I thought this would be a fun game to see how much Google is really worth. Sure we hear numbers thrown at us from time to time; we know their stock prices are ridiculous and that they’re one of the biggest companies in the world, but what does that mean to the average Joe? Let’s see how much we have to work with and what we can do with that money:

1. Currently, the market value of Google is right at $140 Billion. That’s $140,000,000,000.00.
2. That could make 140,000 people millionaires.
3. It would take someone making $50k annually, 2.8 million years to make that much.
4. It would take someone making $250k annually, 560,000 years to make that much.
5. You could buy every single song available at itunes, 40,000 times.
6. It could buy 530,303 average homes at the current value of $264k each.
7. They could give every single American $450 each and every human on earth $20 and still have some left over.
8. While it is a lot of money, it’s a mere 1.5% of the U.S. National Debt
9. It’s only half of the market value of Microsoft.
10. It could put over 4.5 million kids through a 4 year private college And put over 10.5 million kids through a 4 year public college.
11. It would pay over 28 million people’s health care for one year.
12. You could buy 9.3 billion hamburgers, which would equal 1.4 burgers for every human on the earth.
13. It could pay the NBA salaries for over 50 years.
14. It could pay for almost all online spending for one full year.
15. They could buy 3.5 billion text ads from LinkWorth for 1 month :).
16. They could have purchased over 93,000 Randfish proposals during the Super Bowl.
17. You could buy over half a million top end Lamborghini’s.
18. It would only pay for around 30% of the Iraq war.
19. They could pay for the next 350,000 years of current Presidential salaries.
20. And, it’s roughly $140 billion more dollars than I have!

A lot of folks in our industry, and just about any other industry that relies on an online presence, have long been frustrated with the lack of information Google shares publicly. But maybe that is changing… at least for webmasters, SEO’s, etc…

Adamap.com has a screenshot of the Google Keyword tool showing search numbers instead of just the generic green bar measuring a keyword’s search volume.  I haven’t seen this personally, yet, but I hope it is something that will go live soon. In our jobs at LinkWorth of developing custom linking strategies, keyword search volume is something we spend a lot of time researching.  It would definitely be nice to have some new alternatives to the Overture Keyword tool since it’s so fickle when it comes to usability.

Danny Sullivan has a great post on Search Engine Land in response to Ed Kohler’s post about why Google should buy the Ford assembly plant in Minnesota. I thought it was really funny. That lead me to add a 6th reason to Danny’s post which was: It’s only a matter of time before Google is manufacturing automobiles anyway.

Is it that far-fetched? Google has their hands in “all-that-is-profitable” already so why not this? It’s rumored that Google is creating a phone, they went out and bought YouTube, and the list goes on and on. So, why not build gadgety cars? I’ve heard that they give their employees “bonuses” if they buy hybrid vehicles so maybe their spin could be “The GoogleCar: A true hybrid vehicle”

Just think about it for a minute. The term “hybrid” currently refers to the use of both electric and gasoline engines in vehicles. Google could take it a step farther by creating a ride that is always “online.” This is a piece of cake. Scarlett, get Sergey & Larry on the phone!

They build a green car (ethanol/hydrogen/solar/electric…whatever it takes) that has all of their technology built into it. Equipped with high speed mobile internet, you start the ignition using GMail inside your house on a cold morning. Hop in to the toasty, pre-heated GoogleCar and simply vocalize your destination. The GoogleCar will not only show you how to get there, but feed you personalized advertisements during your journey and point out all of your favorite restaurants, bars, or other landmarks along the way. Maybe they’ll even create “Google AutoPilot” so you don’t even have to drive.

If you want to rock out, GoogleRadio will accommodate you. (It’s full of ads, too, but hey…this is the GoogleCar, after all) Want to watch a video or two? YouTube will never be far away. In fact, the several flat screen displays are all touch-screen so passengers in all seats can navigate the web.

The possibilities are endless. Maybe we should sponsor a GoogleCar wiki so our visitors can help us think of features or something. Hmmmmm….food for thought…..

Here are five tips from a Roofer SEO on how you can get noticed by others in your online market:

1. Create free tools that everyone can use.
   Think of something that would help you, have it put together, then offer it up for everyone else to use on your site or theirs.
2. Write reviews about other services within your market.
   If you can spend the time to learn all the other services in your market and give a constructive review, you’ll be surprised at how far flattery will get you.  Not to mention the social networks that may pick up your reviews and send loads of new readers.
3. Participate on your peers websites.
   Look for forums or blogs and interact with the owners and users on their website.  Make sure you use your name and include a link to your website in your profile.
4. Make public announcements through the press about your product or service.
   Use press releases and have them shown in popular news outlets like Yahoo and Google.  People like to keep up with the latest news related to their own market.
5. Network yourself through conferences.
   Most every industry will have some sort of conference or expo that will be full of people that are there to meet others and learn about products or services they may not have heard of.  Setup a booth and meet as many people as you can. You can also use webinar software to host your own online events
6. BONUS TIP:  Show up on the top of search results for keywords in your market.
   Anyone in your market will see who shows up first when potential customers enter your search terms.  If your website appears at the top for most search terms in your market, others in your market will try to figure out what you’re doing to capture most of the traffic. If you need WordPress support services, don’t hesitate to contact the experts at WebCitz.

