Google Advertising Tools

Welcome to the first post in our blog on Google Advertising Tools!

We hope you enjoyed your time with us so far and that our content has been helpful for you. If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

In this series of posts, we’ll be looking at some of the best tools available for advertisers on Google AdWords. These tools can help you save time and money while also improving your performance. We’ll be discussing some of our favorite tools and tactics that we’ve seen work well for others, as well as sharing some tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way.

This first post will cover keyword research tools, which are great for uncovering potential keywords that may not be immediately obvious when doing basic research in AdWords Editor or Google Analytics.

Google Advertising Tools

You may have heard of this little thing called Google. You know, where 3.5 billion searches for information are made per day?

But Google is more than just a search engine. So much more.

In fact, there are numerous Google business tools in addition to its search engine that can be hugely valuable if you’re a marketer.

Download Now: How to Use Google for Marketing [Free Guide]
So, we decided to round up a list of the most essential Google marketing tools at your disposal so you can be sure your business is taking full advantage of all Google has to offer.

17 Helpful Google Marketing Tools for Business

1. Google My Business
   Want to get yourself some free advertising on Google? I kid you not — it’s a real thing.

All you have to do is claim your Google My Business listing (formerly known as Google Places), and your business can get featured in the search results (as well as in Google Maps) for local searches like the one pictured below. Check it out — all the businesses within the red call-out in the screenshot below are local Google My Business results for the search “mexican restaurant, boston.”

Best of all, unlike Google AdWords (which we’ll touch on later), none of those businesses paid for their positions in these local results.

google-my-business-listings

If you haven’t already claimed your Google My Business listing, follow the simple steps in this blog post to get your listing up and running. Keep in mind that as Google walks you through the setup of your listing, you’ll automatically create a Google+ Page for your business as well, which leads us to our second Google marketing tool …

2. Google+ Business Pages
   With the death of Google Authorship and the elimination of Google +1s from search results, the jury is out about the importance of maintaining an active Google+ Business Page these days if you’re not a local business. That said, given Google’s massive empire, we think it behooves all businesses to play it safe and create a Google+ Page, even if you only update it every so often. To create a page, get started here.

But if you’re a local business, setting up and maintaining a Google+ Page goes hand in hand with your Google My Business listing (see above), making Google+ even more critical for you. And considering your Google My Business listing will include a link to your business’ Google+ Page, it’s important to take some extra time to make your page the best it can be.

Learn more about how to optimize your Google+ Page in this free ebook, and you can check out HubSpot’s own Google+ Page here.

HubSpot’s Google+ Business Page

Last, if your audience is active on Google+, it may be smart to add the Google +1 share button to your website — particularly to articles on your blog. Google uses social signals as a ranking factor, so making it easy for your website visitors to share your content on Google+ can help your content rank better in search. To learn how to create Google +1 buttons, check out this post.

HubSpot customers can easily add the Google +1 button to their blog within the HubSpot Marketing Platform.

3. Google Webmaster Tools
   Want better insight into how healthy your website is in the eyes of Google? Just set up a Google Webmaster Tools account. Google Webmaster Tools will alert you to any red flags that could prevent your site from getting found in search results, and help you analyze your existing search traffic so you can understand how visitors are currently finding you.

Here’s an overview of how Google Webmaster Tools can help you optimize your website, straight from the horse’s mouth …

4. Google Suite: Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms
   Collaborating on a project with other marketers on your team? Google Suite is a collection of some great collaboration tools you can use in place of typical software on your desktop. Here they are:

Google Docs for Word documents.
Google Sheets for Excel spreadsheets
Google Slides for PowerPoint presentations
Google Forms for easily collecting simple survey responses
Consider using them to share and collaborate on marketing data analyses, ebook or blog post drafts, marketing or SlideShare presentations, or surveys and polls. Projects save automatically and can also be accessed across devices with a quick download of a mobile app.

