The Interactive Adverising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers have released internet advertising data for the first six months of 2008. The six month period saw $11.5 billion in revenues, up 15.2% over the same period in 2007.

The second quarter of 2008 was up 12.8% over Q2 of 2007, but showed a slight decline, 0.3%, from the first quarter.

Search revenues neared $5.1 billion, up 24% year-over-year. Display neared $3.8 billion, up 19%.

“Interactive advertising continues to demonstrate year over year growth as marketers and consumers increase their embrace of digital media,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “The essentially flat performance we see quarter to quarter reflects in part cyclical advertising trends. Compared to the trajectory in other media and in the general economy, interactive has outperformed because it delivers a level of accountability unmatched by any other advertising medium.”

Internet web sites, including most blogs, are dependent on advertising to pay the cost of their site and to make a profit on their writings. But with money becoming tight and with economic uncertainties in the news, it seems that there is some doubt as how advertising on the Internet will fair. Some are taking the position that advertising could take a hit as companies cut back on their Internets ads. But is it all doom and gloom? Is the sky falling?

According to one article which states:

But Sly Bailey has a more sinister view of the year. “Remember 1999?,” she rather gloomily asked last week’s Association of Online Publishers’ conference. “Well 2009 will be like Groundhog Day. For the lucky we should expect consolidation – and for the less fortunate, failure.” The Trinity Mirror boss said she was “firmly of the belief that there will be casualties in the coming months”.

She’s not the only senior media figure predicting blood on the digital publishing carpet. Maurice Levy, the chairman and chief executive of Publicis, warned of a second bust as long ago as last November. “Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone,” he said. “It’s exactly the same situation as we saw at the end of the 1990s, when everyone thought that because he had a website he’d get the valuation. Now everyone building a Web 2.0 operation believes he will receive the advertising.”

I believe that the American people, as well as people around the world, may cut back on their spending for luxury items. But I also think that many more people may turn to the Internet to do their shopping. With high gas prices, people may want to stay home and order items from the Internet, instead of heading to a brick and mortar store front.

If this comes to pass, than Internet advertising may increase instead of decline, as more folks shop online.

What do you think? Will you be doing more shopping online this holiday season?

This session looks at how to leverage linking from within your own site to maximize your rankings in search.

Why even care about your internal linking? Because you can help yourself with your own site, so why waste one of the easiest link building opportunities out there.
Using nofollow and other techniques for “PageRank sculpting” has risen in awareness over the past year. It’s even been recommended by Google. How does it work, when do you want to do it, and is it worth the time? Techniques and case studies will be shown.
Don’t forget the anchor text. What you say in your links can matter! And saying it in a variety of different ways might be better than using the same exact words over and over. Tips and advice about writing for internal links.
Don’t forget the humans, when it comes to internal linking. You still need to have links showing in a way that benefits your human visitors. Meanwhile, you might have to convince the humans in your IT department, upper management or other stakeholders about why recommended internal link tactics deserve support.

Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn

Speakers:

Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc
Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting Corporation
Anton E. Konikoff, Founder/CEO, Acronym Media
Leslie Rohde, Founder, Windrose Software
Leslie Rohde is up first and says that internal linking is the first place to start. He asks the audience how many people have small companies (<12 employees) or if they’re monetizing their site to gauge interest.

Internal linking is awesome because you control it. You control your own pages and you control your own links. Internal linking focuses the effects of external links. He tells people that good ranking starts at home.

Ranking is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. 70% of ranking comes from 3 factors - on page factors, link reputation effect, and PageRank.

Briefly, he describes the details about writing your page correctly:
- Title includes keywords for ranking and persuasion for humans
- Meta description sells the click
- Body copy engages the human visitor

Link reputation - he says that links speak louder than pages. Think about Google BOmbing - click here, privacy policy, home, etc. However, is your home page about “home?” You should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Fragmented reputation - “partial” truth, common nav bar issues, complete title help, and footer links. He explains this phenomenon by looking at links on Home Depot. If you link to “cooking,” chances are you’re not talking about cooking — you’re talking about cooking appliances.

Content as investment: pages cost money, pages create PageRank (not LinkRank! - pages cost you money). PageRank helps ranking. Ranking creates ongoing traffic. It’s a one time cost that creates residual benefit.

He talks about PageRank sculpting with an illustration. Which pages? Ranking takes focus. Use lasers, not floodlights.
Choose your focus - not all searches are created equal. Competition and conversion and lifetime customer value are important.

