Small Business Shift

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Learn more about this section of Small Business Shift in the original announcement.

Is your website slow? Google is starting to offer a service that will automatically speed up your website. As Ram Ramani says in the announcement: In our testing we have seen speed improvements of 25% to 60% on several sites. This sounds very similar to Cloudflare, where you let the company manage your DNS, and […]

Fitting very nicely with the big new add-photo button on Google Places for the desktop, Google has updated Google Maps for Android. As the Google Mobile Blog Writes: Today, Google Maps 5.8 for Android improves Places and Latitude with: Upload photos for a Place My Places as a simple way to manage the Places you’ve […]

Facebook has created a new “Facebook for Business” page, which is supposed to help you: Learn how to grow your business with Facebook’s powerful marketing tools Much of the content existed before, but Facebook has very nicely pulled it together and created good descriptions to help  business owners get started with the social network. To […]

Mary Bowling speculates that Google business profiles will be a paid product. She mentions that Google is removing some of the business-controlled sections of Places Pages, and says: The only person who I’ve heard making announcements about Google Business Profiles is Christian Oestilan, the ads manager for Google+. That alone is an obvious clue. It’s an […]

Google appears to have renamed Google Boost to Adwords Express. Given that Boost is an ultra-simplified version of Adwords, Express would really be a better name, and might allay at least some confusion. Mike Ramsey of Nifty Marketing found the change at this link: Learn more about new AdWords Express Ads : Introduction – Google Places Help. […]

LinkedIn recently announced “Apply with LinkedIn.” This allows businesses to place a button on their website, which job seekers can use to easily apply for listed jobs. Rather than submitting a resume, applicants have their LinkedIn profile shown to the prospective employer. They are also given the opportunity to message any contacts within the company. […]

We’ve previously had some word from Google regarding business profiles on Google+, and now they’re giving out even more details. VentureBeat writes: In fact, Google will be unveiling specially tweaked profiles with analytics and more sophisticated sharing options, all coming during (or shortly after) Q3 2011. The article goes on to talk about how there […]

Matt McGee writes a rebuttal to some suggesting that with the disappearance of citations from Place Pages local SEO is dead. He likens the disappearance of citations to Google’s unwillingness to show link information for websites (which did not decrease the importance of links), which is spot on with my take on the changes, and recommends […]

You may have heard Google killed off a bunch of business accounts on Google+. This is in preparation for launching of the official product, which it sounds like may still be a little way off. Apparently over 10,000 businesses requested access to the beta business account program, and so they are going to basically bypass […]

Adage shares 50 social media stats. This one might not be the most useful, but is pretty amazing: 43. Re: the Royal Wedding: “911,000 wedding-related tweets were tracked in the past 30 days. That’s about 30,000 per day and accounts for 71% of all social media.” (USA Today) To see the other 49, visit: 50 Social […]