As Google continues to develop it’s “Local Business Centre” one of the new advents is the introduction of physical labels that include a barcode. These physical labels are being sent to business owners that have already verified ownership of their Local Business listing on Google maps.

The barcode, or QR Code that is on the label allows people with smart phones to simply scan the code with the phones camera. Litterally within a fraction of a second, you receive all of the business details from Google’s Local Business listing including any coupons or offers that the owner has posted.

Reviews are also returned. The good, the bad and the ugly are returned. In fact Google even suggests that there is no better time than the present to leave a review -

“Leave a review right after you leave the business. What’s a better time to write what you think, than when you’ve just visited?”

There are already several QR Code scanning apps on the App Store. I dropped a $1.99 and got one and scanned the code on this page… It works very quickly.

To learn more about being a “Favorite Place on Google” you can visit this page here

Cheers -

David

]]> http://www.davidawest.com/2009/12/08/google-favourite-places-and-bar-codes/feed/ 1 http://www.davidawest.com/2009/05/30/does-the-world-really-need-another-search-engine/ http://www.davidawest.com/2009/05/30/does-the-world-really-need-another-search-engine/#comments Sun, 31 May 2009 02:44:50 +0000 David West http://www.davidawest.com/?p=212

Not long ago, Microsoft tried to buy into YAHOO with some billons of dollars. It didn’t work out. Apparently that didn’t turn Microsoft away from the potential of becoming a rival to Google. This was a bid that I actually hoped would occur – because competition is good. As much as I respect Google, it would be nice if there was an alternative search engine.

Enter Bing.com

Microsoft is not branding their new search engine as a “MSN” or  “Live” upgraded – it appears that they have actually been innovative. Some of my colleagues who know me may be surprised to know that I am excited about this. On the surface, based on a short into video, it looks like this may be something good.

I am glad that Microsoft is going to take another run at providing search results. I hope that eventually 50% of the world users use it for their daily search and I hope that in the not too distant future when I ask a prospective clients how they found us… they will answer “I Binged you”.

Competition is Good.  It’s good for search engines, it’s good for websit designers and it’s good for operating systems.

Enough said… for now.

Cheers – David

Here is a quote from an email from a company representing itself as a “professional search engine optimization” service. They also provide pay-per-click services.

“Thank you for signing up. Ash said that he was able to cut a deal with Google, and you will get a report from Google in our behalf, and you will be able to track every  visitor from your site and you would be able to track every detail and you would know where your clients come from. They would be able to identify if it’s by eB——–W-b [name removed to protect the stupid], YP, search results, and other marketing endeavors. We would like to ask for your FTP access in order for it to work efficiently, and accurately. “

Find out why this statement not only raised red flags around ethics, but also raised my hair… I write at length about this one at our corporate blog.

….to read the full posting, visit the eKzact blog and read the article, “Some Peoples Kids… will say almost anything”

What a great name for a web-service developed around a simple concept – reminders.

Remember The Milk or RTM as they refer to it on their site is at first appearance a simple way to manage to-do lists.  Great features like ‘tags’, reminders and the ability to create as many lists as you like start to surface only after you start getting into the meat and bones of the service.  Then the true subtle strengths surface. RTM features the ability to share tasks with you coworkers or family!

So on first glance, RTM is pretty cool.  On deeper digging, I found the golden nugget! Upgrading my RTM account to a “Pro” account, unlocked the features that truly make this a must have add-on to our daily routine.  You see, we adopted Google Apps as our primary tool for managing our enterprise email, calendaring and shared documents nearly a year ago.  The one thing that is missing in Google Apps is a great TO-DO list management system.  RTM has solved this with a quick and easy Fire Fox plug-in.

Once the plug-in is installed in your FireFox web-browser (the web-browser you get to choose and choose to get), your RTM to-do list will show right along side of you Gmail in-box. Taking this all a step further, I can now quickly associate my email conversations to an action item in my RTM to-do list.  Later, when I am reviewing my to-do list, I can quickly return to the related email conversation. We have full control over marking list item completed or postponing them to the next day – all from within Gmail.

How much would you pay for this incredible one time offer?  (just kidding)

W a i t…  You also get -

The ability to easily sync your RTM lists with your Blackberry or iPhone todo lists! Yes, that is correct, two way sync to your smart phone!

So, a powerful action list manager, integration with your Gmail interface, and fully synchronized to your smart phone…

Just $25.00 per year!  Or, if you don’t need a ‘Pro’ account, your “Remember The Milk” account is FREE.
Hope you are enjoying a great Summer!

David A. West     Visit “Remember The Milk” now!

PS – I almost forgot to mention that you don’t need an internet connection to use RTM.  Using “Google Gears” you can sync RTM to your desktop and review your action lists while your flying to Hawaii… for business of course.

