For better or worst, Google has permeated into almost every aspect
of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and
an act carried out by millions of users around the world each day.
New Google products and services are coming on stream at a frightening
pace, further increasing Google’s impact on our lives.

Despite this dominating presence, many people still don’t realize
Google offers some excellent free marketing tools for marketers
and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable
to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or
products online. Useful tools that will make your promotions
easier and much more profitable.

Don’t be fooled by the ‘free’ label, these marketing tools
might be free but there are also valuable. One even wonders
why Google would be giving away these tools and services for
free? It probably makes good business sense in the long
run, by providing these free tools Google is fostering a
lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand
name in the process. Good PR is good business.

Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of
Google’s good-will and snapping up these professionally run
services and marketing tools. Here’s a quick run-down of
the 10 most valuable free Google Internet marketing tools:

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps the premier marketing tool offered by Google.
It will prove helpful to both the marketer and the webmaster.
Google Analytics gives you a daily snapshot of your web site. Google
Analytics analyzes your traffic, where it comes from and what it does
once it enters your site. You can monitor up to three sites
for free.

Google Analytics is extremely valuable in analyzing your
marketing funnel, it tracks all the steps leading up to your
sales or checkout page. Vital information for raising
your conversion rate and ROI.

You may be placed on a waiting list for this highly in
demand service from Google.

LINK http://www.google.com/analytics/

2. Google Sitemaps

Webmasters can use Google Sitemaps to almost instantly place
newly created pages on their site into the Google Search Index.
This is an XML file that is uploaded to Google as new pages
are added on your site. Needless to say this can be a valuable
service for any webmaster or marketer who wants to get their
information on the web quickly.

LINK https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

3. Google Alerts

Be notified when someone or another site lists your site
or mentions your name. Great way to keep track of all your
online activities. Great way to monitor all your online
business interests and products.

LINK http://www.google.com/alerts

4. Google Froogle

Froogle is Google’s price directory! It simply lists all
the cheapest prices for different products on the web.
For marketers and webmasters who are promoting products,
it should be studied and analyzed. Optimizing your
site’s content for Froogle may prove to be very beneficial.

Follow Froogle or Google directions exactly on how to
list or display products on your site. Froogle will
spider your site and display your prices and products
to thousands of targeted customers. That, as they say,
is priceless.

LINK http://froogle.google.com/

5. Google Checkout

Not exactly free but for those marketers who use AdWords
— for every $1 spent on AdWords you can process $10 for free.
You can also place the shopping cart logo on your AdWords ad
and take advantage of the prestige and trust the Google
brand name has built up.

Over time marketers may find this tool to be very
effective and valuable.

LINK https://checkout.google.com/

6. Google eBlogger

Blogging has become vitally important to the health and
functioning of your web site. No site should be without
at least one blog and RSS feed. Creating a blog (online journal)
on the topic of your web site or product will bring in extra traffic
and targeted customers. eBlogger is a simple free
blogging service that even lets you publish or post your blog
files to your own web site server. Keep in mind, each blog
has that all important Google Blog Search bar.

LINK http://www.blogger.com/

7. Google Toolbar – Enterprise Version

Try the new enterprise version of the Google Toolbar
for your company or business. Integrates countless
features with all your employees or corporate
network. These could include a common customer
database, company calendar, financial news…

Keep in mind, Google also ranks every page it indexes on
a scale of 0-10. While it is important to know the Page Rank of
your own pages, it is even more important to know the PR of
your competitor’s pages. You can use the toolbar to get
the PR of each page you’re visiting. Extremely helpful
information for webmasters and marketers to know when
forming online linking or business arrangements.

LINK http://toolbar.google.com/T4/enterprise/

8. Google Groups

Every marketer knows the important of having a large
contact list of people with a similar interest. Social
networking will play an ever increasing role in your
success on the web. Just look at the growing popularity
of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal.

Google groups is another form of social and business
networking that every marketer should be aware of and
pursuing.

LINK http://groups.google.com/

9. Google Adsense

One simple way to monetize your web content is to
use Google Adsense. Just place the Adsense code
on your site and receive a check from Google each
month. For webmasters who are not really into
online marketing (does such creatures exist?) Adsense
can be a painless way to earn extra income from
your site.

For professional marketers using the Adsense system can
supply a tremendous amount of marketing information on the
keywords in their particular niche. It keeps the
marketer informed on what keywords are being bid
on and how much advertisers are willing to pay.

Adsense also has an excellent real-time tracking
system you can use to keep track of all your
important web pages.

LINK https://www.google.com/adsense/

10. Google Writely

A recent addition to Google’s stable of free products.
Writely is a full featured online writing editor with
spellcheck and great collaborating features. It also
lets you publish your content directly to your blogs.
One feature that may be of interest to marketers, it lets
your save files in the popular download format of PDF.

Lets face it, until video takes over the web in four
or five years time — the written word is still king on the
net. It is the medium that markets, promotes and sells
your content or products. Writely will help you write better.

LINK http://www.writely.com

Honorable Mention – Google Trends

This Google program will let you search popular trends,
important for marketers searching for the latest hot
product to promote. You can also break down these trends
by different regions.

LINK http://www.google.com/trends

Final Note

Please take note that signing up for a Google account will
usually help you in obtaining most of these free services or
programs. Some of these programs may have to be applied for
individually. But be assured, all these free Google marketing
tools are well worth your time and effort. They will make your
marketing easier and they will help any webmaster or marketer
run their online business more efficiently.

