A few days ago, I noticed the the "My Account" link was missing from the top of my iGoogle page. This is how I (and I'm guessing most other people) get to all my Google services. Why would they take it away?!?
I mentioned this to a co-worker and he figured out that it shows up when you go to the Classic view, but why are they punishing iGoogle users? Hopefully they'll put it back soon. I'm getting tired of switching back and forth between my iGoogle page and Classic view. 
Shortly after I got my iPhone, I set it up to retrieve my email via the Mail application that comes with the phone. I have three email addresses for various purposes, so I set each of them to check once every 15 minutes. What I didn't think about was how much battery power all that checking would use. I soon found out that this (in combination with a few other things) was causing my battery to last less than a day. An additional frustration was that I had multiple inboxes on my phone and had to flip between them when I received mail at different addresses.
My solution was two-fold:
Gmail will allow you to check up to 5 accounts (via POP), which means that it will fetch mail from your other accounts (and delete it from the other server once it's done if you choose). The result is that you only have one place (Gmail) to check for all your mail.
Here's how you do it:
As an added bonus, Gmail has great spam filtering, so hopefully, you'll have less spam to sift through as well!
Related post: 7 Simple Steps to Conserve iPhone Battery Power
When ranking a page, search engines place a higher emphasis on text contained within certain HTML tags such as <title> and <h1>. Semantically speaking, these should be the most important pieces of information on the page and should convey the idea of the post in just a few carefully chosen words.
Take a moment to view the source of your blog to make sure it is semantically well designed (top-level headings should be enclosed in <h1> tags, paragraphs within your body text should be contained within <p> tags, etc.). If not, you may be able to make a few tweaks that will help you out quite a bit.
Part of the formula that search engines use to determine your ranking is based upon how many highly-ranked sites link to you. Most blogs allow pingbacks and/or trackbacks which will result in a link back to your website if you link to a post of theirs.
Note: I wouldn't recommend abusing this technique or you'll just look like an idiot trying to get linkbacks. Post links to relevant articles, and not just for the sake of linking to something popular.
Google's Webmaster Tools is a perfect example of this. One of the things you can do with it (aside from finding out a bunch of information on how your pages are crawled and indexed) is submit a sitemap. It only takes a few minutes and there's even a sitemap plugin that does all the work for you if you use WordPress. (I'm sure there are plugins for other blogging software, but I've never used them personally). There are no official findings that I know of, but there is some speculation that Google gives your page rank a boost for providing a sitemap.
Good content is a HUGE part of your ranking in more ways than one. It's what the search engines are ultimately trying to find for their users. Sure, they use all kinds of complicated algorithms and crazy secret formulas, but it's only because they can't think like a human and have to rely on things like keyword density to determine relevance.
Don't just slap your posts together. If you don't take the time to write them well, then nobody is going to take the time to read them. Use spell check. Think about the message you are trying to convey. Be informative, but concise, or your readers will get bored and leave. The more people who find your blog useful and/or enjoyable, the more traffic and backlinks you will get, and the higher your ranking will climb.
Hundreds of lines of embeded styles and Javascript in the <head> tag of your page just gives the search engine more code to sort through before it gets to the important stuff (your content - in case you forgot #4 already). Linking to external files has other benefits as well, such as faster page load and bandwidth savings due to caching.
Make sure your blog stays focused. Writing about different breeds of dogs one day, then classic cars the next, then corporate finance the following day won't keep your readers reading and won't get you to the number one spot on Google for any of the three topics. The more you write consistently about the same subject, the more of your pages with the same keywords the search engines will index, and the more your site will make it to the results pages when someone searches for your blog's topic.
Most blogging software has a way to rewrite your post's URL so it's not some ugly string of random gibberish like "http://example.com/?p=18&a=view". Instead, it'll look something like "http://example.com/how-to-clean-up-ugly-urls/". Take a look at the URL of this post for another example. A clean human-readable URL gives the search engines one more place to find those oh-so-important keywords. Even if this gives you little or no boost in ranking, it looks prettier and more professional.
