In a break from tradition though, Google does not have a directory address or alias under google.com, like mail.google.com or google.com/analytics.  Instead, it has its very own address wdyl.com. An interesting step away from their branding.

But I can’t help think that while this service could be handy for finding information under a lot of resources at once, it also sort of adds to the noise.  The page results are loaded and almost overwhelming.  It doesn’t let you prioritize the modules by dragging and dropping. In fact, the order of modules changes every time you refresh. Plus there is a lot of fluff.  Do I really care what the trends are on, say “Dan Brown” or where he’s located if I’m trying to find information about his books?

Also all the services are Google’s. This includes a campy Google Chrome plug at the end. So, its really not a full service application, instead…it might be better phrased as What Would Google Do.

Check it out.  See what you think…and then think about it…what would you use “What Do You Love” for?

At our office, we have taken advantage of a lot of these services and products.  One of my favorites has been Sun Microsystems’ Open Office.  After spending $300 plus dollars on an upgrade of Microsoft Office Professional a few years back, I was frustrated to find out that Office wouldn’t install on the new laptop I bought weeks later, because it said that it would no longer upgrade to the newer versions of Microsoft Works.

This immediately sent me looking for another solution and drove me into using Open Office, which was open source and free.

I have happily used that software for the last 6 years, without an issue (or the pain of spending $600 to replace the software I had just spend $300 on).  But a couple days ago, I learned that Oracle (who had purchased Sun Microsystems) was doing away with the suite.  Luckily, there was a team that convinced them to hand over the code and now, it has been reintroduced as LibreOffice.

But the bigger question is, at what risk do we put ourselves by converting our businesses over to these “free” services?

Last night, I received an email from Google letting me know that they are trimming the allotment of email addresses for their Google Accounts.  We recently began talking our clients into using this service as an alternative to our hosted email solution.  The reason? Clients could use the GMail interface and all the advantages of Google Mail, use their own domain name in their address (@yourcompany.com), and get more space for free (up to 50 email accounts at 7 GB each).

Well, it looks like the window to that free ride is closing as well.  Here is the message received from Google:

As of May 10, any organization that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users. We honor our commitment to all existing customers and will allow you to add more than 10 users to your account for hannush.com at no additional charge, based on the limit in place when you joined us.
Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

Just as we were getting everyone interested in it. But, to their credit though, Google is letting those of us that were originally promised up to 50 email accounts the ability to keep those (for a while at least), without charge.

But it makes sense.  Sooner or later, these companies have to show a profit, to remain in business.  Our expectations of a forever free ride are unrealistic.  The world unfortunately cannot be free.

So, it looks like we all need to keep a cautious eye not making these open source and complementary services too much of an integrated part of our business model.

To this day, I keep waiting for Twitter to “go out of business” because they still don’t have a business model for long term financial stability.  And how many companies are starting to use Twitter as a hub for their business practices?

And as much as we all love Facebook, there may be a day when the model no longer works…or some scandal leaves us sick that we’re using the service.  So, what then?

What do you think? And are there any free services you’re taking for granted right now that you could see being “taken away.”

Now Google is going one step further.  Over the last couple of years you may have noticed the search bar on Google (and Yahoo! and Bing for that matter) has become more dynamic…showing you multiple results and filtering as you add more text.  Now imagine that same kind of instant recognition of your search results…IN the search results?

That is the new direction of Google and they have just released a test version to the general public.  Its smart programming figures out instantly the list to provide you.  Hit the backspace button (or delete for my Mac challenged friends) in the middle of typing Web Design Greenville…go back to the word Design, add in Hendersonville and instantly see the results on the page without refreshing.

This could make it much easier for searchers and more difficult for SEO.  Now you’ll have to anticipate that people will be playing instantly with results…creating a need to get yourself under more secondary keywords.  In other words, just showing up at the top of a single keyword search won’t be as important as showing up under many.  This could lend validation to your site if it constantly shows up whenever parameters are changed.

I’m not sure how long it will be before this is integrated into real search (they will have to work out how the Local Business Center works into all of this)…but it might be time to talk to your web developer (hopefully that’s us) about doing a keyword analysis to build your stable of secondary keyword phrases.

Check out the new search on Google.

First, sign up for your own Google Analytics account (you must associate it with a @gmail.com address so you might want to sign up for that first).

Next, your developer (or you if you’re sharing with someone else) goes to the “User Manager” highlighted below:

The next screen will have a button that says “Add User”…click on this:

Finally, he or you’ll add the email address in for the person you want to share with. Then choose if you want to let them just view statistics or have full control as an administrator (be careful, they can delete accounts, etc.).  The last step is to highlight the sites your want them to have access to.  Highlight them on the left and click the  “Add” button.  Save Changes and you’re done!  You should see the reports in your Google Analytics account within 24 hours.

What if you are provider of daily news updates?  How do you get your site featured on Google News, Yahoo! News and Bing News where people are seeing this breaking content?

One search engine has this down to a science, the other two are still a bit in the stone age…

Leave it to Google to make the process easy.  Just like submitting a website to the general search engine, submitting to Google News is as simple as just filling out a form for your website.  One entry…then just like the old directory days of Yahoo! site submission, you just wait for a human to approve your site.  Then Google takes over and adds your stories automatically.

Not so easy with Yahoo!  For them, the best answer I can find is to submit every story individually.  If you are legitimate news source with a team of reporters, this could become a full time job.

Bing is even worse…they tell you to just email bns@microsoft.com and tell them you have a link you’d like included.  Then wait for a confirmation email from someone telling you it was included.

Really?

