, here goes:

"It's a good idea to check your name on Google, early and often. Given that just about everyone else you meet will be doing it anyway, it's just smart to get a picture of who you are in the world according to the index. In the Google age, every new relationship begins with a Google search."

You have been warned.

Markos Kounalakis, The Washington Monthly's publisher, chronicled the development of the first PDA by Apple Computer in his book, Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton.

Affiliate Programs Can Benefit From Google Ad Words

Affiliate Programs Can Benefit From Google Ad Words
By Donny Lowy

Google Ad Words is the name of the pay per click advertising program which allows affiliates, and other merchants, to advertise on Google and other sites in the Google network.

The program works by setting up a system in which the advertiser pays every time a visitor clicks on his ads.

Since the advertiser can select his bid amount, he is in effect controlling the amount of money he is spending to bring those visitors to his site.

You might wonder why every merchant doesn’t simply bid the minimum amount so that they can keep their ad costs to a minimum.

Since the ads are shown in order of the highest bids first the advertiser with the highest bid will generally receive the most traffic.

Affiliates can utilize the Google Ad Words program to advertise their affiliate sites.

For this to work the affiliate would need to know how many visitors he needs to bring to the merchants site to obtain a sale.

He must then divide his commission by the number of visitors and he will know his breakeven point.

The affiliate would then want to bid below this amount for his traffic.

So if 100 visitors will produce a sale for the affiliate, and that sale produces a $25 commission, then the affiliate needs to spend under .25 per visitor to be profitable.

There are other pay per click search engines which affiliates can use to promote their affiliate sales.

Yahoo has recently started a similar program which can allow advertisers to promote their affiliate links by bidding for key words.

To make sure that the affiliate stays ahead of the game he needs to monitor the results of his advertising.

You can learn more affiliate marketing tactics at www.affiliatebandit.com

Donny Lowy operates the following wholesale sites: http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic

5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic
By Tinu Abayomi-Paul

If you’ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.

But if you knew what I do, you’d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.

Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.

#1 - Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site’s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.

Take note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It’s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.

#2 - Google Will Talk To You and Your Webmaster In His or Her Native Tongue or Plain English with the Webmaster Section http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.

#3 - Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information

If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description, and the following phrase “Google can show you the following information for this URL”.

This special page compiles several queries about your site including pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked to you).

#4 - Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the executive and the search marketer alike.

There’s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular demand.

#5 - Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with Conversion University http://www.google.com/analytics/conversionuniversity.html

Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search discovery. One reference area is called “Driving Traffic”, the other “Converting Visitors.”

At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm, which means Google - the search engine - really isn’t capable of being your best friend or your worst enemy.

Meanwhile, Google - the company - also provides access to resources that will help give your site a fighting chance.

Is it possible to build a site that withstands the search engine updates? Join the speculation at http://www.freetraffictip.com/algorithm-proof .

And You Thought Google Was Just a Search Engine

And You Thought Google Was Just a Search Engine
By Merle Stinnett

Everyone loves Google for searching online, but did you know they also offer other tools for your Web based enjoyment? Google's technicians are a very talented group and they're constantly at work developing new and fun services. You'll find a complete list at http://www.Google.com/options/

Let's take a look at the many faces of Google:

1) Google Free: http://www.google.com/services/free.html

A free search engine for your website. Allow visitors to search your site or the Web. If you select the "safe search" option, adult themed web pages will be excluded from any Web search results that are shown.

2) Google Groups: http://groups-beta.google.com/

Allows you to create, join and even search other mailing lists. Create your own newsletter/ezine at no charge.

3) Google Answers: http://answers.google.com/answers/

More than 500 hand-picked researchers, willing to answer any question you may have for a fee. Prices start as low as $2.50 and go up from there. If you're trying to do some research for a project and are running short on time, this could come in very handy.

4) Google Catalogs: http://catalogs.google.com

Search and browse mail-order catalogs online. Hundreds of catalogs on a variety of topics, from Apparel to Computers. View full contents of each catalog right online.

5) Froogle: http://froogle.google.com

A shopping service that makes it easy to find information about thousands of products for sale on the Net. Find the best price and the best place to purchase.

6) Google Image Search: http://images.google.com

Search over 880 million images. Search results are displayed as thumbnails. By clicking on them individually you can view the graphic at full size.

7) Local Search: http://local.google.com

Maybe you don't want to search the world; you need to find things in your own backyard. Use local search to find businesses and services close by.

8) Google News: http://news.google.com

If you like your daily dose of World News and the top headlines, you can browse over 4,500 news sources here. Continually updated.

9) Google Deskbar/Toolbar: http://toolbar.google.com

This downloadable toolbar allows you to conduct searches at Google from any website. Includes a pop up stopper and the ability to post to your Blogger account (if you have one).

If you prefer to search from your desktop, download their "Deskbar" and search without even launching your browser. http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html

10) University Search: http://www.google.com/options/universities.html

Looking for information on a specific school? Google's University Search serves up admission information, Alumni News and even course schedules.

11) Google Wireless: http://www.google.com/options/wireless.html

If you thought you had to leave Google at home when you're on the move you can now conduct searches via your wireless phone. See the site for specific directions for searching from your device.

12) Language Tools: http://www.google.com/language_tools

The Internet serves a global audience and English is not everyone's first language. With Language Tools you can translate blocks of text or an entire Web page by typing in the URL.

13) Google Web Alerts/News Alerts:
http://google.com/newsalerts
http://google.com/webalerts

Great for monitoring a certain topic or even your competition. Type in a search word or phrase and select how often you wish to be notified. You'll receive an email when updated news on your subject appears online.

14) Blogger: http://www.Blogger.com

Not located at Google but owned by them, Blogger is a free service for creating your own Blogs. Communicate with the world on your own terms. If you use Blogger and download Google's Toolbar, you can easily post to your Blog while surfing the Web. This is a very handy feature. They've also adding the ability to add photos to your Blog and audio messages. Check out http://www.audioblogger.com/

Have you ever heard of "Google Labs"? It's basically a testing playground for the technicians who work at Google. New ideas for tools are placed there for the public to use and give feedback on. This area is considered the "experimental phase" and not all demos are guaranteed to make it out of the lab "alive." It's a very cool place to experiment with new tools. You'll find it at http://labs.google.com

As you can see, Google is far more then just a search engine. Their many tools and services can help you in your Web based travels to be more informed and efficient. Google's runaway success stems from the fact that they have always listened to and served the public. You can see this in the creativity they bring to everything they do.

Next time you need to perform a specific task online, remember Google contains a full array of handy gadgets and they may have just what you're looking for!
EzineArticles Expert Author Merle Stinnett

Merle has been "working" the Net for over 8 years and has a Special Gift just for you. Download my FREE E-book "50 Easy Ways to Promote Your Website". Get your copy now at http://www.WebSiteTrafficPlan.com

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included.

Affiliate Marketing With Google Adwords

Affiliate Marketing With Google Adwords
By: Christoph Puetz

One of the best kept secrets in today's affiliate marketing world is the pay per click advertising version with Google AdWords. Adwords allows advertisers to place small ads on websites or on Google.com search result pages. You probably noticed the little advertisements to the right on Google.com.

