Google Search Engine

Create a Mobile PPC Campaign at Google AdWords

Google AdWords, Google Search Engine, Mobile Advertising, Mobile for Lawyers, Pay Per Click Marketing /

What is Google AdWords? Google AdWords is Google’s main advertising product and main source of revenue. Google AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. Google Adwords MOBILE Interested in showing ads on mobile devices? AdWords allows you to target high-end mobile devices, WAP-enabled devices, or both. High-end mobile ads look like desktop ads and can show on high-end mobile devices, like smartphones. WAP mobile ads are shorter than normal ads and can show only on WAP-enabled devices (sometimes called “feature phones”). High-end mobile ads High-end mobile devices, such as smartphones, have full Internet browsers and can display websites similar to the ones you’d see on a desktop computer. To compensate for the smaller screen size, these devices typically allow you to zoom in and out to more easily navigate around a page. High-end mobile ads come in two varieties: text ads and image ads. High-end mobile text ads: These ads look like normal text ads that you’d see on a desktop computer. The main difference is that we can show more ads per page when someone’s searching on a desktop computer, and fewer ads per page when someone’s searching on a mobile device. High-end mobile image ads: These ads are similar to normal image ads that you’d see on a desktop computer. However, the most common size for ads on mobile devices is the 300 x 50 banner. Learn more about mobile image ad sizes. To have your text ads run on mobile devices, just select the “Mobile devices with full browsers” device option when creating your campaign. To have your image ads run on mobile devices, make sure your campaign is opted in to the Display Network. To run on mobile apps and sites that are designed for mobile devices, your image ad size should be 300 x 50. WAP mobile ads WAP-enabled devices let people browse mobile websites that are specifically designed for small mobile devices. These websites are typically much simpler than the full-fledged websites you’d normally see on a desktop computer. WAP mobile ads come in two varieties: text ads and image ads. WAP mobile text ads: These ads have two lines of text, with as many as 12 or 18 characters per line, depending on the language you use. Your website URL appears on the third line, if you want to enter one. You can also add a “Call” link that allows customers to call you directly from your ad. WAP mobile image ads: These ads look like whatever image file you’ve uploaded. See our guidelines for WAP mobile image ads. Google Mobile AdWords Pay Per Click Marketing for Attorneys Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) is one of the best ways to market your legal site. Its a way to control when your ads shows up, how often and you can also set a budget per day or per month. Its a great way to drive focused and qualified traffic to your site. Google Adwords MOBILE is a really good idea because right now the cost per click (CPC) is lower typically on mobile search vs. normal search. We can help your lawyer practice succeed via Google Adwords for Mobile. We have helped many lawyer clients market via Adwords and have driven a steady stream of qualified visitors that have turned into new clients. Google Adwords is one of the best ways to market your lawyer site online and it can give you immediate results. MOBILE is getting bigger and bigger and now is the time to get in and this is one way to do it and an easy way, do it! Contact us at 630-393-0460 or visit our Google Adwords for Attorneys page.  

Create a Mobile PPC Campaign at Google AdWords Read More »

