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vineri, 1 iulie 2011

SEOptimise

10 New Google Tools, Products and Services Every Business Person Has to Know About

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:29 AM PDT

One of the few products Google doesn’t offer yet*

It seems Google wants to inundate us with new tools, products and services these days. Is this a way to divert attention away from all the bad news about antitrust lawsuits, the FTC and the like? I don’t know. In any case, there are lots of new tools to test.

Many of these will have a huge impact on search and the Web as a whole in future.

Others mights seem less noteworthy at first, but they underscore the long term Google strategy which focuses on social, mobile and HTML5 among others.

Either way, I assume that every business person has to know about these tools, as there are plenty of opportunities here and in some cases also pitfalls.

Google+

Google+ is a fully fledged social network that Google has started to compete against Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It consists of several services in itself, including groups, chats etc.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html

http://searchengineland.com/googles-facebook-competitor-the-google-social-network-finally-arrives-83401

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/

Google +1 (button for websites, worldwide in search)

Google +1 is the Google ”like” button. You can now find it in search results, on websites that include the button, as browser extensions and in most Google products (Blogger, Youtube, Shopping Search etc).

WDYL (What Do You Love)

WDYL is a personalised interest hub for Google users that lets you combine most of Google services around your favourite subjects.

http://www.wdyl.com/

Google Web Fonts V2

Google Web Fonts allow webmasters to replace their boring web safe headlines with some more appealing free fonts. Also, the Google Web Fonts are faster than some of the older font replacement techniques. The new version, V2, is far sleeker than the old one. I’m not sure about the user experience though.

http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2

Social interaction tracking in Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics

While many people provided JavaScripts to track Google +1 votes in Google Analytics, the tracking wasn’t easy to use and wasn’t very insightful in most cases. Now Google has not only launched built-in Google +1 tracking in both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, but also allows tracking of other social sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Delicious. This requires additional coding though.

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-reporting-in-google-webmaster-tools.html

http://www.google.com/support/analyticshelp/bin/answer.py?topic=1316551&answer=1316556&&hl=en

Postrank (Analytics)

Postrank has been one of the best known tools for measuring the social impact of one’s posts. It also provided a great social media analytics tool. Google has acquired the service and stopped sign ups.

While in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, you need some coding to track your social media performance. Postrank just makes you verify your social accounts and lets you add a URL. I hope Google won’t neglect Postrank like they did with Feedburner.

http://www.postrank.com/

Google Offers (Groupon alternative for daily deals)

Google Offers may be the biggest news of all the news services when it comes to business. Google Offers is a Groupon competitor focusing on daily deals.

http://www.google.com/offers/business/

Authorship attribution

In HTML5 you can use so-called microformats to indicate that you’re the author of a posting or article across different websites. Using a meta tag and your Google Profile where you connect your websites and blogs, this will make content creators recognisable across web properties and inside search results.

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/highlighting-content-creators-in-search.html

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1229920&&hl=en

Google Swiffy (tool for converting Flash files to HTML5)

This little tool may have a huge impact. It allows you to convert Flash files to HTML5. I don’t know how good the outcome is, but even the idea of being able to adapt your Flash content to the modern Web is a clear sign of the times.

http://swiffy.googlelabs.com/

Google Sites mobile landing pages

One of Google’s main focuses is the mobile Web. Google Sites, the search giant’s own website editor for starters, has added a mobile option to make these websites mobile friendly.

http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/06/mobile-ize-your-business-with-google.html

Have you tried these tools already? What do you think about this unparalleled wave of new services Google has been announcing recently? Does Google want to cover our every need on the Web? How do you plan to use these tools for your business purposes?

* Image by missha

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