In theory, it is simple – if you have something interesting to someone else, if you build a website with the honest to goodness goal to provide something useful for someone else, that someone else will find you. That is also how the creators of Google describe their main goal, to more or less have a great repository of information, and help people of our planet find useful stuff.

In practice, it is not that simple. It is not that simple because there are thousands, possibly even millions of sites like yours, because you might be running a very honest online business, selling some very useful product, but do not have unheard of, exceptionally grand ‘content’. If your site is listed on page 265 of a search results set, be sure you will never get any visitors that way.

Unlike Yahoo and others, who rely on human involvement, Google does everything through automation. Websites are indexed (or crawled, or spidered – all terms refer to the same process) by their indexing software called Googlebot. Googlebot looks at websites daily, and rules programmed into the software decide which of your pages make it into the main Google index and which don’t. After your site was indexed, whether it was submitted for indexing by a human or the robot just stumbled upon it, your pages are ranked, so Google knows on which page of a search to put your site on, and on what search phrases should your site even be part of the result search.

The Googlebot is very smart and works really well. Keep in mind however, that is just a piece of software, a very sophisticated one, but it’s just a computer program. Consequently, it has a set of algorithms (rules) it uses to index web site content (information), a set of capabilities (as I said before, Googlebot is really intelligent) and a set of limitations. As such, there is an impressive number of ways in which one can trip up the Googlebot and make it impossible for it to index your content. Alternately, the Googlebot can index your site well, and then people will find it when searching for words it contains.

This article will try to teach you all the basics necessary to achieve consistency and persistency in Google, starting with the very basic step: getting indexed by Googlebot, Google’s indexing robot.

1. Read Google’s own Webmaster Guidelines

The people behind Google seem to have two main things down to a science: One, most of their algorithms (rules) are so secret, that all us non-Google employees do is speculate. Two, their guidelines are very simple, direct and precise. Following their guidelines will never hurt your site’s ranking. Disregarding their guidelines can and probably will hurt you in the long run. So go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html and read what Google has to say about itself.

2. Have text links.

Make every single page on your site accessible via a text-based link, as opposed to Javascript, Flash, DHTML (Dynamic HTML), etc. Googlebot’s native language is text.
Google says: “Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.”

This is probably the number one key to your site’s existence in Google. Googlebot is actually a robotic, browser-like software, based on the venerable Lynx browser. The reasoning behind this approach is that the creators are trying to get as close as possible to emulating human browsing, making sure your website is actually human friendly. Consequently, by downloading Lynx on your computer and looking at your site through Lynx (http://lynx.isc.org), you will see more or less exactly the information Googlebot can read and index and the links Googlebot can follow. You will also see HTML errors on your pages and places where a robot would be stuck and could not reach the rest of your site.

I know it is very unfair to those of us who understand and love the potential of websites built completely in Flash, or other engines. However, until the nice folks who run Google figure out a good way to crawl inside a Flash file and extract the appropriate information, we are stuck with standard HTML.

This is not to say that you cannot make your site really pretty and fill it with Java Script and Flash eye candy. But you must have regular text and standard text links. Usually you can achieve the desired effect by having extra navigation menus based on standard text links.

3. Avoid frames.

Avoid frames at all cost. If you must use them (for example to make someone else’s page look like it’s part of your site), do not use them on your front page.

Frames are like the plague, they sneak up on you. It is incredibly easy to lose Googlebot’s tracks inside a badly formatted frameset. You might hear that some of the robots, including Google’s Googlebot and Yahoo’s Slurp are quickly gaining capabilities to go inside frames properly. My philosophy is, until a feature becomes ubiquitous, if you’re uncertain, leave it in the closet.

4. Keep the number of links on a given page less than 100.

This comes straight from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: “Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).”

This looks more like a suggestion and I am not 100% sure if you get penalized in any way or if Googlebot just stops reading your links after 100. I can however tell you from personal experience that I tried a page with 700 links and it seemed fine. Then one day I tried to view the page from my Blackberry PDA and I got this strange error message saying my page is illegally formatted. After I split the page into several ones with 80 links each, the pages worked on the PDA also.

Who cares about the Blackberry? Well, if you’re reading this and your goal is to get visitors, then your main concern should be not to alienate anyone. Remember, today more than ever, people use different devices and different software to access the web. Every visitor is a potential customer. Every employee at a major US lawfirm and many other corporate people use a Blackberry.

Lastly, why would you need that many links on one page anyway? Let’s say, for example, that you specialize in promotional products – corporate branded gifts, such as pens, caps, mints and other products (called sometimes ‘premiums’) imprinted with one’s logo. Your name is John Doe, and you decided to name your company JDPromos (not very imaginative, but will do for our examples). You would want to have every item in your catalog as a text link, so every item gets indexed as a link and as a keyword. Also, those who run forums, ezines, blogs, might want to have standard links to their articles, as the software they use might create dynamic links, invisible to certain robots.

5. Give every page a meaningful title.

Give every single page on the site a complete and meaningful title. This is also directly from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. See Rule #1.

Incidentally, for those who are fascinated by the debates on the death of the Meta Tags, the
<title></title>
tag is not a Meta Tag, but a required element for every page.

The “title” tag is supported by every web creation tool out there, and goes in the header of a web page (between the “head” and the “/head” tags).

Google offers the ‘allintitle’ syntax, which lets users search only text that appears in a page title. A lot of people who integrate a Google bar into their websites allow users to get results only by title. There are over 29 million results returned for Untitled Document.

Most of us – myself included – copy and paste template pages, out of the convenience of not having to recreate all design elements from scratch. If you do so, do not forget to change the title.

Make sure your title is not just a list of keywords and that it is related to the actual content of the page. Google can and will check that, before deciding on your page’s ‘relevance’.

6. Do not place important text inside images.

Google says: “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”

It is very tempting to create images with text inside them, for the very simple reason that as designers, we are not limited to the very few font (type) options that basic HTML allows. Also, different browsers tend to display things differently nowadays, so it is much easier to create a text image, which will be shown consistently and not worry about styles, operating systems, etc.

7. Use descriptive “ALT” tags.

The “ALT” tag is used as a text alternative (hence the name) for images and image links and was designed so that text browsers (such as Lynx) do not just display a generic ‘Image’ for every picture link you might have. If all your links say ‘Image’, how would a potential visitor know what they are?

Make sure that the text description is meaningful and accurate. Take our promotional items company as an example. Let’s say they have a picture of a tradeshow display, as an example of a service they provide outside the ordinary imprinted mint boxes, calculators and keychains. If the “ALT” tag only says “display”, that is what Googlebot will see and index. If the tag says something like “example of a tradeshow display design”, that is certainly more useful and more Googlebot friendly.

