Increasingly, hosting providers, especially free ones, are strongly encouraging their users to use Google Apps for managing their email. This is generally because the provider wants to reduce the processing overhead involved in running POP accounts and save on the disk space involved in storing mailboxes.

Generally speaking, it is true to say that using Google Apps gives much better performance than a small to medium sized host and you can usually tell when a host wants its users to go the GoogleApps route by the type of email support it offers.

If the host offers the sort of POP support where you can create separate email accounts – for example, admin@yoursite.com or fred@yoursite.com – then it is probably safe to say that you can expect a reasonably good email service. However, if your hosting account includes a single ‘catch-all’ email account then, even if you can access it through an email client, the chances are that you would be better off using Google Apps.

There are other email solutions out there but they often have a cost attached or do not offer the full functionality that Google Apps does.

Google Apps is actually much more than just email but I suspect that the majority of users do use it just for that. With a basic, out-of-the-box, Google Apps account you can:

- Add up to 100 user accounts

- Add other domains

- Each user account has its own mailbox

- Include a chat facility for your users

- Share and collaborate on documents

- Create private or public websites online and collaborate with others in building them

- Run a group calendar

- Create your own home page, choosing what Google widgets your users see

- and, of course, email

All this might sound a bit daunting if all you need is a couple of email accounts at yoursite.com! Don’t worry – you can turn off anything you don’t need and simply have what is, in effect, Gmail accounts but using your own domain name instead of gmail.com.

You may already have a Google customised search page which includes some of its more useful widgets like news feeds, note pads etc. and if you have a Gmail account you may also be using the page to show your email. The Google Apps home page is just like this except that you can ‘brand’ it with your own logo. (See the front entrance to my email management for an example – home.mypf.org).

From your home page you and your users, if you have any, can log in and access all the functions of the Google Apps site that you have set up and granted permissions for. You can even create your own URLs for specific functions. For instance, mail.mypf.org will take you to a branded Gmail login page.

The branding continues onto the Gmail pages too.

Of course, the whole point of hosting providers steering you towards Google Apps is so that you can get your POP service from there. Just like a regular Gmail account, Google Apps email accounts can also be accessed by POP clients.

Naturally all this comes at a price – but not a financial one! There is a fair amount of setup involved, from verifying that you own the domain for which you are opening the account to changing your domain’s MX (mail exchange) records to point email delivery at your Google Apps account and configuring your mail client to use the Gmail accounts. Don’t panic! I’ll be covering setup in detail in another article.

Meanwhile, you can take a tour at www.google.com/a. Don’t be put off by the reference to business use:  Google Apps is just as useful for individuals.

Everyone is clicking links. Whether it be link found through a search engine or a link from one website to another, people are hopping around the World Wide Web in a frenzy for information. With all this clicking going on, Internet marketers are trying to find the best way of getting users to click their links and it seems one of the best methods of doing so is via PPC or Pay Per Click Advertising.

To put it in layman’s terms, Pay Per Click Advertising is a type of search marketing where advertisers pay a specified amount every time their ad or website link is clicked by a prospect. This is otherwise known as a “click thru”. The more you spend per click, the more your advertisement/link will appear on the specified site.

There are many companies and websites that cater for Pay Per Click Advertising such as Google, Yahoo!, Live, AdBrite, MSN Messenger, Overture and more. Each of them offer a straight forward means of setting up your campaign. No more expensive trips to the local Internet marketing guru! A prime example is Google AdWords. Anyone with a Google Account can login, create an ad, dump some cash into their Google AdWords Account and they’re on their way. It’s really as simple as that and before you know it, your site will be getting hits from visitors who are actually after what you’re selling – perfect!

One thing we should note is that PPC Advertising, especially through search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, does not directly help with your search engine’s ranking. Sure, your link and site popularity will increase which will have a positive impact, however it definitely isn’t enough to bring your site to pole position. PPC Advertising is simply a great way of attracting the appropriate users to your site. It just isn’t free.