Grab this free guide to learn how Google Suite can benefit your marketing campaigns.

google-spreadsheets

5. Google AdWords
   If you want to give your organic efforts to rank in search a bit of a jumpstart, it might make sense to dabble in Google AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) product. If you have yet to try it, here’s how it works:

You create ads that target specific keywords related to your business, and your ads appear above or to the right of organic search results on Google when people search for these keywords (see screenshot below). The cost your ads depend on the competitiveness of the keyword you’re targeting, but you only pay if visitors actually click on your ad.

For more resources about how to do PPC effectively, check out our PPC Marketing Hub here.

Google AdWords search engine results by Boston Plumbers

Keep in mind that AdWords can quickly become an expensive marketing tool, and unlike organic search, it offers quick wins rather than longer-term, lasting (and free) results. That said, if used smartly, PPC can help you plan your organic search strategy.

By testing different keyword variations using PPC, you can quickly figure out which keyword will send you quality traffic. You can then use this knowledge to target your organic search engine optimization and content creation efforts. This leads us to tool number five …

6. Google AdWords Keyword Planner
   If you’re looking to boost your organic SEO, you’ll want to do some keyword research first and foremost. Keyword research helps you identify keywords to target as you’re creating blog and website content, focusing your SEO and content creation efforts so you can get found by the right searchers.

The Google AdWords Keyword Planner, though a tool meant to help you plan your AdWords campaigns, can also help you search for new keyword ideas and suggestions to help you with your organic keyword research as well. Keep in mind you will need to set up an AdWords account to use the Keyword Planner, but that doesn’t mean you actually have to create an ad.

google-adwords-tool

If you’re a HubSpot customer, our Keywords App has keyword research tools built right in. The app provides keyword suggestions based on relevancy, monthly search volume, and difficulty.

7. DoubleClick Search by Google
   If Google AdWords helps you decide which keywords to target, DoubleClick Search is the other half of your search engine marketing (SEM) strategy.

DoubleClick is a suite of products by Google to help advertisers make and measure their ads so that they target the right spaces online. Its Search tool’s purpose is to “close the loop” on their marketing efforts between search and display, so that both advertising channels are complementing each other. The tool helps you understand which keywords to target given your audience, and how this market’s search behavior is changing in real time.

8. Google Trends
   In addition to the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends can be a great tool for helping you make smarter keyword choices. It enables you to evaluate the popularity of certain terms, compare them against other keyword variations, analyze how their popularity varies over time and in different regions/languages, and shows related keywords, which can be helpful in getting new keyword suggestions.

Trying to decide between two keyword variations for your latest blog post title? Do a quick comparison in Google Trends to see which one is getting searched more often:

google-trends

Google Trends can also help you identify trending topics, news, and content, which may be helpful for spotting opportunities to newsjack … but more on that in number 10.

9. Google Drive
   Google Drive is Google’s free online storage service, allowing users up to 15 GB of free storage in the cloud for files like photos, documents, designs, videos, etc. Trying to send a large image or PowerPoint file to others on your team? Google Drive allows you to share your files or folders with others, making collaboration easy and reducing the headache of too-large email attachments.

google-drive-files

10. Google Alerts
    Google Alerts enables you to monitor the web for mentions of specific keywords or phrases. Once set up, you’ll receive either email alerts or results via RSS whenever these phrases have been mentioned online. For instance, you can sign up to get notified whenever someone mentions your company, products, executives, or your competition.

This PR tool is a great way to stay on top of your business’ online reputation and react to online mentions of your brand in a timely manner.

google-alerts

11. Google News
    Newsjacking, or capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success, is a great way to piggyback off the success of a news story that is already getting traction. If you’re interested in taking advantage of newsjacking in your marketing content strategy, use Google News to search for and identify news relevant to your industry with good newsjacking potential.

To learn more about newsjacking and how to integrate it into your content strategy, check out our “Complete Guide to Newsjacking.”

12. Google Voice
    In an era when people use their phones to surf the web, it’s only natural that we use the web to manage our phone conversations as well. Google Voice , albeit only available in the U.S., allows you to do just that — making it easy to manage multiple phone lines, create personalized voicemail messages depending on who’s calling, and easily transcribe voicemail messages.