What can you do with PageRank sculpting? Without going into detail, he talks about the home page push and how there’s all this linkage going from the home page. The mid tier push focuses on category.
Next up is Eric Enge who talks about PageRank sculpting

He talks about the robots.txt and says he doesn’t recommend it as the major tool but that it can be utilized in PR sculpting.

He shows a slide called noindex illustrated (obviously, he has an illustration) and then shows some syntax. He also shows a case study with a duplicate content scenario: he noindexed pages so that the crawler can find and remove pages. You can remove this by using the URL removal tool in webmaster tools. Don’t use Robots.txt because if someone links to the page, you want to pass the link juice even though you don’t want it indexed.

He explains that it can also be used for content syndication.

He also describes PageRank sculpting - you may want to nofollow those site links like “about us” and “Advertise with us.”

One more - https and https dupe content. The problem is that it has relative links in it versus absolute links. A lot of sites have this problem. You can resolve this in a few ways. You can make the links absolute but in this cae he actually recommends https robots.txt file and nofollow the links to the https page.

Adam Audette is next. He says that text links are good - you need to watch those image links. Just make sure there are text link options elsewhere on the page or with the image.

He shows a small 150 page site that has flash and images but not many good text links. (You can use the web developer toolbar and click on “view link information.”)

Contextual links rule - they have semantic meaning!

Anchor text is very important but it’s not a magic solution. One of the things that we see is that people point to content pages with this anchor text. It’s not enough to put keywords in the anchor text. The pages need to relevant and high quality. If they happen, anchor text can be another helpful factor.

As sites grow, anchor text influence increases.

Links are action points for SEO *and* for people. Click here is a pretty good call to action! Think of ways to use that efficiently.

Mix it up - anchor text should vary!

Link consistently - standardize internal links

Link/Page relations: as he said before, link text should match the page it targets and there should be relevant keywords that surround the links.

Are your pages important? Pages without a lot of links pass a signal.

Link thresholds: general advice is that you should have 100-150 links max. It’s actually case by case. More links can mean less usability.

Related link structures - you can do this with big sites. Use related linking to flatten a site. Shopping.com does a really nice job of using related links on their pages. They also use breadcrumbs which is important too.

- Tag pages - have users tag pages of manually build. Create tag categories and add RSS feeds. Amazon.com does a great job at this.

Anton is up next and he talks about how linking has raised pagerank and increaed the amount of visitors - he changed the navigation to text navigation from images.

Practical internal linking - can you prove that it will work? Is it worth the time and resources? How do we balance the user experience?

Internal linkng - success measurement. It’s difficult to isolate net impact on rankins. Was it nofollow or an anchor text change? Maybe it was an external linking?
Another metric set is indexing levels - getting pages indexed and crawled frequently. Check crawl patterns and click through rates on links.

Do an internal page audit
Before you change links or anchor text, consider the click distribution, page abandon rates, user click paths, and paths to conversion.

Google Inc. has created a product to cut down on drunken e-mail.

The Mountain View, Calif., company (NASDAQ: GOOG), which makes most of its money from advertising, spends that money on a wide variety of issues, from the profound to the absurd.

Last week, Google plopped out a policy document, a plan to get people thinking about weaning the United States off fossil fuels.

This week, as a post on the “official Gmail blog” puts it, the problem to be cured is angry or embarrassing emails sent by drunk people.

Gmail plans to offer “Mail Goggles,” a kind of sobriety test to make sure a sender is sober enough to send a message. Rather than test the sender’s alcohol blood level, the program prompts the user with a series of math problems (69-38 =?, 11×2=?, and so on) which must be solved within a time limit.

The program’s default setting is for late at night on the weekend, when, as the blog says “you’re most likely to need it.”

Jon Perlow, the Google worker who wrote the post, says his inspiration for the product was “the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message.”

SEO hints and tips can inform you how to optimize a web page, and if you can understand how to carry out your search engine optimization then you can get yourself a whole heap of free traffic to your website. Not only your website, but free traffic to selected pages on your website: pages selected by you!
You no doubt understand all the basic stuff, but in case you are new to this, let’s first have look at these basic SEO hints and tips, since many seem to omit them from their web pages. The most important are the essential HTML tags needed to convince the search engines of the theme of your web page.
 

