The title tag might be a feature many people overlook, but it is just as important as having a nice looking web site layout.  Some might even say it is the most important thing, because it is often the first thing a web site visitors sees.  Today I’ll be telling you what the title tag is and what you can do to make yours better.

What is so Important About the Title Tag?

The title bar is important because it tells your readers what they can expect on that page.  If you are missing a title tag, often the Internet browsers out there just name the actual file name as the title.  If that happens, the title tag is not doing the job of telling the web site visitor what that page is about. Title tags are also used by search engines. The title tag is typically used as the first line of the search result.  Once again, this is another reason why it is important to use a title tag.

How do you Write a Better Title Tag?

Now that we have gone over the importance of a title tag, let me tell you how to write a better one.

Keep the title under 65 characters. This is mainly for search engine optimization reasons, so your last few words or your title don’t get replace with a “…” when showing up on the search engines, like Google.

Use keywords phrases specific to your web site. Now this one might seem overly obvious, but some people still forget it.  Use your most popular keywords that lead people into your site, or that best describe your site in the title tags.

Put your web site name at the end of the title tag. Now some people put the site name at the end, some people put it at the beginning and then some people leave it off, all together.  Unless your site name is keyword rich, like “Best Coupons for Hosting” – I would say bump it to the end of the title.  It helps to identify what page you are on.  Then you can put the web page title before it, such as:

How to Write a Better Title Tag – Web Hosting Show

There you have the page’s name first, and the web site’s name second.  Both are relevant when describing the web page in question so both should be mentioned in the title tag.

Re-use your title tag in your web site too. Your web site’s title should mirror your headline title on the web page you are editing.  This is easy to remember to do with blogs, however it might be overlooked with hand coded HTML web sites.

There you have it.  Those are my own personal tips to help you write a better web site title tag.  Have any other advice or tips to share?  Give me your feedback in the comments.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #202 of the Web Hosting Show!

When it comes to extensions, Firefox is king – with thousands upon thousands to choose from.  However, Google Chrome is just now starting to gain ground with the idea of having an extendable interface, so how many good web development extensions are there for this alternative browser from Google?  I did my search and found five of the best web development related extensions for the browser.

Speed Tracer

Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs.

Lorem Ipsum Generator

Chrome Extension that generates random dummy text.It uses a minimalist and well looking design. Many other extensions of this type – in other browsers – simply complicate this task, using really extensive code, XHR, etc. The main purpose of this one, is to use the less amount of code (and also memory) and help the developer/user to get the job done.

Kuber PageRank Checker

This handy SEO tool shows you the Google PageRank of web pages beside the address box. If the PageRank of the page in current tab is not available, the tool shows the PageRank of the domain instead, prefixed with ‘S’.

Chrome SEO

The Google Chrome SEO extension provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks and other daily SEO tasks.

IE Tab

Use Internet Explorer to display web pages in a Chrome tab. Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome.

Know of any more that I might have missed? Be sure to drop then in via the comments, and help us all learn a little more about the web development tools the Google Chrome browser provides.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #201 of the Web Hosting Show!

It isn’t very often you see hosting personalities being covered in the news. I don’t know why, because they are often some of the most successful out there.  That is why I was happy to find this video of Lanham Napier, Rackspace Hosting’s CEO, talking about how is company is competing with the likes of Google and Amazon.

You can see the chart for yourself here.

So what does this mean?  Well, a hundred different people could read into that data a hundred different ways.

Negative View – I would say the main reason why web hosting is down, is because social networks like MySpace and Facebook have kind of taking the place for some people of a standard web site.

Positive View – People don’t search for “web hosting” when looking for a place to start their web site.  Doing a search for “blog hosting” shows it has stayed steady since 2005.  People are looking for ways to host a particular type of site, rather than just general web hosting these days.  It is a much more niche market now.

As you can see, there are arguments to be made for either side on why web hosting is such a falling trend in Google searches. Which way do you see it?

Web Hosting + Coupon = Win for Everybody!