How “Facebook Search” Could Help Google Escape The Antitrust Noose

Facebook, Google Search Engine /

Article from Search Engine Land about Facebooks possible new search engine. Last week in the Chicago Tribune former judge and scholar Robert Bork (who is also a Google advisor) penned an opinion column arguing that by the accepted standards of antitrust law Google has done nothing legally wrong. Bork says, “There is extraordinary competition in the search engine business. Look at the proliferation of what are called vertical search sites that specialize in particular products or services, such as Amazon, Expedia, Kayak and hundreds of others.” Who Competes with Google? This question of who competes with Google — and is the market in fact competitive — is central to the analysis of European and US regulators as the antitrust investigations wind their way through “the system” and potentially to the courts. Google sees many more competitors than do its critics and has been trying for several years to widen the scope of the discussion about “search competition.” If we open the aperture to include vertical sites with a search box (e.g., Yelp, Kayak, Truila) the world looks a great deal more competitive than if we only look at web search engines, which is what most ordinary consumers think when they hear the term “search engine.” In the latter category there is Google, Bing, Blekko and DuckDuckGo. Blekko and DDG have negligible share. Bing’s share is an essentially flat 29 percent (when combined with Yahoo). In international markets such as China, Japan and Russia Google is the underdog. However in some markets, in Europe and elsewhere around the world, Google’s share of search is larger than in the US. 66 Percent or 83 Percent? In contrast to the comScore data immediately above, the Pew Internet & American Life Projectrecently found that Google was the preferred search engine of 83 percent of US survey respondents. Based on a survey of roughly 2,200 US adults, Pew observed that “Fully 83% of searchers use Google more often than any other search engine.  Yahoo is a very distant second at just 6%.” Many regulators and political officials, encouraged by anti-Google lobbying from rivals, have concluded that Google is simply too powerful and has too much control over the online ecosystem. Whether there are legal grounds for a finding of antitrust liability against Google is a different matter, but I do believe the Europeans will bring some kind of anti-competition case against the company. In addition, the various investigations going on at the federal and state levels against Google could also result in an action in the US. This is where Facebook comes in. Specter of Facebook Search Helps Google The idea that Facebook is developing a search engine that might attract some usage away from Google is precisely the kind of development that could save Google’s bacon — so to speak. The “everyone competes against us” defense that appears in the Bork article and that Google has floated several times is unlikely to be persuasive. What will be much more persuasive is the argument that the world’s largest social network will be bringing search to its 900+ million users around the globe. Recall when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was deciding whether to approve or block Google’s proposed $750 million acquisition of AdMob two years ago. I was one of the many dozens of people interviewed by regulators on the matter. My inference from the interview process and questions I received was that the FTC was predisposed to block the deal. Indeed, from all accounts it appeared that the FTC was going to file suit against the Google acquisition — until Apple bought Quattro Wireless. Here’s an excerpt from the FTC’s public statement about its decision not to attempt to block the acquisition, explicitly citing Quattro as the basis of its rationale: The Federal Trade Commission has closed its investigation of Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising network company AdMob after thoroughly reviewing the deal and concluding that it is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks. In a statement issued today, the Commission said that although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency’s concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc. – the maker of the iPhone – to launch its own, competing mobile ad network. Facebook Like Apple for Google’s Legal Team The FTC probably decided not that the market would actually be more competitive but that Apple buying Quattro had complicated its arguments and weakened its case. Facebook is now analogous to Apple in that it provides a potential argument that the search market is competitive, and soon could be come more so if the company launches an improved search capability (whether for site search or the web more broadly). Indeed, Google’s legal team will wave the BusinessWeek article as evidence that the search market is highly dynamic, unpredictable and could change overnight. And that might be just what Google needs to escape the antitrust noose. Source

How “Facebook Search” Could Help Google Escape The Antitrust Noose Read More »

Yellow Pages Sites Beat Google In Local Data Accuracy Test

Google Places, Google Search Engine, Local Search Marketing, Yelp /

In the brave new world of “SoLoMo” there are an increasing number of sites and mobile apps competing to help you choose a local business or lead you there. In addition to Google Maps, Yelp and Foursquare there are the venerable yellow pages’ sites and many others. They all get their local data from generally the same several sources; so one might expect all these sites to have comparably accurate information, right? Apparently not. Roughly a month ago I spoke with Marc Brombert, the CEO of Implied Intelligence. His company provides a range of data-related services (e.g., enhancement, cleansing, de-duplication) to marketers and publishers. At the conclusion of our call I suggested that Implied Intelligence test the accuracy and completeness of the business listings data on several of the leading local search sites. Surprise: Yellow pages beat Google for local search Several weeks later Implied Intelligence sent me the results of its test. They’re a bit unexpected and illuminating. Google, which has probably devoted more effort and resources to local search than any of its competitors, did not come out on top in the test. Overall it placed third. Two yellow pages sites beat it. Implied Intelligence crawled and hand checked 1,000 independent local business websites in the US (no chains or franchises were included in the test) and compared the information it captured to the data contained on the following sites: Bing Maps Citysearch Dexknows Foursquare Google Maps Mapquest Superpages Yellowpages.com (YP.com) Yelp The criteria and results Implied Intelligence evaluated and scored the local search competitors on the basis of the following criteria: Coverage (was the listing present) Number of duplicates Accuracy of information Richness of information (presence of additional information beyond business name, address and phone) The first table below offers a comparison among these sites in terms of basic listings coverage and accuracy. The yellow highlighting indicates the winner in each category. In terms of enhanced information, YP.com was the winner. Reviews and check-in data were not considered because Implied Intelligence felt this didn’t allow for an “apples to apples” comparison across sites. However, had reviews content been included Yelp, Google and Foursquare would likely have fared better. Superpages the overall winner Overall Superpages was the winner, followed by YP.com with Google Maps coming in third. Foursquare was the overall loser. However Yelp also didn’t fare that well either. The table reflects that Google Maps had the most complete coverage: 80 percent of the 1,000 local listings were present. No site had 100 percent of the 1,000 listings. Foursquare had the worst coverage at only 16.7 percent. In terms of error percentages, yellow pages site Superpages outperformed the others. YP.com had the fewest duplicate listings in the test. Source: Search Engine Land This is surprising but this is basically just saying that your contact info might not be the same everywhere and no doubt this can be a big problem for law firms.  You have to make sure that you check the accuracy of your law firms contact info, especially if you have multiple offices and have moved around a lot. 

