Google is one of the leaders among search engines today, although Yahoo, MSN, Ask and others are certainly hot on its heels. Google has certainly made tremendous advances in search technology - theiralgorithms, spam-detection capabilities, even commerc…

I’ve worked in “print” and have researched costs of other forms of advertising. What’s a small business to do for their marketing/advertising efforts?

Yellow pages = costly, ineffective

Local TV Ads = right, all small business just have tens of thousands of $ laying around to make a cheesy ad

Print = Expensive even if you gather an economies of scale by printing 20,000 brochures or inserts, and your response rates are pathetic (variable data printing changes response rate to the better)

Radio = Just another barely focused-on-your-segment mass media approach; might as well throw your money in a hole.

Just Do Nothing = Yeah, that’s the attitude! Apathy 4 life!

Small-business need leads, phone calls, emails that drive sales, AdWords (Overture, Internet advertising, etc.) help a company stay competitive with an increasing population going online.

Don’t Blogger and Pages provide enough ways for someone to create a half-arsed internet presence already?

This partnership between Google and Intuit is another clever move by Google. Not so sure it\’s good for small businesses. That depends on……

For you Intuit employees following this conversation, be certain that small businesses who use your integrated service can either opt out of the content network or don’t make it a choice at all. This is where most of the clickfraud occurs. This contextual advertising is also usually not nearly as effective as pure search engine advertising. Passive users looking at a page with ads that might be somewhat relevant to that page are not the same as active users manually typing keywords into a search box. If you work with Google to develop a simpler solution for small business owners, think carefully about how the content network is involved.

Not necessarily, if Google knows where the Google Search user is located, small businesses nearby, that might be relevant to the search, could be displayed as part of the search results, with a link to Google Maps.

To Omar:

You sound a bit too enthusiastic but not realistic. You underestimate MSFT and overestimate anything and everything GOOG does. I mean it’s not like MSFT cannot do the same type of integration with their software. Also, do you seriously think that those PRIMITIVE web-based “office” apps are a significant threat to MSFT Office Suite? I can’t help but think of you as “fanboy”. It reminds me of all the hype generated by GOOG followers around their Instance Messaging service when it came out. It’s been a year now and look at its dismal market share! By the way, I suggest you read this regarding Google’s track record: http://tinyurl.com/l82vr