18 Essential Google Tools for Business

I use a lot of different tools and resources when I consult and help people get their online businesses going. They all have their purpose in the scheme of things. They help in the planning, research, development, marketing, and maintenance. All these resources would help any business streamline the things that they do and prepare them to be a lot more effective with operating an online business. I have found that a majority of the tools that I use or have my clients sign up for tend to be Google owned/operated. So I have decided to list the 18 tools that I know that every business could benefit from using.

When you sign up for a Google Account you gain access to a lot of different tools. I want to emphasize the tools that help the most with online business. When you sign up for a Gmail account, you instantly gain easy access to all the many tools that Google has to offer. Below are the tools that I think can benefit any business/online business owner.

1. Gmail – FREE web based email system. Great spam filtering and features.
2. Google Analytics – FREE statistical tracking system that has no limits and is very graphical including pie charts, geomapping and many other features.
3. Google Base – FREE product/services/resume/etc. listing engine. It can help inject and speed up indexing for Google search rankings and traffic. Great for marketing.
4. Google Local – FREE business listing and mapping. Best way to register your business on a local level with Google.
5. Google Calendar – FREE calendar program. You can easily create a business calendar and share it on your site. You can open it up for scheduling and also feed it thru and RSS Feed. It also has a great feature that will send a message to your phone to remind you of appointments.
6. Google Talk – FREE instant messaging system that uses a Jabber framework and uses your Gmail account for instant messaging and Talk to Talk phone calls.
7. Google Page Creator – FREE simple web page creator and simple site hosting.
8. Google Video – FREE video hosting.
9. Google Docs and Spreadsheets – FREE web based Spreadsheet and WordProcessing software. Save your spreadsheets and processed documents online.
10. Google Picasa – FREE photo editing software. Can be used to resize images also.
11. Google Picasa Web Albums – FREE image hosting.
12. Google WebMaster Tools – FREE Google sitemap management and other webmaster tools associated with Google. Submit your site to Google.
13. Google Adsense – Earn additional income thru Pay Per Click advertising.
14. Google Adwords – Create more traffic using Pay Per Click advertising.
15. Google Blogger – Create a FREE blog.
16. YouTube - FREE Video hosting.
17. Google Checkout – Credit Card processing and merchant account. FREE processing until the end of 2007.
18. Google Notebook – Installs a plugin within your browser and you can leave notes about individual sites and things that you visit. Perfect for researching design, business plans and models, etc. Saves it to a backend system on Google and it is even shareable.

So you can see if you didn’t know about all of this FREE stuff you do now. I recommend getting signed up with Gmail right away to make it easy to get all the other services going. Let me know if you are aware of any other Google Tools that I may not have listed that you feel could be advantageous to sign up for. No matter how hard you try to hate Google, you gotta love them when they give away stuff like this.

About Brandon Buttars