Hands-down, Google is the most popular website on earth. Yet they seem to be worried about their stiff competition coming in at a close second – none other than Facebook.

This is precisely why Google has decided to introduce their own social network as Google +. Google has tried to make a number of different social media channels over the years, like Google Buzz and Google Wave. Yet nothing has caught on so far…

But now we can consider Google + for a second. Google + makes no bones about the fact that it is supposed to be just like Facebook with a few enhancements. Maybe we could call it “Facebook with a facelift”? Instead of opening up Google + to the public, Google has decided to create a little bit of buzz, so to speak.

Upon its introduction, you can’t sign up directly for Google + just yet. Initially, you have to be invited by someone else who is a member in the beta stage of this social network. But even with this type of exclusive appeal, Google + has managed to gather 10 million members as of July 2011. This is nowhere near the mega benchmark set by Facebook at 750 million members, but it seems to be off to a strong start.

Google + versus Facebook

At first glance, Google + looks like a copycat of Facebook. You can post your thoughts and updates, just like you can to the Facebook wall. There is also something called a Stream, which is exactly like the Newsfeed on Facebook. And to compete with the “Like” button on Facebook, Google + offers a +1 button so that you can show that you are a fan of a post, picture, video, or what have you.

But the big, shiny difference between the two is that Google + has a little something called Circles.

If you’ve ever had the thought when using Facebook that you’d love to say something a little more inappropriate, a little more private, or a little wackier than what you would share with all of your friends, Circles may be the answer. You can create circles of friends, family, acquaintances, and following, which is similar to Twitter. You can also create your own circles with specific members, like Grandparents or College Friends, where you can share private jokes or special stories to your heart’s content without boring everyone else on your Stream.

And when you decide to share something, you are able to specify which circle that it is sent to. Of course, you can choose to send the information to all of your circles or just one to keep a bit of news private. This minimizes much of the fuss surrounding social media, like teachers getting fired for posting pictures of a drunken party or saying something inappropriate. If you want to post something that you don’t want your boss to see, then don’t post it to a public circle, plain and simple.

Although this may be a subtle difference between Google + and Facebook, only time will tell how the Circles feature attracts users to this new social network.

Guest Author:  Bethany Ramos is an expert in Internet marketing and social media marketing, and she also co-owns her own e-commerce website, The Coffee Bump.

Please vote and include any additional opinions in the comments below!

Take Our Poll

Welcome To the Google Network

Google TV exists; it is the interactive programming installed on certain models of Sony HDTV televisions and works with various LG products as well. With Google TV, you can search the web, check and send email, and play Internet content directly on your TV. That is seriously cool, and while Apple has it too, but theirs is a little less feature rich. Like much that Google has done in the past, it is a cool project, but it never really captures the public’s imagination; however, this may be about to change. Google is going to be working on some major upgrades to YouTube that could be the beginning of an actual Google Network.

Your Interactive Past

Does anyone remember the Time magazine cover story on our interactive future, way back when the Internet was young? Does anyone remember what WebTV was? WebTV was a set top box that connected your television to the Internet. In reality, it was a simple way to access email and some basic, sandboxed, browsing from your TV. While Microsoft bought the company and did nothing with it, a few are still out there, unbelievably, and one is now known as the MSN TV.

The interactive vision has been around for as long as the Internet has been a part of the public perception, it just never took off. Convergence was the buzzword to describe the future where TV and Internet became the same thing. The person producing the content was the single problem that arose. Companies saw a future in which people would be able to access and share their precious franchises without revenue control, and froze solid. That copyright and infringement issue has kept the Internet on a leash ever since.

Just recently Amazon announced the release of the Amazon Cloud Player, a service that allows consumers to purchase (hopefully) music , store it on an Amazon server, and  play it from anywhere with an Amazon web music player, but the RIAA threw a fit. This coupled with Google’s YouTube announcement means the record executives will no longer control the Internet. Consider Blockbuster’s bankruptcy sale, Direct TV bought the company solely for its online business model. Netflix is starting to build an original content profile and that is what Google hopes to do. One of the major features of this overhaul is the close to $100 million to develop original content, which is the beginning of that interactive future that we forgot about so long ago.

What’s a TV?