Please note that although the “ALT” tag does count and Google seems to put a high price on this tag, it ranks lower than plain text.

8. Use meaningful descriptions for links

With the risk of sounding like a scratched CD, I’ll have to say this again: Whether you use picture links or text links, please use meaningful text inside your tags so that Googlebot can associate that text with that href link.

In other words, let’s pretend again that we are designing that website for that imaginary promotional items company we called JDPromos. If you intend to put a link to a set of sample coffee mugs promos, say something like “link to JDPromos samples of branded coffee mugs”, not just “coffee mugs”, or even worse, “click here for pictures”. Never use link text like “read more” or “go here” or “download it”, “click here”, “don’t click here”, you get the picture – I hope.

Don’t try to fool the Googlebot with hidden links or duplicate content or irrelevant pages of words like “sex” and “hot girls.” The Googlebot doesn’t like being played and you will be penalized, one way or another, in the long run.

9. Use a “description” tag for every page

Include a

<meta name=”description” content=”[insert your site's description here]“>

tag in your page header to summarize your site. Use a meaningful one or two sentence description, do not keyword spam.

Even better, include descriptive text on the site’s front page where users can actually read it. This text will appear as the description for your site in Google results.

Place more important content higher in the page than less important content in a page, Google does categorize text on a page based on it’s position, text at the bottom of a page is considered less important, or ‘relevant’, to use one of Google’s own terms.

10. Use short query strings

Use URLs with query strings sparingly, if at all possible. Query strings are also called dynamic pages. You can usually recognize dynamic pages by the presence of the “?” character. Keep in mind that the shorter the list of query string parameters, the better. Be aware that not every search engine robot can crawl dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

11. Never use the “&id=” parameter

If you must use query strings, or dynamic pages, never use the “&id=” parameter as part of the string.

I know this might sound ridiculous, as it might be hard or impossible for you not to use the “&id=” parameter, but if you are a programmer and you can change the variable’s name, replace “id” with something else. Otherwise, Googlebot will just skip that page.

Google says: “Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter in your URLs, as we don’t include these pages in our index.”

12. Use robots.txt

Use robots.txt to show the Googlebot around your site. This ancient and very standard mechanism for directing well-behaved robots like the Googlebot will allow you to specify places where the robot is not welcome, whether for privacy reasons, or for reasons of avoiding Google penalties. You might want to keep the robot away from your cgi-bin directory and other places you maybe don’t want available to the entire searching population of the globe. Remember this is a guideline, not a barrier, robots that are not programmed to comply, will disregard. Bottom line, use the robots.txt to guide Googlebot, but not to enforce strict security.

Google says: “Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled.”

13. Make a sitemap

A site map is just a page on your website where you guide your users through the structure of your site. The most basic form of sitemap is a page that lists all of your pages, with a brief description and a link – all text, of course. When you make the sitemap, follow all the rules above and don’t forget that the purpose of the sitemap is to guide your human visitor.

Google says: “Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.”

14. Use the Google Sitemaps project

At the time of this writing, the fastest, best and most accurate way to make sure your site is properly crawled and indexed by Googlebot is to participate in the Google Sitemaps project.

In a nutshell, you make a sitemap as an XML page and submit it directly to Google. Google then sends Googlebot to index your site. Besides the speedy free submission, you also get a good amount of statistics and the opportunity to fix potential errors in your site.

Please note that the XML sitemap needed for the Google Sitemap project is intended specifically for Googlebot, and is different from the sitemap described in the previous Rule, which is intended solely for human users.

Also, do not be afraid of XML, Google’s sitemap is a very simple text file and they give you all the necessary information and directions at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Good luck!

—
Andrei co-owns Bsleek – a company that specializes in web design, hosting, promotional items, printing, tradeshow displays, logos, CD presentations, SEO and more. Andrei has amassed an extensive technical knowledge and experience through his career as the CIO for a major travel management company and through his past careers in military research, data acquisition and airspace engineering. He also consults for Trinity Investigations, a New York based PI firm.

—
Bsleek – Redefining cheap web hosting [http://www.bsleek.com/hosting/]

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrei_Smith

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.

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!

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.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Merle_Stinnett

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster
can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing
by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your
site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated
file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and
data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days,
you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and its
often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to
syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as ‘Really Simple Syndication’ but its original
acronym stood for ‘Rich Site Summary’. XML is only simple code like HTML
and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating
Sitemaps Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of
the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing
the Googlebot’s job!

This is a ‘Good’ thing! With the steady influx of new web sites
growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge,
even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can
now take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON’T improve
your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other
sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make
sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google’s Sitemaps
– mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags.
To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap
file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

http://www.yoursite.com/

1.0

2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00

daily

Along with ‘urlset’ tags at the beginning and end of your code,
and an XML version indication – that’s basically your XML file!
File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location http://www.yoursite.com — name of your webpage

priority you set the priority you want Google to place on that page
in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least,
1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is ONLY relative to
your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important?
You have certain pages on your site that are more important than
others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high
priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows
crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven’t changed.

change frequency you can tell Google how often you change that
particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on — if you
frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly
updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list
all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly
updating your site in Google’s massive index or database.
Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting
a simple text file with all your URLs.

Now there is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different
ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing
as you read this. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML file.

Difficult Google’s Python Generator

That’s a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your
hand and installing scripts doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you,
you’re probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a
generator which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough
up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.
Google XML Generator [https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html]

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed
on your web server, many servers don’t have this. If you know what you’re
doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don’t need a Google Account to use Sitemaps but it’s encouraged
because you can track your sitemap’s progress and view diagnostic
information. If you already have another Google Account gmail,
Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions
from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request
to the following URL:

[http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url]

Hard A PHP Code Generator

This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This
generator will spider your site, and produce your XML sitemap file. Download
the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get
your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.
PHP Generator

Again, this is only hard to do if you don’t know your way around PHP
files or scripts.

Easy Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps a list of
these ‘third party suppliers’ of generators on their site. Find them here:
Google’s List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is www.xml-sitemaps.com, and you can
index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will
give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site.

It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an
XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non-
compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority,
changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory
of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google
Sitemaps of your XML file and you’re in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site
you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file.
This won’t be much of a problem unless you’re daily adding pages
to your site — then you will need something like the PHP or Python
generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your
pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google
Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it’s probably
the wisest route to take.

To learn more about the different Services and Programs offered

by Google click here: Google Adsense & Google Adwords

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins

All knowing, all seeing, ever present!

