Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Head of Google New Zealand shares online business insights

Thursday, April 24th, 2014
Photo credit; Blaise Alleyne on Flickr

Photo credit; Blaise Alleyne on Flickr

A new Internet NZ study shows Kiwi businesses who use the internet extensively are more productive than their less-connected peers, and are four years ahead of their industry average in terms of competitiveness.

With that in mind, Google New Zealand’s Tony Keusgen shares the five golden rules every business should be following online.

1. Use location tools to show people where you are

Register with Google Places to be found on Maps, Google+ and mobile devices and sign up to popular options like Finda, NZS or the Localist so people can easily find you. Registering is simple and almost always free. You just need to submit a website link and enter your details.

2. If you don’t have one already, get a website

Even for primarily offline businesses, having a presence on the internet is important. Websites are still the primary means by which customers learn about all the great things your business has to offer. There are plenty of tools online that will allow you to create a website with no technical expertise relatively inexpensively.

3. Work your web traffic

Sign up for Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to learn how your online visitors behave. Both provide free insights and tips which can help you tailor content and create a great user experience – leading to more people talking about your site, sharing your content and linking to you.

4. Go mobile

Research shows 89% of smartphone users in New Zealand have looked for local information, and 87% have taken action as a result. Click here if you want to see Google’s thoughts on how best you can show off your business across all the different screens people use.

5. Embrace the cloud

The most exciting and fastest growing companies today are those moving toward cloud technologies that make them more collaborative, creative, and help put customers first.

Tools like Gmail, Google Calendars or Google Docs allow you to share large files quickly on the cloud, and work on projects together in real-time, from across town or across country.

Whether you’re installing insulation or baking cheesecakes, cloud technology can save you money and help you work smarter.

To read more about this story, click here.

New Zealand economy could get huge boost if all businesses used internet to full potential

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014
Photo credit; Blaise Alleyne on Flickr

Photo credit; Blaise Alleyne on Flickr

The New Zealand economy would get an estimated $34 billion efficiency and productivity boost  if all businesses were using the internet to its full potential, according to the “Value of Internet Services to New Zealand Businesses” report.

Currently, New Zealand’s economy is worth around $210 billion of output annually.

The report, issued March 31 and funded by Internet NZ and Google, says firms using the internet well are between 6 and 11% more productive than their competitors in the same field. Best practice users were as much as 73% more productive than average businesses in their industry.

The research was conducted by the economic research consultancy Sapere and used data from 5,589 businesses in the Statistics New Zealand Business Operations Survey. It excluded firms in the information technology sector, which were presumed to be high internet users and interviews with 76 businesses were conducted in the tourism, retail, dairy/agriculture, and professional services sectors.

The report says while internet speed and connectivity were once the major issue, that is no longer so. The use to which the internet is put is the larger issue for most firms.

To read more about this story, click here.

Supposed Google directory has no link to Google, investigated for fraud

Wednesday, September 4th, 2013
A New Zealand company calling itself GoogleDirectory and charging people thousands of dollars to be listed is now being investigated for fraud because it has no actual link to Google.
The company launched in July of this year but has been signing up companies since May, promoting itself as a new way for companies to market themselves online.

Fraud police are investigating a New Zealand company calling itself GoogleDirectory – set up with no links to the internet giant but which has listed thousands of businesses and state agencies.

The company launched last month, but had been signing on companies since at least May, promoting itself as a new online marketing tool.

Detective Senior Sergeant Aaron Pascoe, of the Auckland central police financial crime unit, said police had received several fraud complaints from businesses.

“The financial crime unit has received information about GoogleDirectory and we’re aware of allegations which has prompted us to look into it. We have spoken with a representative of the company,” he said.

Google, the search engine giant, has also launched its own investigation.

GoogleDirectory offered New Zealand businesses special internet advertisement packages ranging from $200 to $15,000.

The packages – which cost between $200 and $15,000 – promise to get a business advertised on its site, several other international websites and links to social media pages.

Business people who had been duped by GoogleDirectory said the company told them it was associated with Google and that the services they were purchasing would lead to a bonanza of online activity, none of which turned out to be true.

GoogleDirectory director Simon McLeod could not be tracked down by the New Zealand Herald for comment.

To read more on this story, click here.

Facebook overtakes Microsoft in UK, Google still on top

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Whilst Google is still the most popular website in the UK, Facebook is now in 2nd place, overtaking Microsoft related websites (MSN/WindowsLive/Bing).

A report from online measurement body UKOM/Nielsen has found, for the month of May,

  • Facebook attracted 26.8 million visitors
  • Microsoft wasn’t too far behind, on 26.2 million visitors
  • Google was the clear leader however, with 33.9 million visitors
  • Twitter had 6.1 million visitors
  • While LinkedIn had 3.6 million visitors

You can read more over at stuff.co.nz

Google hunting New Zealanders

Friday, March 4th, 2011

Stuff reports that Google has its eye on hiring New Zealanders to do software development roles for it, but the Kiwis have to be willing and able to move to Google’s Sydney office.

Apparently Google received 75,000 applications for the roles after they announced that they required over 6000 programmers to work for them.

Google has not (so far) said it will employ Kiwis locally, although there is a small amount of staff working for it in NZ.

Top Google searches in New Zealand

Friday, December 10th, 2010

As the end of the year nears, Google releases its lists of most-searched phrases, places and people.

Some highlights:

  • Are Kiwis increasingly becoming cheaper? Perhaps so, with website Grab One being popular in the searches for its online deals.
  • Paul Henry’s antics also got him high on the list of people to be Googled.
  • TradeMe increases in popularity, being the third most searched for social website after Facebook and Twitter.

But just to show that USA is always on the mind, Kim Kardashian was the most searched for celebrity, by New Zealanders.

View the full list of popular searches published on Stuff.

Is Google evil? Or not evil? That is the question

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

So Google did not commit any security breaches when it collected users’ data in New Zealand, however Luke Appleby writes on Stuff today that he is unclear why Google admits that information breaches are committed in countries such as Ireland and Denmark, but not so in Australia.

Its a valuable question – why is the data collection from some countries considered a ‘mistake’ worth apologising for, but not from New Zealand? It seems that when a country does not specifically request that the data be deleted, Google does not consider it to be a mistake.

Mr Appleby states that “…it was the lack of transparency, and the global attitude of Google which led many to question their “don’t be evil” motto”.

The debate continues….

Microsoft treads into privacy mindfield

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Microsoft has bravely decided to go where Google and Facebook have tread before….

Microsoft’s bing.com social networking site also searches other websites including Twitter and Facebook for users’ information, thereby increasing the amount of potentially private information which is available about a user.

It has been careful to blog, however, that “For non-fan pages, we only surface popular shared links from Facebook users in the aggregate form, and only from users who have set their status updates to be shared with ‘everyone.’ No names or photos, or even the text in the update associated with the link are published — just the link in aggregate.”

To see the full article, click here.

Google takes compromising photos

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Google came under attack today for using its 3D ‘street view’ cars to collect potentially compromising data about New Zealand homeowners.

Concerns have been raised about the amount of information Google has acquired through these means, with the company’s assurance that it is not misusing the data it has gathered.

See the full article here.