With this in mind, Pay Per Click Advertising does work for many websites and a lot of people are doing it. What are you waiting for? Create that Google Account, set a monthly limit on how much you’d like to spend and get the ball rolling. Just remember that PPC Advertising is not the be all and end all and it definitely will not miraculously boost your search engine ranking overnight. It is just simply just another weapon in your marketing arsenal.

“Don’t be evil” is the code of conduct the Google Company abides by, to quote its owners, “We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served ? as shareholders and in all other ways ? by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

Google is a popular web based search engine which runs its business unlike any other. The starting page of Google. It is clean unobtrusive and sleek making download time faster. Google is preferred by a lot of users because of this. The term Google itself had a very quirky start it was a misspelling of the term googol referring to a number 1 followed by a hundred zeroes. For more help visit towww.google-atm-machine.com.What started off as quirk turned out to become reality The Google Company grew to ration proportions and is now estimated to have a billion dollar revenue. At the very start, Google was a brainchild of Larry Page then a PhD student at Stanford University who was doing a dissertation thesis on the World Wide Web and its mathematical structure. Because of a misspelling the term Google stuck and it was formally registered on September 15, 1997. On September 4, 2001, a patent describing part of Google’s ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted. The patent named Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Google is also involved in philanthropic acts. One of their activities is the establishment of Google.org giving it a staggering fund of $1 billion. Climate change, global public health and global poverty are just among the issues the organization wants to help. The development of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 mpg is just one of its first projects.

Google has also worked with several corporations to enhance productivity and services. One such is its partnership with NASA wherein they work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. Google has also partnered with Time Warner’s AOL unit for video searches and Fox to provide search and advertising on My Space and other News Corp. websites

Google has been known for its forward thinking and made some very smart acquisitions over the years. For more detail go to: www.instant-adsense-dollars.com.One such example is the acquisition of Blogger from Pyre Labs which is a web log publishing platform. This led to many of its premium features becoming free. The user friendly Google Docs and Spreadsheets is also a result of the company’s acquisition of Up startle, a company responsible for the online collaborative word processor whitely which was combined with Google Spreadsheets. Another of its popular buy outs is you tube which it purchased for $1.65 Billion dollars in 2006.

At the present Google now provides service for a range of tasks and them run several products to do so. Just some of their products are: Gail, for e-mail purposes, Picas a for photos, and Google maps which is a Mapping service that indexes streets and satellite imagery, providing driving directions and local business search.

Google Adsense is the most widely used content-based advertising program by webmasters and web publishers to help generate extra income. Publishers register for a Google Adsense account, enable Google ads relevant to the content on their websites and make money when a visitor clicks on an ad. for more detail go to:www.googleadsense-empire.com.However, although Google Adsense is generally considered the current leader in content-based, online advertising, it’s important for web publishers to realize there are many alternatives to this program, whether they are used instead of or in addition to Adsense.

Furthermore, many web publishers may find too many problems with Google Adsense. For example, they can be too picky in suddenly terminating people’s accounts. When web publishers lose their Google Adsense accounts, they need to know what other options they have. In addition, Google Ad Sense’s terms and conditions are such that some publishers are not even accepted into their program. Finally, some publishers find that Google Adsense does not provide a large enough selection of relevant ads that match their content. It is definitely worthwhile to consider alternatives to this program.

Pay-per-click advertising besides Google Adsense is one type of alternative, including such programs as Albright, All Feeds, BidVertiser, Chetek, Clicks or and Yahoo Publisher Network. Albright, a customizable e-commerce site, is considered “The Internet’s Ad Marketplace,” and enables the publisher to not only control their own ad rates, but also to approve or reject every ad for their website. All Feeds features the highest and best pay-per-click listings from thousands of advertisers, multiple display formats (text links, banners, buttons, search boxes, etc.), real-time reporting, customization and even an integration with Google Adsense. For more detail go to:www.youradsenseprofits.com. BidVertiser allows the publisher to display text ads on their site with advertisers bidding against each other, and they display the highest bidders for maximum revenue-earning potential.