These are obviously not the only solutions out there, but these will definitely get one going in the right direction.

Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing wrote a good blog today about using Press Releases as Online Marketing Tools. It talks about how you can utilize Press Releases to not only get more exposure and traffic, but how you can use them as a tool to build your Link Popularity as well. If you’re thinking that Press Releases are only for large corporations, or that they won’t do anything to help you, we think you might want to reconsider. It has some very good points and advice in it, but 2 of his 10 steps really stand out in my mind:

Think upward and to the left. Optimize a press release using web page optimization principles and keep in mind that important keywords need to be near the top of the document with the most important keyword phrases first.

Optimizing a Press Release is as important as optimizing a web page on your site. The better optimized the Press Release is, the better chance you’ll have of not only pushing that Press Release higher in the natural listings but the better chance you’ll have at adding more “link juice” when it passes the value from the site it’s on to your site.

Distribute the release via a wire service like Business Wire and PRWeb or PRNewswire. If you distribute the same release through more than one wire service on the same day, it is very likely that the news search engines will filter out the duplicates. If your story has more than one angle, take advantage of that and mix it up.

Writing a great Press Release won’t do much for you if you don’t distribute it well, of course. Email me to find out how LinkWorth can help you not only write a great Press Release, but how we can help distribute it to a ton of outlets.

We’re looking to make our blog as interactive and informative as possible with our readers. Along with the LinkWorth staff beginning to add posts, we want to offer our readers the ability to add their own information. If you want to have a voice on our blog, go here:

SUBMIT A BLOG POST TO LINKWORTH

You do not have to have an account to submit a post, just complete the form. All submissions will require approval before it is published.

Obviously we reserve the right to not publish any post we feel is not a fit for our blog, but if it is something our readers would be interested in, we’ll definitely post it.

Business 2.0 put together a list of the next big Web 2.0 startups. It’s a great read to go through and find more info on each of these companies. Some the sites I’ve seen before, but I had no idea how big they really are, with others being brand new to me. Here is a condensed version of the list:

1. www.StumbleUpon.com – Something so simple, yet so much fun. It’s channel surfing, on the web.

2. www.Slide.com – A fancy software that slides photos. You’ll see it all over myspace.

3. www.bebo.com – A social marketing community that has a bit more privacy than myspace.

4. www.meebo.com – This is one I had not heard of but instantly was attached to. Organize all your chat programs into a single browser window. Unlike running a program on your computer, it’s run inside your browser.

5. www.wikia.com – this is an obvious one most have heard of, wikipedia.

6. www.joost.com – While not officially launched yet, they claim it’s going to be the new wave of internet television. They are accepting beta users currently.

7. www.dabble.com – A tool that allows the organization of videos into play lists, which can be shared.

8. www.metacafe.com – Youtube on roids. Metacafe has a program that pays submitters based on number of views.

9. www.revision3.com – video production service for geek related shows. A founder of Digg behind this.

10. www.blip.tv – a platform for syndicating online shows.

11. www.fon.com – move over vonage, here comes fon. Fon, like Vonage, uses existing big company networks and creates networks on top of existing networks. “Foners” install a wireless router and allow people to connect to their router. This occurs all over the world.

12. www.loopt.com – track the movement of your mobile pals.

13. www.getmobio.com – use your mobile phone to find services within your vicinity.

14. www.tinypictures.us – upload phone photos for others to view and comment on.

15. www.soonr.com – allows a mobile phone to search documents on a pc.

16. www.turn.com – advertising program with a multitude of options or outcomes and advertisers pick how they would pay per scenario.

17. www.adify.com – one of the more uninteresting companies/services in the list. I think LinkWorth.com is more exciting with more to offer, but hey, congrats to them for getting where they are. Oh yeah, they provide advertising similar to Adbrite and ProductExpert.

18. www.admob.com – the LinkWorth of the mobile industry. 😀 No, admob.com serves ads through mobile phones.

19. www.spotrunner.com – a one stop shop for low cost 30 second tv spots. Huge investments made to this company.