Note the term ‘web page’, because many people don’t realize that Google, along with most other search engines, doesn’t líst websites, but individual web pages. It is essential that you understand how search engines work if you want to learn how to optimize a web page.
I am going to refer to Google, not only because it is the biggest of the search engines, but also to save the bother of referring to search engines all the time. I will refer to Google, but what applies to Google also applies to the rest. Here are the main SEO basics:
a) The TITLE tag. This appears in the HEAD portion of your html, and is not actually seen by your visitors but is the most important tag on your web page because the spiders place very high weight on it. Use your main keywords here, and also any other text that will inform Google of the theme of your web page.
b) Heading (H) tags. Your page title should be placed within H1 tags, and should contain the same major keyword as you used in the TITLE tag. Any subheadings should be contained within H2 tags. I don’t use any of the lower tags, from H3 down, except perhaps H3 very occasionally. Google will regard any text with H tags as being important, with most weight given to the lower numbers. However, if you place everything in H1 tags, that will dilute its importance on your page and defeat the object.
c) Text enhancements: Use bold, italic and underline enhancements sparingly, and where you once again want to stress the importance of certain keywords.
d) Use your keywords mainly in the first third of your page. Don’t use too many: I get good results with under 1% overall keyword density, by using the main keyword in the first 100 characters, once in the last paragraph and once more each 300 words but concentrated in the first third of the page. Thus, an 800 word page will have the keyword three times in the first 250 words and once in the last paragraph.
 

e) Meta tags: The only meta tag worth using is the description tag, which is used by most search engines in the description of your web page in their listings. Google mainly uses it exactly as you write it. The keyword tag can also be used, but few search engines are thought to use it: Google does not. Any other meta tags are a waste of your space. Anybody that claims differently is wanting to sell you something.
These are the basic hints on SEO, now here are some of the more advanced SEO hints and tips that will teach you not only how to optimize a web page, but to understand the way that search engines work. These are less obvious, and generally not used by beginners to search engine marketing.
f) Use text links to other pages on your website. Search engine spiders love text, and fancy graphics or java links might look great, but don’t get you kudos from the spiders. Stick to text if you want a good listing: there’s no point in fancy graphical links if you have no visitors to use them.
g) Try to use as much text as possible, and as little code as possible. Your code to text ratio should be minimized as much as possible because … yes, you’ve got it! Spiders love text!
h) Another good SEO tip is to focus on your off-page linking. It is possible to get a #1 spot on Google with no content: just loads of links coming into your web page from other websites. Not just any websites, but authority sites, so reciprocal links to and from web pages not directly related to your niche are a waste of time, and can even harm you. Link farms can positively damage you.
i) Use anchor text for your links where at all possible. Google shouldn’t have to work out what your web page is about: tell them. Hyperlink your keyword to your website, but don’t use the same form of keyword from every webpage linking to yours. Mix them about so as to keep the links fresh.
j) And lastly: Keep adding pages to your website. You have more chance of a high listing from one website of 60 pages than from two of 30 pages each. Keep refreshing your content with new pages, and take time to revise some of your older pages now and again. Google detests stagnation.
These are just a few SEO hints and tips that can teach you how to optimize a web page. There are many, many more. Some quite basic, others very much more advanced than the above. However, you can’t get everything free!

It’s remarkable that in 2008 there are still many bidding systems in use by SEMs and in-house PPC managers dedicated to “finding the right position” for each keyword. These position crawling systems guarantee inefficiency and lost opportunity; to put it concisely: they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s why:

1. The value of traffic doesn’t vary by position. Careful study on our part, confirmed by University Statistics researchers, has proved that the conversion rates (orders per click), average order sizes, and margin percentages do not vary by position on the page. In other words, the people who click on ads at the top of the page behave the same way on their visit as the folks who click on the same ad in the middle of the page or at the bottom of the page. The quantity of traffic is much greater at the top, but the quality is almost exactly the same. In fact, the quality in position 1 tends to be slightly lower than position 2, and the quality improves slightly as the ads get lower on the page — these are small effects that can be ignored for practical purposes.
2. Value of traffic times the percentage of value the advertiser can afford to spend on marketing = the bid. Maximizing the top-line within some efficiency constraint — what we’re typically asked to do — is “simply” a matter of measuring the value of traffic on each ad and bidding according to the above formula. That will place the advertiser’s ad as high on the page as they can afford to be, capturing the most traffic for each ad within their efficiency needs. If that bid places an ad in position 1 — that’s great, position 6? Okay, position 15? Oh well. The position is what it is, and is determined by what your competitors choose to do at any moment.

