Free Traffic Tips

This blog at Google has some interesting perspectives on Google, from searcher, webmaster and stockholder perspectives.

Start with their link to the Google Cheat Sheet, and be sure to look at current posts, as well as the archives.

AN SE Roundtable article asks the question: Google and Microsoft Getting Close.

Besides one source they cite that shows how Microsoft and Google appear chummy…

“Another blurb released today mentioned that Google has opened a new office in Kirkland Washington, incidentially right next door to Microsoft’s Redmond Headquarters. Google hiring more Microsoft employees? Maybe.”

This week for Non-Profit Sundays, consider a donation and/or a link to the Global Women Fund For Women.

If you were here last week you know that my latest, and I think, greatest, project is to use some of the resources we small online business owners have at our disposal, to simultaneously make small donations and/or links to charities. The idea is that if we can all contribute by giving a little or making a small donation to other people and organizations whose needs are greater than ours.

For those of us who can’t donate, we can certainly put a link to these organizations on our sites, and encourage every person we encounter through our sites to do the same, either directly or indirectly, we can affect positive change together.

There’s no minimum donation. So even if you can only spare a dollar, give a little. Especially combined, it could help a lot.

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“The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain

I’m alive and semi-well, despite all rumors to the contrary. Thank you for all your emails – though I wish fewer of you had not gone through the agony of suspecting the worst (at least I hope it was not celebration *wink*). I’ve just had a minor crisis involving my health this week, and am in the process of “walking it off”. I had a bit of a slow down, keeping on top of the pressing issues, and taking a short break from other things for a while. It turns out that I won’t be going to Texas after all, so I’ll have to meet some of you another time – maybe you can come up and see me in Seattle next year.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I should be back for non-profit Sundays, and I promise I’ll be around on Google Tuesdays. Other than that, I have some re-org issues to take care of, and I’m going to catch up with everyone who contacted me in the forums or via email while I was resting.

You”re a very caring audience, and I thank you for letting me know that I was missed. Not all people are so blessed, especially in business.

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Slashdot | Could IM Be The Next Step For Google?

Slashdot | Gmail Begins Signing Email with DomainKeys

Curious about what is hot in Google searches?

Go found out from the horse’s mouth at Google Zeitgeist.

Don’t forget the archives.

There’s been quite a lot of talk lately about Google as some ominous Big Brother. But has their company really done anything but uncover what we’ve already done to ourselves?

We worry about privacy, but do we check to make sure our online purchases are secure? I personally took steps to make sure that no part of a credit card number is ever exposed anywhere on my site, and that when people purchase from my processors, it is secure every step of the way.

No one who works with my site, including me, ever sees a customer’s financial information- only proof of purchase in the form of a receipt number.

Of course, the growing uneasiness about onlin privacy in general is not unfounded. Identity theft is real, though statistically you are more vulnerable handing your credit card to a merchant in a store than you are typing it into a secure computer form online.

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