Comments on: 5 Google Products a Small Business (Probably) Shouldn’t Use

By: SEO Michael

SEO Michael — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:36:12 +0000

Good post…except I subscribe to this blog through Google Reader. I am definitely getting freaked about google’s little information gathering hobby.

By: Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing

Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:40:08 +0000

I’m inclined to agree about the point made in the Google Toolbar section about PageRank. This feature is far too frequently overused and misconstrued. It doesn’t correlate as heavily with SEO success as people think. Small business owners should focus on generating good content, building links, and running high-conversion SEM campaigns long before PR will ever impact their bottom line…

By: Tony Lindskog

Tony Lindskog — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:38:43 +0000

This is exactly the same smack talk that people have done about MicroSoft.

Yes, Google is everywhere but by avoiding certain things, you are making your life more difficult than it has to be and I fail to see the purpose.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:16:02 +0000

I agree with the point that if you are an online retailer adsense may not be a wise choice.

But if you are a local retailer who only serves a local or regional market there are opportunities to leverage adsense for customers outside your region.

You could use geo-targetting to only display Adsense to customers outside of your market.

For example let’s say I run a site which receives a large number of international visitors. And because of my business I am unable to serve international visitors. Geo-targetting adsense to these visitors is an great way to turn that traffic into revenue without sacrificing business opportunities.

By: Matt McGee

Matt McGee — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:26:40 +0000

SMC - I think it’s great that you’re using Google Apps for your small biz. If it works for you, keep it up. Like I say in the post, different small businesses will have different needs/concerns.

Mark - do you have some evidence to your statement about Blogger posts appearing faster in the SERPS than other posts? I’m curious to learn more. I’ve never heard that claim before. I’m familiar with WordPress blogs that get posts into the index in a matter of 5 minutes.

Gayle - thank you.

By: Search Marketing Center

Search Marketing Center — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:56:19 +0000

I disagree with the google aps part, its an intagral part of our company, from startup til now, the simple ability of us being able to edit our documents and share them with another makes its just amazing, plus its a lot more user friendly (maybe due to it simplicity) than office, not to mention much cheaper (free) that the office package. office takes up a lot of ram to run and its alot easier to open multiple tabs than programs.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:10:12 +0000

I have to differ with your opinion of Blogger v WordPress, etc. I’ve found the integration with a personal server easier than WordPress, and the fact that Blogger based posts, whether within their blogspot domain, or on your own show up the fastest in Universal Search results is reason enough to give it a fair shot.

http://www.maseratiofminneapolis.com/blog/ is Blogger based, but is tightly integrated into it’s parent website. This took about a day to migrate from the blogspot domain it was on for almost two years. The styling is waiting for the parent site’s refresh, but will be indistinguishable when finished.

By: Gayle Kesten

Gayle Kesten — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:09:31 +0000

Thanks for your insightful article. Thought you’d like to know it was the centerpiece of my blog on SmallBizResource.com.

http://www.smallbizresource.com/blog/main/archives/2008/06/scream_and_run.html

Thanks for looking out for the little guy!

Gayle Kesten

By: Matt McGee

Matt McGee — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:31:52 +0000

I would say two things in reply to that, Adwords Monitor:

1) Google has also repeatedly, in the last couple months, gone out of their way to emphasize that “do no evil” is not a hard and fast corporate rule. Here are a couple:

http://valleywag.com/5015528/eric-schmidt-denies-existence-of-google-evil-meter
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/15/googles-dont-be-evil-not-ordained-motto-says-marissa-mayer/

2) I really like the Googlers I’ve spent time with personally. Matt Cutts, Brian White, and Adam Lasnik are super guys. I trust them. I appreciate the work they’re doing. But what happens when they leave Google? What if the next generation isn’t like them?

Don’t get me wrong. If you read the two articles I wrote about Google products you SHOULD use, I don’t buy into the whole “don’t use Google Analytics” thing at all. I’m not a conspiracy theorist in any way. Not a tinfoil hat kind of guy.

But, I do think Google is becoming far too powerful and choose to not use certain products for that reason. Bloglines is a perfectly fine RSS reader. The Toolbar is completely unnecessary. I choose not to use them, and I recommend small business owners do the same.

By: Adwords Monitor

Adwords Monitor — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:44:19 +0000

Perhaps I just don’t have my tin-foil hat on straight - I see the potential for these things to be misused, but Google has repeatedly referred to its “do no evil” doctrine when questioned about how it does actually use the data it collects.

Personally, I’d be much more worried about the privacy concerns around Google Personalised Search.