So will your 50-inch plasma become a huge multi-purpose monitor, or will your tablet be a really small TV? By the end of the year, we will have a new ecosystem in which online services such as Hulu, Netflix, and others are serving up their own shows that they produced. This is what Google will be doing with YouTube, as it will have channels containing existing content organized by subjects, such as sports, arts, and film. YouTube will also have programs, as they were called back in the TV days, content that it will produce.

Aside from fears regarding what Google might consider entertainment, this is certainly the point where the Internet turns its back on the film and record industry and opens the floodgates. This is the end of the TV/Movie/Recording industry domination of all media; amen. Google TV may soon be more than just the cool interactive menu on your new TV, and just might be the real reason that you bought it. With enough content online, you could very well buy the new 90-inch organic polymer TV and not have a cable provider; what is the world coming to? This interactive future was forgotten so long ago, but much of this new future is driven by the tablet/smartphone/mobile revolution already underway. The iPad drove the concept of a mobile magazine, then it was video, and now the whole market is rushing headlong into the future. Soon TV as we currently understand the idea may not be long for this world.

Guest Author: Jon T. Norwood is a managing partner at High Speed Internet, a site dedicated to providing information on Internet providers and technology.  Jon can be reached at jon@webexordium.com.

I am still getting a lot of question about Google Instant, and I am sure it’s because everyone is concerned about their search engine optimization efforts, so I thought it may be best to clarify this in a post.

Google Instant is real time search that was launched a few months ago to help make searching faster and more user-friendly.  According to Google, here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

• Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Google Instant works from any of the popular browsers, and the main difference between Google Instant and regular search is that Instant populates the results page before the user has completed typing their search query, giving you different suggestions. There’s no need to press Enter to generate search suggestions. Users instead select from the suggested terms or look below to see what websites come up as they are typing.

Searchers can also turn off Google Instant if they choose not to use it.

Most importantly, you can stop worrying. Google Instant does not kill SEO nor does it have any impact of rankings of search results.  Google Instant search results will show three paid ads and one organic listing while the auto-complete box is activated. This means it’s likely click-through-rates on the first and second listing will rise, while those in the third and fourth position will fall.  Thus, this may increase competition if you are using Google PPC.

If you haven’t already done so, here are a few best practices for Google Instant that you can do right away:

For SEO:

1. Edit your website’s meta titles on your main pages to include both the main keyword or phrase and a call to action.
2. Integrate new long tail search terms into your search engine optimization efforts. Use your analytics software to monitor these terms performance and find out how your users have adapted and what kind of impact it made.

For PPC:

1. Refine your negative keyword lists as necessary to lessen the chance of your ads are not displayed for less relevant terms.
2. Monitor click-through-rates carefully because many advertisers will be focusing on broader terms, and this can lead to a lot of competition.

If you need more information, there were a couple of excellent article written about Google Instant.  These will help you make changes to your SEO and PPC plans, if necessary:

Google Instant 101

Google Instant – 10 Things Marketing Teams Need to Know

Are you still using Google regular search or have you switched to Google Instant?

It was only a few short years ago that mobile searching meant driving to the nearest library and ploughing through dusty tomes to find information that would at best be slightly out of date, and at worst, utterly wrong.

The development of mobile phones has changed all this, and it is now easy to search for information wherever a phone signal can be found. This has opened up a whole vista of possibilities and has been extremely successful. Now many businesses, as well as millions of individuals, not only use mobile searching as one of their key methods of accessing information, but as a new way to access tools such as mobile billing.

Recently, there have been a number of developments that promise to take mobile searching to a whole new level and maximize its potential to such a degree that it may even become the dominant search platform of the next decade.

Google has fired the first salvo in the battle for mobile search dominance with the launch of Google Instant. Essentially a real-time search engine, current estimates are that it can on average take two seconds off a search. This, of course, may not seem like much but when you consider how many searches an average business’s employees carry out in a month, the total time saving becomes significant.

It is therefore unsurprising that this is often the single most important point for millions of users. Time is a commodity that has never been more in demand and it therefore follows that anything that can provide the user with a time saving is something that will play a pivotal role in the future.

Beyond this what does the future hold? Although predicting the future in the world of technology is always a risky business, there are some things that we can say with a degree of certainty:

• Google Instant will continue to develop and at the same time, other search engines will move towards the real-time model.