Google has permeated into almost every aspect of life on this planet and beyond.
It has become a mainstream fixture for computer and Internet users around the
globe. All the while, cementing its position as the only real facilitator of the
world’s collective intelligence.

Can you remember a day when you have not Googled?

But Google’s reach doesn’t stop with the mouse or the cursor. It has moved beyond
the computer screen, snapping up resources, sites, and people at a frighteningly
steady pace. Perhaps, the first indication Google wasn’t just satisfied with staying
within the wired confines of the world wide web was when it partnered with universities
such as Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and others, to scan and index the contents
of their libraries — then making this material accessible through Google Print.

Then it casted its aspirations heavenward with the introduction of Google Maps and
Google Earth. Mapping services that bring the world’s geographic information into view,
it is as if Google had literally ascended, watching us from far and near, tracking our
every move as well as our every keystroke. Even using satellite imagery to provide
it with eyes in the sky; leading one to wonder, from those lofty heights can divinity
be far behind?

All kidding aside, Google, whether it wants to or not, is developing a god-like
reverence in the eyes of many. But is this such a leap of faith? Is the idea of
Google as a god-like force in our lives so preposterous? so ludicrous? so sacrilegious?

In prehistoric times, pagans used to worship the sun gods. Ancient Egypt, Greece
and Rome all had their gods who satisfied the basic human need we have to believe in a
superior being or force. They even raised ordinary humans who displayed unusual
courage or bravery up to a god-like status. Are we now entering into a new
post-modern pagan era — will we be worshipping at the feet of Google?

Not really, we treat all our knowledge givers with respect, some even reach
a god-like status. We raise them up above the crowd, give them special meaning
or reverence in our lives. Humans have been doing this since we stood upright
and walked on the plains of Africa. The shaman or high priest of ancient times
– holders of the secret rites, holders of a group’s history or knowledge; we show
these people respect and we elevate them to a higher status.

Google falls into this category.

And Google does deserve some respect, as far as the search engine market goes,
whether it’s wearing a halo or a cursor — Google is still the only game in town.
According to Alexa, a company that tracks web traffic, the top three sites on
the Web are 1. Yahoo, 2. MSN, and 3. Google. However, when you compare where
people go on these sites — search.yahoo.com accounts for only 9% of Yahoo’s
traffic and search.msn.com only 7% of MSN’s total traffic; whereas most of
Google’s traffic is search traffic. This is a big distinction.

And what about the purchasing power of these search engines; latest data presented
by Score Networks, Inc. shows MSN searchers at 48%, Google searchers at 42% and
Yahoo at 31%. That is Google searchers were 42% more likely to purchase online
than the regular Internet user.

Another aspect of Google’s commercial might is its online advertising system. Through
its Adsense and Adword programs, Google has commercialize and monetized most of the
web’s free content. Depending on your opinions or stand, this may be good or bad.
Regardless of viewpoints, Google has been more than generous with sharing this ad

revenue with all concerned parties — content providers, web writers and journalists,
professional bloggers, ordinary webmasters and marketers — all have reaped the
benefits of these programs.

If you feed it with fresh high quality content — Google will take good care of you! In many
cases, it can be argued that Google is subsidizing or facilitating the creation of quality
content on the Net through its Adsense program.

Google’s dominance of all aspects of the Internet is also taking on a god-like force.
It is acquiring and building at an almost god-like speed. Google Acquisitions include:
Outride, Blogger, Neotonic Software, Applied Semantics, Ignite Logic, Genius Labs,
Picasa, Keyhole, Urchin software… how did all this madness start?

Initially called BackRub, referring to the way it back linked to web sites, Google was
founded by Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google, the name
itself is a play on the word googol, and refers to the number represented by 1 followed
by 100 zeros… opened its doors on Sept. 7, 1998, in Menlo Park, California. It had
a corporate staff of three. In 2004 Google offered its IPO with a price per share at
$85. By June 7, 2005, Google was worth $80 billion, making it one of the world’s biggest
media companies.

Perhaps, one of Google’s most brilliant (some believe absurd) moves, happened just recently.
It has applied (via Nelson Minar, a Google Engineer), for patent rights to transmit ads through
RSS feeds. Few people know, even more won’t believe, but the Internet has undergone
a fundamental shift in how information is exchanged on the web. RSS stands for ‘Really Simple
Syndication’ and was first popularized by blogs because blogs use XML and RSS feeds
to syndicate their content.

Don’t come to us, we will deliver. People can view a site’s contents through RSS readers
or an RSS equipped browser without actually going to the sites.

RSS will revolutionize the Internet. Microsoft in its Longhorn Statement has announced
the next version of Windows will have RSS integrated into its Operating System. RSS
applications, under the Creative Commons license, will change the way we use our
computers and the Internet.

Google, if it is successful with this patent application will build on its already god-like
status. The stakes are enormous and Google knows it. This patent could put Google
directly into the mix, but the rewards are beyond belief! And that’s not all, there are
rumors Google may be developing its own RSS powered operating system and browser.
Why not, it has the resources and financial clout to easily carry out such an undertaking.
Google is already the owner of the domain name “gbrowser.com”!

One can only wonder, is Google positioning itself to not only be the brains of the
Internet but also placing itself into the very core of the nasty beast? Does it desire
not only to be a mega hub, but also to be an innate part of the whole structure?
Positioning itself, in essence, to becoming the web’s nervous system.

Any movement of data, information, or commerce on the Internet will have to pass
through and be affected by the Google Factor. More or less, cementing Google’s
influence on the whole scheme of things. And in the process, further weaving
Google into the very fabric of our lives.

Now if that’s not God-like, nothing is.

Everyone is profiting for Google, find out how you can too! Click here: Google Cash File. Get a Free Desktop Calendar & Planner compliments of the Author and DATEwise.

Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins

Page Rank is the value provided by Google with a number from 0 up to 10, to each page of our website. This value indicates how important our web value compared to the others. The greater the value we get, the better are the results of searches on Search Engines. One of the determinants of the value of Page Rank calculation is the number of links that lead to web pages.

Alexa Rank is a value assigned by Alexa which is calculated based on the number of visits and page views on our website, from all the websites that install the alexa toolbar. Alexa value is smaller the better, because it shows the high traffic and page views are obtained by the website. Alexa Rank determining factor is the number of visits and page views are obtained by our website.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO can mean the effort or how to get the highest search results by using the keyword [keyword] in a particular search engine. One factor in SEO is the value of Page Rank of a website.

So, in my opinion, those three things [Page Rank, Alexa Rank and SEO] interrelated with each other.

