Marketing Matters - A thorough Marketing and Business Development Blog

In Google Maps we have a new feature called “Street View”. Though it is not available to all the cities in US (Only avaiable for Silicon Valley, Las Vegas, Miami, Denver and New York according to Colin Colehour from the US), it is the hottest news and Google Maps hits lots of traffic because of this new Feature. When you check Google Map, this additional feature will be available. If you click it, you can see cameras in those selected regions. Click it and drag the human symbol. It will show you that specific street’s 360 degree overview. Though it is a very good feature and its so cool, it will affect the privacy.

The Google help blurb on the Street View feature, displayed at Search Engine Land, explains how the navigation works:

• “Blue outlines show roads where street view is available.”
• “[A person icon on a green arrow] shows where you are on the map. The green arrow points in the direction you’re looking. You can drag the icon to navigate to a different location. You can also just click on a blue outlined road to go there.”
• “Drag the street view to look around 360°. Use the arrow buttons to navigate down the street. You can also use the arrow keys on the keyboad.”

Google in a press release adds that Street View data “will soon expand to other metropolitan areas.” The world is shrinking

Also at the Where 2.0 conference, Google announced Mapplets (as in “map applets”). A Mapplet is a special flavor of a Google Gadget, the XML/JavaScript-based widgets you can add to iGoogle – only that this time, you’ll be adding it to Google Maps. From a press release by Google:

“Mapplets enables third party developers to create mini applications that can be displayed on Google Maps, much like Google Gadgets are displayed on iGoogle. These Mapplets contain a variety of information, from housing listings to crime data, and tools like distance measurement. Users can select from a wide range of Google and third party Mapplets to display on the Map, essentially creating their own “mashup of mashups” directly on the Google Maps site, while still enjoying the built-in functionality of Google Maps, such as local search and driving directions. A number of our partners, including WeatherBug, Booking.com and Platial have already created Mapplets.“

At the Web2.0 expo today, John Battelle, Founder and Chairman of Federated Media Publishing inverviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt. They have discussed many issues.

• Google Docs and Spread Sheets
• DoubleClick Situation and Partnership
• Google Privacy
• Future of Google and Internet

etc.,

Got penalized by Google for duplicate content and excess of keywords? Google doesn’t care about your site PR even if you have 5 or more. Here are my suggestions to come out from sandbox.

• Rich Content
• Remove more links and pictures from your index page that have jammed your page to open slowly
• If you have some irrelevant back links, please remove it
• optimize every page of your site with rich content
• check the keyword density. There are many free tools available in web. Below are the list of keyword density tools. Try to use only one tool for all your pages.

www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
www.submitawebsite.com/keyword_density.html

There is a scary bug appearing in google maps somewhere in germany. Thanks to Google Blogoscoped

Has anyone noticed that there is a change in google search layout? Hmm. It looks good. They’ve moved all the tabs to the left side of the page. You can see the tags both in the top and bottom of the page. Google is testing this layout. But you can’t see the supply numbers (number of pages indexed for that particular keyword) and time taken at the top of the page. We can see only in the bottom of the page. You can’t see this layout when you browse every time. Search in google.com, not in country specific search (Example: www.google.co.in).