The last few years have witnessed a boom in online businesses in the form of blogs, product sales etc. A large number of online entrepreneurs usually had their websites handled or hosted by other sites like Google’s own Blogspot along with blogging giant WordPress.

Unfortunately, the crackdown has also compelled such websites to eliminate whole web content without providing prior notice to webmasters. The ones susceptible to this termination are those who these third party sites believe, went against their terms of service agreements or have questionable content on their websites.

“It doesn’t matter how popular your website was, or how much content you had published on it, big companies like Google are quick to completely eliminate entire websites that they believe don’t meet their guidelines” explains Robert Fuller, one of the founders of WebHostingCheck.org, a resource for finding reliable web hosting. “You run a big risk of losing everything if you rely on free third-party hosting providers.”

However, this has not compelled web owners to pack up their online businesses. On the contrary, many are now opting for paid web hosting services for their needs in order to remain self-reliant. Plus, creating entire web content from scratch makes even stalwart web hosts break out in a cold sweat.

“Traffic to WebHostingCheck.org has steadily increased over the last several months because more publishers and bloggers are realizing they need to be independent” Fuller says. “There are a lot of web hosts out there, but only a couple of them are truly considered the best in the industry. The rest are a waste of your time and money.”

For those who believe web hosting costs an arm and a leg, think again. This service actually costs very less and can be bought along with large quantities of bandwidth. This consequently, can be achieved via one hosting account from some of the best service providers online. This has already enabled many online entrepreneurs to kick start their ailing online businesses.

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3. The Importance of Support in the Web Hosting Industry

Original: Web Hosting Industry is Getting Huge for Bloggers and Entrepreneurs

Tool Urchin Hung Out to Dry By Google

According to a blog post on Google Analytics posted by Director of Engineering, Paul Muret, the Urchin website analytics tool (of which he is one of the creators of) is going to be retired by the search engine giant. The decision comes six years after the software was first introduced. The website of the web analytics tool possesses more data regarding the decision; apparently it will continue operations till 28^th March of this year.

According to the group, the software will probably continue to be used by users due to its immense popularity, for years to come. However, Google is still encouraging people to start using Google Analytics. On the other hand, the blog is still rife with disappointed Urchin fans grieving the loss of their favorite software. In a way this course of action has highlighted the preference of SaaS features as compared to download-and-install online products like Urchin.

Speaking of the web analytics software, Urchin was actually a log-analysis tool meant to aid hosting companies and also to act as one of the main catalysts for the creation of Google Analytics. From that time onward, Urchin has been acquired, dispensed and supported via certified resellers who have sites offering consulting services pertaining to the use of the software along with other tools. This is also one of the reasons many believe the hosting industry has not seen the last of this web analytics tool.

According to the Angelfish website, the Alpha version of the new software will be released by the company on February of this year. The enhanced version will be released in Q2.

“During the past six years our team has provided Urchin and Google Analytics expertise to hundreds of companies. We’ve also created add-ons for Urchin like the Toolbelt, the v5 Search Module, administration utilities, and a bunch of API and management scripts,” says a notice on the Angelfish website. “With Angelfish, we’re bundling all of our experience, best practices, overlooked feature requests and homegrown utilities into a standalone software product.”

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Original: Website Analytics Tool Urchin To Be Taken Down by Google

The World Wide Web Goes Dark As SOPA/PIPA Sink Their Teeth In

The Internet is a place where like minded individuals can talk about anything under the sun without fear of discrimination or censure from authorities. Sadly, this scenario will recede soon if SOPA has anything to say about it. Online surfers received a shock today as they found themselves unable to access several of their favorite websites. Sites like Wikkipedia, WordPress, Reddit all pulled their curtains down in protest of this act.

The most astounding thing is that even Google search engine’s Doodle blacked out in protest of this act. For those of you who are not up to date, SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act is set to be passed as law by the US government, giving them carte blanche in banning websites they think promote pirated material.