The first is the Page Rank. How do we get a high Page Rank? In accordance with my experience, the point is that content is the king. Write setuatu needed people. Or are liked. Or something really be mastered. Make someone else read your writing and was amazed by it. Why? Because someone else could a ‘voluntary’ to link to the website / blog. Link is the main capital that will make your blog is considered ‘more important’ than the other blogs. The more other blogs link to your blog, especially if linked to by blogs with high Page Rank, it will be the higher the Page Rank you get.

The second is the Alexa Rank. Terms to Your Alexa Rank value the better is a high traffic towards your blog, and you get a high page view of this visitor. How can bring high traffic to our blog? So one must be mastered is the science of SEO. How do we make paper, indexed by search engines and occupy the top positions for keywords [keyword] you use. Make search engine automatically bring traffic to our blog. In addition, do not forget to display ’selling you’. As I did in the sidebar of this blog. There are 15 recent post I offer. Why not just 5? I am preparing to visitors and readers of this blog on various topics that ‘they may need’. And several times successfully. Proved, not a few visitors commented on more than one posting. That is, page view my blog quite high. I suspect, though this blog has not visited by thousands of people per day [my data around 200an unique visitor], but because the page numbers of his view quite high, then the value becomes Alexa Rank better.

And the last is SEO. How can we optimize the keywords that we use so that they can compete with the writings of others who use the same keywords! Based on what I learned from the Masters, one of the most influential in determining search rankings in the Search Engine Page Rank is the value we have. Well Loh!
As an illustration, when we want to write about specific keywords and analysis of competitors, who must consider is what blogs Page Rank who earn the number one in search engines. If the number 4 to the top and we are less than that, then we can slim possibility the beat blog. Why? Search engines will rank search results based on how important these pages in his eyes. PR 4 is considered 5 times more important than the Page Rank 3. Page Rank 5 is considered 25 times more important than the PR 3!

Would not it be all three relate to each other? Science SEO to get the best position in search engines need a Page Rank as a capital. With a good SEO is a high traffic we get, the value of our Alexa Rank better.

A little history

Microsoft, the world’s largest software vendor, has been around for quite a long time. Its target market is mainly selling operating systems and office applications for the desktop computers. Microsoft products are sold to computer manufacturers, i.e. Dell Computers, who in turn install and ship Microsoft software package to the consumers. So in a sense, consumers end up writing Bill Gates a $100+ check without ever knowing it. This is how Microsoft became to dominate the computer desktop industry and turned Bill Gates into modern day Henry Ford.

Google, on the other hand, is a relatively new company. It blossomed during the dot com boom, and eventually came to dominate the online search engine business. Today, Google attracts more than 200 million unique queries on its search engine every day; statistically speaking, each query generates 12 cents for the company…that is 8 zeros multiplied by 12! Google, for the most part, profits through its search based advertisement technology known as Adwords. Adwords makes online advertisement approachable in terms of easiness and affordability. Adwords, combined with a similar technology called Adsense, made Google endless amounts of cash. Google, today, is the undisputed champion of the online world.

How they became enemies

“When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna” – Napoleon

Until recently, both Google and Microsoft were living in harmony. The masses used Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to surf Google’s search engine. However, internet’s seemingly unstoppable growth since the early 2000 began to attract the attention of many industries. Microsoft executives clearly saw Internet as the next big thing; possibly a market worth pursuing. Meanwhile, Google continued to make unprecedented strides within its search engine market. Having generated enough cash, however, Google took a different direction; founded by technology enthusiasts, Google began to enter various markets unrelated to its search business. Rumors began to spread that Google is building an online “free” Operating System and various other tools such as an alternative version to the dominating Internet Explorer. This, as you might have guessed, ticked off Microsoft, and it took the bait and decided to roll its war drums against Google. Microsoft, by the way, is not the only company that feels threatened by its presence. Other internet giants, such as AOL, Yahoo! and eBay, are also feeling the heat ever since Google embarked on its journey towards dominating any market of technological interest. Google innovated in markets that already existed and, surprisingly, came about to dominating them. For Microsoft, it was a threat worth neutralizing. Today, Google has its hands in web search, email, online videos, calendars, news, blogs, desktop search, photo sharing, online payments, social networking, instant messaging, WiFi, word processors, web hosting, web browser, search tool bars, spreadsheets, discussion groups, maps and more.

Before long, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay maneuvered to encapsulate Google’s ever-growing strength. Over two hundred years ago, Emperor Napoleon, the Google of his day, found himself in a similar situation. Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain had decided to go to war.

The drums of war

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” – Napoleon

Microsoft’s take on this war is quite different from that of Google. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, has repeatedly alleged that the online market is not a zero-sum game; in other words, it is possible for two or more players to dominate a large share of this market. Microsoft is not used to this. In the past it has decisively eliminated any competition, and taken the throne for itself. Consequently, Microsoft has publicly declared an all out war on Google.

Ironically, Google is the company that is on the attack; it has been aggressively pursuing Microsoft’s market. However, using clever tactics, it has intimidated Microsoft to appear as the aggressor, while Google quietly carries on with its business. In other words, Google has lured Microsoft into a rash attack; when it ends up in disaster, Microsoft will have only themselves to blame, and everyone around them will blame them, too. Google will win both the battle of appearances and the battle on the field. Very few strategies offer such flexibility and power.

It takes more energy to take land than to hold it. Throughout history, defensive tactics have won more battles than the aggressors. After the first wave of siege, the aggressor loses the advantage of surprise attack and leaves himself exposed to a counter attack. The defender can clearly see his strategy and take protective action. Napoleon’s most celebrated victory, the battle of Austerlitz was a counter attack, defeating a larger army with a kill ratio of 15 to 1. A defensive position has become the perfect way to disguise an offensive maneuver, a counter attack. Google has repeatedly asserted that it is not interested in competing with other businesses; it is a web search business only. They have used this facade to make Microsoft’s concerns with the company seem paranoid; a clever move that worked. The fact remains that Google is a powerful secretive company, driven by smart people, and for a cause.

Do No Evil

“In war the moral is to the physical is as three to one”- Napoleon

In his day, most emperors preferred to hire mercenary armies simply because maintaining a healthy army of their own came at too much of an expense. Napoleon reversed this setback by recruiting young French loyalists more eager to fight for a greater France than for the money. As a result, during battle, French soldiers swiftly defeated much larger mercenary armies. My point? Bring people together around a cause and you create a motivated force.