In Affiliate Marketing you are promoting 3rd party products and in return you earn a share of a sale generated from your marketing efforts. We all have seen those little Amazon.com banners on different websites. These would be a very simple form of affiliate marketing. More sophisticated versions are complete stores build around Amazon.com or based on data feeds from other vendors. In some cases the affiliate has to build his own website and store - in others there are white label website templates or pages available for the affiliate to work with. Only when it comes to the actual sale the customer is redirected to the 3rd party vendor who carries the actual product.

Not a new variant but a not very well-known version of affiliate marketing is the promotion of affiliate product links/websites via Google AdWords. The power of advertising on Google.com is combined with the affiliate link. The affiliate partner does not need a website anymore, he directly links the customer to the 3rd party. With Google AdWords very targeted marketing is possible and well-written ads equipped with the right keywords can bring in big bucks. All the affiliate has to do is to figure out which keywords are affordable to promote. And that's where secret to success is. Everyone can buy the expensive and obvious keywords to promote products but when it comes to affiliate success via PPC advertising (aka Google AdWords) the inexperienced marketing folks are being weeded out or are left with big holes in their pockets. Finding the right combination of keywords, target group, ad copy is the critical piece of the puzzle.

Overall - affiliate marketing via PPC on Google or via Overture (competitor of Google AdWords) can be very lucrative and quite a few people are making a living of it. It sounds easy to do but to break into this field a new affiliate needs a lot of luck, big bucks or patience and knowledge.

About the Author: Christoph Puetz is a successful Entrepreneur and international book author. Homepages: http://www.netservicesusa.com and http://www.vitaminassociates.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Google News - Just Another Article Announcer?

Google News - Just Another Article Announcer?
By: Martin Lemieux

In Google's recent battle towards becoming an international news center, I've come to notice that the results delivered from Google News seems like nothing more than the articles we publish everyday. So I ask, doesn't it seem like Google News resembles an article directory of some sorts?

Google News World: http://news.google.com
Google News Canada: http://news.google.ca
Google News UK: http://news.google.co.uk

I only mention this because when submitting my internet marketing articles, I often wonder if they show up within Google News? 9 times out of 10, they do! In fact, they usually show up within 48 hours of being indexed from other top related websites.

How does Google News select it's content?

Right now, it seems that "news centers" & "press release companies" related to your field online are profiting from these search results. When you think about it, wouldn't a press release be a form of news anyways? Possibly...

If you take a good look at the websites who deliver the content within Google news, you will notice that only a select few are providing all of the results. Again, it's possible that Google's news algorithm is still in its infant stages and probably has a lot of uphill battles to conquer.

It may be in Google's best interest to assemble a team of experts in different fields to accept articles/news submissions in order to keep the news source within the Google kingdom.

There is Only A Fraction of Results Showing:

While searching through the GN section, you will also notice a relatively small portion of actual search results coming up. Only a fraction of a percentage of results get listed within the GN search results compared to the same results within the regular search results found on Google's main page.

Only the sections on the left deliver actual real-time news. These are: Top Stories | World | Business | Sci/Tech | Sports | Entertainment | Health. These links provide real-time results delivered from credible news sources online.

Google News Alerts - Ezine anyone?

When you think about it, you are giving Google your email address to get related articles to the search term delivered to your inbox, how does this differ from any other regular newsletter? Are we going to start seeing Google Adwords within the news alerts? Will they consider giving large corporations the opportunity to advertise within their email alerts as a one time mailing! I hope not.

More and more we are seeing less of the Google we once knew and have come to love (A search bar with some great results). Since Google's IPO, the development team at GG are starting to launch applications online that are starting to resemble what we now know as the great Yahoo Portal.

Will there be any difference? Probably not.

One Great Point About Google News:

They have given you the ability to customize your page to show whatever news topics you want. Simply look at the right side for a button that says "Customize this page New!". Once you click on this link a drop down box shows you all the main topics you have listed within your page. Simply click on the topic you wish to customize or remove. The best part of it all is that you can click on "Add a custom section" and simply search for the topic you wish to have listed on your page.

All in all you can create an entire custom news page (author articles) that relate to your industry.

About the Author: Martin Lemieux is the president of the Smartads Advertising Network. Smartads helps their clients to maintain a strong presence online through up-to-date marketing tactics. Sign up for Martin's weekly newsletter: http://www.smartads.info/newsletter Web Designers Directory: http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com
Source: www.isnare.com

How Do You Make Money From Google Adwords??

How Do You Make Money From Google Adwords??
By: Munya Chinongoza

Can you really make money from this?

Late 2003, I think was the first time an ebook popped up that claimed that one could make money from Google Adwords.

The main method that was revealed involved combining Google Adwords and the Clickbank affiliate program, to make money, online, everyday almost on autopilot.

Please allow me to very quickly outline how you can make money on the internet, using this system.

Here are 2 things you need to get started...

1) You need a Google Adwords account.
=> http://adwords.google.com

2) You also have to sign up as a Clickbank affiliate
=> http://www.clickbank.com

Ok, so how does it work?

Well, you simply go to clickbank.com and on the main page you click on "Promote Products" on the right. You will be taken to the index page of all products being sold via clickbank. Each product is listed with a short description and the percentage you make as an affiliate.

Just select the product you wish to promote, grab your affilate promotion URL, by clicking on the [earn 50%]. Your personal affiliate link will pop up, just copy and paste that, into a text editor like notepad.

The next thing I like to do is visit the main sales page of the product I have selected, and select some benefits from the sales copy, I can then use these to write my Google Adwords Ad.

Alright then, how do you write your Ad?

The general profitable Google Adwords format that has seemed to work for many is like this. Line one your heading ask a question, line two mention a feature of the product or ebook, line 3 give a benefit, then line 4 your websites address goes there.

Once you have selected your budget and you submit your ad, it will probably start showing on the Google network within the next 10 minutes.

When searchers see your google ad, they click on it and google will charge you for every click, according to how much you bid on a particular keyword.

If the searcher who clicks on your ad, then goes ahead and buys from the site, you will receive the respective commission from Clickbank, and you can check your earnings when you login to your clickbank account.

However, There's 2 things to watch out for...

Your Return On Investment(ROI) and your Click Through Rate(CTR).

The ROI helps you determine how profitable your Google Ad is, when you subtract the cost of running your ads from the amount earned in your clickbank account.

The CTR helps you fine tune your ad so you can increase the number of people clicking on it especially if its a profitable ad, if more people are clicking on the ad itself it would probably result in an increase in your affiliate income.

That is a quick look at the "How to make money with Google Adwords System". If you would like to get more detailed information on this system, I would highly recommened you grab yourself a copy of this ebook...

How You Can Earn $1,758 a Day with Google Adwords??

=> http://Google123.ontheweb.nu

In Conclusion...
You can also use Google Adwords to promote your own websites and other non clickbank products too, you just need to adopt and adjust the system I have outlined above.

About the Author: Munya Chinongoza is an up and coming internet marketing protégée.He is also the author of "Guru Traffic Secrets Vol.1" in which He interviewed 14 top internet marketers "gurus" and asked them to reveal how they drive targeted traffic to their websites, usually with little or no effort at all on their part: http://www.GuruTrafficSecrets.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Can Google Really Deliver Country Specific Searching?

