Well, Google just released some astounding figures about the size of the Web. According to a blog post on the Official Google Blog, the Google index contained 26 million pages in 1998. By 2000, the index reached the one billion mark, and just recently, Google hit a new milestone: 1 trillion unique URL’s/links on the web at once!

Yes, 1 trillion unique URL’s. That is 1,000,000,000,000 URL’s. That is a lot of URL’s.

Continue reading

Watching trends on Google is much like watching Pinky and the Brain! You might remember the well-known phrase from this cartoon series…

“What are we going to do tonight, Brain.”
“The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the World!!”

If you have not seen this cartoon series, the words may well make you think of Google. Google has literally taken over the World and is continually taking ground in Search with ever-increasing Market Share figures.

Continue reading

Now most of the people out there don’t know/care that Google’s external keyword tool now has approximate search volumes. However for anyone in SEM this is a major revelation!!

For example while trying to brainstorm certain keywords or keyword strings for a new web project or update of an existing one, people in the SEM industry can choose highly searched for keywords and use the data from Google to back up their decisions when the client asks “why did you choose XYZ”.

Continue reading

Yesterday, Google again continued to provide basic SEO tips to help improve your site ranking in organic Google search. It certainly seems like Google is out to help everyone rank better for organic Search, which is good news for all. This follows on the recent “good directions drive traffic to your website” by Google’s Matt Cutts and also an “Introduction to Google Ranking” by Amit Singhal.

Continue reading

Even though we live in a fast paced and virtual world we are still very limited in our way of thinking in order to retrieve and obtain information. I just had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Stafford Masie from Google South Africa at the Lowe Bull Group office in Johannesburg. I was not the only one, but all of us were equally blown away by what Google actually has to offers its users, Advertisers and individuals in the Media world.

I have to mention that longtail previously invited Stafford to speak on Google’s involvement in South Africa at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange which I was not able to attend, so the following are my impressions taken from his latest presentation. This is in the particular order of randomness.

Continue reading

So there I was just minding my own business checking my gmail and I noticed a very strange thing. The counter for the capacity on gmail went all screwey, starting off in the 2000′s and jumping to the 6000′s in a matter of seconds.

Now like any rational person I thought it must be my fault as Google is never wrong. So I cleared my cache and tried this on 3 independent computers with 3 independent internet connections and the same thing happened.

Continue reading