This is a secret I have been sharing for a number of years, and now I want to let you know.  Search for them.  That’s right, any web host worth his disk space will have coupons and rebates out there on the Web.  All you have to do is search for the web hosting in question, plus the word “coupon” or “rebate”.

For example, let say I search for Random Fake Web Hosting Company #5 and coupon.  Via Google, I find a page that says I can get $50 off if I sign up with the coupon code “50OFF”.  Now, all I need to do is go to Random Fake Web Hosting Company #5’s web site and try the coupon out.  If it works, I just saved $50, if not – then I’ll go back out to the search results to find the next best deal.

Ok, so I am sure some of you might be a little disappointed with this tip, however you would be amazed by how overlooked it really is.

This is a great ‘bit of new for hosting customers who can have an easier one stop shop where they can get all their web site and web hosting tools.  It also offers a perk to web hosting companies, cause they can draw people in by offering these services. Google is offering web hosts the ability to have quick and easy access to Google Webmaster Tools, Google custom and site search, and Google AdSense.

• Google Webmaster Tools – helps customers understand site traffic and diagnoses potential problems by giving the user information on how Google crawls their web sites.
• Google Site and Custom Search – helps customers improve user retention and conversions by customizing the search experience on their sites.
• Google AdSense – allows customers to provide relevant ads with search results and contextual ads to match their content.

The perks for the web hosts are the ability to integrate these Google tools into their control panel, and display a Google badge to generate referral fees.  To find a list of web hosts providing the service, check out their partner success stories. Some of the web hosts included are Dot5Hosting, eHost, FatCow, PowWeb, DomainHost and more.

I would highly suggest any web host interested, go check out the Google Services for Web Sites page and sign up to give your customers an easy, one-stop access to Google’s services for web sites.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 184!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.16 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• Make Your Hosting Support Better
• Find Special WordPress Tags Faster
• Become a Better Web Hosting Client
• Google Offers Services to Hosting Clients

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Web Hosting Talk was Hacked!
• DemoWolf Tutorial Updates and Sale!
• Surpass Launches Plan for Web Developers

Trivia Question – What year did cPanel first start? (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

Now I am not going to get all touchy-feely Dr. Phil on you here, I am just going to tell both the web hosts and the web hosting clients what they need to know to make the working relationship between them even better. So lay down on that couch over there, and let me know how your feeling.

How do you Sign Up and Use Google AdSense?

Signing up is a pretty easy process.  All you need to do is sign in with your Google login, and follow the on screen instructions.  Once that is done, you can create the ads you want to use, then grab the code for them to place them into your web site.  I have been using it for so long, I don’t see where this could be seen as a complicated process.  They make it all pretty easy.

You also have several different ways you can setup ads.

• AdSense for Content – your run-of-the-mill ads you are used to seeing.
• AdSense for Search – use Google to power your web site’s search and make money from it.
• AdSense for Feeds – Place relevant ads in your RSS feeds.
• AdSense for Domain Names – Park your un-used domains with Google.
• Video Units – add YouTube partners’ video content to your site, and earn extra revenue.
• AdSense for Mobile Content – create ads for special “mobile” pages.

What Are the Rewards of Using Google AdSense?

The good thing about Google AdSense is that it automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers text and image ads that are relevant to your audience and your site content.  Relative ads are what you want in the long haul.

Now you will not become rich over night, so if you want to quit your day job – you had better set your goal a little lower.  However, aiming at small goals first (such as having the ads pay for your $5 a month hosting bill) is a good start.

Want to learn more?  Here are some Google AdSense resources worth checking out:

• Google AdSense Blog
• Google AdSense Help Forum

Overall, I would say it is definitely work checking into. If you are looking for a name you can trust, Google has won many people over in that aspect too.  Sometimes, I don’t want to sign up with some company I have never heard of, especially when I need to get or receive important information from them (thinking about tax related stuff).  So overall, I would say Google AdSense will not make you uber-rich but it is a trustworthy choice out there.

