Yahoo! Introduces Site Explorer…

Ever wondered how many pages Yahoo! has indexed from your website? Well wonder no longer, because now they are telling you through their Site Explorer. They are even telling you how many back links your website has!

This may not seem important to the average internet user, but to website owners and SEO specialists this is a major benefit. SEO companies can now prove that the work they are doing is helping by showing the increase in indexed pages and back links.

Google has a similar feature called Google Sitemaps, but it is done manually by setting up your own xml sitemap and telling Google to go look. This tool also allows website owners and SEO specialists the ability to see what pages Google could and could not find and how often they return to your site.

It looks as though Yahoo! and Google want to become more open with what information they are putting into their database. This is great for legitimate SEO companies and website owners, but not so great for black-hat companies or spammers that just want to flood the search results with junk. Hopefully their efforts will pay off and we will see less and less junk results.

Google in Space?

Google and NASA have teamed up to do space age research! After another public offering of stock there was speculation that Google was ready to start something new. Well here it is, the Google space program.

It's not certain as to what will come of this new partnership, but Google has always had its eye in the sky so to speak. Google has plans to build a "1 million-square-foot complex of offices and accommodation at the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field". Some of the areas that will be researched were mentioned in the pact signed by both parties, "supercomputing, data mining, and bringing entrepreneurs into the space programme".

Perhaps one day we will all be able to IM someone who is walking on the moon. The possibilities are endless, especially considering the brainpower of the combined corporations.

It does however bring up a question that probably looms in the back of most people’s minds. When is Google going to get too big and broad for its own good. NASA and Google don't seem like the perfect pair, but maybe something will come of the collaboration that will help the search engine industry?

The Power of a Blog...

Blogs are steadily becoming a large part of the everyday internet craze. But are they just a craze, and are they doing anything for businesses? The answer is yes.

Blogs have become a tool for businesses to let customers and potential customers know what they are offering on an up to the minute basis. They also offer a forum to discuss the events of the day whether they are about the business or the world in general.


Now with the creation of Googles Blog Search internet surfers can find a blog about anything. Whether you are looking for reviews about a company or a companies specific blog you can now find it just like you can find their website link.

This can be a good thing, but also can be very bad for a company with poor customer service, or a faulty website. Blogs are instant feedback about whatever the person administering the blog wants to write. If that person has a bad experience with another company they may just write about it. So be warned, customer service and customer relations is more important then ever.

Another thing to consider with a blog is that it needs to be updated on a regular schedule. Blog readers want to see new information, and aren't going to be patient if the same story is up for more then a week (if that). So when considering whether or not to do a blog, be sure that you have the time to administer it, or can hire a company to update it for you.

If you feel a blog is right for you or your company, Vision Marketing offers blog setups and maintenance, email or call us today to find out what we can do for you.

Search Engines in Websites...

Search engines aren't just big powerful companies that rule whether or not your site gets listed and found by internet visitors. They are also tools to enhance your website. Search engines are a database of information that is accessed by putting what you want to find into a search box.

A search engine, or search box is a must on a large website. It makes the users experience much more friendly and offers yet another way for them to find the information they are looking for.

Have you ever been to a large website, or any website for that matter and tried to find something, but just couldn't? It's frustrating, annoying and shouldn't happen. A search box allows the user to define what they want and how they are looking for it.

An advanced search box will allow you to correlate certain terms with your products. Lets say you call your product X and some people refer to it as Y. You can setup your search engine to show product X whenever someone searches for X or Y.

Vision Marketing has implemented these search engines on a number of our client’s websites and would be happy to help you with yours. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.

Microsoft Gets Smaller!?

Have you ever thought to yourself that Microsoft is just too big for its own good? That perhaps if they were smaller, they would have more control over their products and better response to bugs? Well then you may have gotten your wish.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made an announcement that they will be splitting the company into 3 smaller divisions. The divisions are Microsoft Platform Products & Services, Microsoft Business and Microsoft Entertainment and Devices.

