Beyond Search: Google Solution for Nigerian Businesses-Part 1

Google being the largest search engine is more than a search engine. It is the most successful online business for now (www.wired.com). Majority of people use Google only for search without knowing other applications that can help their businesses and search experience.

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University, Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. On Google.com homepage you have different solutions for businesses, some of those applications that will help your business are:

 Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a free web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that allows you to create and edit documents from anywhere and collaborate with multiple people at the same time. You can take advantage of Google Docs & Spreadsheets to coordinate your group’s assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or work with remote colleagues on a new business plan. Import existing documents and spreadsheets, or create new ones from scratch.

To invite people e to view or edit a document, simply add their email addresses to the list of viewers or collaborators. Take a peak at how a document is shaping up, or contribute your thoughts to a draft in progress. Keep track of multiple versions in one place-with an easy drop-down menu that shows who changed what, and when. If you would like to keep a copy on your hard drive, you can export to a number of popular formats (DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, HTML, PDF, etc.). Or, easily publish your work to a web page or blog for the world to see.

Personally, I have been using this tool especially when I have documents in a different format that is not compactable with my computer, all I do is transfer the document to my Google mail and open the document online with Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

Pack

This is a free collection of essential software to help users browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize photos, and more with useful programs from Google and other companies like Adobe and Symantec. You can download and install the entire Google Pack in just a few clicks, and the included Google Updater helps you discover new programs and keep your current software up to date.

Google Alerts

Google Alert helps you get email automatically when there are new Google results for your search terms. Google currently offer three types of alerts: News, Web, and News & Web.

• News Alert: email notification about new articles that appear in the top 10 results of your Google News search.
• Web Alert: email notification for new web pages that appear in the top 20 results for your Google web search.
• News & Web Alert: email notification when new articles related to your search term make it into the top 10 results for Google News search, or the top 20 results for a Google web search.

Use Alerts to monitor a developing news story, keep current on an industry or a competitor, track medical advances, sports teams, or celebrities. The frequency you select (daily, weekly, or as it happens) for your Alerts determines how often Google checks for new results, not necessarily how often you’ll receive alerts. If you select “once a day,” you’ll get a maximum of one email per day. If you choose the “as it happens,” you will get an alert whenever there is new result.

Google Blog Search

Google Blog Search is the easiest way to search for blog content on the web. Using the same technology that powers Google’s web search, Google Blog Search provides fresh, relevant search results from millions of feed-enabled blogs. Users can search for blog posts, blog names, authors, or a specific date range. Google Blog Search also features Google’s Safe Search technology, giving users control over the content of their search results.

Google Book Search

Google Book Search is an index of book content that makes it easy to find books that interest you. Like a card catalog, it helps you learn where to get the full book from a bookstore or a library. Use the Google Book Search homepage to get only book results, or Google.com to see book results as part of your regular search results. Google Book Search makes the full text of millions of books (including out of print and public domain books) instantly searchable, and makes those books discoverable. For authors and publishers, it means that millions of books are instantly discoverable – and able to be purchased. Google Book Search acts as a free marketing program that protects copyright while dramatically expanding the potential audience for, in theory, every book in the world.

Google Language Tools

Search for web content in any of more than 40 languages including searches in the three major languages in Nigeria, or by country domain (157 at last count). You can also translate text to and from several languages or translate a web page by submitting a URL.Google also provide links to Google.com in more than 100 languages and links to all of the current country domains.

Google Maps

Google Maps offers powerful, user-friendly mapping technology and local business information with click-to-call functionality, satellite imagery, and a rich collection of user-generated maps and content. The dynamic, interactive maps are draggable (no waiting for graphics to reload when viewing an adjacent area). Use your mouse or the directional arrows to pan in any direction to see areas off screen. Type in the name of a region or neighborhood to see any part of it as easily as you do with a standard street map. At the top right corner of the Google Maps page, a Satellite View option is available for seeing satellite and aerial images of your location. In this view you can also zoom in, out, or pan in any direction with no long reload times when you drag images.

Personalized Search

Personalized Search ranks Google search results based on what’s most relevant to an individual user. The Web History feature of Personalized Search enables users to view and manage all of their web activity. Over time, this information personalizes future searches by bringing results closer to the top when it’s clear they are the most relevant to a searcher.

Google Scholar

Find scholarly literature (peer-reviewed papers, theses, preprints, abstracts, technical reports) from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities and across the web. As with Google Web Search, Google Scholar presents search results in order of relevance to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article’s author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online, so search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

Google.com interfaces are available in more than 100 languages and more than 150 country domains. You may also choose to receive search results in Nigerian languages as Google.com now supports localized searches in more than 40 languages.

Google AdSense

The Google AdSense program enables websites in the Google Network of content sites to automatically serve text and image ads that are precisely targeted to site content – so well-matched, in fact, that readers actually find them useful. Targeting can be based on search results or on web content. The revenue generated from these ads are shared with partner publishers.

Most of the websites that make up the Google Network sign up online, and some are directed to sites with significant traffic, under agreements that vary in duration. For network members, Google offer:

• AdSense for search. This enables websites of any size to generate additional revenue by serving relevant AdWords ads targeted to search results.
• AdSense for content. This program enables website publishers to generate revenue from advertising by serving relevant AdWords ads targeted to web content. Automated technology analyzes the meaning of web content and serves relevant advertising. AdSense for content can help websites offset publishing costs or even become a primary revenue stream. There is no charge for websites to participate in this program. Using automated sign-up process; web sites can quickly display AdWords ads on their site. Majority of the revenues generated from clickthroughs are shared on these ads with Google Network members that display the ads.