I’ll be sure to cover that too on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 177!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.94 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• How to Score 5GB of Free File Hosting!
• How can Obama Inspire the Web Hosts Out There?
• Three FAQs about SSL
• Making Money with Google AdSense

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• GoDaddy Attack Sends Thousands Offline
• Get Your Free 8GB USB Flash Memory Stick at Hosting-Nation.net

Please be sure to send any feedback, questions or comments about this week’s podcast to me directly at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment! Would love to hear from you all!

Not all tools have to be useful, that can just be fun to play with too.  DataCenterMap.com is one of those geeky hosting tools you may just want to play with on a Sunday afternoon when you have some free time.  As you can see, it is a big Google mash-up map with a ton of datacenter located on it.

All you have to do to see more is zoom in.  You’d be amazed by the number of data centers out there.  Once you find one you want to know more about, just click on it’s spot on the map and you can pull up the actual location as well as the profile on it and their official web site link.

Here is a little more about the project from the developers:

Data Center Map, is a free web service for companies around the world in need of housing / co-location space, whether it is just for hosting of one server, a rack cabinet, a cage or a dedicated room. I created Data Center Map because I, as co-owner of a hosting company, felt that there was a need for such a service in this constantly growing market.

If the map isn’t doing it for you – you can also use this list to navigate datacenters by country:

http://www.datacentermap.com/datacenters.html

At the present data and time they have indexed 980 co-location data centers from 50 different countries.  To play with this tool yourself, go to DataCenterMap.com.

Blog Perfume’s Feed Analysis

With the toolset that Blog Perfume is providing, you can see some details statistics on just about any FeedBurner feed.  You can see the number of subscribers per month, the hits, subscribers and views from a day to day basis, the number of subscribers depending on the day of the week, and more.

Yoast’s Feed Circulation Graphs

Yoast takes a simpler approach and just gives you a graph based on the number of subscribers that you have.  Type in your feed name (what follows after the feeds.feedburner.com/) the time frame and the width of the graph.

Example: Web Hosting Show’s Subscription Number Graph for 6 Months

Feed Compare

This one might be my favorite of them all.  Feed Compare takes your subscription numbers and compares them with anybody else who uses FeedBurner to power their RSS feeds.  You can give it up to four feeds to compare too.  You can view stats for up to 1 month to 24 months, so there should be no concern about getting the big picture when it comes to this alternative FeedBurner stats tools.  For example, you can see the Web Hosting Show’s RSS feed and The WHIR’s RSS feed are pretty close in comparison.

Example: Web Hosting Show’s RSS Feed vs The WHIR’s RSS Feed

For many of these tools, you must have awareness API turned on for your feed in question.  If your trying to look at data from somebody else’s feed, and you get an error – this is probably the reason why.

First thing you must do is login to the Gmail web site, and then Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Accounts tab.

Now on the Account web page, scroll down to the Get mail from other accounts section, click Add another mail account. Now Gmail will walk you though a wizard (like with any other e-mail client) to gather information about your e-mail account.

Now personally, I would make sure you check not to keep your messages on the server.  This way all your messages are sent to Gmail and stored there, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning out your server side mail from time to time.

Once you have finished with the wizard, hit click Add Account.  Now you can use your e-mail from your web hosting account with Gmail.  If you are a fan of Gmail, this will keep you from having to jump from client to client to get your e-mail all checked.

URLmetrix.com brings in a quick and useful way to check your web site’s Online popularity via a slew of resources.  Wondering what your Google PageRank is?  How about your Google or Yahoo backlinks?  Check them all out on this one single web site.  Definitely a resource to bookmark.

Here are all the services they cover:  Your web page title, Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete rank, Quantcast rank, Technorati rank, Google Indexed, Yahoo Indexed, Google Backlinks, Yahoo Backlinks and Delicious Links.

For each thing it scores it will also give you a link to go get more information.

The Merger Begins

Lets say in this alternate reality, Bob Parsons (the man in charge over at GoDaddy) gets an offer he can’t refuse from the Google team. He decides to sell to Google for (well, insert large dollar amount here) and Google is now the world’s biggest search provider and the world’s biggest domain name register all in one smart business move.