PIPA or the Protect IP Act is similar to this movement, but is passed via a different medium namely the US Senate. Both have come under fire due to the fear that their interference may harm freedom of speech on the web; SOPA for instance may even be provided the right to ban piracy sites without even a by-your-leave from the accused webmaster.

However, this is less likely to be the case especially as Lamar Smith, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee removed DNS blocking from the act on Friday. PIPA, on the other hand, still retains DNS blocking as one of its principles.

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3. Tech Related Firms Oppose SOPA Argument in Congress

Original: The World Wide Web Goes Dark As SOPA/PIPA Sink Their Teeth In

Technology related firms were prominent in their opposition against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), on Wednesday, during the argument on this law in Congress.

A report, issued at The Washington Post states that the big tech firms which opposed the Act, include big names like Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay and Google, and they wrote a letter together addressing to the lawmakers in Senate and the House in the previous week.

This report further states that Yahoo is almost out of the Chamber of Commerce –has agreed to the bill – as protest. Consumer Electronic Associations consist of 2,200 tech firms and Google have alerted to follow Yahoo in this matter.

SOPA is considered to be a risk by many companies, especially to the firms busy in providing hosting services; this also includes the Save Hosting Coalition, formed freshly. This effort is the same as “Protect IP Act,” which is also under debate at the moment in Senate.

David Snead and Christian Dawson, from Save Hosting, came to Webinar at WHIR, during which lot of specifics about this danger by some parts of this law were debated in depth. A video archive has been uploaded in archives of WHIR Webinars about Save Hosting Webinar for the viewers.

These both laws will allow the government to instruct DNS providers to close down access to those websites, holding content related to hosting copyrights, without grasping the effect of those closures on sites, hosted at the same equipment as totally irrelevant sites.

Groups, not much related to the hosting business effect, think that this prospective law can suppress online innovation. Opponents state that through easily closing down websites, which come under the ambiguous category of “facilitating infringement”, government will be putting a stop on a dynamic service, like YouTube, prior to its start.

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Original: Tech Related Firms Oppose SOPA Argument in Congress

In a recent announcement by Google, it has been declared that it will offer free websites for small and medium size businesses in India. According to this Reuters report, Google has now partnered with HostGator, in order to provide free website maintenance (up to one year) and domain names. Once the first year has passed, businesses will pay a small fee to renew their domain names. For those of you who may be unaware of HostGator, it is a provider of web hosting services, with headquarters in Houston, Texas and clients from over 200 countries. The company has done quite well since it’s inception in 2002 and it appears that it is likely to further spread it’s wings with this new Google partnership.

By taking this initiative, Google is attempting to get half a million Indian businesses on the web, within a three year time frame. This seems to be Google’s attempt to expand India’s internet market to it’s benefit.  According to the report, India has approximately 870 million mobile users, however, the ratio of internet users is much lower, i.e. about 100 million.  Since India is a country of 1.2 billion people, it is the world’s third largest internet market. This goes on to show the potential that India has for companies like Google to invest and expand the existing user base.

This news was revealed in a TechCircle interview with web host Net4India  CMD Jasjit Sawhney. In the interview, he claims that among nearly 30 million Indian small businesses, only 400,000 (approximately) have websites. According to Sawhney, email hosting has an even lower  number, which creates an important potential market for service providers.

On the contrary, Google claims that small businesses in India are in fact closer to 8 million. This was explained in a presentation on Wednesday. Google further explained that e-commerce was another opportunity for business in India.

No matter what the size of small and medium size business in India maybe, the investment potential seems to be enormous, with a change of earning huge profits in the long run. Having said that, this investment is also quite risky and may not yield any results for companies like Google in the short run. Perhaps this is the reason that this Google is making a significant amount of investment to provide free hosting, without any short term revenue expectations from this Indian investment (as mentioned in the report).

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Original: HostGator and Google Join Hands to Offer Free Hosting to Indian Businesses

Google, a Technology colossal,  has proclaimed on Friday that it will construct a new green data center in Dublin, Ireland, following its procure of 11 acres of land and an existing building on Profile Park.