Each division will have its own president and will essentially run as its own company but they will still be tied together under the Microsoft umbrella. The idea with the split in divisions is to increase the rate at which a product can be released and/or fixed from any bugs.

Perhaps Microsoft is finally realizing that bigger doesn't always mean better. Sometimes you have to break things into smaller pieces/groups in order to accomplish something bigger and better.

It should be interesting to see where this takes them.

Authors Guild Brings Suit Against Google...

You may or may not know, that Google has started a project known as Google Print. This project is intended to allow internet searchers to find books that they normally would not be able to find unless they went to the specific school library that holds them.

Well the Authors Guild association has decided that, since the project seems to be going beyond the scope that was originally discussed, they are going to sue Google. They feel that the scanning and posting of books that are copywritten is against the copyright laws of the US Government.

Google on the other hand says that under the fair use doctrine and the US copyright laws they have every right to scan and publish "snippets" of the text, unless a particular copyright holder requests that Google not use their works.

Google intends to make this searchable database just like their website search engine. You can search for text contained within a book to find where it is located and where you can possibly buy it or at least find it to read.

The decision that comes of this suit could have some major implications on the internet and use of certain documents.

The Power Of Employees...

What might happen if you gave your employees a set amount of time each day to fiddle around with their own projects?

How would react if your boss came over to you and said, any ideas you have to produce a new product or service, take some time out of the day, and develop it as far as you can then present it to us?

Well that's exactly what Google does with all of their employees and the results have been amazing. The latest result of this freedom to think from Google has brought about the Google Wireless Internet service. It's not available yet to the public but it definitely appears that it will be coming down the line soon.

Perhaps Google is on to something here. Maybe a modified version of this could work for your company. Just think what a 10 minute brainstorming session could lead to each day or week. The possibilities are endless!

.cat Domain Extension Approved...

That's right; .cat is now a new domain name extension available on the internet. It's not for everyone though. The new domain extension is reserved for those people who are part of the Catalan language and culture.

According to Wikapedia "the Catalan language is understood and spoken by as many as 12 million people located in portions of Spain, France, Andorra and Italy." The Catalan people feel that because other organizations have been recognized with domain extensions that they should have the right to do so as well.

This comes on the heels of the controversial .xxx domain extension, which is still pending approval from ICANN. The .xxx extension would be reserved for websites having to deal with the adult industry.

ICANN is running down a slippery slope if it keeps allowing new domain extensions. Before they know it, they will be getting requests for hundreds of various extensions.

Should they be allowing all these separate extensions?

Blog Searching with Google...

Google has released a beta version of its search engine for blogs! Google Blog Search, as it's called is just like Google Search, and has indexed a large number of blogs. Type in any subject, or phrase and you will get a listing of blogs that relate to your search.

As a test I put one of the headlines of our blog in and just as quick as I could press the enter key, the Vision Blog Spot was number one on the list. Search for anything from your car type to your favorite color and there is bound to be a blog out there that is talking about it.

As more and more blogs are created, the impact that blog searching will have on internet marketing and searching will be interesting to watch.

Try it out and see what you can find, it's all out there, just type away!

Ditial Storage Solutions Unveils a New Site!

Vision Marketing has just launched a brand new site for one of our long time clients Digital Storage Solutions. The site brings together all the necessary information for visitors as well as presenting it in a clean, professional, and graphically appealing way.

What does Digital Storage Solutions do?

Digital Storage Solutions accelerates business processes and reduces costs by collecting paper and electronic documents across organizations, transforming them into retrievable information, and delivers them to line-of-business applications, databases and archive systems.

What's new about the site?

Besides the fresh new look, the new site allows visitors to easily find what they are looking for. A search box is strategically placed in the top right corner so it is easily seen and used. A visitor can search by application or industry. The home page introduces areas of information in easy to read content boxes. But to truly see what the site has to offer, you need to click through it yourself at www.digitalstorageinc.com

What can Vision do for my company?

To find out more about Vision Marketing and what services we can offer you and/or your company, click here and browse through our site.

