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Unbelievably, more than 153 million visitors clicked on the branded pages of Google almost every month in 2011. On the other hand, the number of visitors reached 138 million for Facebook. The third position was captured by Yahoo with 130 million visitors which was very disappointing. According to the analysts, risks might pop up in the near future if people start turning their faces from web-based email.

The statistical records were collected in between the month of January to October and were extracted from homes and office computers. From a worldwide panel of 200,000 people, the findings were conducted where Google emerged to be the winner. Although it surpassed Facebook in terms of the most happening web brand, Zuckerberg’s site got recognition in Nielsen’s standings under the best social blogs and networks. It was Google + that triumphed over and came eighth in the list of unique monthly visitors with 8.02m.

Amongst the best destination for online videos, YouTube was declared the victor. It attracted thrice the total number of monthly visitors. Although Yahoo ended third in the list, there are predictions that their current position might not remain the same in the coming years and might instead fall drastically. Twitter, LinkedIn and Blogger also captured respectable positions in the list of blogs and networking sites.

After, breaking through the domains of social media with Orkut and Buzz, Google eyed towards a bigger and better leap in the direction of social media. Finally, after a long wait Google announced its third attempt of making a mark in the social world with its newest launch of Google +. Google made the entire world and social media enthusiasts turn their heads with the launch of this much – awaited top secret project.
Google+ seeks to change the way people connect online. Much different from the Facebook’s way of connecting people, this robust application will allow the users create a number of small groups, referred as “circles.” These smaller groups that are based entirely on the user’s choice will let him or her share information and other news with only the people (friends and colleagues) they choose.
Much similar to the News Feed application of Facebook, Google+ will allow its users a dashboard featuring a flow of updates from people on their network. All other activities that include sharing photos, videos, comments are categorized into streams,” with one dedicated for each Circle of friends. Users will also get to customize their security settings according to their own choice allowing some on the network with the entire profile view and limiting only the basic information for others.
A re-designed navigation bar placed at the top of the page of any Google product will allow the users to regulate the social media application. Google+ users can access their profile and check all the notifications and other news along with sharing content within their circles with this bar.
In addition to all this, Google has also launched a friend-finding feature known as “Sparks.” This feature works like a search engine for your hobbies and interests; say, you keep an interest in single malt Scotch whisky; all you need to do is enter the specific keyword in the Sparks search bar to allow Google to deliver content of your interest.
Following this feature on the line of the amazing features of Google+ is known as “Hangouts.” This particular application enables a group video chat feature. With this, the users of Google+ can form a hangout session alerting all people in the network. Friends’ can join the session free, which is open to only 10 users at one time in a single hangout.

Final in the feature list is the mobile functionality application of Google+. This feature is at present available in the Android Market and will be soon available at the Apple’s App Store. The mobile feature includes application like “Huddle” allowing group messaging and an auto-upload feature that by design adds photos and videos clicked on your smart phone through Google+ on a private folder in the cloud. This can be shared for eight long hours, the next time you log on to Google+ on a computer.
Google+ is presently active as a “field trial” period and will be made live soon for the public, as the company says.

It is foolish to ask who does not use Google. Professionals like web writers, online learners and Internet marketers use Google multiple times a day. But many are not familiar with the exact ways of diving into the search world of Google. If your way of searching the Internet giant is all about typing a few phrases or words in the search box, you need tips to improve the search process. No use of keep changing the search words or phrases or queries to get information, images, videos and audios of your choice.

No need to make desperate attempts to get at what you are looking for in Google. Don’t frustrate yourself with futile searches so much that you feel compelled to snatch your hair. This blog post has brought to you the exact ways of Google search or unique Google search tips. My list of Google search tips is not comprehensive. However, you can rank among the Google search experts by using the tips listed below:

Explicit Search

Suppose, you need information about social media marketing. Most probably, you will type social media marketing in the search box of Google. Google will reply to your search with results both relevant and irrelevant to social media marketing. Therefore, it is better to make an explicit search by keeping the phrase social media marketing within double quotes. Explicit search will get you only relevant results on the topic of your choice.

