tips on how to use new Google Adwords interface

Have you seen the new interface for Google’s Adwords? Google gives lots of goods tips on how to use Adwords in six easy-to-follow videos.

And if you haven’t used Adwords at all, here’s an introduction to the basics.

three ways to quickly compare your site with your competitors’

Easily compare sites’ social media presence, traffic and Google rankings with some great free tools, suggests Ann Smarty (great name!) at Search Engine Journal.

hello, hello – internet phoning for small business

Two new, free phone services announced recently hold heaps of promise (and cost-savings) for small businesses.

Yellow (the Yellow Pages people) has announced free Skype calls to any of its listed businesses.

(If you haven’t tried Skype, it is really dead simple to use and includes inbuilt video calling. Download the free Skype software and then all you need is a web cam and a mic, plus headphones if you don’t want anyone else to hear the person you are talking to. Visit Skype here.)

And, in the U.S (though not yet in N.Z), Google has announced a service that offers dirt cheap calls but best of all its sweet range of fancy high-tech features — such as a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones; a central voicemail inbox that accessible on the web; text transcriptions of voice messages; and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail.

A video explaining Google Voice is here:

changing the way people find your business online

Two new developments in online search and advertising could mean big changes in the way people find your business online:

• Google is introducing technology that tracks people’s use of their favourite websites to understand their individual tastes and then package ads falling under the same areas of interest.
• And, a new search engine – WolframAlpha, that goes live in May – can reportedly, understand written questions and then compute the answer to it, as opposed to current search engines that simply look for text that matches the text in your search request.

the Google cloud with the not-so silver lining

A glitch saw a small number of private Google Docs files stored on the net made public – and could put a big dent in people’s confidence in ‘cloud computing’, the National Business Review comments.

And we would have to agree at this stage. Huge potential for small businesses but not enough transparency or control around data security at this stage, especially considering it is the second reported glitch in Google’s service in only  a couple of months.

how to track yourself on the web

Here’s eight useful tools for tracking mentions online of you and your business. If people are talking about you, your products, your service, whatever, you surely need to know about it. These days, it’s a key tool in your management and PR toolkit.

rank high in Google or go unnoticed

New research from Google shows that readers of its search results place a lot of importance on the first two listings and not too much below that.

Sort of  makes a mockery of the truism that you need to be somewhere on the first two pages of results to get noticed. Buddy, you need to be at the top of the first page!

Here’s Google’s eye-scan data:

a glitch in Google’s cloud computing service

Google has made much of its cloud computing or software as a service (SaaS) offerings, hyping them as the new, efficient and cost-effective way to do business.  This blog post from Wired shows Google may still have some SaaS glitches to be ironed out.

It also shows that people’s nervousness about putting confidential documents in the cloud may be around for some time.

who searched for what in NZ in Google in 2008

Not sure if these will be of any use for adjusting your website’s keywords (Ford beat Holden, Marmite beat Vegemite, Hayley Westenra beat Kiri Te Kanawa and art topped sport) but here’s a bit of a rundown on what Kiwis searched for on Google in 2008.

Have a successful online 2009 everyone.

smile, you’re on google street view

A brand new online tool for business promotion here: Google Street View. Every street (well, not quite, but soon will be) in New Zealand has been photographed and yesterday was put online in a huge seamless, photographic map of the country. Now your business’s building can be seen by the world!

Promote your business by embedding a Street View image on your website and make it easier for customers to find you. What other uses could you put it to? Let us know.