• Search engine focus will move in the direction of personalized searches. These will utilize an individual’s data (with their permission) to help narrow down search criteria. For example if a user has a large database of music, web articles and images of the Rolling Stones and they then use a search engine to look for “stones”, it will automatically look for relevant information on the rock group and ignore anything to do with pebbles.

• Social networks will play an increasingly important role in search engine results. In practice this will mean that a search engine will use the information not just about the user, but that of the user’s social network. This promises many great advantages chief among them a much more focused set of search engine results.

• Perhaps the most exciting development and the one with the potential for biggest leap forward in mobile search is the possibility of automatic searches that continue even when the user is not online. This could work by using a combination of search history, social networks and a predictive element that will result in future searches being much more focused and efficient.

This ability to have a much more user-centric mobile experience will benefit not just the ability to advance mobile searching, but other key elements such as mobile payments. A more receptive and intelligent mobile platform will help it become much more intuitive and along with the ability to have much more refined search results, the outcome will be an enhanced mobile experience.The future of search is both exciting for the user and full of possibilities for the business.

It is time to ask: what can my mobile search do for me?

Guest Author: Vera Mosley is an expert in mobile marketing. She is also a blogger and freelance writer for a mobile aggregator.  Additionally, Vera loves to spend time outdoors with her family.

It hasn’t been long since Google stated that they would officially be taking speed into account as a ranking factor in their search engine algorithm. Although it is only one of approximately 200 ranking factors, it is a rather significant one from a usability perspective.

Having a slow website doesn’t necessarily mean that you will struggle to rank within Google, but the search engine ultimately wants to put user experience first – so if your website has great content, is well targeted, and has a fast load time – you stand a good chance of achieving search engine visibility across a core level of terms.

1. Combine External Files

Even modern-day browsers can only load a set number of external files at one time, and for image and JavaScript heavy websites, this means that they have to go through a number of iterations to be able to efficiently load your content for the users. As an example, a website may have 5 external CSS files, 4 JavaScript files, and 10 images on one page. By combining the external CSS into one single file, and doing the same with JavaScript, you can reduce that load time quite significantly.

2. Reduce Database Calls

Each time your website has to query your database for user information (or other data); it is time that is added on to the overall performance of the page. By using static information where possible (such as hard-coded page titles and META data), you can reduce the amount of calls made to the database, which will ultimately reduce the load time of the website.

3. Image Optimization

There are many different things that can be done to images to reduce the overall load time of a website – with the two main ones being file size and utilizing image sprites. Try compressing images before uploading them to your web server, and reducing the file size when saving using programs like Adobe Photoshop. Image sprites are another great way to shave seconds off the load time, by combining common images (such as navigational buttons) into one interchangeable image that is positioned based on absolute CSS rules.

4. Choose an Appropriate Web Server

Many business owners who don’t necessarily know a lot about the internet may make the mistake of choosing a cheap hosting package when looking at website options. Although cheap packages can be great for low-traffic websites, they can really hamper popular ones. Select a web server that will meet the bandwidth and technical requirements of your website, ensuring it is in the target location of your main user’s country.

5. Put JavaScript at the End of the Web Page

Although most web development tutorials encourage you to include the external JavaScript files and code within the top of the web document, it is actually more efficient to place it at the end of the file. If you are linking to a JavaScript document that is particularly large, or one that is hosted elsewhere, it can sometimes slow the whole website down due to it being one of the first things that are loaded. Place any external JS files at the bottom of the web file, that way the main content will load first, and the user will be able to at least begin looking at your website while the remaining files load.

6. Avoid Flash or Image Based Websites

This should be a given with today’s websites, but it is shocking how many sites are built solely using flash, or with large images used instead of background colours. Avoid things such as flash intros to your website (or at least have a “skip” button if you simply MUST have one), and avoid using large flash banners and navigational menus. JavaScript and AJAX can do a lot of what flash was once famous for – and it is much more web efficient.

Guest Author: This was a guest post by Axon IT – a Manchester IT support company catering to businesses throughout the UK. Axon IT removes the stress and headaches of dealing with IT, and can be found posting regularly on their blog.

