Tabbyfied

Local Business Ads (LBAs) enable advertisers within specific business locations to target prospects within a defined geographic area. LBAs are geared to drive people directly to your physical business location, rather than just to your website.

Although LBAs can be displayed in Google’s organic search results the same as any AdWords ads, they have the added advantage of being displayed right on a Google Map itself. This is good because, when a user clicks your ad within the map, an info window expands, showing your business listing as seen in the screenshot below:

Google recently added a link to directions. This makes it super-easy for a prospect to learn exactly how to get to your location. They can also see a Street View…

…as well as select the Save to My Maps option.

Google is also working on new reporting features for Local Business Ads designed to report how many people opened your info window and clicked your various links. For more on Local Business Ads, check out Google’s FAQ. To set up your own ads follow these steps from the Google help files.

Web-based email is convenient. Anyone can easily set up an email account in minutes for free. You can access it from anywhere that has an Internet connection. But the drawback of web-based email is that you can’t get to your archived messages when you’re not online. If you’ve ever been on an airplane or in your car, and needed to retrieve directions or other information that was sent to you via email, well, you know you were previously SOL (and the “S” doesn’t stand for smiling).

That’s why Google is now making Gmail available even when you’re not online. You simply access your messages within the normal Gmail interface and then synchronize changes while you’re connected. Messages that you send while offline are now stored in your outbox and automatically sent as soon as you’re connected again.

Take note this feature relies on Google Gears—a set of open-source developer tools Google created to help build more powerful web applications. You must have Gears installed to use Gmail offline. (Another option is to simply use the Google Chrome browser which already has Google Gears pre-installed).

To access offline mode in your Gmail account, start by installing Google Gears. Then go to your settings and look for the Labs tab near the top of your screen. Once there…

1. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
2. Click Save Changes.
3. After your browser reloads, you’ll see a new Offline0.1 link in the upper right hand corner of your account, next to your username.

Cool! …thanks Google.

Google Suggest is moving out of Google Labs and into the regular search results at Google.com, potentially providing a new way to get traffic to sites that aren’t currently showing up on the first page of Google’s search results.

Google Suggest is just what is sounds like. It suggests alternative queries for you in real time as you type your searches into Google. Those suggestions are primarily based on the queries that other Google users have searched for…

As you can see in the image above, there’s been a lot of interest in Bigfoot recently (due to claims of Bigfoot being recently captured). That interest has translated into large numbers of searches for queries like searching for bigfoot, causing that query to show up on Google Suggest when you type search.

Mid-tail searches of 3-4 words which are currently getting a lot of traffic are likely to receive even more traffic once this new feature goes live, as users are channeled towards the queries Google suggests for them. Longer-tail searches of 5 words or more that don’t get much traffic to begin with are likely to get even less as many users opt to use the shorter phrases Google displays.

As for your own site, you should be able to get good traffic out of this new feature if you can generate enough publicity and reach that tipping point where your keywords are shown in this suggestion box.

For example, TravelRepublic.co.uk could see significantly increased traffic since, even though they don’t appear on the first page of search results for the query travel. That’s because they do appear in the list of search suggestions that Google provides.

That’s most likely caused by TravelRepublic.co.uk having a good offline marketing campaign that drives a large number of searches for their brand. Google is aware of these searches, and thus includes travel republic in their list of Google Suggestions for the very high traffic keyword travel.

This could mean that your offline branding and advertising efforts could have a very real impact on your search engine traffic, particularly if you brand around a phrase that starts with a keyword that already gets very high search engine traffic.

More from the official Google Blog.

Yes folks, Google have launched a new free Ad serving platform, the Ad Manager.

Though still on its testing phase, this program looks promising.

The sole purpose of it is to be a complete package for managing advertising on your site—including selling, scheduling, delivering and measuring ad inventory. While many small sites personally manage the ads they display, you can reach a point where that becomes difficult to track and optimize. So this tool just does that, any ad inventory you have can be managed with this program, you’re only not restricted just to AdSense coz you think it’s a tool made by Google…Pretty neat huh?..and why should you love this tool more?…It’s FREE!

I had read in an article that Google returns different search results for queries based on whether the keyword phrase is keyed in upper-case or lower-case letters. How true is this you say? Should we actually think of considering to optimize for these variations if our site appear in one and not the other? I personally decided to find out for myself.

I fired up Mozilla and I tried keying in “DOGS” on one tab and “dogs” on the other. Here are the results I got.

The lower-case query “dogs” displays pets4you.com on the 5th position.

On the other hand, with the upper-case query “DOGS”, it showed a slight change on the search results. It has greatdogsite.com on the 5th position and moves pet4you.com on the 6th place.

Yes it’s not a major difference, but it is something to be looked into coz from what I read from Google web search help center, it specifically states that their searches are not case sensitive.

This comes to conclude if capitalization on the page affects how a page ranks for capitalized queries. Is this something need to be fix, a “loophole” of some sort where one can exploit on the SEO front? I’m keeping my eyes on it.

Although this might sound a little similar with the “space elevator project” which had a lofty goal, Google Inc. has agreed to build an undersea cable with five telecoms operators that will link the United States to Japan, and provide the capacity to sustain a surge in Internet traffic between the continents.

Quoted:
” Google and the five telecoms companies said in joint statement that the 10,000 km (6,200 mile) undersea fiber optic cable, connecting the United States to Japan, will cost $300 million.

The Unity cable system allows the members of the consortium to provide the increased capacity needed as more applications and services migrate online,” said Jayne Stowell, a spokesman for the consortium.”

Now, this kind of technology have been here for over a hundred of years, and that is called the “Transatlantic telegraph cable”. The transatlantic cable bridged North America and Europe, and expedited communication between the two. Whereas it would normally take at least ten days to deliver a message by ship, it now took a matter of minutes by telegraph. Nothing really new though for Google, but as one of the forum members reacted on the thread I read, notice how all the partners are not US telcos. What is actually Google saying?..Hmmm…I feel this is going to be nasty..write a comment regarding your take on this.:D

Well, it is true that we must share our blessings to others, and Big G is just about to do that.

Quoted:
“Google Inc. said it will dole out nearly $30 million in new grants and investments to nonprofits and a private business that are taking on do-good projects. Its announcement yesterday includes a $10 million investment in closely held eSolar Inc., which is working on utility-scale solar power. Google.org also expects to invest directly in businesses in places such as Africa to spur job creation.”

I totally believe that in any business, instead of whacking every other competitor’s head to bring them down, we should focus on lifting everyone up so that we can all have an equal share of the pie. I’m not doubting that Google is doing this for the tax breaks or whatsoever state sales taxes that is or it’s part of their “don’t look evil” mantra, I don’t care. If their intention is truly for the greater good, then God be with them. People that is making this world worst is not taking a day-off, we should all take part of illuminating good for everybody.

I just hope Google would expand their investments as far as the 3rd world countries, particularly the Philippines.