With a 60% stake in the U.S. web search market, one might expect Google to have mottos of the kind “Let Google do the searching” or perhaps “Search fast, search Google”. On the contrary, Google’s motto is a simple “Do No Evil”. Recently, web search companies were asked by U.S. intelligence agencies to transfer private data on user searches over to them; while other web search companies concurred with them, Google saw it as evil and denied. This decision alone drove Google’s shares dwindling down several points on the NASDAQ, but Google remained true to its “Do No Evil” maxim. Google has come to be seen as a company driven not by the incentive of making money, but rather by the pursuit of knowledge through technological innovation; as a result, the company has used this justification to convince its competitors that it is not interested in defeating competition, but rather providing easier access to information for everyone, and hence making the world a better place. Google keeps its business silent and only attracts attention to the technological goodies it has brought to the masses. In fact, Google’s Machiavellian tactics have worked so well that most of its users do not even know how or if Google makes money.

Google’s army of 7000+ employees are loyal to the company. Over at Microsoft, the employees, especially senior executives, feel caged within the company; leaving Microsoft for Google might bring a lawsuit from the company, as it did for Kai-Fu Lee. To Microsoft’s credit, Google is simply reaping fruit from the hype that Microsoft once enjoyed. Sooner or later, the quality and quantity of potential employees will inevitably decrease in size as the excitement around Google is neutralized.

Mobility through decentralized command

“Separate to live, unite to fight” – Napoleon

Genghis Khan, like Napoleon, was a master of mobility in war. In a very short period of time, his empire stretched from Korea all the way to Europe. Neither two conquerors could have expanded like they did if it weren’t for mobility. Mobility was the key to decisive maneuvering during battle. Varying in size, from 15, 000 to 30, 000 men, each corps was a miniature army headed by a miniature Napoleon. Fluid, Fast, and Nonlinear. At the battle of Ulm, Napoleon completely surrounded the Austrian army within a few hours; cutting off any channels of escape or reinforcements. The Austrian emperor was forced to surrender an army of 30, 000 soldiers.

For a large company like Google, the hierarchy within the company is quite small. Google organizes employees in teams of three to five people. Each team is self directed, while the middle managers provide the required resources to support development within the teams. As a result, Google has fashioned a powerful self-directed decentralized approach towards product development. The consequence of such an arrangement is that there is no keystone employee or manager within the company. It is almost as if the company could run on its own even if it were divided into several smaller pieces. Forbes magazine described the phenomena this way: “Innovation will flourish for as long as the masses are running Google. When management forcefully steps in, the pace of change will slow.” Microsoft, on the other hand, has a well known bureaucratic problem. There are over 12 layers of middle managers between executives and the developers. As a result, the company takes the course that its top managers set for it. Instead of allowing innovation to originate from developers, it flows from top level managers to code-monkeys at the lowest base. This is quite common in other companies as well. The natural tendency of a top manager in any company is to want to control the group, to coordinate its every movement, but that ends up tying the company to the past and to the slow moving armies in history. It takes strength of character to allow for a margin of chaos and uncertainty-to let go a little-but by decentralizing army and segmenting it into teams; company managers gain in mobility what they lose in complete control. A critical step in creating an efficient chain of command is assembling a skilled team that shares the same goals and values; once this is achieved, the top managers at Microsoft can contentedly allow the teams to think and direct on their own. As Joel Spolsky puts it, “The goal of any business owner should be to break his/her job into functional pieces that can be replicated over and over.”

“The goal of any business owner should be to break his/her job into functional pieces that can be replicated over and over.” – Joel Spolsky

Google Achilles:

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets” – Napoleon

Napoleon demanded unprecedented loyalty from his men. When in 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to the mainland, King Louis XVIII sent the Fifth Regiment, led by Marshal Michel Ney who had formerly served under Napoleon in Russia, to fight him at Grenoble. Napoleon approached the regiment alone, dismounted his horse and, when he was within earshot of Ney’s forces, shouted “Soldiers of the Fifth, you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now”. Following a brief silence, the soldiers shouted “Vive L’Empereur!” and marched with Napoleon to Paris. The strength of his image echoed in the hearts and minds of, both, his allies and enemies. He described this himself as “I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches”
Whatever a company’s strength might be, it is actually a potential weakness, simply because the company relies on it: neutralize it and the company is vulnerable. A company’s task is to put its competitor in a situation in which it cannot use its advantage. Google’s advantage is its brand.

”Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult” – Napoleon

The Wall Street judges Google’s worth in terms of its shares value in the stock market. As of July 29, Google is trading at $388.12 per share, the highest bid/share I have ever heard. However, Google’s out of the charts performance in the stock market is a weakness in disguise. Wall Street isn’t thrilled with Google’s secretive style of management, so the investor loyalty could be swayed quite easily. Google will lose its extraordinary command of the NASDAQ as soon as conditions stop favoring them. Google might have a strong user base, but its investor loyalty is at dismay. Without Wall Street’s backing, Google will lose its share not only in the stock market, but in the public relations department as well. Google feeds off its brand, so any successful attack on its image will cripple the company even when it continues to generate cash.

Google depends on its hype. But hype does not stick around forever.

What Can Microsoft Do

”To extraordinary circumstances we must apply extraordinary remedies” – Napoleon

Google is successful not just for its technological innovation, but also for the command structure that makes this innovation possible and. Hence, to solely attack Google’s technology is a mistake since Google will always manage to innovate with quick decisiveness, as it has in the past. Google’s Achilles heel is its Adwords system; its money machine. Without it, Google can neither grow nor innovate.

The general rule for defeating any large army is to launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible. Whereas a defender must defend all their borders, an attacker has the advantage of being able to concentrate their forces at one place. By releasing, what seems to be a product every week, Google has stretched too thin. Aside from search and email, Google products are essentially at the mercy of another competitor, say Microsoft. Microsoft, with its MSN Search, cannot possibly defeat Google in search business, it is Google’s core business and the company will protect it however possible. Sun Tzu stated this in the Art of War as “Put your enemies in a spot where they have no place to go, and they will die before fleeting. If they are to die then, what can they not do? Warriors exert their full strength. When warriors are in great danger, then they have no fear. When there is nowhere to go, they are firm, when they are deeply involved, they stick to it. If they have no choice, they will fight to death.”

“Put your enemies in a spot where they have no place to go, and they will die before fleeting. If they are to die then, what can they not do? Warriors exert their full strength. When warriors are in great danger, then they have no fear. When there is nowhere to go, they are firm, when they are deeply involved, they stick to it. If they have no choice, they will fight to death“ – The Art of War

Microsoft should adopt a partial non-competitive strategy. Instead of publicly and pragmatically target Google’s main business, it should, with surgical precision, covertly attack products Google doesn’t pay much attention to. Google’s policy to let beta products become widely accepted organically is a weakness waiting to be exploited.