If anyone knows a better way, place a comment on this thread with information or a better source…I can’t imaging this is still how they are doing it, but according to both the Microsoft and Yahoo official sites, this is the case.

Its time to start looking at some of the elements of your website that are critical to search engine success.

Next to the website’s URL, the site’s title tag ranks very high on the mythical search engine favorability chart.  Title tags show up in two very important places.  First, if you bookmark a page or look at the top of your browser, you’ll see the title tag prominently displayed.  But the other place a title tag is used is in your organic listing in Google, Yahoo! or Bing.  If you have the right stuff in your title tag, including those juicy keyword phrases you just spent that money on…it can make your organic listing as eye-catching as your AdWord advertisement.

So what should you put into your title tag?  How should you format it?  Here are a few tips for those wishing to use this powerful element.

• First off, don’t go overboard
  Google, Yahoo! and Bing on average only show 60-70 characters.  The other words will still get some power, but your tag will be cut off in search engine results.
• Use keyword phrases
  Okay, pick one or  two keyword phrases that are related to your page content (especially the main title of your page…the <h1> tag to you coders).  Make sure you use these keywords in your page and meta description tag also.
• Divide your content for easy viewing
  When I used to work in radio, I would cut my ads up with hashes so I knew where to breathe and how to see where things stopped and started. Having your phrases | separated | makes them easier | to read.
• Feed what they are looking for
  If they are wanting to buy, use keywords like “shop” “purchase” etc.  If your page is a catalog or information, provide more keywords related to the content.
• Put your company name last
  The beginning of a title tag is more powerful than the end of it.  Make your keywords show up first and then use your meta description tag your company identifier.
• Choose a format and stick with it
  Nothing gets more annoying than going to a site where things change drastically from page to page.  Same with your title tag…make sure it uses the same format throughout your site.

If you use a content management tool, make sure it allows you to customize your title tags or ask your developer how to affect them.  In our content management system (CMS), when you type in a title to your page, it is automatically distributed to the title tag and to other critical parts of the page for SEO.

It is also critical to make sure you are using the right keywords.  Just because they seem powerful to you, doesn’t mean they are going to get results.  There are plenty of great secondary keywords and keyphrases that can be just as powerful as the main ones.  A good keyword analysis will get you off to a good start with your title tags.

Happy editing!

My answer is usually not as simple as just “avoid it.”  I like to give advantages and disadvantages to my clients so they can make an informed decision.

So with that in mind, I also looked for some credible resources to feed their opinion on the subject.  In a world where SEO techniques are growing more and more in demand, I find that drives the decisions of most people.

My main arguments against Flash for full site design include:

• many Flash sites reside on one page which means bookmarks are useless,
• search engines like Google are learning to spider Flash but sometimes you get very undesirable results,
• it becomes very hard to maintain your own content which ties you to a web developer,
• it is another program that not everyone has access to (a bug with IE8/Vista on my computer refuses to install it) so some people may miss your whole site,
• you have 10 seconds to win someone over to your product – most Flash sites I’ve been on take 3-5 seconds to bounce up a navigation…unless you’re selling “Loading” and percentage rates, you’re wasting valuable attention grabbing time, and if your site doesn’t respect their time – do they think your product will?
• customers don’t care about cool effects – they want to know if your product is worth while, if you are selling Flash design then maybe it is worth demonstrating, but most of my clients are trying to sell something else,
• Flash is costly to develop and update,
• and with JQuery you can do many of the things Flash can do to a lesser degree but with much better search engine results (see one of our customer’s non-Flash pages).

For Flash in general, I am also not a big proponent.  I can say that I’ve been to some very nice Flash sites…but I have never bought anything from one of them because their site has a fancy Flash presentation.  In the business world, that speaks volumes.

So what are my pros for using Flash?  It makes me a lot of extra cash as a web developer….it looks nice if done right, and it is less annoying than having a site with white text on a black background (I start seeing spots when this combo happens!  …by the way, if you like this combo…bookmark this Google page for your searches: Blackle)

Other articles to read:

• Search Engine Journal Article
• SEOmoz Article
• Conversation Marketing Article

Have something to say on this subject?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you.

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2007/09/7_ways_marketers_can_use_twitt.html

What is so exciting about the new Bing.com you ask?

Well, for  you…probably not a whole lot.  Yes, it does use a slightly different indexing method and algorithm, but in reality, regular searches don’t seem to deliver anything very different than its “Live” predecessor.  For shopping, it does seem to be branching into reviews and pricing searches (like mysimon.com is).  For maps it actually has my business location (which Google hasn’t gotten to yet).  The Bird’s Eye shots are really clean and crisp…  But again, searches don’t seem very advanced and not any more advanced than Google from my initial views.  Time will tell.

For Microsoft, they are going to go on a brand blitz, with millions of dollars going into pushing Bing.com as the hot new competition to Google.com.

You see, Microsoft’s Live search was no unnoteworthy that less than 1% of people actually typed in Live.com to do searches on the site…the other 99% came from MSN.com.  Google has no master website feeding it searches…it uses a combination of toolbar searches and direct access searches, which keeps Google’s name in the forefront.  So it seems Microsoft thinks its way to beat Google is to get a new brand developed again and just heavily promote it.

But this strategy hasn’t done Vista any favors.  Even though it really is a decent and stable operating system, it still has a bad name…no matter how much Microsoft promotes it.  They have started promoting “Windows” now more than “Vista” because the next operating system will be called “Windows 7.”  And maybe that is the key for Microsoft…stop coming up with cute names and different brands…and just call their search Windows Search or Microsoft Search…and then just make a product that doesn’t change every 6 months.