Can Google Really Deliver Country Specific Searching?
By: Martin Lemieux

This is a serious matter, can Google really deliver top quality search results for other countries? The answer so far is "sort of". In this article I will use Canada as an example of the quality or lack of thereof, that is delivered by Google's search results.

Let's take a look at Canadian search results by Google.ca:

When you highlight "Canada" through Google search results and then start searching, you may be surprised at the amount of companies that aren't really Canadian. All of this also applies for the UK and other major markets as well...

In fact, many of the "paid results" come from American companies. Now some would argue that this is to be expected, coming from American companies with large budgets but I would disagree because a lot of the bulk of the "Canadian specific" results are also American companies.

It is quite evident that this is a growing concern with business owners residing in different countries.

As an owner not from the US, I would rather compete with companies that are more local than not, simply because the results would then be relevant. Irrelevant results equal to poor results and less people take the search results seriously when they keep sifting through poor quality results online.

For example; If you highlight "search in Canada" and search for "web design", the top 2 results seem not to be from Canada. This is a serious issue. What if people click on "I'm feeling lucky", they are redirected to a company outside of Canada. The average person won't know what to think about that and may disregard searching through Canadian results any further.

The more content specific the results are, the more people will search through those results. The more people will tell their friends & peers to search through those results. See, as web marketers, we do have the power to create a search term that people get familiar with. Just look at "Blogging". A couple of years ago, if you asked people to search online for "blogging" sites, you would have had a lot of confused faces staring at you. Nowadays, if you search for blogging, there are more than 900,000 results found in Google and to top that off, there is more than enough paid advertisers as well.


What do we see changing in Google?

The #1 thing we are now seeing more and more is search results listing websites with country specific domain name extensions. Here's what I mean by that....

If you were Google and you wanted to deliver better search results for Canada, how would you go about doing that?

I would look at 2 things:

1) Does the domain name end with .ca? (Ex. www.smartads.ca)
2) Does the "contact" information about the company match the country - Street, City, Province/State, Country. Are all of these factors listed within the contact page?

These are very important factors, evidenced to the fact that, I see Google weighing your "contact" page higher than anything else within your website other than your front page. So the moral is, make sure to list EXACTLY where it is that you do business within your contact page. Your website will rank higher for local searching when this technique is utilized.

Second, make sure to buy a domain name(s) that is country specific. If you live in Canada, buy a domain with the extension (.ca). If you live in the United Kingdom, make sure to buy a domain name with the extension (.uk). If you live in the US, make sure to buy a domain name with the extension (.us).

You may be asking, what if I don't want to concentrate on just local searching? Create a separate website to target different areas. There is nothing with .com, in fact most people automatically type in .com but, if you truly want to target locally, you have to play locally.

The future of search engines is local searching! We are seeing an increasing amount of evidence to sustain this claim. Targeting locally is a great start and will ultimately help you to target internationally later on!

I hope this article helps you out!

About the Author: Martin Lemieux - Smartads Advertising Network International: http://www.smartads.info Canada: http://www.smartads.ca Canadian SEO Consultants Directory: http://www.seoconsultants.ca Canadian Search Engine: http://www.smartadsearch.ca
Source: www.isnare.com

$1 Million In Google Adsense Earnings

$1 Million In Google Adsense Earnings
By: Scott Adams

They are calling him the million dollar man. Jason Calacanis recently revealed in his blog that he is on track to earn a million dollars from AdSense over the year ahead.

And if that number doesn’t wake you up and have you sitting on the edge of your seat, consider for a moment that he reached this level in less than a year. His company only started using AdSense in September 2004.

Calacanis runs Weblogs Inc., a network dedicated to creating trade weblogs across niche industries. And he’s quickly proven that AdSense is a credible advertising partner.

As their network has grown, so has their AdSense revenue. In January 2005 they earned an average of $580 per day. In March it was $737. In May it was $1,585. One day in July, just before he made the blog entry referred to above, they earned $2,335. Remember that is just for one day. If they can take that daily average to $2,740 they’ll be earning a rate of $1 million for a year. And Calacanis predicts that reaching daily earnings of $3,000 or even $5,000 is quite achievable.

That’s quite an achievement. Keep in mind that Calacanis has 103 bloggers on the payroll and nine staffers. Even so, many webmasters would give an arm or a leg to have even a third of that.

Google’s AdSense has been revolutionary. It has become firmly established as the darling of the online advertising industry. Although rumors are heard of major competitors launching a similar service, AdSense’s premier position seems secure for now.

In essence, AdSense has made it possible for almost anyone with a web site or blog to earn some revenue from advertising, without having to employ sales people or spend precious time searching for advertisers.

AdSense works like this. Webmasters sign up for an account in just a few minutes. They receive a small snippet of code to include on their web pages. Google will then automatically serve advertisements that are relevant to the content on the webmaster's pages. When someone visits the webmaster's site and clicks on one of Google's AdSense advertisements, the webmaster earns a fee. Advertisers can pay anywhere from five cents to a hundred dollars per click, and the webmaster receives a percentage of that fee.

Many webmasters are content with earning five to ten dollars from AdSense to cover the cost of web hosting. But many, unsurprising, have higher ambitions. At a popular WebmasterWorld forum, participants share tips and encouragement on reaching a goal of $300 per day from AdSense. So it is no wonder that Calacanis created quite a buzz when he made his million dollar blog entry.

Google have proven once again that they excel at designing innovative Internet services. If you are in the web industry and have not yet used AdSense, then perhaps you should try it out. Or if you are already using it, perhaps Calacanis’ impressive results will encourage you to track the performance of your AdSense units more closely, fine tune their positions and formats, and take your earnings to a new level.

Calacanis’ million dollar blog entry can be viewed at: http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000403051129/

About the Author: Scott Adams is an internet entrepreneur, and earns a living by marketing affiliate programs on pay-per-click search engines, including Google’s AdSense. He explains the remarkable system he uses in his book, Affiliate Adventure, which is available at http://www.AffiliateAdventure.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Google Adwords Ad Automator: The Next Big Thing

Google Adwords Ad Automator: The Next Big Thing
By: AdPro

Google is beta testing a new product which allows website owners and AdWords advertisers to automatically generate their AdWords campaigns by submitting a list of their product details via data feeds. The search engine uses the information from the feeds to determine the best keywords for those pages and automatically creates ads that link to them. This is brilliant news for any site owners who have a large database of products as they can now upload the whole lot at once.

The new Google ad automator feature is initially only being offered to select Froogle merchants who also advertise on the AdWords platform. The tool allows you to manage large, scalable campaigns without investing much time and effort. The ad automator dynamically generates accurate AdWords ads targeted to search queries. The content for these ads comes from the data feeds (that you submit as often as you like) containing your product descriptions, specifications, and information. These data feeds are simply tab delaminated text files. You can in fact use your existing Froogle data feed with some extra columns.

The AdWords system then generates ads from the content in your data feed (or from information you submit through the AdWords interface). This means that you can either let Google create your ad copy for you or you can set it yourself. It then continually analyzes all search queries to see whether they're relevant to any of your products. When it finds a relevant match, it shows your ads on the search page results.

