Have you been 'Googlized'?

If you have never completed a search at Google.com, you may be one of a shrinking minority. From its humble beginnings from a garage in 1998, Google.com now dominates the 'search' market by handling over 55% of the search requests. Yahoo.com, the next most popular - and original leader - handles only about 22%.

But is Google just a good search engine? Besides providing very accurate responses, Google has a dozen other features that are quite intriguing.

1. Using "link:" in front of a domain name - "link:yourdomain.com will return all the sites that 'link' to your site. This is a very important aspect to research because Google determines your site ranking, in part, based on the number of sites that link to you.

2. Google News (http://news.google.com) provides compiled news from hundreds of sources around the world. News Alerts (http://www.google.com/newsalerts) will send you an email when news happens based on your keywords.

3. Froogle.com is the ultimate deal-shopping solution. Your search results will reflect the best price on a particular product and then link you to the particular merchant web site.

4. Site Search allows you to search for a specific word on a specific site. Enter 'quarter horse site:www.nwhorsesource.com'

5. Street Maps, Dictionary, Stock Quotes, PhoneBook, and a Calculator are a few of the other features available - see http://www.google.com/help/features.html.

I encourage you to experiment with these different features from Google. As you understand the potential behind Internet technologies like these you will develop more insights into how technology can serve your business and customers.

Next month, how to appear on the first page of Google searches!

-Doug DeVries
Equine-Design.com
doug@equine-design.com