Where's the Gas?

My wife's friend who lives in North Carolina is having trouble finding gas and gas stations due to the recent shortage. I've found some interesting links and research I would like to share to chart the search engine activity on this topic. I hope everything settles down and gas supplies get back to normal soon. It must be very frustrating!

• BP Gas Station Locator
  
• Shell Stations
  
• Texaco Finder

Search Trends on Google for:

• "Gas Station Finder"
• "Gas Station Locator"
• "Find Gas Station"
• "Station with Gas"
  

Google G1 "gPhone" is finally here!

In a post a while back, I poked fun at what was just rumors at the time about Google's gPhone. Now that the actual Google G1 phone has been released on a T-Mobile microsite, I've very excited about getting my hands on one. It seems to combine the best of what the BlackBerry and iPhone have to offer. The G1 seems to offer more of a desktop like experience rather than a whole new interface, which I feel is a plus. The flip out keyboard is also a great feature. I've tried using Apple's iPhone touch screen and I'm not sold on using it for everyday text messaging. I have yet to handle one of these phones, but from the demos, it's clear that this is a good first shot for Google into the mobile phone market.

What's Your SEO Score?

A helpful tool provided by Hubspot, helps you grade you web site based on a variety of SEO factors. This tool is a great starting point for anyone looking to get a high level view of where their site ranks on all the major search engine factors.

One of the more interesting features of this tool is how it will analyze the content and grade on readability. As you can see, I need to work on my copy a bit to appeal to a broader audience.



Few tools really offer the kind of overall approach with recommendations like the WebsiteGrader. One other such tool is Trifecta offered by SEOmoz. I would recommend trying out many different tools to see what value they can provide.

Boggs on Blogs for SEO

Brulant / Rosetta SEO expert Chris Boggs comments on blog URL and domain strategy for search engine optimization. Enjoy!

Could PageRank Save the Planet?

I hope that my recent posts do not suggest that I am on Google's payroll, but there are some interesting things happening at "the Goog" recently that I would like to highlight.

One issue is a bit political, but very important in my mind, that being energy conservation. As I have always thought, and Google agrees, that much of what is holding back the U.S. energy wise is due to political influences rather than logical ones. Google suggests that energy independence is simply a math problem we can solve.

It makes a lot of sense. If you look back at what search engines used to be like in the late 90's, Google used the same math problem solving ability to come up with PageRank. Page rank being the math solution to solving the growing keyword spam plaguing the internet. We can only hope that the same approach can help us solve all kinds of issues for the benefit of humanity and the planet.

Google Chrome's Coolest New Features

After having almost a full 24 hours to review the new Google Chrome browser, I've come up with a handful of what I think are the coolest new features. Enjoy!

Find in Page Search - Allows you to find specific key phrases within the body of a web page.

Application Shortcuts - Adds shortcut icons to your desktop or start menu.

Bookmark Popup - Quick popup for adding bookmarks of your favorite sites.

Report a Bug - Allows you to report broken sites or "spam sites" to Google.



Incognito Browser Pages - Allow you to search the web freely without Google Chrome backing up your search history / activity for reference.




A Word on Toolbars

One feature I thought was great is the simplified tool bar that comes with Chrome. I've provided a side by side comparison to Microsoft's IE 8 tool bar and Google Chrome's tool bar as an example.

Google Chrome




Internet Explorer 8 beta

Google Chrome Browser

Google is set to release its own browser tomorrow called Chrome to compete with Firefox 3 and Microsoft's IE 8. I'm excited to see what Google has in store. After downloading and installing Microsoft's IE 8 beta, I was impressed by some of the features, but will stick to my favorite (Firefox).

A Word About Chrome

Personally, I'm not a big fan of chrome the metal. My mom's 78 Ford LTD had chrome bumpers which were nice when clean, but keeping clean was another story. I hope Google's new browser keeps it's shine longer than my mom's LTD.