Once setup, you can set daily campaign budget much like a normal adwords campaign. The CPC is set in one of three places. You can either specify your maximum CPC in the data feed, in the AdWords interface, or you can allow Google to determine it for you. The later method automatically sets your max CPC by using the average CPC of the competing ads. As with normal AdWords campaigns, you can have your ads displayed on both the Search Network or the Content Network, and geo-target them.

Some benefits of Ad Automator are that ads are dynamically targeted to queries. They are also automatically compliant with AdWords policies; once your data feed is approved, ads don't need to be reviewed again. You don't need to create new ad text. You can leverage existing product descriptions that are likely already on your website. (However, you may submit customized ad text in your data feed or through the AdWords interface if you like.) You can supplement existing marketing efforts without much additional effort.

All in all I think this is set to be a big improvement when it is fully launched. It will compete with Yahoo’s Search Submit product whereby advertisers can pay to have their pages included in the search results.

About the Author: For more information see http://www.ad-automator.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Getting Top Positions About More Hits? Thanks To Google Alert!

Getting Top Positions About More Hits? Thanks To Google Alert!
By: ASIF IQBAL

How many of you think this way? Let me repeat my question, is getting top positions about more hits to your website? I guess all will answer in YES, but the truth is a bitter reality, thanks to “Google alert”.

Getting King’s place doesn’t mean more Money!
In the same manner getting top positions doesn’t mean more hits to your website, when a website comes at top place in search engine, what it shows? It has three things to show, page title, description and website address. Site title and description help searchers to motivate (to visit) or reluctant (to leave).

Hard to justify with different Industries every time
It takes years to understand one business properly, how can one expect from SEOs should understand all industries? YES, SEOs understand their JOB very well, most SEOs understand the common sense of business.

To Understand clients’ industry/business and its term is just like giving them the best outcomes, it will not only help to communicate with Clients but this way SEOs can help them in correct direction.

Why to Thanks Google Alert!
Google Alert is a very effective utility of Google, it tells us about which websites are hits with search keyword phrase/s, it really helped me knowing the fact that not all top ranked website/s are hits, it’s about the best description tag that turns searchers to click on that website/s, it doesn’t matter where website/s ranked, you can experience it by yourself, www.google.com/alert is a free service, create your alerts and whenever you get alerts, try to search with those mentioned keyword phrases and see the position of the hit website/s.

How important is Description Tag?
Description tag can turn searchers to be visitors, so you can guess how important description tag is! Bringing websites to top positions require a lot of things including healthy content, good link popularity, easy navigation, logical site structure, clean html and relevant title/description tags.
SEO efforts are not just to bring websites to top, bringing website to Top is just one of the elements of SEO efforts. A SEO involvement is the 2nd heaviest involvement than website owner.

Understanding Clients Business…
1. Understand clients target audience and market
2. Select the best keyword phrases according to product/services, keeping target audience in mind
3. Focus on the most relevant keyword phrases
4. Recheck all keywords by “Reverse Engineering Process” , either the selected keyword phrases give the exact traffic your clients require or not
5. Write “Title”, title belongs to keywords, try to include relevant keyword phrase within the limit of 60 to 70 Characters
6. Write “Description Tag” , description tag is very important bringing traffic and converting visitors into customers, it belongs to products and services, write is according to products and services, it has to be central idea of the page and site

Motivate SE Searchers!
Searchers are never the less important than Visitors, it’s easy to motivate visitors than searchers, a visitor visit a page but a searcher view collectively not more than four lines of title, description and website address.

Do you know?
Who your searchers are…
What they must be looking for…
What description your website is showing off after search…
On Which page your searchers are directed…

If you still miss some answers of above mentioned questions, you should be able to find out all, after knowing all answers, you can easily motivate your searchers to hit your website.

About the Author: Asif Iqbal is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in branding and promotion, pioneer of SEO industry in Pakistan, and has trained dozens of quality SEOs. He can be reached atasif@asif-iqbal.com Website Design services
Source: www.isnare.com

Google Page Ranking And The Value Of Links.

Google Page Ranking And The Value Of Links.
By: AllianceLeads SEO

In today’s incarnation of the Internet search engine optimization or SEO is more important than webpage design skills. The best designed webpage has limited usefulness if no one visits it. A website is a product and a product that people don’t know about doesn’t sell. With the many search engines that are available it is important to know which are the most useful and how they are useful. Let’s look at Google.

Google uses a particular search algorithm that assigns a value to websites called PageRank that is one part of how it ranks pages. The PageRank value is determined by several things but the most important are the values derived from the ingoing and outgoing links in your page. Let’s look at that first.

The links in your website allow Google to navigate the pages on your site and index more of the content. Keep in mind that it is your pages that are ranked and not your site. You could conceivably have one page ranked higher than all of your others put together. This is the biggest reason to make sure that all of your pages have links into and out of them and that you never have dangling links or pages that can be linked to but not out of. This is why the navigation structure of your site is vitally important.

With that covered let’s look at the main factors used for PageRank. First of all a page on your site has to be indexed by Google to even have a PageRank. At that point the page has an intrinsic PageRank value. That page has links to your other pages. When one page links to another page it increases that page’s PageRank value without deceasing its own. It is almost like one page voting for another without penalizing itself. This is why you want to avoid any dangling links because although that page would have an increase in PegeRank it could not do the same for another page. With this in mind it is prudent to direct more links to your most important pages to increase its value. Then from that page the visitors to your site can link to the other pages.

The best strategy for increasing PageRank is to link pages to each other with a single link. By doing this you avoid splitting the value between multiple pages. However you want to make sure that all of your pages are linked together so that you can navigate your entire site from a single starting point.

Remember that in SEO you must learn as many aspects of it as possible as they are ever evolving.

About the Author: AllianceLeads SEO is a Search Engine Optimization solutions provider. With over 10 years experience dealing with high end clients, Allianceleads SEO has a thorough understanding of helping businesses compete successfully in the online world. Visit http://www.AllianceLeads.com for more information.
Source: www.isnare.com

Google Page Rank Updates

Google Page Rank Updates
By: Christoph Puetz

Many webmasters are obsessed with the Google Page Rank. Articles and books have been written about Google PR (Page Rank). Forum postings cover the topic over and over again and about every 3 months tensions are rising when a possible Page Rank update is eventually happening. Page Rank updates are an interesting experience watching a small group of webmasters go a little crazy.

It all starts with somebody noticing the PR update in progress. This event will find its way into forums and newsgroups fast. Within minutes and hours the Internet community becomes aware of a Page Rank update. As Google.com uses several different data centers for its search engine services and also updates them in different intervals webmasters all over the world will see different results when looking for Page Rank results. A Page Rank update will also not complete within an hour or a day. For several days results will fluctuate.

