Small Business Shift

There are a bunch of websites and consultants advising that companies skip a website in favor of a Facebook Page. But it’s a really bad idea. You should have a Facebook Page, and a basic one can be put together in just a few minutes. But this can’t substitute for your real home on the […]

Google created Webmaster Tools to help you understand what Google knows about your website, and to help spot serious problems hurting your search rankings. Read on to learn how to setup Google Webmaster Tools and then get an overview of everything you can do with it. Signing Up To get started with Google Webmaster Tools, […]

The following is a guest post from Carol Wilson. Web 2.0 has enabled millions of consumers to communicate on a grassroots level that has helped small companies tremendously. At the same time, however, not enough small businesses leverage the power of being small. Here are a few tips: 1. Reach as many customers as you can through […]

Google has some exciting news for Google Analytics users, as they have just introduced (active immediately – and filled with your existing data) multi-channel funnels. Traditionally, the only source which received credit for a sale was the last one through which a customer reached your site. If, for instance, a user first found you through […]

Web.com is a fast-growing (publicly traded:WWWW) behemoth in the small business web host/design/market space. About a year ago the company purchased Register.com (roughly doubling its size), and a few days ago it bought Network Solutions (tripling it on top of the previous acquisition). Coincidentally, a critical piece was written at Mike Blumenthal’s local search blog regarding a Register.com […]

I’ve written previously about why your business should and should not use Twitter. But a recent report from Exact Target really pins down one of the great things about the social network. As the report states: Twitter users are the most influential online consumers, and their influence spreads across all areas of the internet. It says […]

When you make an update to your Facebook Page, not all your fans will see it. For some pages, it can be so bad that less than 10% of your fans see the news. And it’s mostly because of Edgerank. What is Edgerank? Facebook users have many friends, and they may like numerous pages as […]

When you search on Google for something that may be local (a restaurant, dentist, or plumber, for instance), the search engine returns a combination of regular and local results. About a year ago, these were always clearly separate, but have since become less easily distinguished. What’s interesting is that it wasn’t just the display that […]

I posted yesterday that Google released an update to Google Maps for Android. What struck me about the update was that the very first bullet in their list of features for the app is the ability to upload photos for Places. This, coming right after the desktop Google Places update that also prioritized an “upload […]

Yesterday Google announced changes to Google Places Pages. I posted a quick note in my Around The Web section at the time, but would like to dive into it a bit deeper and provide some analysis as well. What’s Changed On Google Places The Place Pages We’ll start at the top (orange edits are mine): A […]