What's Next For Online Behemoth Google?

By: Curtis Schwab

Google is the undisputable king of search. Its worldwide online user base registers upwards of 150 million searches a day. If your company can tap even a fraction of these Web patrons, you are looking at some serious volume. 2003 was a banner year for Google. There is tremendous speculation on the company's future plans. Here are a couple of hints, insights and hopefully profitable suggestions for Googlers in 04'.

Do You Froogle?

Froogle (froogle.google.com) is a new beta version service developed by Google. This is how Froogle positions itself:

Froogle is a new service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Froogle applies the power of Google's search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase.

So, Froogle is an ideal tool for e-commerce sites to promote their products to a broad audience, and you can count on it being an integral part to Google's market share expansion in 04'.

Google spiders identify online shops and products automatically, so you might already be listed in the Froogle database. However, there is a chance that your products have not been included in Froogle yet. In that case, you can submit a plain text data feed directly to Google's FTP site. If you need help creating and/or uploading your feed visit http://bluewatermedia.net/communicate.html for a consultation.

Blue Water Media has helped several clients submit their entire product line to Froogle. Since Froogle has not yet been officially launched, traffic (and sales) seems to be pretty low right now. If you want to increase your sales, other services might be more attractive for shop owners. But there are two good arguments in favor of getting you "froogled": a) wait until it's an official part of the Google service -- traffic will increase! b) it's free and most likely to stay free!

The IPO

Yes, Google is still a private company, but not for long. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group have been commissioned by Google to lead what is widely anticipated to be the largest IPO ever. With Wall Street insiders and individual investors poised for the big day, the anticipation and press has already begun to create an electric undertone. There has even been talk of Google breaking with tradition and actually making the IPO a bidding situation administered by who else... Google!

I highly doubt Google would (or could) do such a thing at this point, but if you want to be an owner of the stock it's time to start planning now. Opening an account with either of the two lead Brokerage companies before the offering will get you an automatic allocation of Google shares, but there's no telling how high they will go, and I am certainly not endorsing the buy. All indications point to late April for the launch. We will keep you up to date.

Meta Out - Ad Words In

For years, attaining high visibility in major search engines meant simply tweaking the meta content of your Web site pages. Meta content is just a common reference to HTML tags like title, description, and the keyword phrases associated with each Web page. You can work meta content all you want these days and still be buried in Google. What to do? It's all about content and links.

Google still focuses on content. These days, content should be visible to not only search engine spiders, but to visitors as well. The basic premise being, if you say it on your Web pages it must be relevant. With meta content this was not necessarily the case. Webmasters could include whatever keywords they thought would drive traffic to the site. The problem that evolved here is that Googles results started to become irrelevant to the query. So, if you want your Web pages to rank well in Google make sure your preferred keyword phrases are listed on the pages of your site. Just write them into your existing content.

Google ad words are another way of getting the visibility without the mind numbing task of writing awkward keyword phrases into your sites language. Capitalism at its best... buy your way to the top!

The bottom line is that if you plan to grow your business online, you are going to have to play in the proverbial Google sandbox. Their market share is pushing 50%. I suggest planning your marketing strategy with Google in mind, because let's face it, Google isn't going anywhere anytime soon.