For example: “social media marketing”

Exclude Words

Suppose, you are using social media marketing as the key phrase to get information on the same. The search result pages may return results related to social media content or social media advertising besides social media marketing. To exclude the results containing the term content from the search result pages on social media marketing, use the sign (-) between the your key phrase and the word to be excluded.
For example: “social media marketing” – content

Relative Search Word

If you want exclusive search results on content development related to social media marketing, use the phrase content development along with social media marketing in the following fashion:

For example: “social media marketing” ~ content development

Specific Document Type Search

If you are looking for search results containing a specific file type, to say PowerPoint presentation on social media marketing, you had better use filetype as the modifier in the search phrase.
For example: “social media marketing” filetype:ppt

This OR That

When you make search on a particular phrase in Google, the search engine conducts the search not only on the phrase but also on other terms closely related to the phrase. As a result, it presents mixed search results. If you work on two relative phrases and need information on any of them, you should type the two phrases in this pattern: this OR that.

For example: social media marketing OR advertising

Online Calculation

If you want to do an instant calculation, go online instead of using the calculator application and type the numerical digits along with the necessary instruction for division or multiplication or addition or subtraction in the Google search box.

For example: 54789 * 190

If you need the definition of a phrase or word or any other thing, go online and use the command “define” along with the word or phrase in the search box.

For example: define: rainbow

Hope, you will find these Google search tips much useful and helpful. If you know any Google search tip that is beyond this list, please share it with me in comments…

Google, the Goliath of online search, is never at rest. The ceaseless tempo of the Search giant is synonymous with constant innovation and nonstop evolution. Next to e-Books, Plus One or +1 is another wonder from Google’s kit to cast a spell on the users. It is being speculated to be a social feature of Google’s search service. Many think that Google +1 is a challenge to Facebook and Twitter.

Google’s + 1 is almost akin to ‘Like’ button on Facebook. It is supposed to be as impactful as likes on Facebook and retweets on Twitter. It will add as much value to a website or blog in search engine result pages as a post with likes and retweets get in social search results. What distinguishes Plus One from the features of social media sites is its direct influence on Google search results.

As Google dominates the online search world, any new change in the way the search magnate works impacts the global SEO field. Google +1 is, in fact, a recommendation button. It will help the users recommend a website, a blog or any other online post of their choice to their friends and the members in their social networks. The recommended website or blog will be more visible in Google’s search result pages.

To access Plus One, you need to have a Google profile. The profile will be accessible to the contacts in your Gmail, Google Talk and Google Buzz networks. You can import your Facebook friends and Twitter followers to the Plus One network. You can use your contacts on social media sites to get your website or blog recommended by them directly. The more +1 recommendations, the higher value for the site or blog in Google’s search result listings.

As per a report from Matt Cutts, Google Plus One has lots of potential for social SEO. It is a new powerful SEO approach to fetching traffic from different parts of the web world. Now you need to go social more actively in order to enrich your +1 network. It is assumed that SEO professionals will develop better social media communication strategies to increase their social media contacts so that they can build a huge Plus One network to get recommendations for their clients’ sites, blogs and brands.

To make use of Google +1 for the benefit of their clients, SEO professionals need to restructure their Google profiles. People will visit the Google profile of the person who will recommend a site or blog using +1. If the profile is convincing, the recommendation will work. People may not go with the person’s recommendation, if they find his Google profile uninteresting or unconvincing.

This social feature of Google is available in the English market. It will be launched internationally a little while later. Now the time has come to build a huge social media follower base and spice up your Google profile page, if you intent to promote your site or blog and fetch traffic for it using +1.

Duplicate content is the death of a website. Quality content vs. duplicate content is the ongoing talk of the SEO world after the recent change in Google’s algorithm. Originality of web content is now the focus of Google’s algorithm. Google has implemented new filters to filter out websites or webpages with duplicate content. Google has reprogrammed its algorithm as an attempt to deliver high quality and relevant search results. So, the time has come to check if your website has copied content and think how to fix this search engine spam problem.

Reasons to Write Quality Web Content

• Google will index your site out of thousands on the basis of quality and original content. The site will be deemed as a reliable source of authenticate information. Other sites from the same sphere as yours would like to give links to your website.
• Having links on other quality sites, your site will receive a flow of traffic from there. More traffic means more hits. More hits means higher Google page ranking. Higher page ranking means better image of the site.
• Updating your site with unique content will work to keep the site in the search domain of Google. It will also push up the ranking of the site. Unique content is the only strength of a website to stand out from the crowds.
• If yours is a business website, it will receive more sales leads as a result of original content. If the site is an e-commerce one, unique descriptions for products will make the site visible on search result pages. Duplicating the product descriptions from other sources will bog your e-commerce site down.
• Unique content will fuel the number of subscribers for your business newsletters. Subscribers are on the lookout for interesting and reliable information that they have not found elsewhere in the web world. It will boost up the reputation of the site.
• Ezine publishers look for original content across the web to provide their subscribers with. If you send articles with unique content having a link to your website to them, they will readily accept the articles.
• Avoid making copyright violations. If you use the content of other websites on your website without making changes in it, you will violate the copyright issues. Keep in mind, all content on the web is copyright protected. There is no alternative to writing new and unique content.