This also allows you to measure how useful a phone number is on your website. If you include this number on a Contact Us page, for instance, you can gain insight into the needs and behavior of users who visit your site.

To learn more about the various features available with Google Voice, check out Google’s support documentation, and watch the video overview below.

13. Google Calendar
    Being organized is key to being a productive marketer — especially if you’re wearing multiple hats. Enter Google Calendar, an easy way to organize your day, keep track of meetings, and share your schedule with others. Things get even more efficient if your business uses Google Apps for Work so your colleagues can automatically use Google Calendar to book conference rooms and check coworkers’ meeting availability.

But when it comes to marketing, Google Calendar can also be a great tool for setting up an editorial calendar to organize your blog and other marketing content, which can be shared among content contributors both internally and externally.

For inspiration in setting up your own editorial calendar, check out our free Blog Editorial Calendar Template as well as this post for setting up your editorial calendar in Google Calendar.

HubSpot customers can easily set up an editorial calendar that’s integrated with their blog and other HubSpot Marketing Platform apps within the HubSpot software.

calendar-26

14. Google Analytics
    How many of your website visitors are brand new versus returning? How long are people spending on your site? Does it have a high bounce rate?

All of these important analytical questions can be answered by Google Analytics, Google’s free website analytics product. Google Analytics can give you smarter insight into your website traffic and help you understand how people are finding and navigating your site.

google-analytics

That said, website analytics is definitely not a replacement for marketing analytics (here’s the difference). You’ll still need integrated marketing analytics software like HubSpot’s to help you measure your entire marketing funnel and track your visitors all the way through to becoming leads and customers — the metrics by which marketers are ultimately measured.

15. Google FeedBurner
    Want to grow your reach? Then you should be allowing your visitors to subscribe to your website content, particularly your blog, using feeds. By setting up a Google FeedBurner account, your site visitors can subscribe to your content and receive regular updates via their web browsers, RSS readers, or email. And considering subscribers are extremely critical to the growth and reach of a business blog, offering subscription options for your content isn’t something you want to overlook.

HubSpot customers can get RSS feeds (as well as email subscription features) for their blogs right out of the box.

16. YouTube
    That’s right! YouTube has been a Google product since 2006, and considering the fact that YouTube’s more than 1 billion users watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views every day, video marketers can’t afford to ignore it as a powerful marketing tool.

So if you haven’t already, create a YouTube channel for your business here. Then check out HubSpot’s own YouTube channel here.

17. Google AdSense
    If you do manage a YouTube channel, don’t forget Google Adsense.

AdSense is the perfect tool for marketers who manage and create content for a growing internet property, but don’t know how to make money off of it. If you apply to YouTube’s Partner Program and host ads on your videos, you’re actually required to have an AdSense account.

The tool connects your web property with a network of advertisers who are looking to host ads on channels that appeal to their audience. So, if you manage a blog, website, or video channel that matches the audience of an active advertiser, AdSense will place their ad on your property, bill the advertiser, and pay you for hosting it.

Not everyone needs every Google tool on this list, but even the most basic products — when used the right way — can make a business leaner, smarter, and more efficient when communicating to its customers.

google tools list

Some days it seems like Google is working hard at achieving its goal of organizing the world’s information, making it easier for us to find what we need. Other days it seems like the company plans to take over the entire world. And with a code of conduct that includes the direction of “don’t be evil,” maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing [source: Google Investor Relations].

There’s no denying it — Google is an Internet powerhouse. It’s such an influential presence on the Web that when Yahoo! partnered with Google to put Google Ads on Yahoo! search results pages, people began to worry that Google would monopolize the search engine advertising business. Even the U.S. Congress began to question the allegiance [source: Hart]. Google has certainly come a long way — the company grew from a haphazard collection of computers networked together in a garage to a global corporation worth billions of dollars.

The backbone to Google’s business is its search engine, but that’s not the only service Google offers. Do a little digging on Google’s site and you’ll come across everything from productivity applications to an instant messaging client. Google developed some of these products and features itself. But in some cases, Google products started out as independent projects designed by other companies. If Google executives see an interesting application that helps the company achieve its goals, there’s a chance Google will make an offer to acquire that company.