It’s easy to take the idea of search engine optimization for granted. Yeah, the marketing landscape is abuzz with all things SEO today, but did you even know what the term “search engine optimization” meant ten years ago? The term has no doubt covered a lot of ground in a short period of time.

But let’s forget about SEO for a brief moment (gasp!). Trust me, it’ll be OK.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to make our businesses look good to Google. Maybe it’s time we listen to what Google already likes about our business and do something about that.

“What the hell does that mean?” Let me explain via a personal experience.

Shortly after I started blogging a few years ago, I experienced a less-than-optimal situation at my local gym. With one post, I ranted about it. Soon thereafter, I decided to try to be a small part of the solution instead, so I wrote a post filled with my own gym marketing tips. It was a short-lived and somewhat related departure from my normal topics (namely, marketing leadership), so I immediately returned to my regularly scheduled programs.

Here’s the deal: I’m not a gym marketing expert. I have expertise in certain areas of marketing, and I have frequented lots of gyms over the years, but I’ve never really combined the two. I was simply just giving my unsolicited advice on how gym owners could make things work a little better.

However, Google doesn’t quite see it this way. In Google’s eyes, I’m an authority on just about any phrase related to gym marketing. I get a minimum of 20 visits a day from people looking specifically for gym marketing tips. It wasn’t my plan, and it wasn’t on purpose. I’m not sure if the post is constructed well or if it’s simply a void niche, but Google has decided what I have to say on this topic matters.

Which got me thinking ….

How to Leverage Surprising Inbound Keyword Phrases

Let’s face it: expertise is in the eye of the beholder. If Google thinks I know what I’m talking about, and comments and emails and other analytics confirm that I know what I’m talking about, then maybe I know what I’m talking about. But how do I take advantage of such an unexpected gift?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but my pondering has led me to these six options, and I’d love to hear more.

1. Accept advertising for the specific post. Any niche is going to have its major players. If Google’s looking to you when it comes to certain keywords, then these top dogs probably should, too. If you’re entire site isn’t dedicated to the topic, then run-of-site advertising probably doesn’t make sense to them. But an ad per post probably would. Email them and make them aware of the traffic you’re pulling for specific keyword phrases, and then give them a price. You could do banners or simple text links. This is probably the easiest and most immediate way to leverage this traffic. In my example, I could go find software programs for gyms or even authors who write on the topic of gym marketing.
2. Build your list. Forget cash, at least directly. Build your email list or subscriber level with a special, targeted call to action within the post. Or set up an autoresponder that expands on the specific topic. Then, hopefully, your delivery of valuable content over time will build trust, which in turn could lead to business.
3. Create an information product. eBooks, white papers, videos, automated presentations, video, podcast, whatever. If your ideas on the niche have legs, let ‘em loose by creating a more robust information product. You could give it away and leverage the list-building and linking to your site as your form of currency, or you could sell these items at a reasonable price. Just be sure to link the title of the product to the keywords that are most often bringing people to the site. Might as well give them exactly what they’re looking for.
4. Use affiliate links that make sense. Whether you’re keeping it easy with a simple Amazon.com affiliate program or something a little more robust with a service like Commission Junction, affiliates oftentimes take a lot of the grunt work out of selling. Find some products that fit your niche and just post them. Or you could find creators of products that would make sense for you to peddle and offer to set up an affiliate program for them. Then everybody’s winning.
5. Manufacture your own hard good. Go ahead and go old school. Make an actual, tangible product, be it a book, a widget or whatever. No need to feel confined to the online space if an offline product is what people are looking for.
6. Build a company around it. If you’re really feeling ballsy, and if the niche is really ripe for the picking, and if you’re passionate about the niche, then maybe there’s a business waiting for you here. Just be careful: opportunities like this are great at taking your focus off of what you’re really good at it. Make sure you enjoy centering your business around this new niche, or else you’ll be miserable.

Remember to harness and harvest the gifts that Google gives you every single day. Google will let you know where you really stick out. If you can figure out a way to leverage it, you’re a step ahead.

I have no idea which of the above ideas I’ll move forward with, if any. If you were me, what would you do? What other ideas do you have for ways to leverage surprising niche keyword traffic?

