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The Strategy behind Google Chrome

mattias — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:16:02 +0000

No one, not even my wife, have missed that there is a new player on the browser scene, Google Chrome. Though we have different views on the topic, both me and my wife had the same questions and comments popping up.

Why are they releasing a browser?
If someone can gain market shares on the browser market, Google can.
Is this a good or a bad thing?

Of course there are no definite answers to any of the questions, and I think they have the chance to gain market shares if they manage to make the integration with their services in such a way it feels natural to use Google Chrome instead of any other browser available (and fully functional).

But the big question is why they are releasing a browser and how it effects the end user.

I will try to reason around this issue, without getting into the conspiracy area (just touching it slightly).

In order to understand Google Chrome, we have to identify where Google have their biggest earnings and what focus Google have. Google focus on search and their income comes from a lot of different services both for end users and for businesses, with their biggest income generating from advertising. They are building a solid online office suite, Google Apps, and they probably make a dollar or two on other services as well, but the big thing is advertising. I believe that there are three main reasons Google have entered the browser market.

1. Increase Possibility to Target Ads

Google have strategically and slowly moved the positions when it comes to knowledge about user behaviour. In the beginning long time ago (10 years exactly), the user was “anonymous” and only shared entities such as geographic location, recurring visits, clickstreams etc etc, the ordinary web analytics stuff all websites without user accounts get by using Google Analytics.

Later Google Account was released via services such as GMail, Search History, iGoogle and other personalised services enabling Google to gather more data for business purposes such as ad targeting and personalised search results. With Accounts enabled on these services, Google could gather personalised data while using services where you needed to be logged in.

Google Toolbar was the next step in further evolving the possibility to gather personal data, but still Google only gathered information from people who actually installed a toolbar, I do not know the numbers, but I believe that the ratio may be pretty low. Still Google could increase the knowledge about those users, gathering information when surfing on other properties than Googles, but, and a big but is that they made this sharing of private material opt-in, and probably lost a lot of information that way.

By offering a browser, focused on usability, stability and ease-of-use, they will now target the really big audience, and they can hide the privacy issues in a EULA. By owning the browser chrome, they will gather enormous amounts of user data, making it easier to target people with ads contextually targeted both to content and user behaviour.

With their own browser, they can start showing targeted ads even on websites that do not affiliate through their Adsense program.

2. Remove Technical Barriers for Earning Money on Advertising

By owning the browser, Google can make sure that targeted ads do not get blocked. Maybe this is not a huge problem right now, but as a strategic decision, it is important, by trying to move the masses to start use Google Chrome, Google can be sure that whatever technical solution they choose for displaying the ads, they will know that ad impressions will be higher and given that, conversions will rise, and given that Google Inc. will earn more money.

3. Distribution Platform for Coming Services

Google Chrome is Googles iTunes. I believe Google are building a distribution platform, enabling them to start targeting new markets, where companies such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Rhapsody and other companies earning their revenues from micro-payments.

Google are going to increase the marginal for advertising revenue, but in order to really grow, as fast as we have gotten used to, they need to find new mass markets where they really can earn money from transactions. So believe me when I say that within a couple of months Google will start taking market shares from Apple and Amazon on digital items such as music, movies, applications for the web and Android.

Conclusion

Matt Cutts says that there are no hidden agenda behind this, they just wanna make the web a better place. If I where a share holder on Google I would not like those kind of arguments. “making the web better” is just that, an argument, not a strategy. And as a public company Google Inc. must find new ways to increase the market value of the company. I believe Google Chrome is the fundamental piece in Googles future platform taking market shares from competitors such as Apple, Netflix and likes as well as the Chrome will enable Google to increase the marginal on their advertising programs.

11 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

mattias — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:23:54 +0000

Create Good Content

The best way to increase traffic to your website, is to offer good content or service. If people like what you are offering, they will come back to you and they will link to you. There is no single technique better than this one for generating traffic to your website. How many links do you think wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter or Firefox has? What they have all in common are great content, in different forms.

