In their quest to dominate our entire internet experience, it is no wonder that Google wants to be a 1 stop shop for marketers – given that we pay the bills.
I have summarised the Google tools that we know are out there for marketers to use. If we have missed any please add them below.
Site Resources & Tools
Google Analytics – www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics provides a complete website analysis tool to track site performance. Over the years Google has built on the basics to provide a sophisticated web analytics tools which offers conversion analysis, site overlay analysis, custom reporting creation tools and benchmarking along with all of the standard reporting metrics to measure site performance.
Website Optimiser – www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
Website optimizer provides a tool to conduct A/B and multi-variant testing on your website to improve conversion of landing pages. The website optimiser has been built with in-depth but visual/easy to read reporting to make informed decisions based on tests results.
Google Site Search – http://www.google.com/sitesearch/
Google site search provides web owners with the ability to create a simple onsite search function to enable users to search onsite content. This is one of the Google products which incur a charge – however pricing starts from as low as $100 per year.
Google Custom Search – http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
Google custom search is a more sophisticated search function which enables websites to aggregate search results from a variety of other sites/sources. This function is free however search results will also appear with paid ads included, however for a fee of $100 per year search results will appear with no ads.
Google Maps – www.code.google.com/apis/maps/
The Google API for Google Maps allows organisations to plug Google Maps into their websites. The API allows you to customise maps to feature a range of content/information to enhance your users experience.
Google AdSense – https://www.google.com/adsense
Google AdSense enables website owners to publish relevant advertising content on sites and earn revenue from Google by doing so. The sites added to AdSense are part of the Google Content Network.
Search Tools
Google Toolbar – www.toolbar.google.com/ – The Google Toolbar is a browser application which displays the PageRank of the particular page a user is viewing on a site.
Google Webmaster Tool – www.google.com/webmasters/tools/The Google Webmaster Tool provides you with the ability to view detailed information as to see how Google perceives your site to be performing. The kind of data available includes site errors, top performing keywords your site is ranking for in SERPs and actual positions, internal/external linking data, along with the ability to upload an XML site map.
Google Trends – www.google.com/trends
Google Trends provides “hot trends” for the top 100 terms searched in the US (so not that useful for Aussies) but it can also provide trends for particular websites across the world. With the tool you can view the growth of Twitter over the past few years and identify similar sites in that category which can lead to new marketing opportunities.
Google Keyword Research – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
The Google Adwords Keyword Tool provides you with a keyword research tool for both SEO and PPC campaign research. The tool provides keyword volumes for the previous month, plus graphical representation of keyword traffic over the past 12 months.
Google Insights – www.google.com/insights/search
Google Insights provides a tool to gauge keyword trends, determine where the search volumes are more/less prevalent across a given country, the type of content search being conducted ie image / video, local etc and a host of other information.
AdWords Editor – www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor/
Whilst the Google AdWords program is a paid resource, the AdWords editor provides an offline campaign tool which makes the creation of PPC campaigns, light work. Once completed the data can be uploaded into your Google AdWords account.
Social Media Tools
Blogger – www.blogger.com
Bought by Google in 2003, Blogger is one of the leading free blogging tools on the market. Blogger provides the ability to upload everything from text to images and videos and even the ability to blog via your mobile phone.
Google Alerts – www.google.com/alerts
Google Alerts provides an email alert service based on a query or topic. The alert service can be utilised to identify online reputation issues, track community discussions and even track competitor activity.