­It ­seems that Google is reluctant to promote many of its projects from beta versions — early releases that may still have problems with functionality — to completed products. Even Gmail, Google’s e-mail client that launched in 2004, is still in beta. But some of the company’s initiatives are less finished than others. Google allows users to try experimental services at the Google Labs Web site, but admits that the services “aren’t quite ready for prime time” [source: Google Labs].

Let’s dive right into the diverse world of Google products. We’ll start by taking a closer look at Gmail.

­

Contents
Google E-mail
GTalk
Google Checkout
Google Calendar
Google Docs
Google Maps
Google Earth Maps
Google Desktop
iGoogle
Google Health
10: Google E-mail
Gmail organizes e-mails into threaded conversations.
Gmail organizes e-mails into threaded conversations.
COURTESY GOOGLE
In 2004, a Google press release revealed that the company wasn’t satisfied with dominating Internet searches — the second-most popular online activity. Google wanted to tackle the biggest online service on the Internet: e-mail. To that end, Google announced it would allow a select number of people to test a Web-hosted e-mail service called Gmail [source: Google].

Gmail started out as Google’s internal e-mail service. When Google decided to make Gmail available to people outside of the company, it chose to take a gradual approach. At first, the only way to get a Gmail account was to receive an invitation from someone else. Nearly three years after announcing Gmail, Google opened up access to the public at large. Now anyone can create a Gmail account.

­Gmail organizes messages into “conversations.” If someone sends you a message and you respond, Gmail will present the two messages together in a stack. The original e-mail will be on top and your reply will appear beneath it. Future messages will appear under the originals, which Gmail collapses so that they don’t take up too much space on your screen. By grouping messages and responses together, Gmail makes it easier for users to keep track of several discussions at once.

Some people think that communication by e-mail is dying (or is already dead). Google appears to have an answer to that as well: Google Talk. Find out more about it on the next page.

Keeping it Short
Some prefer to keep things short and simple. Google purchased the online messaging service Jaiku in 2007. Jaiku is similar to Twitter — it’s a microblog application. Jaiku users build up networks of contacts. Then they can send and receive short messages using a cell phone, computer or other device connected to the Internet [source: Jaiku].­

9: GTalk
The Web-based Google Talk gadget doesn’t have all the bells and whistles found in the desktop version.
The Web-based Google Talk gadget doesn’t have all the bells and whistles found in the desktop version.
©2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
Just when you thought the Internet had its fill of instant messaging clients, along came Google Talk. Introduced in 2005, Google Talk is an application that lets users send messages to each other. Unlike Gmail, the Google Talk client isn’t entirely Web-based. Users must first download an application to their own computers in order to access its full set of features.

Those features go beyond simple messages. You can send unlimited files — of unlimited size — to other users. Just remember that if you choose to send someone a big file, it’s going to take a while to transfer to the other user, especially over slower connections. Also, if you have a cap on how much data you can transfer over your network, you might face some hefty fees from your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Google Talk is also a voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) client. That means you can make PC-to-PC calls to other Google Talk users. You and your contact will both need microphones and speakers, but Google Talk handles the rest. Real-time voice transmission can take up a lot of bandwidth. Just like file transfers, you might risk going over your data cap with your ISP if you use this feature a lot.

Users can also download the Google Talk Gadget, a Web-based application that allows users to access many (but not all) Google Talk functions from a personal Web site like a blog or an iGoogle page. That means you can use any computer connected to the Internet to navigate to the right site and use Google Talk. Right now, using a Google Talk Gadget is the easiest way Mac owners can access any of Google Talk’s features.

That pretty much covers communication. What else can Google organize? How about Internet shopping? Read all about the Google Checkout service in the next section.

8: Google Checkout
A sample of the stores that use the Google Checkout system.
A sample of the stores that use the Google Checkout system.
2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
Many people use the Internet to shop. One of the drawbacks of online shopping involves transmitting your personal information over the Internet. If you want to purchase items at different Web sites, you have to enter all your information multiple times. Google saw the opportunity to create a tool that would allow merchants and users to take advantage of a universal checkout system.