Yellow Pages Sites Beat Google In Local Data Accuracy Test Read More »

What is Google Plus?

Google Plus, Google Search Engine, Google+, Social Media Marketing /

Google Plus is one more Social Media network you should have your legal practice setup with.  Its the new player on the block but its growing quickly and I really like it. Google Plus is a social network, with similarities to Twitter and Facebook, but some interesting differences as well. The site is based around the idea of offering users some control over who they share information with through a feature called “Circles.”Essentially, a circle is a group of people you define and curate, designed specifically for sharing information. The site also features “Huddles,” which are group chats, “Hangouts,” which are group video chats, and “Sparks,” which are streams of content from around the Web based on topics you’re interested in. Instead of having a wall like on Facebook, the primary user experience is through viewing feeds of information, similar to Twitter or the Facebook news feed. But what’s unique about Google Plus is that you can view one feed of everyone you’ve added to a circle under the “home” view, select to view unique streams of information based on the circles you’ve created, or view a feed called “incoming” for people who have added you to a circle that you haven’t added to one of your own. Your posts aren’t limited to a short character length, and you can edit a post once you’ve shared it. Like a Facebook wall, you can comment on people’s posts and interact with other people, and if they’ve posted publicly, you can comment on someone’s post even if they didn’t share it directly with you. Google Plus integrates the +1 feature that the company launched last month, which has similarity to a Facebook “like,” except that it doesn’t actually share the content on your Google Plus profile. For example, you can +1 a comment or a post on Google+, just like you can +1 a website or blog post that has added the +1 button. GOOGLE PLUS FOR LAWYERS Should lawyers have a Google plus page?  YES! Without a doubt it makes sense to have a Google plus page for your law firm. Even though Google plus just started, it just makes sense to do anything related to Google. Especially because it appears that it can have a positive effect on your organic SEO rankings. Below is a great video describing what Google Plus is and how it compares to Facebook.

What is Google Plus? Read More »

Reports: Google CPCs Continue To Decline And Yahoo/Bing’s Rise While Spend Overall Grows In Q1