A few months down the road, Google announces it will get into the web hosting game. They have the money, servers and resources to start doing serious web hosting at any given moment now. Some might say they already are with their page creator service – but I don’t really count that as it has yet to even really get any decent buzz. If they needed a base for it, they could always use GoDaddy’s hosting business as a starter. Yes, ladies and gentlemen we now have Google Daddy.

Google Daddy Takes Over Web Hosting

With their two tier plan, you can get unlimited disk space, bandwidth and resources for free. Then they charge you five dollars for a domain name and your web site is up and running. Where is the catch? Well Google’s main business is not search – it is advertising. To pay for the hosting, you will agree to put Google AdSense ads on your web site and split the profits with Google 50/50. They get half of your ad revenue (on top of what they take from AdSense profits already) and you get reliable free hosting.

The End is Upon Us

Over the next few months, web hosts would start to drop like flies. Nobody out there can compete with Google Daddy and in one year or so down the road (after that acquire the Planet, Rackspace and a few other dedicated server hosts) they control seventy-five percent of the hosting market. What Google was just a little over a year back for just search they are now for search, domain registration and web hosting.

That would be the ultimate doomsday scenario that would bring the web hosting world to its knees. Google Daddy controls the three things that pretty much defines the Web as we know it and there is not a major force that can stand in their way.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 142!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.35 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Best of the WordPress Magazine Themes!
• Web Hosting Show is Nearly 3 Years Old?
• Google + GoDaddy = Web Hosting Armageddon!
• Server Status Monitoring with Firefox? (link)
• What is so Great About PHP 5 over PHP 4?

I am the Dick Van Dyke to your crazy web hosting musical. You won’t catch me hanging out with Mary Poppins or trying to convince people I’m a music man. I only have room for one passion and woman in my life and that lovely lady’s name is web hosting.

Where is ICANN with this type of practice? I say if they were all over RegisterFly for what they were doing then Network Solutions really should not be treated any differently.

ICANN Comes in to Save the Day!

I am happy to see ICANN has decided to stand up and do something about this money grubbing nonsense. Under current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a new domain name has a five-day grace period to back out and receive a total refund. The problem is people use this period to test how well the domain name does in the real world and also slap ads all over it to make a buck.

So what is the solution? ICANN is talking about charging the ICANN registration fee right from the start instead of waiting. That way companies and individuals would get less of a “freebie”. The cost would be picked up by the domain name register and hopefully this would end the practice of people testing to see how profitable a domain name is for free.

What About Front Runners?

This will also hurt companies like Network Solutions that have started “front running” domains (a fancy name for the same dirty tactics). This is where a domain name register will register your domain name searches and offer to resell them to you for a higher price.

The whole thing kinda reminds me of the mafia and being called in to “do a favor” for the godfather himself. Google is also getting a chance to get some positive press out of all of this. They said that they will no longer allow AdSense revenue to be collected on domains that are less than four days old. Now that will cost Google some big bucks but nice to see that they are doing the right thing. What they are losing in finances they are gaining in public trust in praise.

I’ll inform you about those, and let you know of a few hyper-linked medications to check out too. The Web Hosting Show includes no side effects and an awesome orange-like flavor I’m sure you will enjoy.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 140!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.23 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• A Cool New Visual Trace Route Tool!
• Thing is Web Hosting That Make Me Angry!
• ICANN and Google Hopes to Stop Domain Tasters?
• Fighting Terrorists via Web Hosts and Data Centers?
• Advice on How to Get Your Name Out There!

I am your medical malpractice for the hosting world ready to happen and I welcome you into my offices yet again to talk about web hosting, web development, domains, terrorists and even a few things that make me angry. Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!

Logging into Google Calendar, adding a task or reminder is easy to do. Just click on the date and type in the item you need to remember in the “What?” box. Later on, you can click that same item to edit it further – such as set it to repeat every x amount of days or weeks.

For Web Hosts and Hosting Workers:

• Mange project start and stop times
• Figure out when your next invoice is due
• Schedule staff meetings and share it with your support crew

For Web Hosting Clients and Customers

• Setup a reminder for your next hosting billing date
• Notify yourself of when your domain name registration is up
• Write down server maintenance times from your host so you don’t forget

Google Calendar is one of those tools I use for just about everything. Don’t forget to try out some of the alternatives like 30 Boxes, Yahoo Calendar and Kiko then stick with the one you like best.