There are many non-conferential strategies Microsoft can adhere to:

1. The giant can enter markets that Google would never tackle; Microsoft’s success in the gaming and music industry strengthens this point. Furthermore, Microsoft can let its allies (i.e. Yahoo!, AOL, eBay etc) confront Google in markets Microsoft wouldn’t want to.

2. Google, with its recent release of Open Source project hosting, has subtly brought on its side a smart culture of developers who already dislike Microsoft. This form of passive strategy is what Google is best at. CEO Eric Schmidt once stated that a company’s success lies in its programmers. Microsoft can hire more talented engineers. If there are two equally intelligent students competing for the top position, all they have to do is study 5 minutes more than the other would. Taking that one extra step in hiring employees will have a significant impact on the company’s business.

3. Be more reserved. An attack kept silent has a better chance at succeeding than one that is clearly perceived and understood by the enemy. As Niccolo Machiavelli puts it “No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.”

“No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.” – Machiavelli

4. Decentralize product releases. Instead of passing product decisions through a layer of eleven managers, let the product innovation come from the engineers responsible for designing them. A much more effective road that Microsoft can take is to provide seed capital for other startups releasing products competitive to Google. This has several advantages. Startups are more focused and motivated. Microsoft wouldn’t have to expend excess resources into startups since they can also rely on other VC’s. Since startups can think and manage themselves, this will decentralize innovation and also rid Microsoft off its 11 layers of management.

5. As mentioned previously, Google’s vital organ is its ad delivery mechanism. If Microsoft successfully releases a better system for delivering advertisements, it will decisively capture Google’s hold on ad publishers. Due to Microsoft’s huge hotmail user base, the company has an excellent opportunity at delivering more targeted advertisements.

6. Lastly, Google focuses a very small team, usually 3 to 5 engineers, on its beta products. Microsoft can take advantage of this by focusing more resources on similar products. Even though, smaller teams innovate faster, larger, more resourceful teams, have a better chance at success. A successful product requires the collective effort of more than just the engineering department.

”Between a battle lost and a battle won, the distance is immense and there stand empires” – Napoleon

Conclusion

Napoleon’s tomb In the end, despite his genius, it was Napoleon who became overwhelmed by counter forces and lost. Unprecedented success often causes blindness. My advice for Google is to continue its rapid innovation but also put a tap on its uncontrolled product releases. As for Microsoft, despite the company’s several ill conceived tactics, it has a lot of potential for improvement and much to learn from its rival, Google.

Notes:

(1) Some excerpts were taken from “33 Strategies of War”.

(2) Despite the critical tone of this article, I can’t help but think how dull the tech world would be without either of these companies. I will gladly take down any part of this article if anyone at, either company, is disturbed by it.

(3) I didn’t write this solely for the purpose of comparing Napoleon’s strategies with that of Google or Microsoft. I wanted to write a piece that gave a strategic analysis for both companies. I wish I could’ve written some more on this subject, but thought most readers would fall asleep. I can’t write, I am an engineer.

(4) Any research on this article was done through Google. The article itself was written on Microsoft Word.

I am a jobless undergraduate studying Electrical Engineering at Ryerson University, Canada. My interests include military and corporate strategies, business, economics, history, religion/philosophy, politics, logic, technology, programming, electronics, mathematics, neurology, quantum physics, and cosmology. If you wish to contact me, I can be reached at biohazard@gmail.com, or python_kiss@hotmail.com and my website address is http://www.shuzak.com

To see this article with photos, go straight to http://shuzak.com/Personal/Napoleonic-Lessons-for-Google-and-Microsoft.php

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jawad_Shuaib

It is intended to give average people and internet newbie’s the ability to create a website via a free and easy to use tool. Blogs became main stream over a year ago and proved to be so easy to use, that virtually anybody was able to start one and publish content without the need to take some internet 101 or Web Development classes.

Google Pages is geared toward the same audience. The difference between Blogs and Google Pages is, that Blogs are meant to be a “Journal” to publish recent News and Events and not permanent content such as a Family History or “About Me” pages. Google Pages tries to fulfill this need.

The high demand for the new Service forced Google to disable the creation of new Google Pages accounts only a short time after they announced it. New Accounts are only available by invitation only.

I got an invitation last week and started playing around with the new Service to find out how far it developed, what you can do with it and what not. This article is a brief review of the current features and shortcomings of the service. You can visit my Google Pages Test Pages at http://carsten.cumbrowski.googlepages.com to get an Idea how Pages created by this new Service can look like.

The Basic Layout

The first choice the user has to make is which of the 4 pre-defined Layouts and 41 pre-defined Designs he wants to use for his pages. There is no option to change a design or layout to custom needs which really limit the possibilities to create unique looking pages severely.

The Google Pages Team did obviously not study how Blogger is solving this problem in an elegant way by providing the selection of templates with the ability to tweak it afterwards by more experienced users. Blogger is also owned by Google. I recommend that the Google Pages Team meets with the Blogger Team to discuss synergies and learn from the years of experiences the Blogger Team already has with this problem.

The WYSIWYG Editor

The intuitive WYSIWYG Editor is overall very easy to use, but rather limited in options. Only 6 Fonts are available: Arial, Verdana,Times New Roman, Courier New, Georgia and Trebuchet; 4 Font Sizes: small, normal, large and huge; 70 fix Colors; H1, H2 and H3 Head Lines; Unsorted List (ul); Bold or Italic font formatting (no underline, superscript or strike through); Link to other Page, File, Email or External Link; Alignment of Content: left, right and center; Image (must be uploaded) with 4 fix size options: small, medium, large and original size.

There is the option to edit the HTML Code which you need to fall back to when it comes to creating “Tables” or using additional HTML Syntax not provided by the Editor like “hr”, sorted list, the mentioned font formatting or specific colors not available in the list of the 70 predefined ones.

What I also miss is a simple build-in spell checker. The Google Toolbar has one build-in and there are various free solutions out there as well, such as the Lingucomponent Project from Open Office (http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org).

The Page and Image Management

The Management of the individual Pages is easy. Google Pages refers to Pages by what you use in the predefined “Title” area of a page. So far so good, but there is an issue when it comes to the Page Name used for the URL. The Initial Title specified for a new Page is used for the Page “File name” and can not be changed afterwards.

The Google Pages URL Syntax is http://username.googlepages.com/pagename. Make sure that you give a new Page a title that reflects the wanted “File Name” and change the Title of the Page to its real Title afterwards. The Inability to rename a Page renders the “copy page” feature more or less obsolete. The copy of the original page is simply named “originalpagefilenameX” with X being a number starting with 2 for the first copy.

Accessing the uploaded Images and deleting them is simple. The user must be careful though, because there is no indicator if an Image is used in a “published” = live page or not. Deleting a used image creates a broken Image on the public site.