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine /

By all accounts, paid search spending rose in Q1 2012 as compared to the previous year, but by how much depends on the source, and the sector. Covario, which serves mostly high-tech clients, says paid search in the Americas grew 15% in the first quarter, while Adobe’s Efficient Frontier, which serves clients in a variety of verticals, says it saw a 16% year-over-year increase in the U.S.. Meanwhile, the retail-heavy and U.S.-focused Rimm Kaufman Group (RKG) says search spend rose 30 percent as compared to the 2011 period. All three companies recently released reports that give insight into how paid search did in the last quarter, and predict what spending might look like for the rest of the year to come. Cost-per-click rates on Google continued to decline, according to Efficient Frontier. The company says Google CPCs fell by 5 percent year-over-year, and was down from the fourth quarter, as well. Still, by increasing clicks overall, the company has managed to hang onto its market share. It probably helps that Yahoo-Bing CPCs increased by 18% year-over-year, giving the Search Alliance less of an ROI advantage. According to Rimm Kaufman, Google CPCs fell 7% year-over-year in Q1, while CPCs on Yahoo-Bing rose 15% as compared to the year-ago period. Though Efficient Frontier said cost-per-click pricing was down in the automotive and finance sectors, the company found that CPCs dropped most precipitously (by 17%) in the retail sector. Covario also noted a drop in CPCs, saying they declined 3% from Q4 ’11. The company’s analysts believe search engine algorithm changes are behind the decline and predict pricing will stabilize in the second half of the year. The biggest trend noted by Efficient Frontier is paid search on smartphones and tablets. The company says spend on mobile devices in the U.S. represented 7.7% of all search spend in the first quarter, mostly driven by growth in spending on tablets. Tablet spend has grown from nearly zero in May of 2011 to 4.25% of all search ad spend by March of 2012. Spend on tablets is now greater than that on smartphones. The company predicts that overall mobile device spend will account for 15 to 20 percent of search spend by the end of this year. Part of what’s driving the move to tablets especially is that conversions on tablets exceeds that of desktop devices, yet CPCs on tablets continue to be lower. Rimm Kaufman said it saw mobile traffic share at just under 14% at the end of the first quarter, which was nearly double 2011 levels. Tablets represented nearly 8% of paid search clicks and 57% of mobile clicks. Google was the deliverer of much of that mobile traffic, and it continues to be the dominant player overall. The company commanded 78% market share in Q1, according to Covario. Spend on Google was up 1% from the typically-busy Q4 period, and up 23% over the year-ago period. The Yahoo-Bing Search Alliance showed 2% growth from the fourth quarter, but it’s still down 20% from the first quarter of 2011 and has 13% market share. Baidu, the leading player in China, grew 4% from last quarter and 142% year-over-year. The company rakes in 9% of global paid search spending. Of the three companies, only Covario and Efficient Frontier made predictions about the rest of the year. Covario forecasts 18 to 22% annualized growth globally in 2012, while the Adobe unit only gives a U.S. number, saying growth will come in between 10 to 15 percent this year. SOURCE  

Reports: Google CPCs Continue To Decline And Yahoo/Bing’s Rise While Spend Overall Grows In Q1 Read More »

Google: 1 Billion People Will Use Mobile As Primary Internet Access Point In 2012

Google Search Engine, Mobile Advertising, Mobile for Lawyers /

Former AdMob executive Jason Spero, who is now Google’s head of mobile sales, took the stage earlier today at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona to offer up some new,global smartphone user survey data and 2012 predictions. The Google-sponsored survey had a sample size of roughly 1,000 respondents in each of the represented countries: US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. The data reflect that mobile search usage has nearly 100 percent penetration among smartphone owners, most of whom search at least once a week. Though it’s not made clear in the data released I assume this is browser-based search and does not include search via mobile apps. Google’s browser-based mobile-search share is 97 percent globally, according to StatCounter. In addition Google’s Spero offered mobile predictions for 2012: More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point. There will be 10 days where >50% of trending search terms will be on mobile Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away “Mobile driven spend” will emerge as a big category Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving a new consumer behavior Tablets will take their place as the 4th screen New industry standards will make mobile display easy to run 5 new, mobile first companies will reach the Angry Birds level of success The ROI on mobile and tablet advertising will increase as a result of the unmatched relevance of proximity The intersection of mobile and social will spark a dramatic new form of engaging consumers 80% of the largest 2,000 websites globally will have an HTML5 site One million small businesses globally will build a mobile website This is all amazing information and it shows that mobile is just taking over. So its time to think about your mobile presence.  Can people find your site when they are on a mobile device and if so, is it setup for mobile users?

Google: 1 Billion People Will Use Mobile As Primary Internet Access Point In 2012 Read More »

Google Eliminates Another Link Network

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine, Link Building /

The battle between Google and those trying to artificially manipulate its search results is an ongoing battle. Google on March 19th took down one of those blog/link networks named BuildMyRank.com. BuildMyRank.com confirmed Google has deindexed an “overwhelming majority” of their network as of March 19, 2012. The management of BuildMyRank.com has decided to immediately shut down their service and provide refunds to customers. BuildMyRank.com thought that Google would allow their network since they felt they provided “better quality service,” which was a “bit different from other networks.” But as they admitted on their blog, “this was not the case. The bottom line is that Google has been cracking down for awhile now and its a new era of SEO.  You need to create good content, include videos and work harder to obtain links then in the past. Jennifer Ledbetter at PotPieGirl has a lot more on this network being hit by Google on her blog. It might also just be one of several networks hit.  