Chetek, an impulse product merchandising service and comparative shopping engine, features interactive minimally. Clicks or boasts higher payouts per click along with a larger range of advertisers, supporting feeds from more than one advertising provider and the chance to earn more by either displaying relevant banners or underlining a section of clickable text on their websites. Yahoo! Publisher Network is a newer model and allows the publisher to not only display relevant ads and earn from each click, but also to integrate other features and programs of Yahoo! on their site, such as Y!Q and Add to My Yahoo! (RSS). Other pay-per-click advertising alternatives to Google Adsense growing in popularity include Affiliate Sensor, Badly, ClixGalore, Fast click, Kanoodle, Nixie, Revenue Pilot, Search feed, Target Point and Vibrant Media Smarted.

However, pay-per-click, content-based advertising programs are not the only ways for web publishers to generate online income. Affiliate marketing works great as well, using affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, Click bank, Amazon and Link share. Affiliate marketing involves an affiliate promoting the services or products of a merchant on their site and is rewarded for every visitor, registrant, subscriber or customer that comes through them on a pay-per-click, pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale basis. Other alternatives to Google Adsense include networking opportunities, merchandising, RSS advertising, donations and sponsorships.

There is a plethora of alternatives to Google Adsense for publishers to choose from. A common piece of advice presented to amateur web publishers is to include more than one type of revenue-generating program on their site to unleash greater income-earning potential, for security, protection and for backup in case Google Adsense suddenly decides to close down their account.

A no follow link is an HTML attribute that is used to give instructions to search engines that the hyperlink is not to influence the ranking of the search engines index. A no follow link is designed to reduce the effectiveness of search engine spam and improve the overall quality of the search engines results.

Because of the number of spams spreading over the net, In 2005 Google designed the idea of a no follow attribute to a link to eliminate these spams. The no follow link is not for blocking access to web content, only for preventing the content to be indexed by the search engines.

Hyperlinks that include the rel=”nofollow” attribute will not influence the links target page rank or block any content. Although this was a Google design and is copyright owned by Google many other search engines have began using the attribute value as well such as, Yahoo, Windows Live Search, and Bing.

The search engines are not to literally not follow the link; they are supposed to only not index the link in their search engine databases. The link is still able to be clicked and the page will load, no content will be blocked it is just meant to reduce the indexing and spam that comes across in search results. Google for example, states that the no follow link be taken literally and the link will not be followed at all but in reports done for SEO purposes it shows some conflict to this. Google actually follow the no follow link but does not indexed the links on their linked page. Yahoo will follow the link but does not include it in any of its ranking calculations, while MSN Search treats the no follow link as not counting it or following it. Search Engines have heir own algorithm to follow on how to identify a no follow link.

The majority of weblog software programs will automatically submit links with the no follow attribute and not give any options to change or alter this. There are some programs that will allow alterations from trusted users and others will allow them to be submitted as the writer wishes and then use human editors to remove any unwanted links.

The no follow link protects web owners from unwanted content on their site. Many web owners will begin a blog or forum posting to encourage fresh content to be displayed on their page and increase the overall page rank of the site. Negative links to a site could give serious downfall on a websites Pagerank so the no follow link allows the bloggers to leave links but protects the webpage owners from taking negative hits.

Google has began using the no follow links as a machine readable disclosure for paid links and therefore keeping them from gaining any credibility in the search engines results. The web owners are still debating over whether or not the no follow links are protecting them or hurting them as many pages are paying for links to be traded on their site in hopes of increasing their page rank. The no follow link has been contradicted many times over where SEO is concerned and it depends on the web owner as to if they allow them on the site or not.

Search engine optimization Services are a vital part of online marketing. As an Internet business owner, one of the most important things that you need to do is get people to surf through your site so that they see what you have to offer and, hopefully, buy your products or services. Since the most common way that Internet surfers use to look for the information on products or services is a search engine, then it is to your advantage to “convince” the search engine that your site is responsive to the needs of the searcher based on the keywords that he enters into it. To do this, you need to optimize your website, either by yourself or through a SEO Consultant who is equipped to provide your site with various search engine optimization services.