Bottom line? They allow support workers to get often asked questions answered as quickly as possible.

Let AutoHotkey Do the Heavy Typing for You!

Thinking outside the box though and trying to see what you really need when it comes to quickly publishing these answers – well, there just has to be a better way. Personally I set out to find something that would allow me to type in a few letters – hit enter, and automatically paste a four paragraphed answer to a question. I found my answer after spending some time playing with AutoHotkey.

AutoHotkey is a free mouse and keyboard macro program. The part your going to be interested in is the AutoText feature which allows you to write up a simple script, type in a few letters – hit enter and have your quick response typed out for you. It does have a learning curve to master but once you do get it down it is a powerful tool for anybody who finds themselves typing the same thing over and over again.

Your Own Virtual Notebook

Another tool I like to keep at my side at all times is my Google Notebook. While doing my own tech support work – it is handy to have some of the most asked questions there at my fingertips. Not much has to be said about this, because the concept here is so easy to understand.

Copy and save things you need to type out or access often inside of Google Notebook. While going through the e-mail or help desk at your hosting company, keep it open in another tab and you have yet another personal list of quick response tools.

So there you have two great ways to make your customer support work just a little easier on you.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 129!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.92 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Google PageRank Updates and Debate
• Discrimination Against Southerners in Hosting
• How to Backup Using cPanel
• Best of the Forum Scripts
• ICANN Investigates Insider Domain Registrations

Get your vienna sausages and oversized cup of coffee ready because I am going to deliver the dull and boring world of web hosting and web development in a way never before seen or heard. Here on the web hosting show we deliver you real hosting talk with none of the angry fan boys.

Not every web site out there has the best search features. Heck, some of the web sites out there don’t have any way to search through them. When you have a web site or resource that you need to search often, trying to use the lame ways the respective owners want you to use is no way to go. Google offers anybody the chance to use their technology to create your own custom search engine.

Step 1 – Visit and Sign In: To get started all you need to do is visit Google’s custom search engine web site. Once there, create a Google account or login to your existing account and your ready to get going.

Step 2 – Lets Get to Creating a Search Engine: Now you should navigate yourself to the “create a new search engine” page. Most of the boxes you fill in explain themselves. When it asks “What do you want to search?” make sure you select “Only sites I select”.

Step 3 – Fill in Your Domains: Now we get to the fun part. In the text box under “Select some sites” type in the domains you want to search. If there is only one – your job is pretty easy. If there are many – you had better get to typing. Here is Google’s advice on how to format your URLs to match how you want to search the domain:

• Individual pages: Specifying www.mysite.com/mypage.html will just include the mypage.html page on www.mysite.com.
• Entire sites: Specifying www.mysite.com/* will include all the pages on www.mysite.com.
• Parts of sites: You can use wildcard patterns to include just certain parts of a site. For example, www.mysite.com/*about* will include only files on www.mysite.com that have about in their name.
• Entire domains: You can also specify an entire domain using *.mydomain.com. If you specify mydomain.com, we will automatically convert this to *.mydomain.com/*. If this is not what you want, you can change it back in the control panel.

Step 4 – Test Out Your New Search Engine: Hit the “Next” button and now you get to play with your new search engine to make sure it works the way you want it to. Finish that up and you have yourself a customized Google search engine that will only search the domains you put into it previously.

Now some might ask why would you want to do this? Here are just a handful of reasons why you might:

• You need an easyier way to search your web host’s support site or forums?
• You want to deliver a better search for your web site’s visitors?
• You want to search all of your favorite “insert subject here” web sites?

Google makes it pretty easy for anybody to make a custom search for any domain or set of domains out there. This is one webmaster tool that just can not be overlooked.

It is an age old question, how should you submit yourself to the search engines. Should you not do anything at all and hope they find you? Should you go out and use one of those “all in one” search submit services? Should you go to each search engine and submit yourself by hand?