With that in mind it is a funny event watching the hype surrounding a PR update. Webmasters get nervous if the PR of their website suddenly changes. A change can mean that the PR completely disappears or that the webmaster sees different (conflicting) results. As a high Page Rank can mean higher amounts of traffic and eventually higher income from a website this event often feels like a rollercoaster ride for the people who depend on having a successful website. Imagine the website you worked for so hard suddenly going up and down in Page Rank during a PR update. Now the same people start posting questions and comments in forums and newsgroups. The more experienced webmasters know the game and react professionally. They know that the publicly visible Page Rank is just a moment in time to display a snapshot of what is in Google's database. They know that PR actually updates daily or weekly internally, but that these more frequent updates do not show up as publicly visible PR updates. But no matter how often it is pointed out that the publicly visible PR is not important - the hype around this topic by a large group of webmasters does not quiet down. "How many links does it take to get a PR 5?" - "Why does my PR suddenly went down? I added x number of back links to my site." - "I hate Google for doing this." - These and many other comments or questions will show up. But in the end it all comes down to: Public PR is just a snapshot in time of what is in Google.com's database. PR changes much more often than what is showing up in the Google Toolbar.

And so it comes as no surprise that about every 3 months the tensions go high up in newsgroups and online forums when it comes to discussing Google Page Rank. If you are on the hunt for a high Page Rank for you site - don't waste time looking for the publicly visible PR. Use the time the others need to discuss PR to actually work on the Page Rank for your site. Establish high quality back links to your site. Grow these numbers slowly. A large increase in a short amount of time is not natural. Back links grow slowly and that is what Google is looking for. Be smart - be in it for the long run and not some short-term PR gain that won't last.

About the Author: Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Successful websites of Christoph Puetz can be found at http://www.vitaminsinstock.com and at http://www.smallbusinessland.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Searching The Internet For Information The Google Way

Searching The Internet For Information The Google Way
By: Sandra Stammberger

The Internet today is an ever growing database of knowledge. But as with almost anything in life there are some negative things attached to this aspect of Internet.

First, the Internet is not an ordinary encyclopedia, i.e., an organized knowledge database. The Internet is more like a disorganized database to which everyone can contribute. Because of the diverse and widespread information input and the requirement to find specific information when one needs it, there is a need to bring some sort of organization to the Internet community. Today there are web directories and search engines as two of the most useful mechanisms responsible for bringing order to the Internet.

Web directories organize links to many places on the Internet where information about a specific topic can be found. Web directories can have a general or topic specific focus and are usually organized into several categories based on the topic. Web directories are good sources of information if they are well-maintained with regular updates. They are usually maintained better by human actions than by automated software. Computers still cannot determine the relevancy of certain text as effectively as humans. A good example of a human edited directory is dmoz - Open Directory Project, (http://www.dmoz.org). It is the largest and most comprehensive human-edited directory on the Internet, maintained by thousands of volunteer editors.

Search engines are yet another tool that helps you find information on the Internet. There are many search engines on the Internet but the biggest and the most popular are Google, AOL/Netscape, Lycos and MSN. Some of them also have their own web directories, which are often comprised of dmoz data combined with their own data.

Search engines, however, are different from web directories. They do not categorize links to web places like web directories do but they allow users to "search the internet" using specific search terms. However, it should be noted that what is really being searched at the moment you submit your inquiry (in the form of a search term) is, in fact, a database. These databases are constantly updated and upgraded with so called 'search engine spiders' which search the Internet all the time looking for new and recently updated websites.

So what search engines can help you do is to find which pages contain, and are the most relevant to, the search term you have used. For determining the relevancy of a page to the search term, they use complex algorithms which are not completely revealed to the public. The reason for this is that these algorithms, once known to public, could then be used to adjust a site's ranking, ignoring the fact that the content of the website must be relevant to what people are searching for. Search engines want visitors to return to their websites and thus need to provide quality. This quality is relevant results for a visitor's search inquiry.

With the basic operation of web directories and search engines now explained, what are effective ways to use them to obtain relevant information?

Here are a few simple tricks that many people do not know when searching the Internet for information using various search engines. Let us look at Google, since at the moment Google (http://www.google.com) is the most popular, and thought by many the most comprehensive, search engine.

When you search for something on Google you may get a variety of results, some more and some less relevant to the original search inquiry. For example, you may end with results from various newspaper articles that merely mention the search term, but the content may be totally unrelated to the search inquiry. A good technique to minimize those unrelated results are to place "intitle:" or "allintitle:" before your search terms.

The "intitle:" option is used when you search for a single word search term and anything you write after that word will not be affected by the intitle option. So if you want a phrase to be affected by the intitle option you will use "allintitle:" instead. E.g. "intitle:cars" but "allintitle:used cars" (without the quotation marks). Note that there should be no space between the colon and your search term.

A similar effect can be accomplished with the options "inurl:" and "allinurl:" but here Google will restrict the results to show only those results where the URLs contain the word or phrase you have searched for.

If you are searching for a definition of a term, Google offers help here too. You have to type "define:" (without the quotation marks) followed by the word or words you want defined. If Google has come up with that definition on the Internet it will be displayed for you at the top of the search results. Please note that if you enter more words after "define:" Google will see those words as a phrase.

When you have a URL of a website that interests you (e.g. www.example-url.com) you can find all the websites that link to that site, all the websites related (similar) to that site and check what info Google has on that particular site.

You will use "link:" followed by the URL of your choice (e.g. "link:www.example-url.com" - without the quotation marks) when you want to find all websites that link to that site. The prefixes "related:" and "info:" are used in the same way.

Should you wish to search only a certain website, not the whole Internet, you can use "site:" following with the URL of the website you wish to search. But note that the search term here comes BEFORE the "site:" which is followed by the URL of the website. E.g., "download linux site:www.linux.org".

The only time the quotation marks are used in searching is when you are searching for a phrase and not combined with any of the above mentioned prefixes. For example, "searching the internet" with quotation marks will search for the exact phrase and "searching the internet" without quotation marks will search for the places where the words "searching", "the" and "internet" appear not strictly in that order. Logically by using quotation marks when searching you will get fewer results but more relevant ones while without the use of the quotation marks you will get more but usually less relevant results.

This explanation and these little tricks should help you use the Internet more efficiently in the search for information and should improve the quality and relevance of your search results.

About the Author: Sandra Stammberger is the owner of Insider Scripts. At Insider Script’s programmers are working around the clock to develop affordable, powerful money making scripts that will help you drive traffic to your business. http://www.insider-scripts.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Can Google Bot Help You To Love Your Girl Friend Better!

Can Google Bot Help You To Love Your Girl Friend Better!
By: Arvind Kumar

What is analogy between Santa clause and Google bot. Yeah you got it. Whenever you see any of them it is smile spread on your face. Your heart feels light. You can sleep well in your dreams. It makes you more attentive to your near and dear like your girl friend, children, wife and whole family by reducing tension in your mind.

The point here is how to get that accomplish. Google is the toughest hurdle to win in any SEO efforts. But it worth its salt as Google account more than third and fourth search engine do together (Yahoo is second) so we need to get listed into Google as soon as possible.

Search Engines are hungry for quality content. And they keep looking for it. For the searchers, any search engine wants to put most relevant and updated information. This forces them to love blogs. Blogs which have good content and are regularly getting update get a great ranking from search engines. For Google, suggestion is to start on blog on www.blogger.com. After creating one you put at least one link their in the blog pages. And you are done. You will see your page listed in Google within 48 hours Did you blink? Yes, you did.