How do position crawlers work?

Largely, trial and error through the following steps:

• Test ads in different positions on the page.
• Measure the efficiency (cost to sales ratio or whatever) at each position.
• Set crawler to maintain the highest position where the efficiency worked.

At first glance, this may look like the same process. It isn’t. The critical mistake is the flawed assumption that the position produces the efficiency, when in fact the position is a coincidence of the value of traffic and cost of a particular position lining up at a given time. The position crawler determines that a position, say position 6, is “magic” for this term, when in fact the ever changing bid landscape will mean that position 6 either costs too much or is too far down the page much of the time.

Let’s look at some graphs.

On this ad, let’s say it’s “Foo Bar” on Adwords, the exact match version, we know that the sales dollars per click is basically $3. Let’s say the advertiser can afford to spend 33% of revenue on marketing, so by economic rationale, we’d say bid $1 on this ad. On average, that puts us in position 6 as it turns out.

The position crawler will get to this same place eventually, trying different positions until it learns that “position 6″ is its happy place. But that’s the problem, it learned the wrong thing. Position 6 is irrelevant.

At any given moment, the bidding landscape will not look like this average. Instead, it might look like this:

Perhaps several competitors got directives from their corner offices to “Be more aggressive”. We’d say, well, we can still only afford to spend $1 for traffic, so we’re going to get less traffic, but we’re not going to overspend.

Position crawler will say: “Gadzooks, I’ve fallen out of position!” and will start merrily climbing his way back to position 6, even though it means wasting money in the current environment.

On the other hand, maybe the actual landscape looks like this:

In this case, the wise system would say: traffic is worth $3, I can afford $1 — lookie there! We’re on top of the page, reaping the HUGE benefits of the higher CTR and Impression counts, and it’s cost effective — Yipee!

The position crawler will instead say: “Egads, I’m in position 1, I need to crawl back to my happy place of position 6!” And so, even though they can get the tremendous extra traffic associated with the top spot cost effectively, he’ll waste this opportunity by crawling back ‘home’.

The position crawlers are built with all kinds of cool features to “jam” competitors and “take advantage of holes in the landscape,” but all these complexities don’t change the fact that they’re playing the wrong game.

Bidding based on the value of traffic is simple conceptually, but complex in practice. The value of traffic is difficult to measure for low traffic “tail” terms, requiring smart stats and tiered clustering mechanisms. Moreover, while the value of traffic doesn’t change based on the position of the ad, it does change based on the time of day and day of week, the season, the match-type, the syndication network, special promotions, etc, so the calculations must factor in all those effects to do this well. This is a difficult game, but it’s the right game, and the results speak for themselves.

The next time someone tries to engage you in a discussion about “finding the right position” for a particular term, remind them that the value of the traffic is measurable; but the cost of a position is unknown, and unknowable, changing based on the whims of your competition. Bottom line: don’t let your competitors run your search program.

Everyone is trying to save money in today’s economy - but sometimes when you think you are saving money you are actually losing so much more than you save.
If you are considering handling your SEO, that is only a good decision if;
a) you have the time to do the work and actually get it done and b) you can get the results you need so you actually improve your traffic from top rankings.
 

To determine if you should handle your SEO - check out these questions.
1. Can you work within simple HTML? At a bare minimum, you need to be able to add Meta tags to an HTML document. Ideally, you can also bold text, set up links, change formatting, rename images, move java script into a .js file etc.
2. Do you have enough time to make your site search engine friendly? Plan on a minimum of 3 hours for sites that are in great shape, and up to 25 hours (or more) for sites that may need a complete overhaul. In our experience, 3 - 6 hours seems to be the norm for time spent on updating SEO friendliness issues.
3. Will you have this time for SEO friendliness work within the next week? Typically, if people don’t take action in the immediate future (within the next 5 business days), the project ends up being delayed indefinitely. You need a clear scheduled start date for your SEO work - especially when the holidays are approaching! You need to get things going!
4. Can your business afford to “lend” this time to SEO without experiencing some other negative impact? If the time is not truly extra time you have, then you would be “borrowing” the time from another area of your business. Can you do that without harming another area of your business?
5. If your SEO project becomes bigger than you initially anticipated, will you have the time and attention to continue dedicating to it until completion?
6. Are you an experienced and competent copywriter? If you said no, do you feel you can quickly master writing compelling copy that is also keyword rich?
7. Is the content already on your site something you feel comfortable altering? Often people that have paid for high-end marketing copy on their websites do not want to make any SEO alterations themselves, for fear of altering the effectiveness of their current copy - and therefore affecting their conversion rates.
 

