The search engine gurus at SEOmoz have posted a rather interesting blog article, courtesy of their CEO and co-founder randfish, that poses 5 scenarios that could usurp Google’s dominance of the search engine market share. While the perceived threats to Google vary in plausibility and likelihood, they still highlight some interesting trends that are currently emerging in the ever expanding world of internet marketing.

We thought we would evaluate these so called threats, with consideration of recent developments in the search world, and throw in our own two cents as well. To summarize, Google’s empire will crumble if:

Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent post, the blog masterminds over at Problogger share with us an intriguing blog analysis, revealing elements of content that make it viral and worthy of social bookmarking.

Using the premier social bookmarking site del.icio.us, Darren Rowse breaks down the titles of popular posts on the popular post page to find common concepts and elements that drive massive traffic.

Here are some of his findings:

1. High Level Advice, Practical Tips and Clear Results

   Post Example: Monday Master Class: How to Schedule your Writing Like a Professional Writer.

   Read the rest of this entry »

Google’s Webmaster Tools is a valuable resource for both new and experienced webmasters and webloggers alike. It has a variety of features which allow users to analyze how Google search results rank your page, learn more about generating traffic and ask questions about search engine optimization and visitor trends. The following are some the essential tools and services Google lays out for you.

Once you’ve set up your Google Account (having a gmail account will work), you can submit your website or blog to Webmaster Tools by simply inserting its URL into the Webmaster Tools Dashboard. After you verify your site (by either uploading a HTML file to Google or inserting a Google metatag into your site’s source code), you can take a look at your blog through Google’s eyes.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the several new products Google Labs is producing is the accessible Google Page Creator. It is a program designed for non-technical folk who aspire to be a Webmaster and publish on the Web. Google Page Creator hands them the power to create simple web pages without having to enter any code.

To get started, all one has to do is sign up for a Gmail account and log in to the service through Google Labs to access the Page Creator. *Please note: your URL will be automatically chosen based on your Gmail user name.

From there, the process gets even simpler. Here it is with all its features and options: Read the rest of this entry »

Picasa is Google’s software application dedicated to editing and publishing photos for the web. The program is free and very easy to use, placing it among the ranks as popular web photo services like Flickr. Here is a quick run down of Picasa’s features and uses.

After importing your photo files into Picasa, you can resize, crop, reduce red eye and enhance the color of your pictures. You can also optimize your pictures so that they can easily be sent as emails or as elements of web pages. Printing optimization, slide shows and image timelines are also included. There are customizable tabs that allow you to name and divide sections for your photos, organizing them a cleat fashion.

In order for you to easily search through your digital photo albums, Picasa uses IPTC keyword data to keep track of the keywords attached to your jpegs. This also allows other photo programs like iPhoto and Adobe Photoshop to access these keywords for cross-accessibility. The search bar is an incredibly useful tool when you are dealing with literally hundreds of photos imported from your camera. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Labs has come up with yet another innovative tool to help users organize and access their web information with Google Notebook. Google Notebook allows users to drop and drag clips, images and text they collect into simple sections that can be interchangeable. The process is incredibly simple and can be done all within the same browser window. Here are some of the principal features of this exciting new web tool:

Access Google Notebook from any web page or computer. Simply sign in with your Google Account to place the Google Notebook extension in your browser’s status bar. With your account, all your clips, notes and settings will be saved and accessible from any page, browser and computer.

Easily clip information from web pages. To place items into your sections, simply highlight the desired content and click the “Clip” button in the Google Notebook window. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Labs has expanded on the coveted search engine’s power by providing alternative views and shortcuts to better organize and specify your search results. Here is a list of some of the new features that are being implemented with Experimental Search:

Alternate Views: List, Info View, Timeline, Map

The alternate views for search results presents 4 tabs next to the search bar that will separate information regarding your search term into specified areas, like historical events or location. Hitting the ‘list’ tab displays the search results in conventional order. The ‘info’ view allows you to specify search limits (in terms of time period, measurements, locations and images). Click on ‘timeline’ and it plots the chronological history of your search term. And the ‘map’ tab locates where your search term is or where it has been featured geographically using the conventional Google Maps satellite imagery.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google Trends is a tool put out by Google Labs that allows users to monitor the most popular search results on the web and how they have changed over time (since 2004). Google Trends also displays news stories covering factors that may have affected the volume of the term’s search results.

After entering your search term, Google Trends will display a line graph that has time (in years) across the horizontal axis and search volume (on a global scale) on the vertical axis. There is also a news-reference-volume graph that tracks which news stories relevant to your search term have appeared on Google News. Below this, Google Trends displays which countries, cities and regions have searched for this term the most.

Read the rest of this entry »