Here’s how it works: first you create a Google account. If you already have a Google account, you’ll need to enhance it by providing a credit card number, billing address, shipping address and a phone number. Once you complete this step, you can go shopping.

All you have to do is log in to your Google account and look for Web sites that subscribe to Google Checkout. When you see the checkout symbol listed next to an entry on a search results page, you know that you can purchase items from that site using your Google account. You’ll be prompted to provide your Google Checkout password, but you won’t have to enter your credit card number or personal information again. You make your selections and Google handles the rest of the transaction. The merchant never even sees your credit card number.

­Google Checkout is free for consumers. Merchants must pay 2 percent plus 20 cents per sales transaction. But Google gives a discount to merchants who use Google AdWords. For every dollar a merchant spends in AdWords advertising per month, Google will process $10 of sales without charge [source: Google Checkout].

Google also offers products designed to help you organize your life. Find out more about Google Calendar in the next section.

Feeling Insecure
Some people may feel nervous about giving Google their credit card information. Google stresses that it takes security and privacy very seriously. Since the merchant never sees the credit card number, there’s less of a chance for someone to abuse the user’s information. But it also means that Google’s databases become an attractive target for hackers who want access to lots of credit card numbers.

7: Google Calendar
An empty Google Calendar.
An empty Google Calendar.
2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
In April 2006, Google released a free online calendar application called Google Calendar. If you have a Google account, you can create a Google Calendar. If you don’t have one, you can register for a free account.

You can use Google Calendar to schedule events and invite people to participate. By sharing folders, you can compare your schedule with other users. If everyone keeps his or her calendar up to date, it’s easy to avoid conflicts. A single user can open multiple calendars and view all the scheduled events in a single window. Since this can get confusing, Google displays each calendar’s events in a different color.

Google includes its search feature within the Google Calendar system. You can search for specific calendars. Calendar owners can choose to keep a calendar private or share it openly with everyone. It’s also possible to create multiple calendars with one account. That can come in handy for organizations that have multiple customer bases. For example, a theatre might have one calendar for the general public that shows the times of performances and a second calendar for actors to let them know about auditions and rehearsal schedules.

Another Google product that’s gaining popularity is a suite of applications that you’d usually find in office desktop software. It’s the Google Docs suite of programs. Find out more about them in the next section.

Join the Club
Google is big on giving users an integrated experience. That’s why Google is one of the companies leading the OpenSocial initiative. The concept is simple: build a system in which a user can create login information and profiles in a central location, then use that information whenever he or she wants to join a social network. It also benefits application developers — instead of building the same application for each social network, developers can create one version using the OpenSocial standards and port it across every network. Google walks the walk by using a similar approach with its products — you can access most of them by creating a single Google account.

6: Google Docs
Google Docs uses a simple folder and file organizational system.
Google Docs uses a simple folder and file organizational system.
2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
The Google Docs suite marks Google’s attempt at getting into the online productivity software game. The free suite includes a word processor, a spreadsheet editor and a presentation application. In short, it has the basic software applications many businesses need. Instead of saving all your data to your computer’s hard drive, you save your Google Docs files to a remote Google file system. Because the files are hosted on the Web, you can access them from any computer connected to the Internet. Your documents aren’t tied to a specific device.

Another feature of Google Docs is the ability to share documents and editing capabilities with other Google users. Multiple people can make edits to the same document at the same time. With traditional desktop applications, a project manager might have to handle multiple copies of the same file as various collaborators make edits and additions to the document. With Google Docs, everyone can make his or her changes directly to the file saved on Google’s servers. Google Docs also keeps track of earlier versions of the document — project managers don’t have to worry about someone accidentally deleting an entire section.

One drawback to Google Docs is that none of the applications are as robust as popular desktop productivity software suites like Microsoft Office. If you only need basic functionality, Google Docs can be useful. If you’re accustomed to creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations with all the bells and whistles, you’ll probably want to stick to traditional software.

We’re halfway through. Maybe you’re feeling a little lost with all these products and features. Never fear, Google has a solution: Google Maps. Find out more in the next section.