What search engine optimization services you will need will really depend on the needs of your website. There are several factors that you need to consider in determining your search engine optimization services requirements, including:

• Level of competition

If you are competing against a relatively small number of businesses, then your search engine optimization services requirements will not be so extensive. However, if your products or services are offered by hundreds of thousands of other Internet-based businesses, then you are going to have to avail of quite a number of search engine optimization services in order to rise above the crowd. This concept is nothing new; even in the brick-and-mortar world, the level of investment and intensity of advertising and promotions is dependent on how many businesses are competing in the marketplace.

• Keyword Popularity and Competition

Search engines operate on keywords, and search engine optimization services focus on these. Search engines utilize automated “spiderbots” that “crawl” through your site to get the keyword statistical data that is the main basis for evaluating its relevance viz. the said keywords. The higher the relevance of your website, the higher in the search engine’s list of keyword-responsive sites it will be. The intensity of search engine optimization services requirements will depend on the level of competition of that keywords that your website is aiming to rank for. For example, if your website is responsive to “book”, your search engine optimization services needs will obviously be more extensive than if your website was responsive to the keyword “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.

• Actual utility of your website

If your website is a single product or service website, you will need a lot of search engine optimization services in order to drive as much of your addressable market to your site. Statistically speaking, your relative success rate will more or less remain the same and it will probably be low so the trick is to make it up in volume. For example, if your success rate also known as conversion rate is 5% and only 100 visitors go to your site, then you will probably only get 5 customers. If your break even target is 100 customers, then you will have to convince 2,000 people to visit your site. If, on the other hand, your website offers a variety of products and services, your success rate will probably be higher, which means you need less visitors which, in turn, means your search engine optimization services needs will be less.

What kinds of search engine optimization services are available? There are several, actually, but the most common ones are:

• Homepage optimization

This is one of the most common search engine optimization services available. In this service, the text of your homepage is embedded with the keywords that your website is responsive to. What’s more, the HTML program itself is embedded with keywords in the meta-tag portion, or that area in the program that contains remarks and does not appear in the homepage itself. It is always good to optimize your homepage because this is mostly what the search engine “spiderbot” “sees” when crawling through your website.

• Link popularity analysis

One strategy to optimize your website is to get the links to your site embedded in popular websites so that when visitors go to that site, they also get to see the links to yours and, hopefully, click on them. You can accomplish this in two ways: buy ad space in the popular websites or offer to exchange link space. Either way, you will need to analyze the popularity of the candidate popular website by via link popularity analysis, which is one of the search engine optimization services that SEO firms or individuals offer.

• Website promotion tools

As mentioned earlier, you can promote your site via links to popular websites which, incidentally, rank high in the search engines. These strategies are part of an SEO firm’s website promotion tools and form part and parcel of the search engine optimization services they provide.

The list of search engine optimization services that SEO companies provide changes over time. Remember that your website is not the only one that undergoes optimization, and that there is absolutely only one position for each of the Top 50 ranking for each search engine. Your website may be number one today, but as your competition avails of better search engine optimization services, you may be dislodged tomorrow, so you will always need to search for even better search engine optimization services to regain the top position. SEO companies and individuals themselves will also need to find ways and means to offer better search engine optimization services so that they can continue to justify their existence.

In selecting an SEO consultant, be sure to look at its clients and see how popular they are. It’s the best way for you to find out if their search engine optimization services are effective and if they are constantly improving them.

If you are a serious business website owner, chances are you are constantly on the lookout for ethical means to promote your website to your target market. Chances are also good that you probably read somewhere or heard from someone that your most practical promotion solution is to trust your business to a search engine optimization company. The processes of promoting your site and increase your online visibility is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. If you are familiar with the term but do not have the expertise to properly implement SEO for your website, then you might want to consider hiring a Search Engine Optimization Company to do that work for you.

