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• August Table of Contents

• Getting Started with Google Mapping
• Trouble Getting Listed in Google?
• What Monitor Size Should You Design For?
• Which Search Engine Gets the Most Requests?
  

Getting Started with Google Mapping

You can add maps to your web site using the Google Mapping API that is now available. It works with the major browsers, but use caution on others. You can see a sample page at:

http://www.netadventures.biz/maps.htm

It’s not hard to do a page like this. To start, go to:

http://www.getaholdofme.com/

You will need an API key to fill this out. At the left menu you can find a hyperlink to Google to get your API key. This is free, but you do need to register with Google and enter the URL for the home page of the web site where you will add the map. Copy the API to your clipboard.

Return to the previous site and enter the API and fill out the rest of the page. You can either enter the address and let Google geocode it to the latitude and longitude or you can enter the latitude and longitude from your personal GPS (if you have one or one you can borrow).

Note: Trusting Google to geocode it may give some amount of error, and won’t work at all if the street is new and not in Google’s geocoding directory.

Once this page is submitted, a sample map is generated and two pieces of the HTML code to create the map are shown. One short piece is pasted into the page where you want the map. The other piece goes at the very end of the HTML code (the instructions tell where.).

Now upload your page and give it a whirl. That’s all there is to it.

As you might guess, there is already a very good blog for those doing Google mapping. Find it at:

http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

There is plenty of material on the Internet for taking your Google mapping further.

Trouble Getting Listed in Google?

Having trouble getting a good rank in the search engines? Having trouble getting on that first page? We just helped a client get to the #2 position in Yahoo with 51,000 compting sites on their search phrase. Let us help you get up there?

Here are some tips to get that position in Google:

1. Google has a sandbox effect that sidelines new sites for several months. Use this time to build those all-important links into your site.
   
   
2. You want LOTS of links going into your site with anchor text in those links that relates to your site topic. Some will be reciprocal, but build one-way links in as well.
   
   
3. Be sure your page design is focused on a single topic.
   
   
4. Be sure you aren’t using any tricks to position yourself. No cloaking, hidden text, or doorway pages.
   
   
5. Remember that Google can’t index your site if your host isn’t up. Be sure you are using a reliable host.
   
   
6. If all else fails, remember our book has a long, long list of tips to help you.

What Monitor Size Should You Design For?

In doing web design for clients, they often want nice wide pages in their web site for their high-resolution monitors. The problem is simply that a big chunk of users don’t have anything more than a 800 X 600 screen. You force them to do horizontal scrolling to see your pages - not good.

OneState.com reports that the percent of each monitor size used on the web (global) now is as follows for the most popular monitor sizes:

With percentages dropping quickly after that. For our business site we have 57% at the 1024 X 768 and 15% at the 800 X 600. We had one user log in at 640 X 480, a pretty dead resolution now.

What this means, in simple language, is that if you don’t design for the 800 X 600 user, you are probably losing 15-20% of your market. One method to do this is to keep your design page size no more than 800 pixels wide. A second possible solution is to have the web page query for the user’s page size and adjust the design from that information.

Which Search Engine Gets the Most Requests?

The Nielsen/NetRatings reports that during June of 2005 Google ranked #1 of all searches conducted online with 47% of the searches. Yahoo! followed next with 22%, and MSN was third with 12%. From the first quarter of 2005 to the second, both Google and Yahoo! had single-digit growth in their search requests at 6% and 9% respectively. In a surprise twist, however, both AOL and Ask Jeeves showed double-digit growth at 15% and 16% respectively, almost three times the growth of Google. MSN searches actually dropped by 4%, but (as mentioned) was still third with 12% of the searches.