Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

Like other technology and communications companies, Google regularly receives requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from its services (e.g., alleged defamation, hate speech, impersonation), or provide information about their users. The Google Transparency Report shows the number of requests they receive in six-month blocks. Request for removal of copyrighted materials by private parties are not included. The statistics also don’t show all categories, but primarily cover requests for criminal matters.

These numbers aren’t completely transparent though, because there may be multiple requests that ask for the removal of the same piece of content, or data for the same account. Also, the data doesn’t show whether Google complied with or challenged any request. Requests to remove content also include other Google products like YouTube.

Google’s first SEO Starter guide is a no-nonsense guide to optimize your website for search engines. It includes instructions for writing page titles, info on navigation and URL structure, best practices, how to make use of the meta description tag and making sure your mobile site gets indexed. The updated version of the Google SEO Guide follows the same format, but promises the following additions/improvements:
* Glossary to define terms throughout the guide
* More example images to help you understand the content
* Ways to optimize your site for mobile devices
* Clearer wording for better readability

Google has it’s own URL shortener at goo.gl. According to Matt Cutt’s blog it was created so Google could use it for its own products, but then they decided to make it available to the public. If you log in to your Google account, you’ll get analytics and history features for the URLs you’ve shortened with number clicks, traffic sources and visitor profiles. Looks like it doesn’t have a feature yet to preview the full URL before clicking on it.

Get 50 free customized e-mail accounts (yourname@your-business.com), including calendar features and online collaboration tools with Google Services. You can create and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and create secure web pages for intranets and team projects/wikis without the need to know code or html. Since all services are offered online and there is no software to download, they will work on any computer, PC, Mac, Linux.

You need your own domain in order to get started. If you don’t have one yet, you can also buy your own domain to work with all your services through this site. (Domains are $10 per year.) A great feature is that you get private domain registration at no extra cost! You also get full DNS control and domain management and it comes automatically configured to work with Google services.

If you’re looking for a no cost option for a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and collaboration tool, try Google Docs. You’ll avoid buying and updating expensive software and you can login from any computer with internet access. Another free online office suite is offered at Zozo.com. Basic services are free, with upgrade options available.

This free SEO guide published by Google is an exception from all the overhyped e-books and guides available on SEO. It provides all necessary information you need to get started with search engine optimization and is well written and illustrated. It provides lots of examples incl. how to use heading tags and optimize your images, but also tips for basic ‘good practices’ like having a useful 404 page and a sitemap. If you’re working on your first website, or you need a ‘to-do-list’ for an existing website, this guide will be of tremendous help.

Google AdWords tool shows keyword suggestions based on keywords you add, or based on a website’s content. You also get info on keyword competition and search volume. Use this info for SEO, or PPC advertising on AdWords.

Find currently popular keywords on Google Trends. Google Trends also shows web and blog results, news articles, graphs, historical data and trends by region and year. You can also compare relative search volume over time of multiple search phrases.

Test and optimize your website content and design by serving different versions of a page on your site. This will help increase your website’s conversion rate and ROI. Google’s Optimizer can also be accessed through Google Analytics.

View, classify, and download comprehensive data about internal and external links to your site with Google’s WebmasterTools. You can also see how visitors get to your site.