8. Do you have any prior SEO experience?
9. Do you have the tools or know where to purchase the tools that will help you in keyword selection, site analysis, reporting and current industry information?
10. Would you rather spend your time working ON your business (i.e., growing it) than IN your business (i.e., taking care of the nitty gritty details rather than the big picture)?
11. Do you have a plan in place to make sure you stay current on all SEO trends and changes so you can maintain your rankings on-going?
Now let’s take a look at your answers and what they mean:
1: Can you work within simple HTML?
On-page optimization requires that you work within the HTML on your website. If you are not able to work with an HTML document and feel confident that you will not cause any errors or malfunctions, then you simply can not handle your SEO at this time.
You would need to learn HTML before you could consider handling SEO. Please note, if your site is more complex than simple HTML, you would need to be comfortable working within the code used on your site.
2, 3 and 4: Do you have enough time to make your site search engine friendly? Can your business afford to “lend” this time to SEO, and therefore experience no significant negative impact? If the time is not truly extra time you have, then you would be “borrowing” the time from another area of your business.
 

You will also later need to write content, alter content and handle various optimization techniques, but to get started - before you can do anything else - you need to make the time to get the foundation ready for SEO. If you don’t have time to do this, your project simply won’t get off the ground.
Do you truly have the time, or are you just taking it from somewhere else. If you are taking it from somewhere else, that may be fine - you just need to be sure that you aren’t harming your business in other ways. Getting rankings, and ultimately traffic to your site will not benefit you if your business falls apart while you work on the optimization.
The remainder of the questions are details for you to consider. Basically, the more No’s there are, the more likely it is that you should NOT handle your SEO in-house.
If your results determined you can handle your SEO, here are the final details you need you consider:
1. What is your time worth per hour? Which option is more cost effective for you - hiring someone or spending your time?
2. Can you recognize when your choice is not working for you and are you willing to try the other option at that time?
3. You must commit to educating yourself and learning all that you need to know to truly run a successful SEO campaign. Inadvertently spamming, or using a questionable technique can result in a temporary loss of results or a permanent ban from the engines. Be 100% sure you aren’t endangering your business.
If your results determined you should outsource your SEO, here are the final details you should consider:
1. Make sure you know what questions to ask the SEO firm you hire.
2. Plan on spending anywhere from $300 - $1000.00 per month to run an aggressive SEO campaign.
No one but you can decide - we just wanted to arm you with some things to consider. It is all in the details, and you should consider them carefully before making a decision.

Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Happy Birthday Google!

One way Google is celebrating this event is through funding 10 million dollars for the idea that can help the most people. An idea that could have the most impact on our world.

It’s an ingenious way to celebrate Google and what it stands for… a birthday gift to everyone.
 

You can find out more about Google Impact Project here: 10 to the 100

Google Has Already Impacted Many People

Like a lot of webmasters and marketers out there, I am very grateful to Google. Mainly because Google has been very good to me and has made my online livelihood possible with organic rankings, Adsense revenue, Adwords…

Maybe I could have done it without Google, but it would have been a much more difficult job. And it’s very hard to imagine a world without Google.

It’s also hard to believe Google has only been around for 10 years… it has made all the difference to my onlíne marketing. I have used Google and Google Tools every day for the last six or seven years.

And it seems Google is only getting stronger and better. The new Google Chrome browser will only add to the long líst of Google’s helpful offerings to the public.

With this thought in mind, here is my (biased) líst of the most 10 useful marketing tools Google has produced.

10 Most Valuable Free Google Marketing Tools

Google has become the dominant search engine on the Internet. It would be hard to imagine a web without Google. For that matter, it would now be hard to imagine a world without Google. As frightening as that may seem to many people, it is none the less true.

For better or worse, Google has permeated into almost every aspect of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and an act carried out by millions of users around the world each day. New Google products and services are coming on stream at a staggering pace, further increasing Google’s impact on our lives.
 

Despite this dominating presence, many people still don’t realize Google offers some excellent free marketing tools for marketers and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or products online. Useful tools that will make your promotions easier and much more profitable.