It is difficult, sometimes, to convince a client that their website is actually performing quite well. Clients expectations, sometimes, far exceed their websites ability to perform. Google Analytics offers an industry leading statistics engine for website owners and developers to track and trend website performance.

Using Analytics to better understand how visitors behave, we can determine how they are finding a website, what search engines are people using and what keywords visitors use when searching. We can also review bounce rates and the number of pages viewed by a visitor.

The one thing we could not do in the past was demonstrate to the client that their websites performance is good, or bad, based on benchmarking. It was nearly impossible to demonstrate that other websites of similar size and nature perform better or worse than the clients website.

Google has “stepped up” and changed this by introducing “Benchmarking”. As users of Google Analytics, we have been given the choice to share the statistical data gathered from our websites. In return, Google has made the “Benchmarking” data available back to us.

Google states that there will be a minimum of 100 accounts compared in any given category. Some categories could potentially have thousands of sites being benchmarked.

The data from participating sites is averaged and anonymized through the aggregation process, then classified into a category. We limit the effects of outlier sites from the aggregate data in each category to help ensure that the benchmarking data is most representative of the industry vertical you choose to compare your site against.

Google Analytics Benchmarking Help

Google exposes vertical categories when there are enough websites that fall into the category. If a category for your vertical market is not showing, it is likely because there is not enough data to create a direct benchmark. You will still be able to benchmark websites of a similar size.Google Analytics benchmarking currently allows us to show a comparison for the following metrix;

• Visits – unique visitors to the website. Not hits… hits don’t mean anything.
• Bounce Rate – did they pop in and out again…
• Pageviews – total number of pages viewed during the reporting period.
• Avg. Time on Site – how long did the “stick”.
• Pages/Visit – how many pages a visitor viewed for this visit.
• New Visits vs. Returning Visitors

We currently add analytics to all of our accounts where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Online Marketing services are involved. If you are a website owner and would like to have Google Analytics installed on your website, please feel free to contact us and we would be glad to help you.

Understanding how your website is performing in relationship to search, online marketing and in comparison to your vertical markets is critically important. If you have a website and are not measuring it’s success, you may be missing an opportunity to improve.

Getting visitors is okay – Getting customers better!(tm)

Regards,

David A. West
eKzact is a leading Calgary Website Design company.

I read about “off line” or “disconnected” web applications some time ago. We are now starting to see these off line applications come into production use. Google has recently added the ability to use their popular “Google Docs” applications off line.

The Google Docs applications include a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation application. Up until this point, Google Docs has been an on line only application. While the apps are extremely useful and easy to use, the limitation of only being able to work while on line was at time difficult. The limitation of only being able to show a presentation, for example, while connected to the Internet was one of the biggest limitations that I found.

The advent of the ability to synchronize a local copy of the Google apps and my actual files to my local laptop has removed the limitations. I can now work on a presentation or document on line, and in full collaboration with my peers, and then take my laptop off line (say flying to Vancouver) and continue to work on my presentation. When I arrive in Vancouver and setup to speak at the convention center, I can run the off line version of my presentation during my lecture!

If you haven’t tried Google Docs, you can easily create a free Google account and give them a try. If you are looking for an enterprise solution to email, document collaboration and calendaring, then you should consider Google Apps for your business. We have helped several small business clients in recent weeks to take full advantage of Google Apps in their business. Our own company, eKzact Solutions, has been using Google Apps for nearly 5 months now. We have grown to love the Shared Calendaring, Gmail Interface and the Apps for document collaboration.

One really nice feature of Google Apps is that we get all of the upgrades Google staffers enjoy! No fees for upgrades, and no fear of end of life. Google uses their own applications to support their own business and their 10,000+ employees around the world.

If you would like to learn more about integrating Google Apps into your business, please drop us a note here.

Cheers,

David West

Someone wrote about our business today and Google sent me a note. Do you know when you or your business is mentioned on a website, forum or blog?

Google Alerts is a free service provided by the Worlds leading search engine. A testament to the speed of the Google bot is the speed in which Stuart’s blog entry today was indexed.

I received this alert at 8:45 PM today, the same day that the blog entry was written.

On 1/28/08, Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply@google.com> wrote:

Google Blogs Alert for: link:www.ekzact.com

Leading IT Companies come together to help Calgary Small Business
By Stuart R. Crawford(Stuart R. Crawford)
A new group of leading IT companies in Calgary have recently come together to help out the needs of the Calgary Small Business community. Technology needs in Calgary are becoming more and more complex and Calgary businesses need a group …
Calgary Small Business IT Blog – http://calgaryitblog.blogspot.com/

Google states that some handy uses for alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

I monitor our company domain names, trade names and some keywords that are important to us. The use of Google Alerts for search engine optimization and testing is invaluable. You may want to setup an alert on your business name or personal name to see what people are writing about you!

You can sign up for Google Alerts at this location — http://www.google.com/alerts

Cheers,

David A. West

PS – Thanks Stuart