20. www.vitrue.com – it’s youtube with infomericials. Corporate companies get to promote their products through this site. Create product/service videos and upload for all to watch.

21. www.successfactors.com – give up half your profits to bring on successful management.

22. www.janrain.com – a tool to consolidate all of your logins into one single login.

23. www.logoworks.com – automates the creation of your logo for business cards, stationary and such.

24. www.reardencommerce.com – sells a virtual web assistant or secretary that handles daily agenda’s.

25. www.simulscribe.com – FINALLY something I have wanted for so long! A way to convert voice messages into text for text messages or emails. So while driving down the road, no more running over innocent people while trying to type in an email or text message, you can just talk into the phone and have it type for you. Thank you simulscribe!

I also want to send a thanks to Tom Nguyen for sending this story to me. Great read.

If you have been part of the LinkWorth community for almost 2 years, you should remember a new product we rolled out called “Billboard Link Ads“, which will soon be called “LinkBB“. The idea behind LinkBB was the ability to push a product or service on “other” websites by having an entire content page hosted on these other sites. Not only did it create relative content around your embedded text ads, but advertisers could really pitch their product and/or service to butter up the potential lead and hopefully make a conversion once they made it to your site.

As time has past, a few places have popped up that basically take the original idea and make easy to understand blog terms. Payperpost.com was one of the first I know of (could have been others), then TLA jumped in with Reviewme.com. I think there is another one or two, but really nothing worth mentioning for free pub. I have not tested either of the places out, just read actual user feedback and there are some very obvious road blocks we can see that have not been addressed yet. The basic concept is extremely easy and very similar to something I read 2 years ago (wink wink). With that being said, I think these places are doing well and providing a decent product. Patrick is one of the nicest guys out there, so I definitely wish him the best and while I have not spoken with anyone from Payperpost.com, I’m sure they’re great people as well, and I believe everything is under control and they’re doing wonderful.

This is where I now announce that we, LinkWorth, of sound mind and body, we’ll soon have a nice fat list of new products and newly updated products already on the list. One of which will be referred to as “LinkPost“. It will be a glorified use of what we’ve had for a couple of years with a few additional bells and whistles on it. These added features are going to be so simple, but so “I can’t believe this hasn’t already been done” simple. We have no need for new website names or anything, we’re just going to add it to our product list. These will be launched completely after “Extreme Makeover: ‘Web’ Edition” has completed our amazing transformation. 😀 (Yes I have thought of a show like this already, but I just don’t think the stories are sad enough to have many interested in it, but it would be fun!)

We are extremely excited we’re nearing the time to unveil all of our hard work. We hope you are as well. Our goal is to begin stuffing our customer’s pockets with more money from better products and an easier flowing website to simplify the process.

GO MAVS!!

With the greatness of StumbleUpon, a time killer in itself, making some kind of organization can sometimes help find the best of the best. So no more wasting time, here is my top 10:

1. Papervision3D – Click on the images and enjoy the craziness.
2. – This is one is a great time killer if you are into the night sky and what exactly is out there.
3. – Stellarium takes the sky-map above, to a whole new level. If you want to see exactly what you see when you look at any part of your sky at any time of the day, download and install the freeware software. It is open source and there are no ads or anything involved. Learn about all stars and constellations. You can even have falling stars while you’re gazing.
4. I’ve got a big bag of crabs – Something that puts you in a transe and you can’t take your eye’s off.
5. Killer Music Player – This is a very cool music tool that allows you to build your music and listen to it.
6. Unusual Deaths – this is a wiki version that has all of the popular deaths and how they died. It tends to focus on the real bizarre.
7. Super cool fast animated video’s of cosmos. Speed time up to see the future faster.
8. Wildcard – This is a definite time kill. There are 5 options to mess with down in the lower left corner.
9. Popular Links For All – Social bookmarking to a new level. Everything you could possibly need.
10. What song was on your birth date – Enter your birth date and see what music was the top hit on that day.

There are loads more, so I’ll try to do it 5 at a time since 10 takes too long. It took me a good hour to do this for being sidetracked.

Today someone published a Digg about the biggest Google Bomb ever. It appears the individual was searching for “how student loans affect fico score” and wow were the results a little favored towards Google’s blogspot pages! Since I’m sure they are going to correct this issue before some read this post, I went ahead and printed the top 100 results to PDF so you could see what it looked like.

Google Results-PDF

The comments for this digg post shows Matt Cutt’s immediately responding to the digg with the following suggestion:

Hi, I work at Google and I’ll check on this. My impression was that something was happening in the migration from the old blogger to the new version of blogger, but I’ll definitely check with the blogger team about tackling this.

Hmmm, does this mean they place weight on blogspot sites over other sites? Probably not, probably just a huge bug, but interesting to see.