Posted on June 17th, 2007 by Chris

9 Google products I couldn’t live without

I am a huge fan of Google. I have read Sergey and Brin’s autobiographies and really do like their style and business strategies. Like many others, I choose Google as my primary search provider but what most people don’t realise, it that Google offer so much more than search. I thought I’d share some of the cool Google products and Services I use on a regular basis…

1) Google Search
I had to start with Google search right? I almost always use Google search, both Google.co.uk and Google.com - Yahoo would be my second choice. It’s also woth learning the basics and advanced methods of using search to produce better results.
2) Google Video
As I’m unable to access Youtube (unless I run a proxy server, which by the way is illegal), I have Google Video to play with. As Google bought Youtube earlier this year, you will notice Youtubes video’s appear in the search results in Google Video. You can remove these results easily by adding -site:www.youtube.com after your keyword/s.
3) G Mail
I have 80 plus email accounts, one for each site I own however my personal emails almost always run via G Mail. Every time I see someone email me on a hotmail addy it makes me cringe… There are so many cool features with G Mail that’s it’s amazes me why people don’t transfer… Features include Chat, a great spam filter, dialogue style emails (grouped together) and huge memory.
4) Google News
From time to time I do like to know what’s happening in the UK, especially keeping up to date with Football. I once heard that Google news can be quicker displaying breaking news stories than BBC!
5) Google Images
I like to add images in my blog posts… many times Google Images provides a quick and easy tool to find a suitable image.
6) Google Webmaster Central
The Webmaster Central area offers some great reading on how Google crawls and index’s sites. This is not the reason I visit though, I use the applications that let me tell Google when to crawl my site, diagnose crawling issues and to submit a Google Site Map to let Google know about other pages that may not be indexing. I also recommend visiting the Google Webmaster Central Blog which is up-dated frequently with news that every webmaster should be aware of.
7) Google Toolbar
The Google tool bar offers many features, although I mainly only use 4 of them. The first is the Google Page Rank indicator, this provides me with a number from one to ten, the higher the number the higher Google values the page I’m on. For instance, my Adventure Travel Blog have a Page Rank 3 out of 10, Google.com has a Page Rank 10 out of 10. Another great feature I use is the G Mail button, I can simply click on this button which is located in my toolbar and my email account is opened (click “remember me” when logging in) The tool bar also offers a pop up blocker which is great, don’t you hate those annoying advertising pop ups? Lastly, I use the spell checker which is great for checking my spelling when writing out forms on the web.
Google Reader
If you are a Blog addict like me, you’ll want to use a management system that will allow you to manage all your subscribed Blog posts in one area. I wrote a Blog post titled “Do you use an RSS feed reader?” which will provide more details on using Google Reader.
9) Google Trends
Have you ever wondered what are the most popular keywords used in Google Search are? Google trends let’s you know! They have a USA and a UK version.