…
The author is a full-time online marketer who runs numerous web sites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Everyone is profiting from Google, why not you? Click here: Google Cash File Copyright © 2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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Who would have predicted that seven years ago two friends with an idea and a little ambition, working in a garage, would one day revolutionize internet search advertising? Then again, looking back on the personal computing industry and how it got started, we could ask the same. Once again this shows us just how much possibility is yet to be discovered in personal computing.

Just six letters, one simple word, with tremendous value, is becoming one of the most recognized trademarks on the internet. Google, founded by two college friends – Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Stanford University – has succeeded in becoming the world’s number one search engine and in just a few years.

Toping its biggest rivals, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves and even making an enemy or two along the way, the ‘zero-tolerance’ software corporation Microsoft, Affinity Engines, and Advanced Internet Technologies – to name a few – Google has made quite a name for itself in such a short time.

Now the multi-billion dollar enterprise has got a swarm of internet users, marketing analysts and entrepreneurs asking ‘how did they manage to do it?’

One thing we do know about Google is that it tends to be very secretive about its business. Google was recently presented with a subpoena from the U.S. Justice Department, in 2006, to turn over information on Internet searches in coordination with law-enforcement (as a part of the government’s crackdown on terror). This, of course, enraged certain privacy activists. Google went to court and fought the subpoena. Other internet search engine companies such as Yahoo, MSN, and AOL complied with the same subpoena, making statements that there were no privacy issues concerned in the matter. However, to the public’s great surprise, Google’s case for not disclosing information about their searches was not on the grounds of privacy. Instead the company claims that disclosing this information would jeopardize its trade-secrets.

Google is under a microscope, to every marketing expert and competitor, right now. It poses a great threat to the market in which it operates. What is more intriguing, however, is that the market poses a great threat to it. Google literally owns the Internet search advertising industry profiting from 70% of its total output. Yet its greatest strength is, ironically, also its greatest vulnerability.

Internet marketing is no easy task, let alone offline marketing. Google, on the other hand, has made this process increasingly simple. With the bulk of Google’s paid ads coming from direct marketers (as apposed to branded marketing) it’s managed to generate a rapid-fire quality advertising floor to a rather dynamic audience. This has opened up numerous opportunities for internet marketers around the world. Still, Google has very little expertise in the areas of branded marketing as well as displayed advertising. This gives its competitors more edge.

Officials from Microsoft have admittedly stated that they did in-fact underestimate Google and they are already underway in launching a ‘counter attack’. This type of no-nonsense attitude is exactly what technology initiative companies like Google seem to invoke from Microsoft.

Yes, Google has succeeded at generating more advertising revenues than experts thought possible, but that does not mean it can’t fall. What’s alarming to some analysts is that 99% of Google’s revenues come directly from its paid advertising program. That means only 1% of its revenues are generated from other meager products – such as the Google Pack. This puts the company in a very dangerous situation, because surely its Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising program will only grow so far before it reaches a slump. With law suits barging in the company’s front door and tensions rising, there is good reason to suspect such notions.

The suits at Google are failing to show focus, another reason for analysts to raise suspicions on the company’s future success. While Google’s website and search technology has remained optimum – in its simplicity meets power approach – the top level executives have failed at defining the company’s strategic mission. What’s somewhat reassuring though is that the folks at Google seem to be quite aware of this fact.

Google makes its mission statement short and to the point – as they do with pretty much everything. Their overall mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful – as stated on their website. How they plan on doing this and by what means, however, remains unclear.

Some people think Google merely struck oil and can’t determine where to invest their money for future growth. Or perhaps that’s what they would like us to think? We have to remember that Google is under a watchful eye and there is a lot at stake for this company. One wrong move and it could be Google’s last click.

Maybe that’s why Google retains this stealthy cautious approach in its marketing tactics. It is important to understand, however, that Google is indeed shifting its aims as a services organization and beginning to search for profit maximizing solutions other than its dominant search advertising. For instance, they have invested in a number of growing companies such as dMarc, Dodgeball, and Current Communications Group LLC. Not to mention the recent purchase of YouTube by Google for a hefty $1.65 billion.

Over the years Google has also launched various beta products such as Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Video, Google Earth, Google Maps, and Froogle. Its Google Labs are throwing random new ideas at Googlers all the time.

When Google first released its toolbar in 2000 people were skeptical. Soon the Google Pack made one small, but critical, step for the company’s future. Simply getting these products on your desktop was enough of a threat to Microsoft that they rallied to build a search engine (that will supposedly compete with Google Search and Google Desktop) directly into the core of their next-generation operating system, Windows Vista.

So it appears that Google, while still in a premature stage of development, is heading in the right direction. With experts predicting growth in the market of up to 41% by next year, investors can rest assured that their stocks aren’t going to plunge anytime soon – if at all.

Google has proven itself as a very profitable and lucrative business. Though, it is yet to adapt its distinct vision to the changing environment and continue to build from its core with an effectiveness and efficiency that will meet the competition.

Sherif Ramadan is the founder of Business-Geek.com a website dedicated to providing small businesses with affordable services. If you’re struggling with your small business startup or looking for professional business services that won’t nickel-and-dime your small business budget, visit us today at http://www.Business-Geek.com to learn more about our services.

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