Search Engine Optimization

If the Search Engines cant find you, you dont exist. If you cant compete with wikipedia, facebook, twitter or firefox for good content, you have to use all the white-hat SEO-techniques you can find in order to optimize your website for search engines. This can be done both on-site and off-site.

Link Exchange

Contact people who run websites or blogs similiar to yours and offer them a link to their site in exchange for a link back to you. This is a good way to start building links organically to your website. When your website is getting more and more popular, more people will contact you with similar offers. Only link to sites that actually has something to do with what you are offering. In order to maximise the search engine optimization, make sure the links you get corresponds to the keywords you are targeting.

Affiliate programs

If you are selling something online. Start an affiliate program and track referrals and give some of your profit to the one who referred the customer to you. If your offer is ok, people will start talking about your affiliate program and start generating traffic to your site, hoping to convert a user and earn a dollar or two. I think more and more people will start using this as a way to drive traffic to their sites. As it is today affiliate programs are mostly used by big players.

Pay Per Click Search Advertising

There are a couple of big solutions today for PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising. The biggest name in the industry is of course Google Adwords. Yahoo and Microsoft also offers solutions for PPC-advertising. With PPC you either target a number of keywords and buy advertising space next to search result, or you buy advertising space on other sites that fits your targeted keywords and website content.

Banner Advertising

A lot of big blogs offers advertising possibilities for banners. Today the most commonly used format for banners on blogs are the square ones you often see above the fold on the right on blogs such as Problogger.net and alikes. The CPM for these type of banners differ a lot but I am sure you can find a good deal for such banner advertising if you look around the blogosphere. You can also post on webmaster forums such as forums.digitalpoint.com where you will find a big and alive community.

Social Networks

Use your contacts to drive traffic to your website. Use both your offline contacts and your online contacts. Typical examples on driving traffic to your site could be the following:

- Mail all your contacts (if they are part of the intended audience) about your website
- Create a Facebook Group that focus on your new website
- Sign up for MyBlogLog.com and promote your website as a commmunity
- Promote your website on MySpace
- Create a short (fun) movie and post it to YouTube.com
- Change your signature on all forums you are active on to include your new website
- Print a t-shirt with your websites url on and wear it to work and when shopping

Competitions and give-aways

Create a simple competition where you hand out a prize or two. The typical prize could be an ipod and a lifetime VIP-membership on your website. If you really want to build traffic, create a competition that acts as a link bait, making the contestants create natural links in forums and such. This is one of the most effective way to get links and traffic. But you have to have somewhere to announce the competition. I would suggest using competitions when you have started to gain an audience.

Link Baits

Link baits are powerful, but sometimes difficult to come up with. It is important to understand the concept. Link baits are content that gets people to link in numbers. A typical example could be someone naming their child Google, a woman throwing up on live TV, a funny letter, a mugshot or just something stupid. You get the picture? Link baits are important but also a question of timing and luck. Typical content that can be considered link baits is:

- Top 10 lists
- Articles with authority that helps people on a matter where there are a lot of interest
- A funny picture, story or movie
- Unique Content such as screenshots from new software or screencaps from upcoming movies
- Something cool or astounding

Link Building

Link building incorporates a lot of different techniques and approaches. This is long-time job and something that builds traffic long-term. But done right it is going to make a huge difference for your traffic. Link building can contain these approaches:

- Article submissions
- Directory submissions
- Social Network submissions
- Commenting on blogs
- Add link to footer in forums you are active in

Buy Traffic

There are a lot of different solutions available out there for buying traffic, from targeted traffic from adwords to people redirecting to your site from domains no longer in use. As you can see the quality of the traffic may differ a lot and you have to take this into account when thinking of buying traffic. But watch out, dont let good offers fool you, a lot of scams exists out there, if someone is selling 10000 unique visitors for $10 it is probably too good to be true.

In order to maximise the profits from the increased traffic, it is important that you know your front end architecture. Front-end architecture covers a vast range of topics within web development, seo and other areas.