According to the company, it will spend about $101 million to complete the new data center, hired from a third party, which will enlarge its present Dublin data center space.

The data center is estimated to employ around 30 people and the construction project will fabricate about 200 jobs. The company is following a spirited bid process and has already employed contractors.

Google already has over 2,000 workforces in Dublin; many of them work out of three office buildings in central Dublin, which the company procured last year.

The news pursues Google’s earlier declaration in the week, where it revealed its intentions to construct three spanking data centers in Asia, situated in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Google also unlocked, on Thursday, about its new data center in Pryor, Oklahoma and proclaimed its plans to build a second data center at the site.

With Google’s new data center mission along with big data center constructions by Microsoft and Amazon have congealed Dublin as one of the leading cores for cloud computing infrastructure.

The city’s reasonable temperature is excellent for data center cooling—- an energy efficiency method, Google definitely got good knowledge in setting up.

The company’s chiller-less data centers acquire advantage of local climate, such as its up-to-the-minute data center in Hamina, Finland, which uses cold water from the Baltic Sea as a substitute of using chillers.

The head of Google Ireland, John Herlihy, stated, “We’re very happy to continue investing in Ireland and to build out our presence here even further. The new data center will be one of the most energy-efficient in Google’s global fleet. This investment further strengthens our presence here, and I’d like to thank IDA Ireland for the assistance they gave us in selecting this site.”

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Original: Google Opening up A Green Data Center in Dublin, Launches Service in Oklahoma

A remarkable search engine, Google, has recently planned to spend $200 million to structure new data centers in Asia. This new release has been disclosed after a long period, subsequent to the Google reviews about its data center energy consumption. Google data centers, according to its claims, put up with half of the total industrial energy consumption.

According to Wall Street Journal, Google as a sole owner aims to structure its foremost state of the art data centers in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Moreover, Google’s data center portfolio, providing services crossways to US, Belgium and Finland, will be further enhanced due to creation of its new datacenters.

Asia has turned into a renowned region for IT growth and development with enterprises heading towards this region on a fast pace. According to the latest releases by Voxel and SoftLayer, both are inclined towards opening data centers in Singapore.

“Some of the key things we look for in a site include closeness to our users, robust infrastructure, reliable power, availability of skilled workers, reasonable business regulations and cost,” Taj Meadows, Asia policy communications manager at Google, said in a statement.

Following the Google statements, its new data centers will start functioning in the recent coming years; though it previously has great number of employees working in total of 15 preexisting offices all around the Asia Pacific zone.

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Original: Google Announces its $200 Million Investment to Develop Asia Data Centers

According to the latest reports released this week by Google, Google data centers use up around 50% less energy as compared to the rest of the industry. A report revealed that a usual Google user uses up 180 watt-hours energy per month which is almost like switching on a 60-watt bulb for 3 hours.

Google consumes around 2,260 megawatt-hours of electric power in aggregate of the entire world’s electricity. According to the New York Times, this amount of electricity is just 1/4^th of the annual nuclear power plant’s yield. Google is famous for being environment-friendly and has created waves recently, when it announced its plans to open seawater-cooled data center in Finland.

Moreover, Google takes pride in offering a “zero carbon emission email” to the Gmail users. According to Google, the carbon footprints of Gmail user are about 1/80^th, if compared with the email servers hosted by other small businesses. So, keeping this in view, Google makes a point that preferring Gmail over other hosted servers can help you conserve 170 kWh per user.

But, according to a report on Data Center Knowledge, Google is refraining from revealing the figures it uses up for carbon offsets or on the data center energy consumption, and as an alternative, is giving out data on electricity usage. Nevertheless, Google’s effort to reveal some of the facts will encourage other small industries to be honest with their efforts. Google has devoted a website to give out details regarding its green initiatives.