What is a Search Engine Optimization company? It is an organization whose objective is to provide the necessary tools and expertise to optimize your website towards the goal of securing for you a first or second page ranking in the search engine’s list of keyword-responsive sites. A Search Engine Optimization company’s role is that of an influencer, i.e., the strategies it employs for your website are geared towards influencing the search engine’s “spiderbot” to give it a high relevance rating which, in turn, influences its ranking. A Search Engine Optimization company’s indirect role is also to influence the surfer to visit your website but is not responsible for what happens to the visit.

There are many Search Engine Optimization companies that have hung their virtual shingle in cyberspace, with many more sprouting up each and every day. With so many choices available, it is important that you are guided in selecting the right Search Engine Optimization company that best suits your requirements and budget. Here are a few tips in selecting that Search Engine Optimization company:

• Always Go for Reputation and Experience

This is pretty much a common sense tip. When you are headed for the unknown, it always makes sense to go with a guide who knows what you don’t. A Search Engine Optimization company that has years of experience as an organization and has people working for it with years of individual experience is normally a good choice. Experience, however, is just one half of this selection criterion, the other half being REPUTATION. A Search Engine Optimization company may have the experience, but if it has a track record of unethical or even illegal SEO activity, then the experience counts for nothing.

• Avoid SEO companies that Spam

A Search Engine Optimization company that sends spam email to promote itself is not a good Search Engine Optimization company and will get your site banned costing you more that it will ever benefit from.

• A company that hides everything, has something to hide

Beware of the Search Engine Optimization company that has a “black box” solution for everything that ails your website, i.e., you don’t need to know how it works; you just pay. In all likelihood, what this type of Search Engine Optimization company is hiding from you is, at best, unethical, or at worst, illegal. It is very important for you to understand what is going to be done with your website (in lay man’s terms) because, at the end of the day, it IS your website and you will have to live with whatever the Search Engine Optimization company does to it.

• Go Window Shopping

Like with every important purchase decision you make, you must check out more than one Search Engine Optimization company before you make a decision. Ask for a list of the websites they claim to have worked on, and do your own research. Also, ask each Search Engine Optimization company you are considering about what they think of the other candidates in your list. Be wary if they launch into a negative marketing pitch about their competition. A really good Search Engine Optimization company will rarely badmouth a competitor. Even if the competitor is really bad, the worst that a good Search Engine Optimization company will do is objectively point out their strengths and weaknesses.

• Go with the Clear Deal

A good Search Engine Optimization company will always be very clear any work proposal it makes. It clearly spells out the terms of reference, timelines, commercial aspects, guarantees, penalties, any other items that it and you may find relevant towards meeting your expectations. That way, you know what you are getting into and what (and what not) to expect.

These are but a few tips on how to select the expert that will take care of optimizing your website for you. Approach a Search Engine Optimization company like you would any other company that you are considering to handle some work for you, and you are covered.

Before going into what a Search Engine Optimization firm does, let us first define what “search engine optimization” or SEO is. In “brick-and-mortar” terms, SEO may be compared to placing an advertisement in a medium that caters largely to a particular market segment, e.g., medical journals, fashion magazines, adult cable channels, etc. so that there is a high probability that whatever products or services you offer is what that particular viewing, reading, or listening market segment needs. The “agent” for this type of advertising is the advertising or marketing firm which, when related to cyberspace is the Search Engine Optimization firm.

SEO is the set of activities and strategies implemented (either by yourself or through a Search Engine Optimization firm) that influences a search engine’s “spiderbot” to give your website a high relevance rating which translates into a high ranking in the list of keyword relevant websites. Since it is a targeted approach, the success rate of an SEO strategy (measured in terms of average business per visitor also known as conversion rate) that a Search Engine Optimization firm implements should be higher than, say, online advertising (which may attract more visitors but will include a big share of “just looking” hits, thus resulting to a lower average business per visitor). This ultimately results to lower cost per sale since the resources required to service the visits (which will go down in terms of quantity but increase in terms of quality) goes down.