Don’t be fooled by the ‘free’ label, these marketing tools might be free but they are also valuable. One even wonders why Google would be giving away these tools and services for free? It probably makes good business sense in the long run. By providing these free tools Google is fostering a lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand name in the process. Good PR is good business.

Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of Google’s good-will and snapping up these professionally run services and marketing tools. Here’s a quick run-down of the 10 most valuable free Google Internet marketing tools:

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps the premier marketing tool offered by Google. It will prove helpful to both the marketer and the webmaster. Google Analytics gives you a daily snapshot of your web site. Google Analytics analyzes your traffic, where it comes from and what it does once it enters your site. You can monitor up to three sites for free.

Google Analytics is extremely valuable in analyzing your marketing funnel. It tracks all the steps leading up to your sales or checkout page. Vital information for raising your conversion rate and ROI.

You may be placed on a waiting líst for this highly in demand service from Google.

2. Google Sitemaps

Webmasters can use Google Sitemaps to almost instantly place newly created pages on their site into the Google Search Index. This is a XML file that is uploaded to Google as new pages are added on your site. Needless to say this can be a valuable service for any webmaster or marketer who wants to get their information on the web quickly.

3. Google Alerts

Be notified when someone or another site lists your site or mentions your name. Great way to keep track of all your online activities. Great way to monitor all your online business interests and products.

4. Google Froogle

Froogle is Google’s price directory! It simply lists all the cheapest prices for different products on the web. For marketers and webmasters who are promoting products, it should be studied and analyzed. Optimizing your site’s content for Froogle may prove to be very beneficial.

Follow Froogle or Google directions exactly on how to líst or display products on your site. Froogle will spider your site and display your prices and products to thousands of targeted customers. That, as they say, is priceless.

5. Google Checkout

Not exactly free but for those marketers who use AdWords - for every $1 spent on AdWords you can process $10 for free. You can also place the shopping cart logo on your AdWords ad and take advantage of the prestige and trust the Google brand name has built up.

Over time marketers may find this tool to be very effective and valuable.

6. Google eBlogger

Blogging has become vitally important to the health and functioning of your web site. No site should be without at least one blog and RSS feed. Creating a blog (online journal) on the topic of your web site or product will bring in extra traffic and targeted customers. eBlogger is a simple free blogging service that even lets you publish or post your blog files to your web site server. Keep in mind, each blog has that all important Google Blog Search bar.

7. Google Toolbar - Enterprise Version

Try the new enterprise version of the Google Toolbar for your company or business. Integrates countless features with all your employees or corporate network. These could include a common customer database, company calendar, financial news…

Keep in mind, Google also ranks every page it indexes on a scale of 0-10. While it is important to know the Page Rank of your pages, it is even more important to know the PR of your competitor’s pages. You can use the toolbar to get the PR of each page you’re visiting. Extremely helpful information for webmasters and marketers to know when forming online linking or business arrangements.

8. Google Groups

Every marketer knows the important of having a large contact líst of people with a similar interest. Social networking will play an ever increasing role in your success on the web. Just look at the growing popularity of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal.

Google groups is another form of social and business networking that every marketer should be aware of and pursuing.

9. Google Adsense

One simple way to monetize your web content is to use Google Adsense. Just place the Adsense code on your site and receive a check from Google each month. For webmasters who are not really into onlíne marketing (do such creatures exist?) Adsense can be a painless way to earn extra íncome from your site.

For professional marketers, using the Adsense system can supply a tremendous amount of marketing information on the keywords in their particular niche. It keeps the marketer informed on what keywords are being bid on and how much advertisers are willing to pay.

Adsense also has an excellent real-time tracking system you can use to keep track of all your important web pages.

10. Google Docs

A recent addition to Google’s stable of free products. Google Docs (Writely.com) is a full featured online writing editor with spellcheck and great collaborating features. It also lets you publish your content directly to your blogs. One feature that may be of interest to marketers, is that it lets you save files in the popular download format of PDF.

Let’s face it, until video takes over the web in four or five years time - the written word is still king on the net. It is the medium that markets, promotes and sells your content or products. Writely will help you write better.

Honorable Mention - Google Trends

This Google program will let you search popular trends, important for marketers searching for the latest hot product to promote. You can also break down these trends by different regions.

Final Note

Please take note that signing up for a Google account will usually help you in obtaining most of these free services or programs. Some of these programs may have to be applied for individually. But be assured, all these free Google marketing tools are well worth your time and effort. They will make your marketing easier and they will help any webmaster or marketer run their online business more efficiently.