Guest Author: Brett Duncan offers common sense for marketing leaders at his blog, MarketingInProgress.com. He spends his days as Senior Director of Global Online Solutions for Mannatech, and his nights chasing a crazy little boy around the house in between brief moments of cheering on the Texas Rangers. He lives in Irving, Texas. Sign up for his free newsletter now if you like practical, thought-provoking marketing tips.

Google has just rolled out a new feature that makes the descriptions shown under each search result title more useful. You can now search within a page right on the search results by clicking on a link below the description. It’s essentially a search within a search, something that can make it far easier for users to find just what they are looking for.

According to Search Engine Journal, these snippets are only appearing for wikipedia at the moment, because most webpages aren’t correctly optimized for the search feature. So how can you ensure that your website gets full benefit of the new description search feature?

1. Create subheadings. A good webpage will include subheadings anyway, if it is over 300 words long. This can help search engine spiders find out more about a page and accurately catalog the information. It’s also useful to human users who prefer content to be broken up into more manageable pieces.

2. Optimize, optimize, optimize. We know that search engine optimization is valuable, but if you haven’t optimized your subheadings and titles on a page, you can’t expect Google to provide accurate searches within the page description.

3. Set up a table of contents. One of the best ways to make your site friendly for both humans and search engines is to add a table of contents for any page with a number of subheadings. This will allow people to jump quickly and easily to the section they want. It looks like this will also help Google set up the search within a search function for your site.

Search engine optimization is becoming more and more complicated now that there are more players in the field. Everyone is working hard to be the best and while that is a good thing, it does mean we need to pay more attention than usual to how we optimize our websites. Staying on top of the latest developments can help boost your site in the search engine rankings, so it’s worth following SEO news.

The standard for search engine optimization has been Google for a very long time, but now people are starting to think about another option. Bing has been far more popular than anyone anticipated. Even with Google Caffeine on the horizon, it would be foolish not to take this new up and comer into account when planning your SEO strategies.

Still not convinced? Here are a few reasons you should be optimizing for Bing.

1. It is rapidly creeping up on Google and if this deal with Yahoo goes through, you’ll definitely want your site in Bing. It’s important to consider all the possibilities, especially since it can take some time to get picked up by the search engine.

2. There are already many loyal users. These are people who no longer use Google. If you want to reach as many people as possible with your marketing message, you definitely want to include the newer search engine in your SEO plans.

3. If you get decent traffic from Yahoo right now, you’ll want to make sure you start optimizing now for the transition which is expected to occur early 2010. This will ensure that you don’t end up losing too much traffic when the two companies join up.

4. Who couldn’t use more traffic? If dual optimization helps you boost your incoming traffic, then it is definitely worth it. This is the main reason people have started aiming for better rankings on both Google and Bing.

5. It takes very little time. SEO for this new search engine isn’t much different from that of Google, so making some small changes or additions to your website can drastically change your results.

Despite the fact that Google has been such a big player in the SEO field for so long, we shouldn’t become complacent and ignore other traffic sources. Even the Romans ended up losing out, so keep your options in mind and don’t put all your website traffic in the hands of just one search engine.

The brand spanking new version of Google Caffeine is about to be launched, but the internet is already buzzing about it. Last week, a developer’s version was released and the testers have been reporting some excellent results. So just what can you expect from this new and improved search engine when it finally makes a full appearance?

Faster Searches

That’s right. Preliminary testing shows that the new Google search is roughly twice as fast as the current version. That’s excellent news for anyone who likes their info fast and let’s face it, who doesn’t? This could prompt searchers to refine their searches a little more, as well, resulting in more targeted results.

More Results

While Google has been the leader of indexing pages in the past, more recently it has fallen a bit behind. This may be because of so many sites winding up in the Sandbox or simply because Google is not that great at finding new pages on old websites. At any rate, Google Caffeine is showing up with hundreds of thousands of new results, indicating a drastic change in how its spiders check new pages.

This is great from the SEO side of things, since it means your site will be completely indexed faster.

Better Optimization

Keywords are extremely important in the new version of Google’s search engine. It looks like keywords used in titles are now particularly useful and that is great news for anyone who has been using proper SEO from the start. If you still haven’t optimized your business site, now is the time to get on that!

Google Caffeine isn’t just a slight upgrade to the current version, however. It is a full-blown, brand new way to search. From the looks of things, it is also going to change the way we do business and improve SEO.