What does a Search Engine Optimization firm do in order to achieve its objective of ethically optimizing your website? One Search Engine Optimization firm may apply a different set of SEO strategies versus another Search Engine Optimization firm, but they both focus on one aspect: the search engine keyword or keywords. Essentially, the keyword is the major rating criterion of a relevance rating; i.e., how often it appears in the website or content. Although more sophisticated discernment algorithms are being implemented by the search engine’s “spiderbot” to weed out unethical practices (e.g., embedding keywords in articles or content that do not have any logical connection), the keyword density still the key.

Some of the strategies that a Search Engine Optimization firm employs are as follows:

• Keyword Rich Domain Names

This is the most “no brainer” strategy that a Search Engine Optimization firm could employ, yet is one of the most difficult to implement. The proposition of this strategy is that the best way to get a high ranking for a keyword relevant site is to embed the keyword into the domain name. For example, www.recipes.com will obviously get top ranking when the keyword “recipes” is used in the search box (as a side note, if you are looking for recipes, you might even just skip the search engine altogether and instinctively enter www.recipes.com). The problem with this strategy, of course, is that these domain names are probably owned by someone else already, in which case, the Search Engine Optimization firm could embed the keyword in a longer domain name like, e.g., www.mothers-recipes.com or www.home-cooked-meal-recipes.com, which, when combined with other SEO strategies could potentially even outrank www.recipes.com.

• Content Optimization

In this strategy, the Search Engine Optimization firm ensures that the content is ethically filled with all the relevant keywords to which the website is responsive to. This is accomplished by framing the advertising copy around the keyword and making it appear as many times as relevancy allows, including the keywords in the text articles, etc. The Search Engine Optimization firm has several ways of determining the possible relevance rank of your website based on the level of content optimization.

• Meta-Tag Optimization

All websites use HTML in several parts of the website’s program. In the body of the HTML program are areas that the programmer uses, among other things, for remarks (e.g., to remind him what the code is all about). The content of these areas (called meta-tags) do not have an impact on how the website looks but is “crawled through” by the search engine’s “spiderbot” all the same. Because these meta-tags play a factor in the website’s relevance, a Search Engine Optimization firm will normally embed as many keywords as ethically allowed to into them.

In selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm that you will use to optimize your website, be sure to put a heavy premium on its experience and reputation. Also, avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that engages in unethical (and illegal) practices just to increase the number of visitors to your sites. Avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that is vague about how it is going to optimize your website. If it has nothing to hide, then it should be transparent as to what it is supposed to do. If you heard about a Search Engine Optimization firm through spam mail, do not even consider it. If the Search Engine Optimization firm charges you a low price without any clear specifics as to what it will do, walk away. Finally, make sure to canvass your requirements before selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm you will use.

Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages. However, before these pages were placed in the index, they were each crawled by a special spider known as the GoogleBot. Unfortunately, many web masters do not know about the internal workings of this virtual robot.

In fact, Google actually uses a number of spiders to crawl the Web. You can catch these spiders by examining your log files.

This article will attempt to reveal some of the most important Google spiders, their function, and how they affect you as a web master. We’ll start with the well-known GoogleBot.

GoogleBot

Googlebot, as you probably know, is the search bot used by Google to scour the web for new pages. Googlebot has two versions, deepbot and freshbot. Deepbot is a deep crawler that tries to folow every link on the web and download as many pages as it can for the Google index. It also examines the internal structure of a site, giving a complete picture for the index.

Freshbot, on the other hand, is a newer bot that crawls the web looking for fresh content. The Google freshbot was implemented to take some of the pressure off of the GoogleBot. The freshbot recalls pages already in the index and then crawls them for new, modified, or updated pages. In this way, Google is better equipped to keep up with the ever-changing Web.

This means that the more you update your web site with new, quality content, the more the Googlebot will come by to chëck you out.

If you’d like to see the Googlebot crawling around your web property more often, you need to obtain quality inbound links. However, there is also one more step that you should take. If you haven’t already done so, you should create a Google Sitemap for your site.