It's often difficult to come up with topics that nobody else has written about, but there are those rare opportunities when you get the first look at a new technology or product, or have an original take on an existing topic. This is what happened to me with the new Google Analytics beta. My account was one of the first to be switched over, and I wrote a post about it. To my surprise, for a short time, I wound up at the top of Google for the keywords "google analytics beta".
If you've ever coded a web page and tried it out in Firefox or another standards compliant browser, then opened the same page in IE only to find an entirely different looking page, you'll appreciate this Wordpress plugin. It encourages readers to make the switch to Firefox and puts money in your pocket if they do.
The plugin makes use of Google's Adsense referral program and requires that you setup an Adsense account (a simple process - just click the button below to get started).
Once you setup your Adsense account, just paste the Firefox referral code into the plugin file according to the installation instructions.
By using your choice of three different levels, you can control how aggressively you push the switch. Here are the descriptions from the Explorer Destroyer site:
Level 1: Gentle Encouragement Rating: $$
Visitors using IE see a message encouraging them to download Firefox (with a download link) running across the top of the page.
Level 1 Demo >> (the demo will pretend you are using IE)Level 2: Semi-serious Rating: $$$$
Visitors using IE get a friendly splash page encouraging them to download Firefox. There's a download link, and a link to continue on to your site.
Level 2 Demo >> (the demo will pretend you are using IE)Update: Xavier sent us this modified version of level 2 that will only show the splash page occasionally. Download it here and see a live demo here.
Level 3: Dead serious
Level 3 will not allow people using IE past a splash page. This level is very useful for sites that are not IE6 compatible. And there's never been a more important moment to switch people to Firefox. Can you handle it? (At least try it for a day to see how good it feels.) Unfortunately, level 3 is a little too intense for the Adsense policies, so for this level you'll have to use a regular, non-Adsense link to download Firefox.
Level 3 Demo >> (the demo will pretend you are using IE)
I'm still contemplating whether or not to use the plugin on this site. I'm a big Firefox fan, and yes, IE is a pain to code for, but some people may be put off, even by the Level 1 method. Let me know what you think.
I've been using Google Reader to read RSS feeds for a couple of months now, but it wasn't until I saw Tim Ferriss' interview with Robert Scoble and heard Robert mention how much he liked the shortcuts that I realized that there were so many. The most useful for me are:
See the Google Reader FAQ for the complete list.
I found a very interesting article that suggests that Google could be digging its own grave with the perks it gives its employees.
Check out The Final Days of Google: It is going to be an inside job..
Well, it was more like a few hours, but it sure didn't last long...
This morning, I checked out my Google Analytics account and happened to notice that I had a few hits from the keywords "google analytics beta". So, out of curiosity, I Googled it thinking that I would be somewhere 5+ pages deep in the search results. But, to my surprise, my "New Google Analytics Beta Version" post was the VERY FIRST result! I have the screenshot to prove it!
Check out the first and fourth results. The first is my blog post, and the fourth is the Digg page for my post.
Don't let me fool you. I'm no search engine guru, I don't have very much traffic to my website, and my Google page rank is 0/10, so I'm sure none of these factors did it.
Here's what I think happend:
I'm pretty sure my account was converted on the first day that they started moving everyone to the new version, and I wrote the blog post that night. I think I just beat everyone to it. That would explain why, tonight, just a little over 12 hours later, I'm nowhere to be found on the first 15 pages of results.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...
Well, at some point today, my Analytics account got flipped over to the beta of the new version. If nothing else, it's prettier than the old one.
A few things that I noticed right off:
I'm still digging into it, so I'm sure that there are plenty more changes that I haven't noticed yet. Overall, it looks like they focused more on the readability of individual reports, which is a very good thing. It seems promising so far; it'll just take a bit to get used to the new layout (although I'm already starting to).
If you haven't logged into your Analytics account in a few days, go check it out. You might have been converted as well.