You can go closer to Google by using it new service of Google personized pages. It is my yahoo kind of service and shows you your own Google page. You need a Google account to get this page. Try it here www.google.com/ig . Once you get in your own Google home page, you can see ‘create content’ on the left column. You put your blog feed address in the box after clicking the create content. It will put 3 latest posts from your blog in you homepage.

That’s it. Sit back and relax. Better go for 8 hour date with your girl friend. You are in Google now.

This article may be re-printed as long as following resource box is included as it is with out any alteration.

About the Author: Arvind Kumar is one of prominent writer and consultant on Marketing and Management. You can reach him at arvind@nuttymarketer.com. For more on Gorilla Marketing Strategy and planning visit http://www.nuttymarketer.com.
Source: www.isnare.com

Beat Google’s Dampening Link Filter With SEO Articles

Beat Google’s Dampening Link Filter With SEO Articles
By: Glenn Murray

Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts agree that links back to your site have a great impact on your ranking in the major search engines. Think of it like an election; your site is a candidate and every link to your site is a vote. Of course, it was never quite that simple (high ranking, relevant sites have more voting power) but now it may have gotten even more complicated.

The Dampening Link Filter

It seems that Google may have introduced something called a “Dampening Link Filter” into its indexing algorithm. I’ll give you a layperson’s overview of this filter, but for more intimate details, check out http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20050407GooglesNewLinkFilter.html#google.

More and more people are realising the importance of links back to your site (or “backlinks”). For some time, companies have been engaging in all sorts of link campaigns designed to generate thousands of backlinks. Many of these campaigns haven’t really paid too much attention to the context or lifespan of these links. And Google knows it. Because these campaigns are designed to artificially generate the perception of a site’s importance – to trick the search engines into thinking they’re important – it’s been suggested that Google has decided to put an end to it. Apparently, there’s evidence to suggest that Google has introduced a new link filter to dampen the effect of new backlinks. So if your link generation campaign has just created 500 links in a day from seemingly irrelevant sites, Google will suspect it of being artificial, and refuse to pass on the full effect of those links – at least for a while. Well, that’s how the theory goes, anyway.

It has been argued that you can avoid being penalized by this filter by generating links:

• more slowly;
• from relevant sites; and
• which have a long lifespan.

The wisdom of relevance and lifespan is already well established; the dampening filter is simply one more reason why people should start to heed it. Writing and submitting SEO articles for online publication is one way to do so.

This article explains how SEO articles satisfy each of these three conditions. (For the basics of SEO article writing, take a look at http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.)

Build Backlinks Slowly

Writing quality articles takes time. It’s as simple as that. Even an SEO copywriter can’t just bang an article together in a morning – it has to be well considered. It must be accurate, informative, interesting, well written, and topical. And once you’ve written the article, the real work begins. You then have to submit it to your favourite article submit sites. And as they all have different requirements and idiosyncrasies, submitting your article to 50 submit sites can take you all day!

Once submitted, even the best articles will only be published gradually. A good article can be published 2 or 3 times a day for a week or two, then interest tapers off. But still, over the course of 6 months a single good article can be published hundreds of times! And remember, each time is a link.

Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

As soon as you choose the topic of your article, you define the type of site that will publish it. All online publishers have an agenda; they want to generate traffic. Whether for commercial or benevolent reasons, they want particular kinds of articles for very specific audiences. Your article won’t be published on irrelevant sites simply because the publishers of those sites get nothing out of it.

Of course, your article may be published on sites that are only marginally relevant. For instance, this article may be published on general copywriting websites, advertising websites, web design websites, home business websites, etc. But the beauty of a well written SEO article is that you get to optimize it for the keywords that you want to rank for. So even if the keywords on the publishing site don’t quite match your own target keywords, the page containing your link (i.e. your article) does.

What’s more, you even have the power to optimize the links themselves. For instance, as an SEO copywriter, I can distribute backlinks throughout my article that use my target keywords as the link text (e.g. copywriter, SEO copywriter, advertising copywriter, and website copywriter ;-). Some submit sites don’t let you do this, but most will – at least in the byline.

And one other thing – other people link to good articles. This can increase the Page Rank of the site containing your article, which, in turn, can increase the page rank of your own site. It’s a win-win situation!

Build Backlinks With a Long Lifespan

The quality of your SEO article determines the lifespan of your backlink. Write a very helpful article, make it easy to read, and choose a topic which isn’t going to go away in a hurry, and your article will stay online for years.

In any event, most publishers tend not to clear out their article libraries simply because it’s better for them to have lots of content available to both readers and search engines.

Conclusion

While it’s no new phenomenon to SEO veterans and SEO copywriters, the writing of SEO articles to generate backlinks is a tactic which offers much in the way of ranking. The possibility of a Google dampening link filter simply increases the value of that offering.

Happy writing!

About the Author: * Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.
Source: www.isnare.com

Tips For Maximizing Your Google Adsense Revenues

Tips For Maximizing Your Google Adsense Revenues
By: Diane Nassy

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn’t putting in the effort to make things happen.

Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you’re still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don’t make money

1. Determine if your visitors are “in the mood”

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don’t work with pay-per-click programs.

The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

• Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here..

• Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don’t have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

• Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit. This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.

• Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and “How to” sites are good examples.

• Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.

2. Make sure that your visitors don’t feel that you just want to grab their money

Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn’t your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.

3. Play by the rules

Google has some very specific Terms of Service for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don’t lose all of your investment by getting shut out.

4. Use the tools that Google gives you

Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad “channels” for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn’t build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!

5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again

You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it’s good, then you need to make it great. If it’s great then you need to make it amazing. If it’s amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club. The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there’s a club that I wouldn’t mind belonging to.

6. Get more traffic

No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you’re only pulling a 2% click-through. That’s a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.

7. Experiment with new keywords

New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content. Once you get something that’s working then refer back to Tip # 5.

You can see results in near real time when you use Google’s AdWords. Don’t be afraid to be different. If something that everyone else is doing doesn’t work for you, then invent something that does work and get it on your site.

About the Author: Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips. For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com
Source: www.isnare.com

How To Avoid The Google.com Duplicate Content Filter?

How To Avoid The Google.com Duplicate Content Filter?
By: Christoph Puetz

More and more webmasters are building websites with publicly available content (data feeds, news feeds, articles). This results in websites with duplicate content on the Internet. In cases of websites build on news feeds or data feeds you can even find websites that match each other 100% (except for the design). Several copies of the same content in a search engine does not really do any good and so Google apparently decided to weed out some of this duplicate content to be able to deliver cleaner and better search results.

Plain copies of websites were hit hardest. If a webmaster was publishing the exact same content on more than one domain, all domains in question were eventually removed from Google's index. Many websites based on affiliate programs suddenly took a big hit in loss of traffic from Google.com. Shortly after this started some webmaster forums saw the same complaints and stories again and if 1 + 1 was put together a clear picture of the situation was available: a duplicate content filter was applied.

Duplicate content is not always bad and will always exist in one way or the other. News websites are the best example of duplicate content. Nobody expects those to be dropped from Google's index.

