As a followup on our previous post about Google, here are a few more tips for using the various tools from Google to your advantage:

Does your business have a Google Place page? Be sure to take advantage of this free service. Your company information will then be displayed when someone does a Google search for terms related to your business (for example "Ohio hydraulics"). Get more details about maximizing your Google Place page in this article from Duct Tape Marketing.

For those people who work with large data sets, the Google Refine product is useful for cleaning "messy" data (including text entry inconsistencies like "Rhode Island Hydraulics" vs. "RI Hydraulics"), then transforming and analyzing it. You can read more and watch some demo videos on the project home page here.

Web advertising is getting more sophisticated all the time, with come advertisers allowing you to customize the ads that you see, and opt out of ads you don't want to see. However, up until recently, these customizations and opt-outs were lost every time you clear your web browser's cookies. Google has recently announced a new extension for its Chrome browser that allows you to opt out of ad tracking cookies permanently, and they are working to make this feature available for other browsers as well.