Search engine spam is a deceitful art of tricking the search engine spiders into indexing webpages, despite their duplicate content. As a result, search engines return inappropriate search results of poor quality. Search engine spam is practiced by pages with a replica of content on other pages. Many think that creating similar or multiple webpages and staffing them with the same content will get their sites listed on relevant search result pages. But the sites become the victim of their own unethical practice that is search engine spam.

Therefore, Google has restructured its algorithm to value the websites with original content and dump the websites with duplicate content. It is evident from the words of Matt Cutts: “we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”
Follow http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html to know Google’s content guidelines for webmasters.

Google is never at rest. The web giant is always on the wheels of evolution. Bearing evidence to Google’s obsession with innovation is the launch of Google eBooks. The latest Google application promises to take the readers to a world where virtual reading is a pleasure. Built on a cloud technology based platform, Google eBooks is accessible via any web browser. A deliberate move by Google to capture the global online market of book lovers, this technological landmark is a challenge to traditional book stores and libraries in the real world. At present, it stores an incredible collection of titles in multiple different categories like health, humor, literature, science, technology, photography, philosophy, poetry, religion, social science, travel etc. The list of categories is unlimited.

Bookshelves at Google eBookstore

Google has partnered with approximately 4,000 publishers and authors from across the globe to multiply the number of eBooks in its collection of best sellers and new releases. There are several shelves in the online store of Google eBooks. You can catch a glimpse of the latest arrivals in “New Arrivals” shelf. The “Free Classics” shelf boasts of nearly 3 million popular classics of different times. You can shop for eBooks of your choice from the cosmic collection at the Google eBookstore directly.

The application is compatible with the following devices:

• Mobile phones running on Android 2.1.
• iPhones, iPads and iPods with iOS 3.0
• JavaScript enabled browsers
• eBook readers with Adobe eBook platform

Formats of Google eBookstore

On offer are some eBooks with flowing text, some with original scanned pages and some with both. The eBooks with flowing text offer great reading experience by allowing the readers to adjust the line spacing, paragraph alignment and font size. The text of eBooks with original scanned pages is not adjustable to fit in the screen size of different reading devices. You can switch between two different formats, original scanned pages and flowing text that many Google eBooks come with, within the settings of your reading devices. eBooks with scanned pages are better for larger display on desktop and laptop screens.

User Library at Google eBookstore

With your Google account, you can own space for “My Library” at Google eBookstore. In “My Library”, there are several sections: My Google eBooks, Purchased, Reviewed, Recently Reviewed, Favorites, Reading Now, To Read and Have Read. Click the button “Create new bookshelf” to make a new section or shelf and name it after your choice. You can comfortably browse across the sections using the search application on your “My Library” page. Your purchase at Google eBookstore will be stored in the “Purchased” section. This shelf is marked ‘Private’ and other users of Google eBooks cannot view the contents of the shelf.

Besides accolades from global book buffs, criticism from rivals, academic experts, foreign governments and consumer watchdogs is pouring in for Google eBooks. However, it is a hit with techies, gadget freaks and Internet-savvy people. I was looking for books on importance of cultural identity. I found some relevant eBooks at Google eBookstore. Thanks to Google.

There is no doubt that whenever Google releases a new tool from its kit or implements a new search technology, does it for the benefit of not only its users but search engine optimizers as well. To measure the performance and boost the search engine ranking of your website, you need to monitor the SEO activity of your own as well as your competitors. Among the existing search engine optimization tools from Google store, Google Reader helps you do so. Google Reader offers mobile accessibility to its users.

Google Reader is a powerful SEO tool to make online periodical check on the websites of your choice. It will give you alerts when those sites are updated with new content. This Google tool is a great use for you to stay updated on the rival sites, instead of checking each of them individually. It also helps you respond to new content before the content grows old. Sharing information is another purpose that Google Reader caters to efficiently. This use is beneficial from business point of view.