Google Eliminates Another Link Network Read More »

Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine /

Google has confirmed a new Panda update. One year ago, Google launched its “Panda Update” designed to filter low quality or “thin” content from its top search results. Panda 3.3 Update Here’s what Google says about its latest Panda-related change: Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web. This sounds very similar to Panda 3.2, which happened in mid-January and was described only as a “data refresh” and not related to new or changed ranking signals. Evaluating Links Google says it’s getting rid of a link evaluation signal that it’s been using for years. This one’s sure to prompt discussion: Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable. We’ve reached out to Google in the past, asking for further clarification on the items in these monthly roundups. The company has indicated that the blog post says everything Google wants to say. That, along with Google’s understandable (and necessary) reluctance to give away too many details about ranking signals, leads me to assume we won’t be getting anything more than the above about this. A link evaluation signal that’s been used for years is now turned off? The SEO mind races…. Local Search Rankings Here’s another one, along with the link evaluation signal, that I’m actually surprised Google would so openly reveal. The company says traditional algorithmic ranking factors are now playing a bigger part in triggering local search results: Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal. Traditional SEO has played a bigger part in Google’s local search since the launch of Places Search in late 2010. And now it sounds like that dial is being turned up a little higher, too. Google’s post also says local results are being improved because of a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.” SOURCE: Search Engine Land

Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update Read More »

Google Announces 40 Search Updates in February

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine /

The Google search blog announced 40 search updates that are happening this month. From the Google Blog… This month we have many improvements to celebrate. With 40 changes reported, that marks a new record for our monthly series on search quality. Most of the updates rolled out earlier this month, and a handful are actually rolling out today and tomorrow. We continue to improve many of our systems, including related searches, sitelinks, autocomplete, UI elements, indexing, synonyms, SafeSearch and more. Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine. Here’s the list for February: More coverage for related searches. [launch codename “Fuzhou”] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the “Searches related to” section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what you’re searching for. Tweak to categorizer for expanded sitelinks. [launch codename “Snippy”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] This improvement adjusts a signal we use to try and identify duplicate snippets. We were applying a categorizer that wasn’t performing well for our expanded sitelinks, so we’ve stopped applying the categorizer in those cases. The result is more relevant sitelinks. Less duplication in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename “thanksgiving”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We’ve adjusted signals to reduce duplication in the snippets for expanded sitelinks. Now we generate relevant snippets based more on the page content and less on the query. More consistent thumbnail sizes on results page. We’ve adjusted the thumbnail size for most image content appearing on the results page, providing a more consistent experience across result types, and also across mobile and tablet. The new sizes apply to rich snippet results for recipes and applications, movie posters, shopping results, book results, news results and more. More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India]. More accurate detection of official pages. [launch codename “WRE”] We’ve made an adjustment to how we detect official pages to make more accurate identifications. The result is that many pages that were previously misidentified as official will no longer be. Refreshed per-URL country information. [Launch codename “longdew”, project codename “country-id data refresh”] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data. Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search. [launch codename “terra”, project codename “Images Universal”] We launched a change to expand the corpus of results for which we show images in Universal Search. This is especially helpful to give more relevant images on a larger set of searches. Minor tuning of autocomplete policy algorithms. [project codename “Suggest”] We have a narrow set of policies for autocomplete for offensive and inappropriate terms. This improvement continues to refine the algorithms we use to implement these policies. “Site:” query update [launch codename “Semicolon”, project codename “Dice”] This change improves the ranking for queries using the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results. Improved detection for SafeSearch in Image Search. [launch codename “Michandro”, project codename “SafeSearch”] This change improves our signals for detecting adult content in Image Search, aligning the signals more closely with the signals we use for our other search results. Interval based history tracking for indexing. [project codename “Intervals”] This improvement changes the signals we use in document tracking algorithms. Improvements to foreign language synonyms. [launch codename “floating context synonyms”, project codename “Synonyms”] This change applies an improvement we previously launched for English to all other languages. The net impact is that you’ll more often find relevant pages that include synonyms for your query terms. Disabling two old fresh query classifiers. [launch codename “Mango”, project codename “Freshness”] As search evolves and new signals and classifiers are applied to rank search results, sometimes old algorithms get outdated. This improvement disables two old classifiers related to query freshness. More organized search results for Google Korea. [launch codename “smoothieking”, project codename “Sokoban4”] This significant improvement to search in Korea better organizes the search results into sections for news, blogs and homepages. Fresher images. [launch codename “tumeric”] We’ve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web. Update to the Google bar. [project codename “Kennedy”] We continue to iterate in our efforts to deliver a beautifully simple experience across Google products, and as part of that this month we made further adjustments to the Google bar. The biggest change is that we’ve replaced the drop-down Google menu in the November redesign with a consistent and expanded set of links running across the top of the page. Adding three new languages to classifier related to error pages. [launch codename “PNI”, project codename “Soft404”] We have signals designed to detect crypto 404 pages (also known as “soft 404s”), pages that return valid text to a browser but the text only contain error messages, such as “Page not found.” It’s rare that a user will be looking for such a page, so it’s important we be able to detect them. This change extends a particular classifier to Portuguese, Dutch and Italian. Improvements to travel-related searches. [launch codename “nesehorn”] We’ve made improvements to triggering for a variety of flight-related search queries. These changes improve the user experience for our Flight Search feature with users getting more accurate flight results. Data refresh for related searches signal. [launch codename “Chicago”, project codename “Related Search”] One of the many signals we look at to generate the “Searches related to” section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], that’s a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate

