In This Chapter

• The many different sides of Google
• Paying for ads with Google AdWords
• Being paid to include ads on your site through Google AdSense
• How weblogs help you update your site frequently
• Froogle and catalog shopping with Google

With so many search engines on the web, why am I so obsessed with Google? There's MSN Search, Yahoo!, Alta Vista, and hundreds -- if not thousands -- of other search engines, all of which offer various capabilities and can help your business garner traffic and customers. So why be so intimately tied to Google?

The answer is that, as I write this book, Google is the king of the hill, the top dog, the online search engine that more people use than any other, and as such, it's vital that you be findable therein. Yes, you should make sure your site and business are part of Yahoo!, are found in MSN Search, and so on, but here's the secret scoop: If you're building a site and working on an online promotional campaign aimed at improving your traffic and, simultaneously, your rank in Google, you're doing all the right things to be well-ranked on these other search engines, too.

Google changed how Internet users thought about searching by creating a system where the results for a given search are not just based upon the web page content, but also factor in how popular those pages are on the web. Providing dramatically better results, Google quickly rose to its leadership position, and now MSN, Yahoo!, America Online and other search companies are trying to catch up, building search systems that use approximately similar methods of sifting through the web to find the best matches.

Tip: By making your Website and Web pages �Google-friendly� you�re also doing all the right things to make them search engine friendly for the many other search engines people use.

One thing that all of these search companies do have in common with Google is that everyone is trying different diversification strategies, hoping to turn a great search engine into a great online business. Google has added an e-mail service, a social networking service, a busy advertising network, a catalog shopping feature, a news consolidator for information junkies, and much more.

This chapter will give you a guided tour of the Google empire, talk about some of the most interesting facets of Google the search engine, and also mention some of its additional capabilities that can directly affect your bottom line.