Step 1 – Go to the “Big Boys” in the Searching World!

The first thing you want to do is get yourself submitted to the big boys in the search engine world. This would be Google, Yahoo and MSN (or Live Search). Here are a few links to help you with that process:

• Submit Your URL to MSN Live Search
• Submit Your URL to Google Search
• Submit Your URL to Yahoo Search

Step 2 – Sit Back and Wait, and Work, and Wait!

Don’t get yourself stressed out if your not in Google within the next hour. Getting listed can sometimes take days or weeks. During this “downtime” you can try your best to get more folks to link to you as well. The more incoming links you have the better the chances are that a search engine spider will travel from somebody else’s web site to your very own.

The spiders are the little bots that crawl through web sites link to link figuring out what content you have and if it is any good or not.

Now I left out the all in one submitting solutions for a reason. Some of these places are frowned upon by the major search engines out there. These services that could be very useful have been taken over by greedy folks that want to charge you and impatient folks who hit submit every five minutes to every search engine out there.

Google loves webmasters, and I proved that last weeks with out guide to Google Analytics. Have you tried Google’s specific tools for webmasters though? If you have not you might be missing out on a lot of good information on and about your web site.

Why Do I Need the Webmaster Tools?

By using this series and set of tools you can see all kinds of information about what keywords are bringing people in from Google, the Google crawl rate, the last time your page was indexed plus around two dozen more cool tools and interesting resources. If your a webmaster who hasn’t done this your missing out on a free set of very helpful tools right from the folks at Google.

Create and Submit Your Site Map

To see what I am talking about visit the Google Webmaster Tools web site. Here you can submit your site map to Google so that have a better and easier way of crawling your information. It never hurts to give Google everything it needs, so best to play nice with them if you want to see yourself in the search results for your favorite keywords.

There are a number of tools out there to help you learn about how to create this special sitemap for Google to index. Here are just a few suggestions to help you get started:

• XML-Sitemaps.com
• SiteMapsPal.com
• SiteMapDoc.com

Also if you are using a content management program (like Joomla, WordPress and others) you might be able to find a plugin that does all the hard work for you and spits out the sitemap.xml file for you.

Once the sitemap has been generated, go in and submit your domain too the Google Webmaster Tools page and then go to the Sitemap tab and then click “Add a Sitemap”.

Verify You Own Your Web Site

After you get your domain and your site map in the system then you must verify that you are the owner of the web site. You can do this either by adding some code to your index’s header information or by uploading a file with a funny name. I would say go with the second one as it is the easiest one to do.

Create your file with the funny name on your desktop, upload it to your “public_html” folder and then check to make sure it is there. Then you can go back to the Google Webmaster Tools web site and tell Google to check for verification. Once they do you are all set!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 116!
Running Time: 19 minutes | File Size: 8.69 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Company Bio of FastServers.Net (Part 2 of 3)!
• Google Webmaster Tools Setup Guide and Help!
• How to Catch Hosting Friends with LinkedIn!
• The Best Way to Submit Your Site to the Search Engines!
• What is a Reverse IP Lookup?

Link of the Week: Add Mitch on Pownce!

If you really stop and realize it, you can get an entire education just by hanging out on certain spots on the Internet. There are sewing websites for those who love their needlepoint. There are music web site for those who want to learn to play a tune. This web site and podcast is all about how to learn about and get more from the web hosting and web development worlds that we all have to live with each and every day.

What is one of the best free solutions for tracking statistical information on your web site? Personally I like Google Analytics. It has just as many tracking and stats options as any of the expensive big boys out there but it is totally free for anybody to use. Free plus good equals a winner in my book.

The question is, how do you get it up and running on your own web site? I have seen a number of folks have trouble with this – so I figured I would go through the steps and tell you how to get it done, one on one.

Step 1 – Go to the Google Analytics web site and sign up for an account or login with your Google login information. After you login, click on the “setup” button to get started.