If You Can’t Build It, Buy It
Google has a reputation for buying smaller companies and incorporating their products. Google Docs is a good example — to build out the suite, Google bought the following companies:

Upstartle, which designed the word processor Writely
XL2Web, creator of an online spreadsheet application called 2Web Technologies
Tonic Systems, the company responsible for the presentation application
READ MORE
5: Google Maps
The Google Maps satellite view gives you a birds-eye perspective of cities like Atlanta, Ga.
The Google Maps satellite view gives you a birds-eye perspective of cities like Atlanta, Ga.
©2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
Google launched its online map feature in 2005, nearly 10 years after MapQuest’s online debut. Like its competitor, Google Maps lets users view maps of specific regions and get directions from one location to another. Google Maps allows users to view street maps, topographical terrain maps or even satellite views. For some areas, Google also has a traffic map feature that can alert you to any snarls or bottlenecks.

The Google Maps feature relies on digital map images from NAVTEQ. NAVTEQ provides map data to many different clients, including in-vehicle navigation systems. A company called deCarta — formerly Telcontar — provides the applications that power the mapping features. Google employees create the applications that combine the images from NAVTEQ and the mapping capabilities provided by deCarta to create the features you see in Google Maps.

In 2008, Google added a new feature to Google Maps. Now you can get walking directions from one location to another. Previously, Google Maps only plotted out driving directions, which have to take things like one-way streets into account. Now users can find the shortest walking route between two points.

Sometimes Google’s decisions don’t go over as well as they had planned. Google’s Street View feature for Google Maps is a good example. Google mounted special cameras to cars, then sent them through cities across the United States and France. The cameras pointed in different directions and took pictures every few seconds, giving users a street-level view of certain cities. But some people say that Google’s actions violate privacy. Google responded by blurring people’s faces in the photos to protect their identities.

Google Maps is closely related to the Google products suite called Google Earth. We’ll look at it more closely in the next section.

4: Google Earth Maps
The interactive globe in Google Earth
The interactive globe in Google Earth
GOOGLE EARTH™ MAPPING SERVICE
Google is always looking at new ways to organize and present information. One of those ways is to geotag data. Geotagging is a way of linking information to a real-world location. You view geotagged information on a map. While Google Maps could serve as a way to provide geotagged information to users, Google decided to go with an alternative. Google chose a digital globe and called it Google Earth.

Google acquired a company called Keyhole in 2005. Keyhole built the foundation for Google Earth, a digital globe that gave users the ability to zoom in and out of views ranging from a few dozen feet from the surface of the Earth to the equivalent of orbiting the planet. Google Earth gives the user dozens of choices, from viewing satellite images of the planet to overlaying maps, three dimensional terrain features and even fully-rendered cityscapes.

Google Earth also allows developers to create applications to link information to specific locations on the globe. Users can elect to view geotagged information ranging from general news reports to customized data. Google Earth makes it possible to illustrate news stories in a new way. For example, a news agency could illustrate a story about wildfires by plotting out the damage on Google Earth.

Originally, the only way users could access Google Earth was to download an application and install it on their own computers. The application accesses the Internet to get the latest information and updates, but the user’s computer hosts most of the application’s features. In 2008, Google launched a new Google Earth application that’s entirely Web-based. But since the full version of Google Earth needs a lot of computing resources to run smoothly, the Web-based version is a streamlined variation with fewer features than its desktop cousin.

When Google executives say they want to organize the world’s information, they’re not kidding. And they aren’t stopping with just the Web — they want to organize your information too. That’s where the Google Desktop application comes in. Read more about it in the next section.

Sketchy Applications
One important application related to Google Earth is SketchUp, a program that allows computer artists to create 3-D buildings. Artists can export their creations to Google Earth. They can add textures to their buildings, making them even more realistic. Visit cities like Tokyo or New York City in Google Earth and you’ll see many buildings laid out exactly the way they are in the real world.