Google Goes to College...

Google is now targeting college students! They have a whole page of their directory dedicated to tools that they feel will help a college student in their day to day tasks.

When you get to the main page of this area you can choose from Gmail, Google Talk, SMS, Google Maps, Google Toolbar, Scholar, and Picasa. Google says,

You spend your life dealing with information. A lot of it is academic, a lot more is personal, it all matters, and you can probably use better tools for handling it effectively. On this page, we’d like to introduce you to a few of them.

And what better company then Google to offer all these services? They have become almost the backbone of the internet and are constantly updating their services, which can only help to improve the college experience.

Watch for Google coming to kindergarten!!

Another eBay Acquisition...

Shopping.com the famed comparison shopping site, is about to be bought out by the mega auction site eBay. This could potentially create a huge amount of business for both sites if integrated correctly.

Shopping.com allows a user to search for a product and get a list of several retailers that are selling that product online and what their prices are. So before you even get to an e-tailers site, you know what you are going to be spending on that product. It also gives you a star rating system of how people felt about that specific site/store.

If integrated correctly when a shopper goes to shopping.com, and searches for their product, they will find not only retailers but also eBay auctions and sellers carrying that product.

It will be interesting to see if the acquisition goes the way most people are hoping, or if it will become too much in one basket.

As always, watch the Vision Blog Spot for more details as they come along.

eBay Acquires Skype

It has been talked about and rumored for weeks now, as to whether eBay was really considering buying Skype. Skype is a free program that allows people to talk over the internet with other Skype users. Skype also offers a paid version that allows you to call from Skype to regular land line or cell phones.

eBay is hoping that with the acquisition of Skype that they will be able to integrate a way for buyers and sellers to be able to talk before finalizing a sale. Live auctions might also be a thing of the not too distant future for eBay. There are a number of possibilities that could happen given the vast number of users on both eBay and Skype.

This merger of companies may also help to further expand the global marketplace. Imagine calling Europe without having any fees, or bidding on an item from China and being able to speak with a local (English speaking) representative to help with the process.

eBay and Skype have a lot of planning and detailing to do, but all in all the acquisition appears to be a win win for both companies.

Google Hires One of the Internets Founding Fathers...

Vint Cerf, probably not a name that rings any bells, unless of course you know the history of the internet like the back of your hand. Cerf helped to develop the TCP/IP protocol that allows all of us to connect to the Internet today.

Cerf has been hired as the "Chief Internet Evangelist". Although sounding a little high and holy, this title means that Cerf will be helping to develop the next generation of internet applications, standards, systems and infrastructure.

Cerf has worked for the US government, as well as MCI and WorldCom. He is also the chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). He will remain as active chairman for ICANN while working at Google.

Google is certainly lining up its arsenal for the future of the company. It's good to see that Google isn't slowing down in its effort to further the advancement of the web and it's applications.

Check out Internet News to read more about this recent development.

The Big 3 for Apple...

Over the last couple of days Apple has really come out of the gate fighting. Apple now offers the even sleeker iPod, the iPod Nano, as well as a new iTunes to go along with it. The third new product in this latest wave of releases is iTunes for your mobile phone!

The Motorola ROKR, new to the market, is like a cell phone iPod combination. The phone an be connected to your MAC or PC and just like and iPod you can add songs, delete songs, categorize them, and more! The current phone allows up to 100 songs to be loaded. The music can be played through the included headphones or through the ROKR speakers.

Apple seems to have a lot riding on the iPod craze and the ease of use of it's iTunes software. This latest combination of cell phone and iPod could capture a whole new market. Now instead of having to buy several different devices you can have at least of couple of them all rolled into one.

iPod Nano - The Next Generation iPod

Apple has done it again! They have come out with yet another iPod. This one called iPod Nano is thinner then the size of a #2 pencil! That's right, thinner then that.

They are releasing two sizes, the 2GB(500 songs) and the 4GB (1,000 songs). Both sizes offer everything that previous versions have offered. Color screens, click wheel, synching with iTunes, and variety of other accessories are also available.

