Product DescriptionGoogle is not only the search engine of choice for millions of users, it is an immensely powerful tool for savvy businesspeople who know how to use its advanced features. "Go Google" is a comprehensive guide to everything readers need to know about Google's myriad applications, including Google Apps, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google SMS, Google Base, and other services that will help businesses get organized - and get noticed. Complete with information on research tools like Google Local, Google News, and Google Alerts, this is the ultimate guide for businesses of every size.
Product Details- Amazon Sales Rank: #505365 in Books
- Published on: 2008-01-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .96" h x 7.42" w x 9.16" l, 1.45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 356 pages
Editorial ReviewsGreg Holden (Chicago, IL) has written more than 30 books on computers and the Internet, including Starting an Online Business for Dummies , Selling Beyond eBay (978-0-8144-7349-8), and How to Do Everything with Your eBay Business. He is founder and owner of Stylus Media, his own small Internet-based business.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Learning from Google:
A 21st-Century Model for
Success
You know what Google is. At least, you think you know Google. Chances are you
associate Google with being among the most successful high-tech businesses in the
world, as well as being the most popular search service on the World Wide Web. And
you have probably heard ‘‘google’’ used as a verb, meaning ‘‘to search for or find
something online,’’ as in: ‘‘I Googled my professor and found his home page . . . I
Gmailed him my report.’’ (Gmail is Google’s email service; you’ll hear quite a bit
about it in the pages that follow.) If that’s all you think of when you hear the word
‘‘Google,’’ you’re missing the latest Internet revolution. What you can learn from this
book will improve your life immeasurably, especially if your goals are to work more
efficiently and to do a better job of marketing yourself or your company.
What’s So Great About Google?
Back in 1996, two graduate students started their own Web-based search service,
which they called BackRub. By 1998, the project had gained a lot of attention, secured
some investors, and turned into a corporation called Google—a Web site that
made specific Web pages, discussion groups, or even individual words and phrases
easy to locate. In recent years, Google has expanded its services for businesses in a
dramatic way. Its Gmail and AdWords services are now in widespread use. For example,
Google offers scheduling, word processing, spreadsheet, email, and other applications
both separately and as part of an umbrella package called Google Apps. These
days, Google is also an increasingly popular solution for small businesses that need
to increase their visibility and build their brand. Google is fast becoming the most
affordable and effective marketing venue for businesses.
Through its expansion into the business services space, Google itself provides you
with a role model that you can follow as you develop your own business online. It all
starts when you create a service that gives you a solid foundation. After a steady
stream of customers are knocking at your virtual door, you can expand into new
areas. Google can help you make that exciting move.
This book will give you comprehensive descriptions of the site’s search engine,
advertising, marketing, workflow, and communications features. Not only that, but
you’ll be provided with tips on how they can best meet your needs. Google’s search
tool and other services can help businesses get organized and on the same page,
often for little or no cost. The new Google Apps will let businesses take their online
communications and data sharing to a new level. This book will examine ways in
which businesses like yours can communicate messages and make Web sites more
visible to prospective customers; it will go a step beyond what has previously been
said about Google to describe how clients and coworkers can use it to communicate
with one another more effectively.
These days, Google is much more than a directory of the Web’s contents. It’s on
the verge of becoming an integral part of many small business operations. Google is
itself a model for a 21st-century business. You can learn a great deal about how a
successful company operates by reading the sections that follow.
Googling Google: Researching an Internet Success Story
Plenty of books have written about Google and how it started. In a nutshell, the
business was founded by two men, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who first met in late
1995 when they were graduate students at the University of Michigan. They spent a
lot of time and programming effort to come up with a complex algorithm for finding
content on the Web with amazing accuracy.
It should come as no surprise that the best way to find out about Google is to
Google the company history yourself. If you enter the search terms Google History on
the home page (http://www.google.com), you will see that the first returned result is
a link to Google Corporate Information: Google Milestones (http://www.google.com/
corporate/history.html). This will reveal a comprehensive and up-to-date timeline detailing
the company’s achievements. Here you will find personal anecdotes from and
biographies of Larry and Sergey (who are shown below), as well as a detailed history
of their company’s humble beginnings and remarkable growth. Don’t be afraid of being
bored. You won’t be. It’s all told with the straightforward and laid-back style that have
become synonymous with the name Google.
For more information, you can also scroll down to the bottom of any page on the
Google website and click on the link labeled About Google (http://www.google.com/
about.html). This will take you to a map of all of the products, services, and support
features that Google offers, as well as provide links to more corporate information.
The ‘‘take away’’ point here is that Google succeeds by providing a service that
everyone wants and needs: access to information and links to virtually any kind of
online content.
Information Sells
What’s the first lesson you learn from Google’s story? Having identified a need that
is shared by each one of the millions of individuals who go online every day, Brin
and Page stuck to their core business and kept improving it. They spent many years
building their company, slowly focusing on the basic activity of searching for content
on the Web. Only when that process became widely accepted did they begin to sell
ads that would appear alongside search results pages. Only after several years did the
company go public. Only recently have they begun to provide the business applications
described in this book.
When you start up your own Web site, whether or not you use Google, you need
to identify your mission and stick to it without trying to take on too much at once.
Define the kinds of customers, clients, or visitors you want to reach. Determine how
you’re going to meet their needs by making your own products or services available
online. Start with a few pages or business applications and build your presence gradually.
Once you have a firm base—a Web site created with Google’s Web Page Creator
(see Chapter 11), a domain name obtained through Google Apps (Chapter 6), or a
sales channel created with Google Base (Chapter 15)—you can expand your presence
to build a wider audience.
On the Internet, the more prospective customers who can reach and the richer
the level of content you provide, the more effective your business will be. As you’ll
learn in subsequent chapters, you improve your search engine rankings for both venues
when you are able to make links from one Web site you own to another one you
own. If your sites have three or four ‘‘levels’’ of content (in other words, if your
visitors are able to click through from one page to another and keep finding new
forms of information) your site will be ‘‘stickier.’’ You’ll be able to hold those visitors
on your site for a longer period of time, which make it that much more likely they’ll
perform the action you are hoping for—whether that action is making a purchase,
filling out a form, or sending you an email inquiry.
Google gives you a virtual toolbox full of options for creating a Web presence
that is expansive and extensive. It can help you in one of two ways:
• If you already have a Web site dedicated to your business or club (or to your
own personal exploits), Google provides you with a set of tools that are surefire
ways to help you meet your goals. (And you can use Google’s Page Creator
as described in Chapter 11 to create another Web site, too.)
• Google gives you a free and yet powerful way to establish a full-fledged Web
presence if you don’t have one already.
Keep It Simple
When you look at the Google home page shown in Figure 1-1, what do you see?
Along with the search box and heading and links, your eyes will rest on lots of white
space. While other Web sites (such as that of Google’s competitor Yahoo!) are cluttered
with links, words, images, and corporate logos, Google’s remains remarkably
Figure 1-1. Google’s home page points to a model of simplicity you should try to emulate.
uncluttered. No doubt Google could make millions by placing a single ad or two on
its well-traveled home page. But the site’s managers know the value of simplicity, and
you should appreciate it too.
There’s no doubt about it: You can go ahead and hire Web designers and computer
programmers to create a complex and world-class Web site that will ‘‘Wow!’’
everyone who visits it. But chances are you have picked up this book because you
want to avoid just this sort of expense and complication. You want to be in control
and plan your online site in a way that reflects your personality and your interests.
And you don’t want to pay a...
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