As the owner/webmaster/developer/marketer of several highly-trafficked sites, I receive more than my fair share of spam that somehow creeps through the filters we have in place. Although the majority of the spam I receive is some variant of the usual scam about transferring large sums of money from a political refugee’s off-shore bank account to mine (some of these are pretty funny and creative), recently there’s been a huge increase in emails from marketing companies offering their services.
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I just received notification that Google Analytics (formerly Urchin) is now offering free website analytics, whether you’re a Google AdWords customer or not. I signed up for an account using my existing Google account info and set everything up in under five minutes! I currently use a combination of a hosted version of Webtrends and a desktop version of Clicktracks for deeper analysis, but have looked at Urchin in the past.
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Great reading material here…an email from Bill Gates and a memo from Ray Ozzie (CTO of Microsoft) sent to top management just before the press conference in San Francisco last Tuesday where Gates spoke about Microsoft’s two newest web services, Microsoft Live and Office Live. Both internal documents were supposedly “leaked” to the press and the story quickly appeared in The Wall Street Journal as well as The New York Times, among others.
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Software integration isn’t just a buzzword for online businesses, it’s an absolute must. Having your entire business automated is the ultimate goal in efficiency, and if you’re still wondering if it’s right for you let me offer a few reasons I believe every online business needs to explore their software options. Available integrated solutions vary greatly depending upon the size of your company and other business requirements, so I will not attempt to review what’s out there or offer software recommendations.
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Successful internet marketing is, was, and will always be about great content. Whether it’s a press release, a forum, your blog, or the hundreds of articles you offer for free on your site, it’s all just great content. Great content is what allows you to never have to “ask around” for links to your site or even pay ridiculous sums of money every month to get them. If you have great content on your site people will link to you naturally. And this is the only “sure” way to gain the exposure and search engine rankings that you need for your website. Period.
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Jim Boykin is the owner of We Build Pages and a long-time marketing addict whom I respect a great deal. His latest post offers some common sense but very effective advice on how to circumvent Google’s Sandbox effect that new websites experience for a period between 6-18 months.

The “secret” is…buy well-established exisiting sites that already have great content and powerful inbound links. Check out Jim Boykin’s blog for more information.
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If for some strange reason you’ve never checked out Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts’ blog, stop reading and go there now.

Jagger 3 Update

If you’re a regular like me, you’re either happy or sad to know that Jagger 3 is now visible at one of the Google data centers located at 66.102.9.104. Matt also posted that although there is still some minor flux the results include Jagger 1, Jagger 2, and Jagger 3. View your site(s) new positioning but do yourself a favor and ignore the hundreds of comments below Matt’s latest post.
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Bill Gates spoke with Computing magazine in an exclusive two-part article about, among other things (including his usual nostalgic rememberence of the PCs of yesterday), Microsoft’s fiercest competitor, Google. Gates claims he is “unimpressed” with Google so far:

“Which Google products are you talking about? Seriously? Other than search, which are you talking about? Google Talk? Wow. A total “me too” product. Even Gmail: what is the unique thing?”

Gates also goes on to say:
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