Creating a Google sitemap allows you to communicate with Google, telling them about your most important pages, new pages, and updated pages. In return, Google will provide you with some valuable information as well. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. This allows you to pinpoint problems and fix them so that you can gain increased exposure in the search results.

The next Google bot in our lineup is known as the MediaBot.

MediaBot – used to analyze Adsense pages
useragent: Mediapartners-Google

MediaBot is the Google crawler for Adsense Publishers. Mediabot is used to determine wich ads Google should display on Adsense pages.

Google recommends that webmasters specifically add a command in their robots.txt file that grants Mediabot access to their entire site. To do this, simply enter the following code into your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

This will ensure that the MediaBot is able to place relevant Adsense ads on your site.

Keep in mind that ads can still be shown on a page if the MediaBot has not yet visited. If that is the case, the ads chosen will be based on the overall theme of the other pages on the site. If no ads can be chosen, the dreaded public service announcements are displayed instead.

There is a strong debate over whether or not the MediaBot is giving websites with Adsense an advantage in the search engines.

Even Matt Cutts has confirmed that the Adsense Mediabot has indexed webpages for Google’s main index.

He states, “Pages with AdSense will not be indexed more frequently. It’s literally just a crawl cache, so if e.g. our news crawl fetched a page and then Googlebot wanted the same page, we’d retrieve the page from the crawl cache. But there’s no boost at all in rankings if you’re in AdSense or Google News. You don’t get any more pages crawled either.”

This is very similar to Google Analytics, which also promotes a slightly higher degree of spider activity.

Those who run Google Analytics on their site can expect additional spider activity.

However, you certainly shouldn’t depend on any of these tools for getting your site indexed. The key to frequent spidering is having quality inbound links, quality content, and frequent updates.

Have images on your site? If so, you have likely been visited by our next Google spider, the ImageBot.

ImageBot – used to crawl for the Image Search
useragent: GoogleBot-Image

The Imagebot prowls the Web for images to place in Google’s image search. Images are ranked based upon their filename, surrounding text, alt text, and page title.

If you have a website that is primarily image based, then you would definitely want to optimize your images to receive some extra Google traffïc.

On the other hand, some web sites may not benefit from Google image search. In most cases, the traffïc from the Image search engine is very low quality and rarely converts into buyers. Many people are often just looking for images that they can swipe. So, if you want to save some bandwidth, use your robots.txt file to block ImageBot from accessing your image directory.

One of the few exceptions I would make is if you have a site dedicated to downloadable images.

Our final bot is completely dedicated to the Google Adwords program.

AdsBot – Checks Adwords landing pages for quality
useragent: AdsBot-Google

AdsBot is one of Google’s newest spiders. This new crawler is being used to analyze the content of advertising landing pages, which helps determine the Quality score that Google assigns to your ads.

Google uses this Quality score in combination with the amount you are willing to bid to determine the position of your ads. Therefore, ads with a high quality score can rank higher even if other advertisers are paying more than you.

This is one of Google’s many efforts to ensure that they are delivering the best results to their users.

Can you still block being spidered? Of course, but it will lower your overall Adwords quality score, which could end up lowering the positioning of your ads. If possible, it is best to give AdsBot complete access to your site.

Today’s Google bots are becoming more advanced all the time. However, nothing beats relevant, quality, updated content. Deliver that and the search engines will eat it up.

Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages. However, before these pages were placed in the index, they were each crawled by a special spider known as the GoogleBot. Unfortunately, many web masters do not know about the internal workings of this virtual robot.

In fact, Google actually uses a number of spiders to crawl the Web. You can catch these spiders by examining your log files.

This article will attempt to reveal some of the most important Google spiders, their function, and how they affect you as a web master. We’ll start with the well-known GoogleBot.

GoogleBot

Googlebot, as you probably know, is the search bot used by Google to scour the web for new pages. Googlebot has two versions, deepbot and freshbot. Deepbot is a deep crawler that tries to folow every link on the web and download as many pages as it can for the Google index. It also examines the internal structure of a site, giving a complete picture for the index.

