Google Places could be considered a heavy weight champion in the competitive SEO ring. This simple tool can give your business a major leg up in Google’s search results if executed correctly. Businesses that don’t even rank in the first three pages in Google’s organic search results can still be displayed on the first page via Google Places. Google Places aka Google Maps is the answer to get your company visible amongst local search inquiries. Does your business have a Google Places page, and are you using it to its maximum potential?

February was a busy month for Google, which made 40 changes to the globally renowned search engine. These changes are aimed to improve the systems related to sitelinks, autocomplete, UI elements, indexing, synonyms, SafeSearch, related searches and more. Each little change on a website or search engine has the potential to make a large scale difference over time. From the following changes you can learn how Google is better structuring itself and take away some insider knowledge that you can apply to stay ahead of the ever changing digital curve. 

Yes it’s true, everyone is striving to make it to the top; the top of Google that is. This multinational internet search engine is known to process over one billion search requests each day and has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centres worldwide! It only makes sense to want to be the first candidate to pop up and be revealed to curious browsers and potential clients. But this highly used tool is a relatively new phenomenon that has taken hold of our culture since the late 90’s.

Recap of the fastest rising Google searches of 2011

Flow Visualization

Google+ hopes to be a major alternative to Facebook, but the nascent social network is still deciding on some of its key elements.

A member of Google+ can sort acquaintances and friends into Circles, use Hangouts for conversations, and share Sparks with other members. Circles are groups of people such as coworkers or family members. Hangouts invite a group of people into the same text or video chat, and Sparks show people what links, videos, or websites are popular.

The search engine giant Google is unveiling a new feature designed to make searches faster than ever before.

Google enjoys being the number one search engine in the world but they also understand that constant evolution and adaption is necessary to stay that way. However, does this new feature really appeal to users?

Google has recently created massive waves again by introducing "Google Wallet", an Android application that will store your credit cards and make it so you can pay with your phone. This of course has created a strong divide between supporters and naysayers.