Step 2 – Next you load up a screen that wants you to put in some information about your web site. Type in your domain name, account name and set your time preferences. The account name will be the group name for the series of web sites you use Google Analytics on. Not really important at this time – so you could really jut call it “Charlie” if you wanted to.

Step 3 – The next page wants you to put in your contact information. If you don’t want to do this – just select your country and you should be good to go to the next step.

Step 4 – One of the last pages you will see is Google’s terms of service and legal agreement. Skim through it, read it if you want to. I know your probably not going to though. Click the “I agree” check mark box and move on.

Step 5 – The last step gives you a ‘bit of javascript to cut and paste onto all of your web pages that you want to track. Just copy it from there and paste it into your web site. Get past that step and your done! You have successfully setup Google Analytics.

If you did all of that correctly, in a few days you should have a lot of new statistical information to view. Google Analytics is an awesome free tool so there is no reason why everybody with a web site shouldn’t be using it. Have any other questions, comments or concerns? Shoot them over my way at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I will be more than happy to help you out.

One of these questions will not be answered by this edition of the Web Hosting Show, can you figure out which one it is?

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 115!
Running Time: 16 minutes | File Size: 7.46 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Company Bio of FastServers.Net (Part 1 of 3)!
• Week #1 of Web Hosting Triva!
• All or Nothing, Free Hosting with a Catch
• How Do You Setup Google Analytics?
• A Handful of SEO Ranking Tips and Advice!

Link of the Week: HostingTalk.it – hosting talk in Italian!

It is time for me to join you yet again, from my secret underground recording studio and laundry room for another week’s worth or web hosting podcast fun and information. If you leave this show knowning a little more than you started out knowing – then I think my job is done.

It seems like a lot of folks out there in the Web hosting industry are claiming that because of this – the sky is going to fall. Personally, I do not see what the big deal is about it.

The argument is that if Google registers your domain names – then they will own your soul. No wait, I did not mean it that way. It would mean that they could hold search engine placement over your head though.

Would Google domains do better in Google than regular ones?

Now why is none of this going to happen? It is because Google does not want to be the controller of the Internet. Google wants to be the fast food of the Web hosting industry. A few months back we were told that their page builder and movement into the hosting industry was going to be a big deal. Was it? No. They threw up a WYSIWYG editor and left it at that. Not exactly the most in-depth hosting environment. I have a feeling the domain name registrations are going to be handled much in the same way.

If Google really focused their efforts on domain name registration, it would be more of a threat. Right now though, it sounds like they are not undercutting prices and are not offering anything folks can live without. From what I have read so far, they are reselling domains from GoDaddy and eNom. For $10 a pop, and only offering “.com,” “.net,” “.biz” and “.info.” domain extensions – there is no deal here. I can get it cheaper by going to GoDaddy and eNom themselves.

To read more about this topic, here are a few good resources to check out:

• WHIR Blogs – Google Offers $10 Domain Registration
• TechCrunch – Google Starts Selling Domains
• Lunartics – Reasons for Not Buying a Google Domain

To make this a success, Google will have to find something better than the “Google Apps for Your Domain” to package this with. Unless people just pay because it is Google (and some people will) I doubt they are really going to make any real dent in the market. Google needs to offer a better deal or get out of the way – because they are just cluttering the market and not making it any more competitive.

+ Check Out the Podcast This Was From! Listen to the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 89!

Now is it as big of a deal as everybody is making it out to be? I say no – and I’ll let you know why on today’s show. Also I have found a great new Online DNS tool that would be handy for both Web hosts and Web hosting clients to have. All that, and your usually Web hosting goodness is now on the air.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 89!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.54 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s Web Hosting Show podcast.

• Google Starts to Sell Domain Names
• Ajax DNS Tools That You Can Not Live Without
• How to Subscribe to Ping! Zine and The WHIR (both digtal and paperback)
• Host Gator Takes Down Hate Speech Web Site

Link of the Week: ResellerGuide.com

This is the number one Web hosting podcast in all of the land and I am more than happy to bring it to you each and every week. As the end of the year draws near, I hope to keep entertaining you and informing you about the Web hosting industry for the rest of 2006 and on into 2007.