debbidoo hearts Google: top tools from the web’s hottest property

Some say that Google owns the Internet. Or at least, that it thinks it does. It’s certainly true that it’s the world’s most popular search engine, with a global market share of almost 90%, and it’s also – apparently – the world’s most valuable brand (by the way, if you’re a business angel looking for your next investment, do let me know if you’d like to cough up $100bn for the debbidoo brand – I’m sure we can talk!)

But what many people don’t realise is just how much more Google is than a search engine.

If you’re a casual Googler, possibly all you’ll know about Google is that you type in a search phrase at google.com or google.co.uk (I prefer the latter – I want my results local, please) and you’ll get a list of (hopefully) relevant results on the left of the page (‘organic’ results), and a list of ‘sponsored’ results on the right hand side (more about these later).

But if you look at the top right hand side of the Google results page, you’ll see some other options that you may not have spotted before.  Specifically, the one that says “sign in”.

When you click the ‘sign in’ link at Google for the first time, you’re asked to create an account. You might wonder why you would want an account with Google – after all, it’s just a search engine, right?

In fact, if you create a Google account not only are you providing Google with really useful information about how its services are used (for example, if you set your country to UK,  this will help Google measure search volumes in the UK compared to the rest of the world), which it can use to improve the services it provides to you and other users; but you’re also able to access loads of other excellent tools – most of which are free – that you’re sure to find useful as a business or as an individual – or both.

But what do all these tools do, and why might you find them useful? Here’s a few of my favourites.

Great Google tools for website owners

Google Analytics – install a very simple code snippet in your website template, and learn how your visitors discovered your website, what they did while they were there, and other really useful visitor statistics. No website should be without some sort of analytics package, and Google Analytics is one of the best free ones you can get.

Google Webmaster Tools – use this to monitor your site’s search engine visibility and use the results to optimise your website for Google and other search engines. You can also see which search phrases trigger your web pages to be returned in Google’s results, and in which position, and find out if you have any broken links or other problems that are making it difficult for Google to accurately index your website.

Google AdWords – these are the ‘sponsored results’ you see on the right hand side of the Google search results page. When set up and managed properly, Google AdWords is a very effective, highly targeted method of online advertising, where you pay only when someone clicks on your ad  (this type of advertising is known as pay-per-click advertising, and it’s something debbidoo can help with if you don’t fancy learning how to do it yourself). Your ads can also be seen on websites elsewhere in the Google network, for example on websites owned by newspapers. You can also manage your campaigns with an external tool, the AdWords Editor – it’s not to everyone’s tastes, but I’m quite a fan

Google Keywords Tool – use this very helpful tool to plan your website’s keyword strategy and your pay-per-click campaigns. This tool will give you a pretty good idea of the search volumes for the keywords and phrases you plan to use in your website’s content, and offers suggestions for related words and phrases.

Feedburner – use this free service to set up and monitor RSS feeds and email feeds for your blog, and to create great little widgets that display your latest blog posts on another website (you can see this in action on debbidoo’s ‘mingle‘ page). A feed is a useful thing to offer your visitors, as they can subscribe to it and be notified whenever you publish a new blog post.

Google AdSense – if you own a website and would like to make some money from it by displaying ‘sponsored ads’, then this is the tool for you! While AdSense ads are customisable in terms of colour etc, they don’t look great on all websites, in my opinion; a serious business website can be spoiled by excessive ads, I think. However, AdSense does work well on news sites and on business sites where the primary income is advertising – for example, one of debbidoo’s websites, Keep Christmas Cheap, is funded by Google AdSense and affiliate ads.

If you don’t like the idea of plastering your website with ads but would still like to get a small income from hosting ads, you could use Google AdSense for Search, placing a search box anywhere you like on your website, with the ads only showing on the results page.

Google Local Business Ads – great free service for businesses, which puts your business literally on the map! Once you’ve registered and your ad has been processed, you’ll show up for searches for your type of business in your area, like in the example below (click to enlarge):

Great Google tools for everyone

Google Mail – even if you have an email address, it never hurts to have a spare one – or more! While there are many different free webmail accounts out there, I’m particularly fond of Google Mail because I can use it to send emails from other email addresses. So say I’m away from the office for a few days and I’m using someone else’s computer – with Google Mail I can send emails from my @debbidoo.com email address, or my @petha-ltd.co.uk email address, or any of the other email addresses I’ve told Google I may want to send from.

Google Docs – this is one of my most recent Google discoveries, and I love it! When I’ve got my Petha hat on, I’m able to share documents with Wyn securely and remotely – so we can both edit documents, print them off, add new documents and so on. It’s really handy if you’re away from your own computer and need access to your important documents; you can upload existing files like Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and so on to your Google Docs account, or create brand new ones (even on a computer that doesn’t have Microsoft Office or Open Office installed), and access them from any computer with an Internet connection.

Google Alerts – receive an email whenever a word or phrase of your choice is mentioned online and indexed by Google. Really handy for measuring brand awareness, if you’re a business user, or just for monitoring absolutely anything that interests you!

Google Directory – search the web by topic, like the giant encyclopedia that it is!

Google Earth – view any place on Earth – including the stars – in 3D from your desktop. Google Earth is a downloadable tool which is loads of fun and utterly addictive.

Google Reader – use this to read all the latest items in the RSS feeds you’ve subscribed to (if you want to subscribe to this blog’s feed, look in the ‘subscribe’ box down at the bottom of the right-hand column).

iGoogle – your own personal Google homepage, which you can personalise with some great gadgets, games, news feeds and lots of other things. Here’s what my iGoogle page looks like (click to enlarge):

Google Chrome – lovely, fast, simple web browser. I personally hate using Internet Explorer – it’s slow, I don’t trust it, and I simply don’t like it – so I use Firefox for the majority of my web browsing. But every now and then, for one reason or another, I want to use a different browser. So Google Chrome is my secondary browser of choice.  Free to download and very easy to use, I highly recommend it.

If you think this is a long list of Google products then you’re right – it is! But I’ve only listed a handful of the great services and products provided by Google – for a list about a squillion times the length of this one, try this article on Wikipedia… now that’s what I call a long list!