“Static” Content is not an option

If you would like to have the same content for certain areas on all your pages, such as a Footer or Main Navigation you have a problem which can only be solved by cumbersome manual labor.

You can not incorporate anything to your Site Template. This means that you have to recreate the static content for every page manually. If something changes, you have no choice but must update every single page of your site manually one by one.

This is a major shortcoming that practically causes users to be inconsistent with the overall look and usability of their site.

No JavaScript or iFrames

JavaScript and iFrames are forbidden to be used in your Pages. If you add the Code manually, it’s getting removed by the Page Creator automatically. This includes inline and external JavaScript

This means, that you can not add most of the common types of Advertisement to your pages to monetize the site including Google AdSense Ads, Amazon Product Ads, Linkshare DRMs or Chitika Ads.

You can also not use any JavaScript to improve site usability.

General Tools are simply absent

Google Pages does not offer any type of tools to extend the features of the site beyond a small collection of static HTML Pages with a little bit of content.

The ability to place AdSense Ads on those Pages should be of high interest by Google since it allows them to increase their Advertising Revenue. Any build in function to place AdSense Ads somewhere into Google Pages is not in sight anywhere. I assume that this will be coming at one point because Google Pages is simply perfect for Google AdSense.

The ability to create any type of Forms or in general ANY interactive content does not exist, which severely limits the use of Google Pages. This is something the Google Pages team should work on.

Providing features like a contact form that integrates with Google GMail, the publishing of Feeds from Google Reader or the Integration of Google Maps and Google News would be perfect for Google Pages. Google Analytics can’t be added to the Pages as well.

Indexing of Google Pages by Google Search

What I haven’t found out yet, is if Google automatically adds Google Pages to the content to be crawled by its Web Crawler or not. A Search in the Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agooglepages.com) Index reveals that over 46,000 Google pages were already indexed and added to Google’s Search Index as of today. This tends me to believe that the pages are in fact automatically crawled by Google.

Conclusion

Google Pages is surely for a good reason still in Beta Status and will probably remain in that Status for quite a while. The existing features have a lot of flaws and also a lot of very important features are missing all together.

Google Pages does also not interface with any other existing Google Service although Google Pages is a perfect candidate to exploit and showcase a wide variety of existing Google Services (live and beta ones). Google has still a long way to go with this service to provide a useful tool for the general public.

I see its use today as a place where you can create some static pages with content to link to from your blog at Blogger or other Blogging Services. It is certainly not enough for most people to create their complete Homepage/Presence on the Internet via Google Pages.

It might also be an alternative for some Geocities Users since Google Pages does not show any 3rd Part advertisement anywhere on the pages.

About the Author Carsten Cumbrowski is a professional Web Developer with years of experiences in creating enterprise Web Solutions. He has also over 5 years of experience in Internet Marketing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carsten_Cumbrowski

Signing up

When I tried to sign up, due to very high demand Google had stopped providing new accounts. Of course, I felt discouraged because I always like to see Google as the never ending source of information for everyone. Google asked me to submit my email address so that I remain in the queue for Google Page Creator. However, after 5 minutes I again tried and this time to my sheer delight I got the account but again felt disappointed that Google Page Creator does not support my browser (Opera). So, I entered Google Page Creator with Internet Explorer and this time it opened very well.

* A Gmail account is a must

* Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher, with JavaScript and cookies enabled- Then you can work with Page Creator.By signing up with it I got a sub domain from Google with a capacity of 100 Megabyte. For me it is so interesting to note that for signing up I did not have to fill up any form. Just my Gmail was enough. Even I did not have to spend anytime for selecting a url for my sub domain. I did not have to do any email verification. I am sure this process will attract many users in Net.

Help section

Before doing anything, I visited the help section. I spent 10-15 minutes to read the topics and I was totally satisfied to see that the topics were written in very easy and non Technical English. It provided the necessary information about Google Page Creator. Then I visited Google Page Creator Help Center . It was written in a very easy manner too. The troubleshooting tips are useful too for a new user.

My first page

When I saw my home page Google Page Creator I felt like working an Microsoft Word and MS Frontpage. There are places where I should just click and then type something- It is just as easy as that. No download, no support from any other software. Just type some words and hit the publish button- that’s it. If you are not satisfied with the Layout then you can change it within a minute. There are 4 kinds of layouts and all you need is to just click on one of them. The same goes for the Look too. If you are not satisfied with the Look of your webpage then there are 41 Looks to select. I liked some of them while the others did not appear to be very impressive to me.

My first Picture

There is an option for uploading a picture. You can upload by two ways: you can select an image from your PC’s hard drive or you can give a url of any picture from Internet. Both of them worked pretty fast.

Adding a page

After I finished my home page I wanted to add a new page titled About Me. The process is almost same like working on the first page. After I finished creating the page I really felt that Google has been able to overcome the biggest challenge of allowing everyone to have own website at free of charge.

Will my page be found in Google Search

Yes, it will be because Google has informed in its website that within a few hours of my website being created by Google Page Creator it will crawl and add to its search. When something gets indexed in Google, other search engines wont waste time to index it too.

What next for

Google Page Creator is surely one of the biggest revolutions in ICT sector in recent times. Google Page Creator is a giant step in overcoming the problem of ordinary users to make an online presence without any technical know how. By it Google entered into the web hosting industry and the best thing with Google Page Creator is that any website created here is supposed to be blessed with unlimited amount of bandwidth.

Difference between Blogspot and Google Page Creator

Google’s Blogspot is very popular among everyone and there are thousands of blogs hosted in Blogspot. In Blogspot, a person needs some basic ideas about webpage design and HTML but in Google Page Creator anyone with the ability to browse Internet through Internet Explorer and Firefox will be able to create their own website.

No ads in Google Page Creator

I am not sure about it yet but I did not see any ads of any company including Google after uploading my website. If this continues, then Google will dominate the market of free websites. I have seen many of my students and friends to get annoyed from Tripod and Geocities about advertisements and gradually losing interest about free web hosting altogether. I am sure that Google Page Creator is going to influence the writing industry a lot in the coming days.

Things to note: * http://pages.google.com is the homepage of Google Page Creator

I am a Researcher and Freelance journalist here in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Right now, I am writing my M Phil thesis on ‘Role of English Language in Information Technology Sector of Bangladesh. I am a Member of Editorial Board of the leading ICT Magazine of Bangladesh, Computer Bichitra. Besides this I have some past expereince of Teaching English Language in the University level and also being a Research Assistant for MBA department in a University. I have been writing in newspapers and magazines for the last 10 years and I have published more than 400 articles, features, reports, interviews, and translations on various topics. My website: http://www.southasiablog.com My blogs: http://asianbiz.blogspot.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Razib_Ahmed

So, if you are like me when I first heard about Friend Connect in May of 08, I thought Google, why don’t you stay out of my territory. You don’t belong here and I do not install every widget piece of junk on my site.