So, how can webmasters avoid the duplicate content filter? There are quite a few things webmasters can do when using duplicate content of any sort and still create unique pages and content from it. Let's see some of these options explained here.

1) Unique content on pages with duplicate content.

On pages where duplicate content is being used, unique content should be added. I do not mean like just a few different words or a link/navigation menu. If you (the webmaster) can add 15% - 30% unique content to pages where you display duplicate content the overall ratio of duplicate content compared to the overall content of that page goes down. This will reduce the risk of having a page flagged as duplicate content.

2) Randomization of content

Ever seen those "Quote of the Day" thingies on some websites? It adds a random quote of the day to a page at any given time. Every time you come back the page will look different. Those scripts can be used for many more things than just displaying a quote of the day with just a few code changes. With some creativity a webmaster can use such a script to create the impression pages are always updated and always different. This can be a great tool to prevent Google to apply the duplicate content filter.

3) Unique content

Yes, unique content is still king. But sometimes you just cannot work around using duplicate content at all. That is alright. But how about adding unique content to your website, too. If the overall ratio of unique content and duplicate content is well-balanced chances that the duplicate content filter applies to your website are much lower. I personally recommend that a website has at least 30% of unique content to offer (I admit - I am sometimes having difficulties myself to reach that level but I try).

Will this guarantee that your website stays in Google's index? I don't know. To be most successful a website should be completely unique. Unique content is what draws visitors to a website. Everything else can be found somewhere else, too and visitors have no reason to just visit one particular website if they can get the same thing somewhere else.

About the Author: Christoph Puetz is a successful Entrepreneur and international book author. Websites currently operated by Christoph are: http://www.highlandsranch.us + http://www.smallbusinessland.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Local Business Advertising & Google Adwords

Local Business Advertising & Google Adwords
By: Tom O Brien

Local Business Advertising

"I don't need the Internet to advertise - I'm a local business!"

Okay...

If you could spend £0.04 (or $0.05 in the US) and have a new customer - what would you do with your local business advertising budget?

I hope you would spend that money again and again!

Granted this is the ideal example and you are likely to pay much more then £0.04 per customer you acquire, BUT - herein lies the rub for local businesses:

An internet presence announces your business to the world.

When you are online, you have little control about where traffic is coming to you from (if you are not actively driving traffic that is), but what if you could make sure that people who lived in your area, who buy your goods and would make ideal customers could be targeted!

Google Adwords can help you target local people, not people from New Zealand if you live in the UK - but people close to you.

Pinpoint geographic targeting of prospects is an optimum use of your local business advertising budget.

Is it 100% foolproof?

Alas no, but it's a good start.

How do I do it?

Well the easiest way to do this is as follows:

Create a national campaign with your search terms and your location terms - eg: If you're a plumber in Poole then "plumber poole" would be a good keyword.

Create a geo-targeted campaign (this can be done in a couple of ways - I'll leave the nitty gritty details out for now) which means your ads are served to local people when they search for your keywords.

So in the plumber example if a local person types in "plumber" and doesn't mention anything else, your advert will be shown.

So goes the theory anyway.

Does it work all the time?

Like I said - Not always very well.

This is because Google uses IP addresses to determine location and this method is somewhat of a cleaver when a scalpel is required.

It all depends how diligent ISP's are when allocating IP addresses to their customers, the only way you can know is through empirical means.

What if the regional targeting is producing no results?

If this is the case then a national campaign with location terms included (as mentioned above) is your best bet.

If you were to run a national campaign on the same keywords without the location terms, you will be competing with other players who have a national presence for your particular product/service which could prove very expensive.

Your local business advertising budget spend should at the very least give Adwords and PPC advertising in general a tryout. Remember there are an infinite number of keywords in any target market.

Just because the big boys may have a stranglehold on the 'obvious' terms does not mean your market is saturated.

About the Author: Tom O'Brien is a certified Google Adwords Professional and helps businesses maximise advertising ROI. For further tips on using Adwords effectively, visit: http://www.pdqprospects.com/services/GoogleAdwordsCampaignManagement.html
Source: www.isnare.com

Great Site Ranking In Google The Secret's Out

Great Site Ranking In Google The Secret's Out
By: Darren Yates

How many years did you register your domain name for? If it was only one then Google could hold that against you.

Why?

Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain name registered for a longer period implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and serious about their web site.

This is just one of the unusual factors possibly considered by Google when indexing and ranking a website. Factors you could never even have guessed at in some cases.

How do I know this?

Google have recently made public, March 31 2005, the contents of their filing of United States Patent Application 20050071741.

In which many of the search giants secret ranking criteria is revealed and it makes very interesting reading. You must read this if you are serious about ranking well in Google. The days of Spaming Google are drawing to a close. With this patent they reveal just how hard they're coming down on Spam sites. You Do Not want to get caught out.

Listed below you will find the hard facts, I recommend you bookmark this page now. You will need to reference it each time you optimize a new site.

• Links.

It's common knowledge that Google relies heavily on inbound relevant links to rank a site. Now they explain exactly how it works.

As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a link. Google seems to also consider historical factors. Apparently the Google 'sandbox' or aging delay begins count down the minute links to a new site are discovered.

Google record the discovery of a link, link changes over time, the speed at which a site gains links and the link life span.

With this in mind fast link acquisition may be a strong indicator of potential search engine Spam.

Gone are the days of pages and pages full of links. You must grow your links slowly to stay below the radar and be careful who you exchange links with. That means no more buying hundreds of links at once or other underhand tactics.

PR is now very valuable.

Your link anchor text should vary but remain consistent with your site content. No more using your main keywords on every link exchange you gain. That's 'anchor Spam'. Instead vary them around your top five to ten keywords.

Link exchanges are still very important but you must work and utilize them ethically. If you don't and you get caught the recovery from a ban can be months in coming and your host and IP may also be recorded.

Softly softly seems to be the message. The fact is fewer but better quality links will benefit you more anyway and they will be much more likely to long-term which is good to.

• Site click through rates (CTR)

CTR may now be monitored through cache, temporary files, bookmarks and favorites via the Google toolbar or desktop tools. Many have suspected for some time that sites are reward for good CTR with a raise in ranking. Similar to how Adwords works.

CTR is monitored to see if fresh or stale content is preferred for a search result.

CTR is also analyzed for increases or decreases relating to trends or seasons.

• Web page rankings are recorded and monitored for changes.

• The traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored over time.

• Sites can be ranked seasonally. A ski site may rank higher in the winter than in the summer. Google can monitor and rank pages by recording CTR changes by season.

• Bookmarks and favorites could be monitored for changes, deletions or additions.

• User behavior in general could be monitored.

As Google is capable of tracking traffic to your site you should closely monitor the small amount of copy returned in search results. Ideally you want to integrate a call to action in there to increase your listings CTR.

Clicks away from your site back to the search results are also monitored. Make your site as sticky as possible to keep visitors there longer. As mentioned above it may also help if you could get your visitors to bookmark you.

• The frequency and amount of page updates is monitored and recorded as is the number of pages.

Mass updates of hundreds of files will see you pop up on the radar.