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Original: Google Data Centers Use Up 50% Less Energy than the Rest of the Industry

The latest social networking craze is Google+, the recent attempt to compete with Twitter and Facebook. However, this new social networking platform could significantly affect the way in which online businesses are found on the Google search engine. One important feature within the Google+ software is the “+1” button which is the equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” button. This determines the social and customer value of business sites and web content.

Explosion of Signups

Since its release on June 28^th, 2011, over 20 million individuals have signed up for an account. Due to the amazingly high number of users that have jumped on board, Internet marketing professionals and analysts are wondering whether the +1’s will affect the way in which businesses utilize search engine optimization tactics.

Utilizing the Best Aspects of other Platforms

Google+ takes the best of social network and wraps it into a neat little package. For instance, there is a video chat feature called “Hangouts” as well as a news feed that is defined by the user called “Sparks.” However, the most innovative feature of the platform, which is also the most relevant to SEO, is “Google Circles” which allows users to share content with specific groups of people or “circles.”

+1-ing

As users build their circles, they can see the websites of other members and +1 them in the search engine results. These +1’s then appear in the search pages for those logged into their Google accounts. Since this is at an early stage of integration, it is difficult to predict exactly how the +1’s will affect those who are not logged in. However, it is safe to assume that in the future the +1’s will be significantly influential on search engine rankings.

Adding Value

As search engines become more intuitive and social, “Likes”, “Tweets” and “+1’s” are becoming value-added activities. These functions are straight-from-the-consumer endorsements of websites, products or any other online entity. When a customer searches for a specific product, there is likely to be customer reviews and recommendations that will play a role in their decision-making process. Users tend to trust the judgment of strangers.

Optimizing these Recommendations

Traditional SEO cannot be used to optimize for customer recommendations. Instead, a new strategy must be implemented and Internet marketers must focus on providing the best customer online experience imaginable to influence +1 recommendations for all their products, services and websites.

Google continues to take the world by storm with their newest way to social network, Google+. With the most powerful feature being the “+1” button, they are sure to optimize their search engine to make it as “human” as possible.

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Original: Google+ Affecting SEO

The Page Speed Service, provided by Google, functions like a web hosting service, gathering information from publisher’s servers, modifying the pages and reproducing the content onto their own server.

Websites were provided with an astounding prospect by Google, on July 28^th, of increasing the speed of the load time for their WebPages, from 25 percent to 60 percent. This has put forward the world, a renowned search engine company with even more authority and influence than before.

The speed, at which a webpage loads, is highly imperative to publishers as it is the main factor they consider to increase traffic on their website. If a website takes time to render its content, there’s a lower likelihood of visitors sticking around. Nevertheless, several industry watchers have begun to voice their suspicion, claiming that, through this Google, they would attain greater command over Websites.

The working behind Page Speed Service is that publishers sign in and direct their DNS (Domain Name System) access towards Google. The Page Speed Service then gathers details from the publisher’s server and revamps the pages in order to increase their load speed, providing them to visitors through Google servers.

“Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times,” stated a Google engineering manager, Ram Ramani. Ramani also explained that publishers will no longer need to be anxious about compressing their images, caching and other tiresome Website optimization factors.

He, even, declared that Google managed to enhance the speed of numerous Websites, by 25 percent to 60 percent.

Several industry watchers were wary of Google’s attempt to avoid using the servers of the publishers and to link the website through their own servers. They suggested that this act would result in Google gaining the title of being a Web Host, or a content delivery network.

Many feel that publishers might have little trust in Google, in delivering their Website content. Google, however, assured eWeek against it, claiming, “We don’t use the information collected from serving these Websites toward improving search results, or targeting advertising to users. We may, however, use the information collected to improve the quality of Page Speed Service itself, including making pages serve even faster.”

So far, Google has decided to make this service available only to a specific Webmaster, completely free of cost; although publishers can make an appeal to the company in order to avail the service. The price of the service, expected to be “competitive”, has not yet been revealed.

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Original: Google’s Page Speed Service Creates Suspicion