Here is a brief on the potentials of Google Reader from SEO perspectives -

Link building is effective if you keep tracking the links that you have secured from multiple websites spending lots of time and labor. It is time consuming to monitor the in-linking pages in a manual process. You can get it done automatically by adding the pages to the Google Reader. With the feed creation tool of Google Reader, you can track the changes in those pages easily.

You may be searching for hub pages where multiple websites competing for space have been listed as well as linked to. The same links as those of your competitors may be of little advantage for you. However, these pages can often get you somewhat new links. Using Google Reader’s feed creation tool, it is easy to track the hub pages and your competitors’ link building activity there. You can come across new competitors on hub pages.

If you can identify your competitors, you can keep a watch on their SEO activity via Google Reader. You can create feeds to track changes in and receive updates from the most important pages of their websites. Whenever they add a new page to the sites, rewrite any page and update the sites with new blog posts, Google Reader will alert you via the feeds. As a result, you get to know how often the most important pages of the rival sites are updated. It helps you devise SEO strategies for your website accordingly to compete with them.

You have built relationship with a website owner and the owner has agreed to give you a link from his site. Tracking the site to check manually if the link to your site has been added to it or not burns up time. Google Reader’s feed creation tool does it for you and let you know when the link goes live. You can spend your valuable time doing other important things.

No end to the wonders coming out of Google’s magic stick! Google TV is a mightier attempt than Google Caffeine, made by the supreme search giant to combine surfing Internet, watching television, browsing websites and listening to music in a single pack. Built on the Android platform, Google TV requires the users to use Chrome OS for browing the web and running applications.

Each and every new release from the Google factory raises a storm in the SEO world. How to use this platform to promote websites, particularly those relating to business is a concern with the SEO masters across the globe. The first thing to take note of is that websites need to be in sync with the Google TV from such perspectives as text, image, color and navigation. Speculations are that bigger text, crisp images, suitable color choice and easier navigation are the must-have ingredients for websites to be optimized for Google TV.

Tips on Optimizing Website Content for Google TV

Sites for Google TV need to have a more user-friendly interface. It should be simple in design and content, with lots of readability on the TV screen. The strength of each paragraph should not exceed a limit of 90 words. Each paragraph should consist of small sentences as a single glimpse is enough to read them. Each sentence should not be shorter than three and longer than twelve words. The space between lines and paragraphs should be more than the standard version . The font should be from the Droid Serif and Droid Sans family as only they are supported by Google TV.

Tips on Designing Website Navigation for Google TV

How to design user-friendly websites for Google TV is a consideration for web designers when the question is navigation. Sites for Google TV should be much easier in navigation than those for computers. The onscreen actions should be limited in number. The navigation menu should display all key features. There must be an easy way to return to the previous page. Some direct way to navigate visible and actionable items on the screen should be there. As the users of Google TV will prefer to navigate using a directional pad rather than the QWERTTY keyboard, the navigation process should be designed direction wise – left-right, up-down and center.

Importance of Video Sitemaps for Websites on Google TV

Optimizing web-based video content to be discoverable and visible on Google TV is being given importance. In the words of Matt Cutts who is the chief engineer of this Google project, “If you make video, you are a site owner or a publisher, please start exploring video sitemaps”. With the growing popularity of video content, video sitemaps are optimizable and indexable on Google TV.

Importance of Google TV Ads for Online Marketing

Google TV serves also as a platform for online marketing. Through TV commercials, Internet marketing campaigns can be accomplished easily. Google TV supports various tools and applications to drive traffic to web-based business ads. Video advertising is another useful method to focus eyeballs from all around on websites. Google TV ads will help reach more and more new customers. Keyword analysis and selection is of no less importance for Google TV geo-targeted ads.

Do people need to have their sites rebuilt and redesigned in the Google TV friendly version to get their content easily viewable on Google TV? Let’s wait for sometime to get an answer to this question.

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With its own URL shortener, goo.gl, Google has jumped into the fray with major URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyURL.com. Next to Google Instant, goo.gl is another useful offer from the Search Giant for its global users. Google introduced the URL shortening service in December last year an an application for Google Toolbar and Feedburner.

Since the initial release, Google’s URL shortening technology has been available for use with Google products like Blogger, News, Picasa, Maps and Moderator. But the worldwide fans and followers of Google had been expecting goo.gl to be an independent web tool for direct use. Therefore, the Internet Search Giant came up with the website http://goo.gl/ yesterday.