On the other hand few or small updates to your site could see your rankings slide. Unless your CTR is good. A stale page that receives good traffic may hold it's own and not require an update. So don't update for the sake of it.

Depending on your market fresh content may not be a requirement. If the information your pages contain does not go out of date then updating may not be necessary. If your market is more news based for example then changes regularly are a must. In general changes don't necessarily have to mean fresh content. They could involve simple edits to current content.

A further indicator that Google is really cracking down on Spam is made clear in the following extract from the Patent. Mention is made of changing the focus of multiple pages at once.

Here's the quote - “A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.

Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate Spam. For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a ’stable’ period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a ‘doorway’ document.

Another indication may include the sudden disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document.”

There's still more to look out for:-

• Changes in on page keyword density is monitored and recorded as are changes to anchor text.

• The domain name owner address is considered, most likely to help in a local search result.

• The technical and admin contact details are checked for consistency. These are often falsified for Spam domains.

• Your hosts IP address. If you are on a shared server it's possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or Spaming. If so your site will suffer since you share the same IP.

The impression I get here is that Google have learned from the Spam 'attack' they suffered in early 2004 and they are determined to eradicate it from their listing results.

So what do you do?

There's a lot to take onboard here and consider. But you can't go far wrong with your SEO if you try to grow your site as organically as possible.

If you know what you are doing you can take short cuts. Carry on with link exchanges but consider each site carefully and slow down in your gathering of them. Vary your anchor text. Add small amounts of good quality content to your site regularly. Check your search engine listings and edit your site to include a call to action in them if possible. Make your site more 'sticky' to encourage visitors to stay a while. Encourage visitors to Bookmark your site. Oh and register new domain names for at least two years.

Before you do anything remember to reference the above info first. It may just save you months of misery as your site gets banned and 'Sand boxed'.

Overall keep it ethical and you can't go far wrong. Do not be tempted to Spam. Stick to the guidelines above and you are much more likely to outlast and out rank your competition.

About the Author: Darren Yates is the owner of www.how-to-make-money-online.info a site about Making Money Online and Internet Marketing. This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that we ask is that you do not make any changes, that this resource text is include, and that the link above is intact.
Source: www.isnare.com

Google Has An Achiles Heal - Will Their Competitors Notice?

Google Has An Achiles Heal - Will Their Competitors Notice?
By: Steve Blom

Even though Google Revenues continue to soar, the hidden problem that may stifle growth and may even allow Yahoo or MSN to overtake the paid search market in the future lies in two critical phrases: Customer Support, and Customer Training

Approximately 40% of the small businesses we have surveyed have tried Adwords in the past and failed, and some of them have tried multiple times. In some markets the percentage is closer to 60%. Why? because the program was designed by Google engineers, and heavily favors companies with the type of resources that most small businesses do not have. Unlike MSN and Yahoo who have programs that are much simpler in terms of use for small businesspeople, Google favors a technology driven solution that relies less on customer support, and expects users of their system to become more sophisticated.

The problem with this is that it is working quite well for professional internet marketers and search engine marketing companies employed by big corporations, but many small business people who are not web-savvy are by and large left out of the mix. This is unfortunate because this is a huge segment of potential income that is left "up for grabs" and may be scooped up by MSN and Yahoo who are developing simpler, easier systems with better customer support.

All the major search engines recognize this problem, and getting those "offline" advertisers online is a high priority for all of them, but so far there has not been great success. It is a knowledge and training gap, and neither Yahoo, MSN, or Google has so far been able to address it adequately.

Google's recent acquisition of urchin, a web analytics program illustrates the problem Google is trying to solve. Big Companies getting involved in paid search will still continue to drive big revenues, but the new internet is about verticals and niches, and Google simply isn't making the grade in terms of training their customers well enough.

Where do small business customers go after they "churn"? Many of them go back to what they were doing successfully before; email marketing, direct marketing, and call centers according to our study.

The next growth area will be hundreds of thousands of verticals, driven by small businesses exploiting areas and needs that the fortune 500 companies can not fill efficiently. The search engine company that gets the most advertisers on its side will win market share, and winning will require the ability to service everybody, not just the super sophisticated internet super geeks.

However, many private companies not sanctioned by Google, have sprung up in order to try to bridge the gap between the Google Adwords program and the ability to advertise efficiently on Google and achieve a high ROI. One such company is http://adwordstraining.org that offers free video training and free frequently updated information at http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org

Simple training videos are available on the site, as well as an advertiser self study course to get non-technical people up to speed with Google Adwords advertising.

Between Google's extensive training program of Google Professionals and private training by private companies, this knowledge gap may be bridged, and in the process a whole new industry of Google Adwords Marketing companies may be created, to facilitate the knowledge gap between Google and the advertisers that want to take advantage of the enormous advertising reach afforded by paid search.

But, this might not be enough for Google to keep its lead, as advertisers often follow the path of least resistance in getting their messages out, and they are the ones funding the growth of the search engine industry.

Where those advertisers ultimately go will determine the ultimate victor in the ever growing search engine wars, and the winner is by no means secure at this point.

Steve Blom
Founding Partner
InTouch Media Group
http://www.intouchmediagroup.com

About the Author: Steve Blom is a founding partner of InTouch Media Group, a publicly traded company specializing in the online marketing field. http://www.intouchmediagroup.com
Source: www.isnare.com

How To Verify And Monitor Your Search Engine Listing On Google.com?

How To Verify And Monitor Your Search Engine Listing On Google.com?
By: Christoph Puetz

Being listed in search engines and ranked high on searches is the overall goal a webmaster is trying to achieve when dealing with search engines. Search engine optimization is probably one of the most commonly used words among webmasters. In the Internet market becoming much more critical to business success this is almost natural.

While the professionals know how to verify search engine rankings and listings, the normal user or startup webmaster might not know how to verify these things. The often just type their domain name into the search engine of choice and are happy if they get a result back that includes their domain name. But there is a little more these startup webmasters should know about.

Every page indexed by a search engine is a possible landing page for visitors to enter the website. As more pages get indexed the higher number of possible entry points to the website. But how can a webmaster verify how many pages are currently in the index of a search engine?

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3DomainName.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3DomainName.com

Replace "DomainName.com" with the actual domain name that needs to be verified. A webmaster should also run the following variation to get an impression of what is really out there.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Awww.DomainName.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.DomainName.com

The next thing a webmaster should check is to see how many other websites are linking to his/her website at all. As almost everyone knows nowadays - the higher the number of links pointing to a website (incoming links) as higher the possible search engine ranking on search can be (and we all want that number 1 spot, right?!). The problem is that Google will never show you all incoming links to a website. But even a ball park number can be helpful in finding out if the SEO work of the past paid off. So, how does a webmaster can get this ball park number of incoming links?

http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Awww.DomainName.com

This command will show the 'ball park' number mentioned above. It will give the webmaster a hint how successful the website is and how many people/websites are linking to it.

By researching the information of how many pages and how many links to/for a website are registered/indexed in a search engine a webmaster can gain important knowledge. This knowledge makes it easier to see what works and what does not work when it comes to search engine success for a website.

About the Author: Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com and http://www.highlandsranch.us.
Source: www.isnare.com