Google is constantly striving to enhance products for businesses, and has rolled out a change for San Francisco, CA and Charlotte, NC – city pages will now highlight Google Places pages and Google Offers for small, local businesses within these areas.

City pages were introduced back in mid-June, available for Austin, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego, California. City pages present website owners with a local dashboard, allowing them to see their local business analytics from products such as Google Offers and Google Places. More>>

With Google rolling out its Google+ social network yesterday, earlier today they gave existing test users the ability to invite others to join the network. For those unfamiliar with Google+, the layout is similar to Facebook in that it has news streams, photo albums, and more advanced features such as Circles, allowing you to ‘group’ your friends and, if you so choose, limit conversion to a Circle of your choosing. More>>

You may have noticed the sudden colour change in your navigation bar when using Google.com. No, this isn’t a new customization setting allowing you to customize the look and feel of Google. This is a black horse that will take you for a ride into the wonderful world of the Google+ Project. More>>

With Facebook Like buttons scattered across the web, Google has created a new and exciting product in an attempt to fire back at Facebook’s success: the +1 button. The button launched late last week as an extension of Google’s search engine, giving you the ability to “+1” search results and ads that you like. In the foreseeable future you will also be able to like websites and content. More>>

As many of you know, Google and Bing have both confirmed that they’ve added social linking as another variable to their search algorithms, meaning that social linking effects search engine rankings. Social linking can be very powerful, and when you break it down you begin to hear different terms like social ranking, user authority and the frequency of tweeting, but how does it all come together to form a strategy that will help you increase search engine rankings?  More>>

If you’re looking to compete in your local market and have adopted a Local SEO strategy, you’re probably aware of Google Places and the importance of local references and citations to attract attention and improve rank. If you think about it from Google’s perspective, the more local references you have, the more trust and strength you can expect for your listing. But how do you know which sites to put emphasis on? More>>

Today marks a push and advancement in the Internet marketing industry. Salesforce.com, Sequoia Capital and Google Ventures have made an impressive investment of $32 million into HubSpot, a company that is leading the charge in Inbound Marketing. Hubspot founders Brian and Dhamesh are authors of a New York Times best-seller on Inbound Marketing, and are also the creators of the well known Grader tools used by many. More>>

Ladies and gentlemen, Google Hotpot has gone live. For those who aren’t familiar, Hotpot is the recommendation side of Google Places, allowing users to rate and review businesses and various locations. With the introduction of Google Places back in October, we saw a major shift in the way search results were presented, going from the traditional organic results and merging with Google Local to become Google Places. This resulted in a blend of traditional organic results and local Places. And as anticipated, Hotpot links will now also appear in Google search results. More >>

You create first class content for your website or your clients. Your writing is smart, your analysis is good, you even have a compellingly readable style. Your words look great on the page and make your clients feel warm and fuzzy!

But does it matter?

According to emarketer, the percentage of US companies that will adopt blogs for marketing purposes will rise to 43% in 2012, up from 34% in 2010. The use of blogs has been steadily increasing throughout many industries, with a forecast for adoption throughout media companies, retailers, marketers, and broader businesses such as B2B firms, academic institutions and government agencies. While this data is US specific, we have seen blog adoption throughout most industries in various countries. More>>

If you’re an Internet marketing consultant or webmaster who manages websites and campaigns for clients, or if you’re an Internet marketing agency, you’ll want to know about Google Engage.

Google’s Engage program provides you with free online training, including course material, on a variety of different Google products, including AdWords, Analytics, Google Places, and more! That’s not a bad start, but the cool part is that you’ll actually be rewarded for your participation. When you register, Google will give you AdWords vouchers that you can pass on to clients to encourage them to start an AdWords campaign for free – throw that in your PPC ad copy! More>>