Google Announces 40 Search Updates in February Read More »

Google Plus

Google Search Engine, Google+ /

What is Google+? It is Google’s latest attempt in gaining some market share in the social network area. Here is how Google explains the new service: We realize that today people are increasingly connecting with one another on the web. But the ways in which we connect online are limited and don’t mimic our real-life relationships. The Google+ project is our attempt to make online sharing even better. We aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available; we just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you. Sounds pretty cool, huh? And it is. There are 5 main features to Google+: Circles, Hangouts, Instant Upload, Sparks and Huddle. Circles While most social networks are about sharing with a wide audience, Google has gone in the other direction. Circles allows you to group friends, family, and various associates into groups and optimizing the flow of information to each one. This is a great way to keep your professional and private life separate and something which Facebook doesn’t easily provide. Hangouts In my opinion, this is the coolest feature of the project and it’s what sets Google+ apart from Facebook. Hangouts lets up to 10 users simultaneously video chat with each other face-to-face. Instant Upload This is a simple way to ensure that all the photos you take on your phone are easily accessible. While you’re snapping pictures, Google+ adds your photos to a private album in the cloud. This way they’re always available across your devices—ready to share as you see fit. Sparks Think of it as anything that is meant to “spark” a conversation. Google+ will keep a feed of content that is based on your interests which you can view at any time and then share with your friends who have the same interests. Huddle Huddle is a group text-chat tool within Google+ for having private conversations within a Circle. You can use this feature directly from your phone – that’s if you use an Android 2.0+ or iPhone 4.0+ phone. There are some great videos explaining each feature in more depth here. Other things you should know about Google+: An Android app is currently available for Google+ Google has submitted to Apple’s App Store an iOS app for using Google+ and it is awaiting approval Businesses looking to market on Google+ won’t be left out. “Pages” similar to Facebook “fan pages” will be coming soon, according to Google’s Jeff Huber Google has already been forced to tweak its privacy setting on Google+ by completely eliminating the ability to share certain semiprivate posts to your wider network of friends You still own everything you put on Google+ (unlike Facebook which takes co-ownership”). The Google+ Terms of Service state “You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.” Rumors of games in Google+ are already doing the rounds in the blogosphere Facebook has responded to the launch of Google+ with the announcement of “something awesome” tomorrow (Wednesday 6th July). We hear it is a deal with Skype to launch a video chat service Mashable have already provided instructions on how to import your Facebook contacts into Google+. Now that’s keen! How can I get into Google+? That’s the hard part. Unless you have already scored yourself an invite, then you’re going to be waiting a while. As of late last week, Google closed any new sign-ups for invitations as it was overwhelmed with the number of people who had joined already. So for the time being all you can do is sign-up to receive notifications of when new invites will be available. You can do so here.

Google Plus Read More »