Interestingly, a look at the fine print reveals for once it isn’t Google which has concocted a killer software platform to do this but a simple deal with Microsoft to licence Exchange. It then passes on this service feely to end users who simply need to setup their handsets using the clear step-by-step guides.
As always Google is labelling this service a beta and lists limitations which should keep existing NuevaSync users clear for the meantime. Namely:

• Only five Google Calendars can be synchronised with Google compared to Nuevasync’s eight
• Modifying recurring events does not always work
• Deleting recurring events does not always work
• Calendar guest attendee information is also not reflected
• Contact information is limited to two home numbers, one home Fax, one mobile (a potential deal breaker for some), one pager, three work numbers and one work fax number. No work on addresses

So far as I have seen NuevaSync suffers none of these issues and also suffers from very little latency (read: 3-5 minutes) something Google Sync needs needs to be checked for. Lastly, it is also worth noting with this announcement that phones supporting SyncML also get contacts-only syncing while a similar, if not so seamless BlackBerry Google sync has been around for more than a year. Perhaps it’s due for an upgrade?
The future is in the Cloud people, resistance is futile…
Update: iPhone users will need firmware v2.2 or higher and Windows Mobile support is for v6.0 and above. Earlier edition unlocked iPhone owners get hacking. Earlier edition Windows Mobile owners start crying.

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. Google uses a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

What an excellent tool! I just completed our test set up and I have to say that the tool is complicated but looks like it should really be a jewel in Google’s toolbox for account management professionals.

A few tips, I found it confusing to add the scripts to the various includes for headers and footers that I have on my site. Even though I added the code, Google had trouble sensing it. I ended up just making an HTML page from my includes and put my content in there without a problem. Highly dynamic sites may be harder to set up if you are using several includes.

Don’t do your work late at night. The implementation and set up took several hours and so it is best to do this when you are fresh not at the end of the day. The level of detail is intense to make the program work best and so take your time and think out what kind of testing you want to do first.

This tool will be a real resource for clients who really want to test landing pages for improved results.

This is what the Website Optimizer does. Allows you to create a page, tag special sections, then create dynamically inserted new sections - this makes up your test and Google will measure the activity and let you know what is working. Google serves up the dynamic content for you.

I was able to make one landing page with three different titles, two different content blocks, and two different images one male one female for our ghost blogging ad group.

Google has detailed reporting that will identify what is working best during your test period. It is all tied into Google Analytics and into the Google AdWords interface.

An excellent, top level, professionals tool that you will definitely want to check out.

Make a group of your own
Why not start your own group? For your family, your softball team… Creating a group is easy – just pick a name and start inviting members.

Join a group
Find something you like? Join straight away, or request an invitation if it’s a private group.

Discuss online or over email
Join in on what others are talking about
From within a group, you can reply to a message that someone else posted, or post a message or question of your own

Start a discussion in your own group
Create a group of your own so you can get in touch and keep in touch with your group’s members.

Discuss online or over email
You can choose whether you want to read and post messages online, or to just use your current email account to read and respond.

Create rich, custom pages
Create web pages right inside your group
Use it for information about your group, shared documents, or anything you want to publish online. Any member can view, contribute to, and comment on the pages, from right within your group.

Build a knowledge base
Capture the content and information that may already be in your discussions, in a way that’s more easily accessible. Have a group for discussing the best restaurants in your area? Why not create a page that lists members’ favorite restaurants?

Customize your look and graphics
Make it your own
No two groups are the same, so why should they look the same? Select pictures, colors and styles to give your group its own distinct look.

Share files and member information
Upload files
Group members can upload files and share their work with others in the group.

Learn more about each other
Each member of a group can create a profile, including a picture and quote. Now you can share information about yourself, and even find other members using search.

Take the Google Groups Beta Tour

Some Screens

Over the next few weeks we’ll be testing AdSense video distribution and sponsorship with a small group of publishers. You may remember us doing a similar trial last year with MTV Networks, where we distributed ad-supported MTV video content to publishers who displayed the content on their sites.

This time, we’ll be working with a larger set of content providers, grouping together video content from providers such as Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment together with quality ads and offering them as playlists which publishers can select from and display on their AdSense sites. Participating publishers range from small to large, and cut across many different types of content.

If your site did not make it into the test, you’re out of luck for now. The music-related content would only be well-suited for sites with certain topic areas of focus, and particular demographics. The expanded testing being done now could be a harbinger of greater availability in the short term for video ads throughout AdSense.

Google provides an online submission form where the URL of a site can be submitted, or it is possible to submit a website through its sitemaps program, but it can often be better to get a site linked from an existing domain on Google, so that the Googlebot spider will find the site through its travels around the web.

Google is able to deep index complex websites, either on the first visit or after several updates, including pages within a frame. It will also index PDF documents hosted on a site.

If you found this interesting , read our article about how to get noticed on Google.

Optimising your website can be a lengthy process, but with the right skills your site can be noticed sooner than you think.
Websites need to be linked to from other quality websites. Every page should have a clear website title. And its important to include your desired search terms (called keywords) in order to articulate how you want to be discovered by the Google search bots.

Keywords direct the search engines on how to find you, and links are the holy grail. If a lot of sites link to you, that means you have authority and should be placed higher than others. Not just dozens of links though, they have to be of quality and importance also, importance is based on pagerank, but that’s something we will discuss in a later article.

Your sites content needs to be descriptive and strongly outline about you and your services whilst gently incorporating the one- or two-keyword phrases that you are concentrating on. Try to break your site up with some images too, making sure the alt and title tags are relevant to that image.

And of course your site needs to be submitted to the Google directory.

Useful Links

Add your site to Google
Our article about Submitting your site to Google

Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page. Larry was soon joined in his research project by Sergey Brin a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend. Larry hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page). It was originally nicknamed, “BackRub”, because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site’s importance.

Google Screenshot

This is a screenshot of the Google homepage back in 1998, a lot has changed since then!

Google is now the most dominant search tool on the web, setting the standards that others try to follow and better, as yet unsuccessfully.

Sources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google
• Google Timeline