Freshbot, on the other hand, is a newer bot that crawls the web looking for fresh content. The Google freshbot was implemented to take some of the pressure off of the GoogleBot. The freshbot recalls pages already in the index and then crawls them for new, modified, or updated pages. In this way, Google is better equipped to keep up with the ever-changing Web.

This means that the more you update your web site with new, quality content, the more the Googlebot will come by to chëck you out.

If you’d like to see the Googlebot crawling around your web property more often, you need to obtain quality inbound links. However, there is also one more step that you should take. If you haven’t already done so, you should create a Google Sitemap for your site.

Creating a Google sitemap allows you to communicate with Google, telling them about your most important pages, new pages, and updated pages. In return, Google will provide you with some valuable information as well. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. This allows you to pinpoint problems and fix them so that you can gain increased exposure in the search results.

The next Google bot in our lineup is known as the MediaBot.

MediaBot – used to analyze Adsense pages
useragent: Mediapartners-Google

MediaBot is the Google crawler for Adsense Publishers. Mediabot is used to determine wich ads Google should display on Adsense pages.

Google recommends that webmasters specifically add a command in their robots.txt file that grants Mediabot access to their entire site. To do this, simply enter the following code into your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

This will ensure that the MediaBot is able to place relevant Adsense ads on your site.

Keep in mind that ads can still be shown on a page if the MediaBot has not yet visited. If that is the case, the ads chosen will be based on the overall theme of the other pages on the site. If no ads can be chosen, the dreaded public service announcements are displayed instead.

There is a strong debate over whether or not the MediaBot is giving websites with Adsense an advantage in the search engines.

Even Matt Cutts has confirmed that the Adsense Mediabot has indexed webpages for Google’s main index.

He states, “Pages with AdSense will not be indexed more frequently. It’s literally just a crawl cache, so if e.g. our news crawl fetched a page and then Googlebot wanted the same page, we’d retrieve the page from the crawl cache. But there’s no boost at all in rankings if you’re in AdSense or Google News. You don’t get any more pages crawled either.”

This is very similar to Google Analytics, which also promotes a slightly higher degree of spider activity.

Those who run Google Analytics on their site can expect additional spider activity.

However, you certainly shouldn’t depend on any of these tools for getting your site indexed. The key to frequent spidering is having quality inbound links, quality content, and frequent updates.

Have images on your site? If so, you have likely been visited by our next Google spider, the ImageBot.

ImageBot – used to crawl for the Image Search
useragent: GoogleBot-Image

The Imagebot prowls the Web for images to place in Google’s image search. Images are ranked based upon their filename, surrounding text, alt text, and page title.

If you have a website that is primarily image based, then you would definitely want to optimize your images to receive some extra Google traffïc.

On the other hand, some web sites may not benefit from Google image search. In most cases, the traffïc from the Image search engine is very low quality and rarely converts into buyers. Many people are often just looking for images that they can swipe. So, if you want to save some bandwidth, use your robots.txt file to block ImageBot from accessing your image directory.

One of the few exceptions I would make is if you have a site dedicated to downloadable images.

Our final bot is completely dedicated to the Google Adwords program.

AdsBot – Checks Adwords landing pages for quality
useragent: AdsBot-Google

AdsBot is one of Google’s newest spiders. This new crawler is being used to analyze the content of advertising landing pages, which helps determine the Quality score that Google assigns to your ads.

Google uses this Quality score in combination with the amount you are willing to bid to determine the position of your ads. Therefore, ads with a high quality score can rank higher even if other advertisers are paying more than you.

This is one of Google’s many efforts to ensure that they are delivering the best results to their users.

Can you still block being spidered? Of course, but it will lower your overall Adwords quality score, which could end up lowering the positioning of your ads. If possible, it is best to give AdsBot complete access to your site.

Today’s Google bots are becoming more advanced all the time. However, nothing beats relevant, quality, updated content. Deliver that and the search engines will eat it up.