Then I dug deeper, and deeper yet. Then I started to see where this was going, and then it really got deep. The Google Friend Connect widget is just the beginning of something much larger and what comes next blows most away.

GFC: Poster boy for Google Social Networking

Google Friend Connect is just the pretty face of a much larger application that should be called Google Social Networking. Here it is in a nutshell.

There are five major pieces to Google’s social features.

* GFC
* Google Reader
* Gmail
* Google profiles
* Your shared items

Here is what Happens in Google Friend Connect:

You join a blog thru the Google Friend Connect widget.

When you do this the RSS feed should be added to your Google Reader.

Then you can add other members showing in the Google Friend Connect widget as friends by clicking their avatar as they can yours.

When they accept your friend request (become mutual friends) you both appear in each others Gmail contacts and Gchat if you wish. You don’t get some interface that masquerades as email like Facebook’s inbox. You get a real email address that you and your new friend uses everyday to log into sites to use GFC.

Why are real email addresses important? You can now add this email address to your address book in say Outlook and you OWN your friends list. Get kicked off Facebook for some silly reason like many do? There goes your contact list. Not with GFC, Gmail is your contact management system for Google friends.

Your Google Reader can display their Google Reader shared items and you will show in their Google Reader. This is social bookmarking.

Your shared items has an RSS feed that creates HTML a tags that are outgoing links from Google to your site and are fully followed. So when someone shares (or bookmarks as most call it) one of your blog posts in Google Reader they are creating an incoming link directly to your site.

So what will Google Friend connect do for you?

I tripled my RSS subscribers in a week, made 200 new contacts that I now have in my address book and Gmail contacts, not some closed loop dependent on Facebook’s whims.

I have those same friends sharing my best articles in their Google Readers and I share theirs. All the while we all are creating backlinks to our own articles as well right in Google.

Now, my GFC friends have friends of there own and they have my RSS feed installed in Google Reader. So when they share my best blog posts their friends have the chance to read my best work. AND share it with their friends, and them with their friends. Viral marketing at it’s best.

You can email them, chat right from Gchat and get to know what would otherwise be nameless, faceless, social contacts all spamming each other for a few visitors. This is why social marketing fails for most, your friends are totally untargeted, you know little about them and you get a ton of spam for some stupid group and you end up not even wanting to open that inbox.

What is the best feature of Google Friend Connect?

The other day Google Latitude came out. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I jumped on Gmail and started a few chats with people that follow me and read my blogs. I was instantly able to find out if my target market would be interested in the blog post I was about to write and I learned what my fellow GFC uses wanted to know about Google Latitude.

I got feedback, (hated it and loved it), I found out limitations that otherwise I may have missed (because I love it) and got to know some of my readers a bit better. Time spent, 20 minutes. Value? PRICELESS. My Google friends submitted my site to other social sites, bookmarking sites and emailed links to their friends.

Why? Because we found each other thru laser targeted niche content on sites we both liked enough to join thru the GFC widget.

What else is there?

Google does WAY more than this, but I just don’t have all day or the space here it explain it. But if this got you as excited as I was when I discovered these new features in Google you want my free Google Friend Connect tutorial on my new site.

Chris Lang is rated one of the top 10 social marketers to follow on Twitter. Recently interviewed by John Assaraf of “The Secret” movie fame and spoke on social bookmarking at David Carleton’s social media event in San Diego.

Chris Lang is a very busy boy but still a real person and totally accessible. Available for interview, comment or consulting you can learn more here on his Google Friend Connect enabled site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Lang

Google PageRank is a Google algorithm that measures the worth of EACH webpage based on the links or other webpages that reference it. Like the Voter is to the Candidate, consider each external reference (link) to your webpage as a VOTE of Importance for that specific webpage. Democratically, the more votes (links) your webpage receives the better your Google PageRank. But were it that simple. Google also measures the Importance of each Voter’s webpage and weighs this in the Vote of Importance calculation. So you see, important webpages bring more importance (greater Vote Value) to your webpage!

Bottom Line: Linking, Links For Trade, Reciprocal Links and getting listed in the thousands of Directories, Blogs, and Ezines all promote Votes of Importance for your webpages. This is an ongoing lifelong endeavor by Webmasters and SEO experts.

Google Directory is where you go to get your entire website included in a Google Catalogue organized by Category or Topic. You would think that getting listed in the Google Directory would be a well defined process just like it is clearly outlined in most of the top directories:

(1) Website URL

(2) Title of Website

(3) Short Description of website and

(4) maybe keywords that best represent your website.

But not so with Google Directory! Google outsourced this critical inclusion to the Google Directory to another Directory Organization called The Open Directory Project or DMOZ. Why does Google entrust such a crucial element of Directory Cataloguing to an outside organization? You are even more perplexed by this Google outsourced function when you discover that The Open Directory Project is a organization of Volunteer Editors! Yes, a host of no-credential individuals somehow freely donate their time to apply strict and ethical editorial rules to each submitted URL. And this wonderful world of volunteers ensures a trusted process resulting in consistent, fair and quality listings in both the DMOZ and Google Directories! Believe It or Not! But my distaste for the whole DMOZ thing will be detailed in another article.

Bottom Line: You must submit to DMOZ – The Open Directory Project and IF, and I MEAN A BIG IF, you get listed in The Open Directory (months but who knows because there is NO Feedback or Status mechanism in place), then Google might also extract your DMOZ listing information and place it into the Google Directory. GOOD LUCK!

Google Webpage Indexing is the more predictable process and can be accomplished by submitting your website URL to Google. To ensure that Google Robots crawl through ALL of your webpages for your website, you must create an XML Sitemap of your entire website and let Google know it exists in your website directory where the Google Robots will use it. This XML Sitemap will get all your webpages Indexed in Google. Google even references a website that will FOR FREE generate XML Sitemaps and HTML, TXT and ROR versions of the Sitemaps as well. And Good News! By January 2007 Yahoo and MSN will also use the Google XML Sitemap file to crawl your website!

Bottom Line: Always submit and re-submit Google XML Sitemaps whenever you add new pages, products, anchor text or links to your website. Search Engine Robot Crawlers love websites that are changing, dynamic and adding new content.

A little more of Google understood.

Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, photographer, and avid snowmobiler. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc and Foursight Photography, which provide business, marketing, and internet marketing consulting services. Carl with wife, Janet, also operate a number of e-commerce web-sites.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carl_Chesal