If you are setting up a website business, including setting up a blog, this article is for you and is here to help you to understand how to choose your website domain name and hosting company.

Paid for hosting or free hosting?

I would always recommend that you go for paid hosting and the reason for this is that you have more control over what you can and cannot do with you website pages and of course this is more professional.

A web hosting company that I use a lot is GoDaddy.com who are based in the USA and have a really great service where you can buy an all ready registered domain name. One of the benefits I have found with GoDaddy’s service is that they have a helpline which, even though I live in the UK, I have used a few times and it is sometimes very useful to be able to speak to someone in person in order to resolve an issue quickly and easily. There are not many web hosting companies that provide a free technical helpline like this.

If you buy an already registered domain name that is at least two-three years old, and if you are lucky it may already have visitors and a Google ranking, you will find it much easier to get onto page one of a Google search. Google tends to put “New” domain names on “hold”, just in case they have been set up as a spamming site, so a newly registered name will take much longer to be indexed and move up the page rankings.

So if you go to the GoDaddy.com website and go to the “Auctions” tab located at the top of this page you will be able to choose from hundreds of already registered website domain names. You can even get these for as little as $5!

So a suggestion, if you are setting up a website about let say “Phone Services” try putting this into GoDaddy’s “Keyword” box and change the “Keyword” “begins with” to “contains” and this will list all those sites containing your keywords. You could try entering one word at a time, so firstly try “Phone” and secondly, “Services” and see what comes up.

If you find a website domain name you like in this search, here is very useful Free tool called the Wayback Machine which will not only tell you how old this website domain name is, but also you can have a look at what it looks like by clicking on the historical pages.

The GoDaddy site will also tell you how many monthly visitors the site is presently receiving, although this is not as important as the age of the site.

The other check you can do for your potential domain name purchase is to check how many links are already pointing to it. Click here to get the free Link Popularity Check software and follow the instructions for this. What you will find is that you can very quickly enter this new domain name into this link checking software and with one click, you will see within seconds the links pointing to your chosen domain name from Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. This link information might give you an indication of the likely Google ranking it already has. For example, if there are 4-5 links under the Google column you might find this site has a Google Page rank of a one or two, of course this is not guaranteed.

Last night I was watching a program about how Bill Gates made Microsoft one of the Worlds biggest companies and made him the richest man in the World up until recently.

One aspect that was discussed on this program was the threat that Google poses to Microsoft. Bill Gates seemed to be really nervous about the power of Google and how they are developing their site so that PC users no longer need to buy Microsoft products like Word, Excel and Power Point, etc, as these programs are held on Google’s servers.

Google’s GDrive is a step in the direction that makes Mr Gates Nervous and is an online storage option where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. We are all familiar with having a C: drive and a D: drive, so how do you fancy having a G: drive too.

This new service from Google (thought to be launched in 2009) will allow you to access and update your information, including word documents and spreadsheets, your emails, your personal photos etc, just so long as your device has an internet connection. It could also mean that instead of your PC booting up from your hard drive (or your C: drive), it could be booting off the Google operating system.

By shifting pretty much the entire content of a user’s hard drive to Google’s servers, PC’s would become simpler and cheaper. These new devices would simply act as a portal to the web and perhaps we would just need a keyboard that interacts with our television set and nothing more, other than a “local” processor and some RAM memory to work on files locally.

This new form of computing has a new term, which is “cloud computing” on the basis that your information is sitting in “the cloud“.

Of course the benefits of this new system are numerous, one of which is having your data stored in another location or “the cloud”, so if your computer is stolen or if it crashes, then your data is “safe”. The second obvious benefit to businesses is the ability to share information with other users within your business as a large network, using the internet as the network connection.

One thing that you will have to consider is the security of the information held by Google; will you be happy for Google to hold all your data. What about security breaches? Google would have access to all your data files and all the information pertaining to your business! This information could be sitting anywhere in the world too – it might sit in the USA or perhaps in Indian, who knows where?

The only constraint on this service is the bandwidth you have with your Internet Service Provider (ISP), so as long as your service is a fast one then there should be no speed issues. Today the Internet and the connections to it are pretty reliable. However, there are still times when the Internet still goes down, only last week it was reported that Google’s servers in India were down.

In one of my businesses we have been cut-off from Internet connection due to faults on the line, usually a fault with BT. In this event, if all your data is stored remotely, you would not be able to access your files and work would grind to a halt! Is that how you would want your business to run?

Can you also imagine the law suits that would be flying around, should Google lose company data! This could prove to be an interesting dilemma trying to prove that the data was in fact sitting on Google’s servers when it was lost. This could be a lawyers mine field in the future and can you imagine a small business going up against the might of Google, should something go wrong.

As a business owner what do you think about the idea of the Google GDrive? Would you be prepared to trust your hard drive to Google? Please let me have your comments on this below…

I have decided to make this blog a “Do Follow” blog so that if you leave a comment on my posts you will receive a “follow” link to your website.

So what does that mean for you?

If you do not already understand the “No follow” rule I will explain this first. If a link from your website to another website has a “no follow” rule against it then Google will not count that as a link for PR ranking purposes.

In most cases, when a person makes a comment on a blog, the link back to their own website will include the “no follow” rule and therefore, Google will exclude this as a link back to that website. The reason blogs started to include the “no follow” rule was to restrict the number of spam comments, however, if you use a spam comment checker like Askimet then the amount of spam that gets through is limited.

Therefore, by removing the “no follow” rule this will encourage people to make comments on your blog and to return to your blog in the future.