The total weight is 1.5 ounces, and the dimensions are 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27. The starting price for these feather weight gadgets is $199. Much more affordable then it's larger siblings, and yet just as powerful.

Click here to read more about the iPod Nano

E-Commerce For The Elderly...

It may sound odd to try and market to the elderly for online business, but is it? According to James Maguire's article "Seniors and E-Commerce: Selling to the Older Shopper" it's the only growing market out there. He feels that teens, young adults, and adults are almost, if not already at their saturation point.

It's definitely not something to shrug your shoulders at. Senior citizens are becoming a larger group and eventually will need to use all the technology that we have available to us today. Take for example some of the figures below...

The senior market online is expanding, says Forrester analyst Lynne Bishop. Over the least three years, "You see about 9 percent of seniors newly coming online within the year," Bishop says. Moreover, "the percentage of seniors who go online daily is growing," she says, noting an increase from 21 percent to 26 percent in the last two years. (Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation puts senior daily usage at 46 percent; Pew puts it at 49 percent). Broadband usage among seniors is jumping still faster, Bishop says, increasing from 20 percent two years ago to nearly 30 percent this year. "Broadband correlates to doing more online," including shopping, she notes.

It's amazing to think that in a few years most of the civilized world will, in one way or another, be online and linked up to everything on the web. There are new markets popping up everyday, and though right now the elderly seem to be the hot area, there will no doubt be a new market in a short time.

It's up to the individual e-commerce site owner as to how they will leverage this information, to help turn a profit and expand their store/business.

Content Distribution and SEO

What might you ask does writing articles about your company have anything to do with how well your site will do in the search engines? Everything! Articles that you or your company write will talk about your products and services, but not only that it will also have a link at the bottom directing people back to your website.

So imagine for a minute that your article gets distributed to 25 people. Those 25 people in turn take your article and post it on their website. You now have 25 links directing people back to your site from websites that will more then likely deal with the same industry your business does. So now you have not only increased your linking, and in turn increased your chances of moving up in the search engines, but you have also increased your qualified traffic.

Articles should be written by a professional copywriter (which we offer), and also should have a footer note about the author (your company not the copywriter) with a link to your website. The link should use your most important keyword, or products as part of the text.

Content writing and distribution has the potential to greatly increase your qualified traffic while at the same time increase your natural rankings. You would be surprised what a professional copywriter can do with a small bit of news. Don't worry about writing pages and pages of copy yourself, just give them the background and they should be able to take it from there.

Google Goes Print...

Google has decided that just being king of the Internet and search world isn't enough! They now have gotten into the hard copy print world. Through a strategic partnership with PC Magazine, Google has bought full size ad space and is selling it to their customers for much cheaper prices.

There have been no comments from either Google or PC Magazine as to what the terms of their deal are or what type of discount Google might be getting to be able to offer such cheap prices.

The ads contain text at the top and bottom of the page that read "Ads from Google", but don't overpower the ads.

This partnership definitely brings Google closer to their goal of being a one-stop-shop for businesses marketing needs. It's unclear if they will go further into other media markets such as television or movies, but nothing is unthinkable with Google.

A New Internet?

Our should I say outernet. We all know about extranets, intranets, and the ever growing internet, but have you heard about what might be coming down the pipe-line? Outernet, is the use of flags, banners to display digital ads via IP connections. How is this done you might ask, and what's different about it then an LCD display?

It's all in the technology...

Electrophoretics hold the promise of a more flexible alternative to traditional LCD displays. They can function as a kind of digital paper that could be updated electronically with, for example, the latest news or pricing information. -- David Needle

This could be the next media frenzy. You could be driving down the street and see what looks like a flag or banner hanging from a building and every day it could say something different. Much like streaming media on a desktop, this new technology will allow users to update on the fly. Have a new product coming out tomorrow, or marking down your prices? Simply type it into the program and your banners and flags are automatically updated.

Although this technology is not expected to reach the general public until 2008, it will be interesting to see what happens.