Why another URL shortener? It is a question from those who have used tiny.URL and bit.ly till date. The one and only answer from Matt Cutts is that goo.gl is “the stablest, most secure and fastest” of all URL shorteners on the web. It has been built with a focus on quality, stability, security and speed. The following are the features that distinguish Google’s URL shortening service from others -

• The web based application, goo.gl is stabler and easier to use
• The Google URL shortener comes with an automatic spam detection
• The URL shortening tool works at an awesome speed across all platforms
• The application is also accessible from the user’s Google account profile

What is more positive, exciting and advantageous about goo.gl?

You will notice a list of the URLs that you have shortened till date, if you access Your Google account. On clicking the ‘details’ link beside any of the shortened URLs , you will see complete real-time analytics data on the URL including total number of clicks, traffic graphs, traffic sources, total count of referrers, total number of visitors and their profiles.

It will help you evaluate the worth of popularity of the content of blog posts and web pages of which URLs you have shortened by using goo.gl. You can see who your visitors are and target the prime sources like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and LinkedIn that send a bulk of traffic to your links. Moreover, you ca n also analyze the traffic is thick from which countries.

Hurry up to use goo.gl and let me know how fast and safe it is…

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Google Voice, an innovative service from Google house, recently became avaialble for the use of everyone in the USA. In India, it is available in Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad. Highly useful exclusively for small businesses, it gives them additional advantages over others in the present era when communication is one of the makings of every business activity. Apart from making and receiving calls, recording voicemails, sending and recieving text messages through Google Voice application, some funcitonal features are there to faciliate the operation of a business across geographical borders. Moreover, with this applicaiton, products and services become searchable online for the people of particular areas. Just Dial, which also offers voice-based search service, is the only competititor of Google in the local search arena. However, Google’s voice service is more tempting because of the exlusive features, described below –

Search Voicemails and Prioritize Calls

Google records voicemails and the user gets transcripts of the voicemails through emails from the search giant. That is why, chances to lose the voicemails that are important for your business and from the target clients, are slim. More importantly, the recorded voicemails are searchable in Google search engine. Just like Google helps you explore the World Wide Web to search for anything under the sun, you can look for the transcribed texts of voicemails in the online search world. This specific function of Google Voice is useful exclusively for the businessmen who receive a large number of business calls. With Google Voice, they need not fear losing the calls or voicemails.

Sharing Calls and Voicemails with Others is Easy

Google Voice makes it an easy job to share calls, voicemails and text messages with the people in your organization. You can forward those as they are sent via email to you, to others, if necessary. The recorded audio of voicemails can be embeded and shared through email or other online communication tools. Moreover, you can record a call by pressing a button. The recorded audio will be searchable on the basis of specific key phrases on the web. Being shareable, the audio recordings can be useful for collaboration at corporates where conference calls are common. This feature of Google Voice benefits those who fail to turn up at conferences.

Adjust Contacts Depending on Various Purposes

Google Voice lets you categorize your contacts to some user-defined groups. From Google Voice’s setting menu, you can adjust the contacts under each group. You can connect with certain contacts through calls or voicemails and block other contacts from making unnecessary calls to connect with you. You can arrange the contacts in an order depending on your purpose of using them, for example business development discussion and product promotion. You can forward calls from the contacts of those groups to any member of your organization. Google Voice lets you customize voicemail messages for customer support or greeting callers or important clients.

Build a Local Identity of Business in Different Parts of the World

If your business runs over different parts of the world, you can pick the area codes of those places and set up your Google Voice number accordingly. The clients from those local parts of the world will get local numbers to call you. Different area codes may be irrelevant to you because you can make free domestic calls through Google Voice. But, it may not be the same for your clients and customers. The local area codes work as local representatives for your business. Google Voice allows you to make cheap international calls. Thus, you can save a sizable sum.

Specify Which Calls You Wish to Receive and When

You can instruct Google Voice over which numbers you want to recieve calls from and at which time of the day. If you dont wish your phone to ring duirng business hours, you can moderate it accordingly. If you are absent from office for some hours of the day, you can connect Google Voice with the calls recieved during those hours. There is of course, exception for important contacts. If specified, Google Voice will transfer calls from those contacts to your mobile phone.

Let me know, if you have benefitted from using Google Voice….