So if you like the content of my blog and you want to receive a Google recognised link back to your own website, then please spend a bit of time posting your comments to my content.

However, please will you make your comments relevant to the post and to the content of this site and please do not spam me. Spammers will be found out and all comments will then be removed. Also, your website will then be black-marked so that you will find it harder to make comments on this and other blogs in the future, so play fair please.

By the way, thank you for stopping by and for taking your time out to read my blog site and I will say that comments that are meaningful to my posts are always gratefully received.

Finally, if you feel that what my blog has to offer is good and if you have made a few comments that link to your website, I would appreciate it if you could post a link back to me and not necessarily from the same website, in fact, it would be better for your link-back to come from another website so that the reciprocal link will have a better effect on the Google rankings for your and my website.

The European Union has announced that it has been investigating the terms of Google’s proposed deal to partner with Yahoo for advertising.

The deal would see Google’s advertising programmes built into Yahoo’s search engine in the US and Canada.

However, the EU Competition Commission argues that there are anti-trust implications because the two companies do business in Europe.

The EU’s present inquiry could escalate to a formal investigation.

The announcement follows on the heels of news of a similar anti-trust investigation by the US Department of Justice.

If it goes ahead, the partnership would control more than 80% of the online advertising market.

EU antitrust regulations have traditionally proven more strict than American ones, so the investigation could prove to be a significant stumbling block for the deal.

The World Association of Newspapers, which represents some 18,000 titles worldwide, joined the fray in opposing the deal on Monday.

“The reality is that a large portion of the traffic to most online newspapers’ websites today comes through paid search or natural results on search engines,” the group said in a statement.

“For this reason, competition among search engines is absolutely vital for newspapers – to ensure that no search engine can set monopoly prices for paid search ads, and to prevent any search engine from influencing users’ surfing habits by manipulating unpaid search results.”

Each advert will generate revenue for Google. However, there is considerable speculation that another motivation is to provide Yahoo with an alternative to Microsoft’s bid for a hostile takeover.

Both Yahoo and Google say that they are cooperating with investigators on both sides of the Atlantic, but argue that they will go ahead with the deal in October.

News reported by The BBC

Google has acknowledged that its stake in rival internet firm AOL may now be worth less than the $1bn (£519m) that it paid for it two years ago.

In a statement to market regulators, Google said the value of its 5% investment may be “impaired”, meaning its worth could have diminished.

Google took the stake largely to cement an advertising partnership with AOL.

But AOL has struggled in recent years and owner Time Warner has indicated it could sell the business.

Financial strength

Time Warner recently took steps to separate the access and content functions of AOL, seen by analysts as a prelude to a sale of both operations.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo are seen as possible buyers of AOL’s content arm as they strive to compete more effectively with Google.

Google’s statement represents its first public acknowledgement that its holding in AOL may be a financial drain on its own business.

“We believe our investment in AOL may be impaired,” its statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission noted.

“There can be no assurance that impairment charges will not be required in the future and any such amounts may be material.”

Google did not say how much it thought its AOL stake was now worth.

Although unfortunate, AOL’s declining value is unlikely to prove a major problem for Google given its enormous financial strength.

The firm made a $2.5bn profit in the first six months of the year and currently has cash reserves of more than $12.5bn.

News reported by The BBC

The internet search engine Google has been named as Britain’s top “superbrand”, after it beat Microsoft for the premier spot, according to a YouGov survey published today.

The search engine, which came third in the same consumer poll last year, took pole position in a list of 500 brands available in the UK, beating Mercedes-Benz, the BBC, British Airways and Royal Doulton.

Since Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then students at Stanford University, it has become one of Britain’s most familiar names, launching Google Earth and acquiring YouTube, the popular video sharing site, in 2006.

According to Hitwise, which compiles a list of the top four leading UK search engines by volume of searches, Google.co.uk had a 73% share of users in May, significantly ahead of its rival Yahoo! which made it to number 75 in the YouGov poll.

Microsoft, despite its fall to second place, still looms over rival Apple, which despite its high-profile launch of the iPod and iPhone, narrowly missed a place in the top 10.

In the poll Sony took 10th place, beaten by BMW at seven, Bosch at eight, and Nike at nine.

Surprising omissions from the top 100 include Tesco, which only managed 300th position, showing a fall of 230 places from last year, and Sainsbury’s, which fell 194 places to 232nd position. Fastfood retailers such as McDonald’s and Burger King also showed significant falls on last year.Stephen Cheliotis, chairman of the Superbrands Council, a brand valuation consultancy that commissioned the poll, said: “Lifestyle brands, particularly those in the technology sector, have considerably more sway with the public than everyday staples such as the supermarkets, which now seem further than ever from the affections of the British people.

“As the spectre of rising food costs continues, they are likely to come under further scrutiny.

“The results are a further sign that Google is continuing its dominance. It is clear Google is the brand that people value at work and in their personal lives.”

Marks & Spencer, which has experienced a rollercoaster ride, recently issuing a serious profits warning that sent shares plummeting to their lowest level in seven years, still holds sway with the public and makes the top 20, at number 17.

The Royal Albert Hall, at number 26, tops the list of cultural destinations, followed by the Tate galleries at number 46. The Eden Project in Cornwall is at number 50.

The Guardian and Observer appear on the list of superbrands at number 229, 184 places ahead of the Independent and 60 ahead of the Daily Telegraph, but behind the Times/Sunday Times titles which are placed at 122nd.

An alternative list of “coolest brands”, to be published in Dazed & Confused magazine in September, lists five fashion brands in the top eight, including Levi’s.

News reported by The Guardian