3: Google Desktop
Google Desktop lets you install gadgets like these on your own computer’s desktop.
Google Desktop lets you install gadgets like these on your own computer’s desktop.
©2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
Have you ever had to search for a particular file on your computer? How about an e-mail that’s somewhere in the middle of a folder that has thousands of messages in it? The experience can be frustrating, and those of us who are organizationally challenged can endure a lot of stress while trying to dig up a particular piece of information.

That’s where Google Desktop can come in handy. It’s a downloadable application Google offers free of charge. Once a user downloads and installs the application on a computer, Google Desktop goes to work. It searches and indexes the files on the user’s computer. It does all this during the idle time when the computer isn’t working on other things.

It doesn’t just index the name of a file — it searches the contents as well. Maybe you don’t remember the subject of a particular e-mail, but you remember it mentioned something about a new sushi restaurant in town. You can search for the term “sushi” using Google Desktop and it will return results relevant to that term. The results look a lot like the search engine results pages Google generates for Web searches. One of those results should be the e-mail you need to retrieve.

Google Desktop also gives users the option to install personalized Google Gadgets. Gadgets retrieve information on the Web and present it in a window that stays on the user’s desktop. Information might include traffic and weather updates, news feeds or to-do lists, among other things.

If the Google Desktop doesn’t gather enough information for your liking, you can always create a specialized Google homepage that can pull information and applications from hundreds of sources. That’s the idea behind iGoogle, which we’ll look at in the next section.

2: iGoogle
iGoogle acts as a portal to other Web sites.
iGoogle acts as a portal to other Web sites.
COPYRIGHT 2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
­You probably have a small number of Web sites or applications that you use more than others. What if you had a way to collect those Web sites so that you could go to a single location on the Web to access all of them at once? That’s the concept behind iGoogle, a free aggregator or portal Web service.

The iGoogle service allows users to select multiple applications and news feeds from across the Internet. Each user can customize his or her own iGoogle page. For example, sports fans can add applications that grab the latest scores and statistics of their favorite teams from the Internet and display them in a dedicated window on the iGoogle page.

Google lets users organize their own iGoogle pages using a set of simple tools. One of those tools is a series of tabs at the top of the iGoogle page. Account holders can create tabs for specific categories of applications or news feeds. This makes it easier for users to find the information they want when they want it. Once the user sets up his or her iGoogle site, the application does the rest of the work.

While you can choose to include Google apps like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs in your iGoogle page, you aren’t limited to Google applications. Third party developers have created iGoogle applications that let you access lots of different Web-based programs. With the right application installed in iGoogle, you can access things like:

Digg
Facebook
Hotmail
MySpace
Pownce
Twitter
Yahoo! Mail
The final Google product we’ll look at is possibly the most controversial one. That’s because it’s an attempt to organize medical documents. Find out more about Google Health in the next section.

1: Google Health
The Google Health profile page
The Google Health profile page
©2008 HOWSTUFFWORKS
Changing doctors isn’t always a smooth experience. On top of all the normal stress of dealing with unfamiliar people, you also have to find a way to get your medical information from your previous doctor to your new one. That usually means you have to rely on other people and hope that they respond. Transferring your medical data is important because the more information your doctor has about your medical history, the more effectively he or she will be able to diagnose and treat you when you need it.

Google’s solution to this issue is to create an electronic, centralized location for your medical files called Google Health. Your doctors would transfer your files to Google’s databases. Instead of having to track down the physical location of a paper file, your doctor would be able to log in to a computer and pull up your entire medical history. You don’t have to worry about remembering which doctor has your file.

But some people think Google’s approach creates a serious problem. What if someone were to compromise Google’s security systems and access that data? Medical information is, by its very nature, personal. The potential for abuse of this information worries some people. Others don’t like the idea of a third party having access to all their medical information, even if it is secure from hackers.

Google stresses that its databases are very secure and that patient privacy is a primary concern. Google Health’s purpose is to put patients in control of their own medical information. It’s supposed to give them the tools they need to stay informed about health issues. It’s up to the individual to decide if the benefits outweigh the risks.

That wraps up our look at ten Google products. If the past is any indication, we’ll see many more Google applications and services in the future. As long as the world has disorganized information, Google’s job isn’t done.

Conclusion

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