It’s not a joke! As much as I love Google I am going to participate in the first ever Google Free Day on April 1st. How will you find information? Try using one of the alternative search engines - my thoughts in the beginning were “they suck” - but really when I think about it, I can’t complain about Clusty for example, or Ask.

Wendy Boswell at Lifehacker lists a few of her favourites - and I am going to try out at least one or two of them! Copied here for your convenience are a few that I found interesting:

1. Clusty: Clusty is a metasearch engine, meaning it combines results from a variety of different sources. However, Clusty adds extra search suggestions arranged by category (clusters) for example, if you type in “coffee”, Clusty responds with clustered results to the left such as Tea, Espresso, History of Coffee, etc.
2. Indeed: Indeed.com is a job search engine. It is not a list of message boards, or a place where you can actually submit your resume. Indeed is extremely simple to use, and covers all the major job boards, newspaper classified sites, niche industry sites and corporate job sites. I found more jobs in five minutes on here than I did searching on other job boards. You have to go to the individual websites in order to apply (which is kind of a pain) but this is a great way to generate job leads. Indeed also offers a nice toolset for the job searcher, including a JobRoll, “a customized, dynamically-updating list of jobs that may be placed on your blog or website.”
3. FoodieView: FoodieView is a recipe search engine searching over 175,000 recipes from all different kinds of sources, including AllRecipes.com, The Food Network, Martha Stewart Recipes, and many more. FoodieView is a targeted recipe search engine with a lot of really interesting features; it’s also extremely easy to find good recipes on FoodieView that are actually relevant to what your search query is, which, if you’ve ever tried to find a recipe using certain ingredients on one of the bigger search engines, you’ll agree with me when I say that it can be a huge time-waster.
4. Healthline: Healthline.com is a medical information search engine, with lots of interesting features that make it very simple to use (in other words, you don’t have to have an MD degree to find what you’re looking for here). Healthline is solely dedicated to finding medical information online, and it offers medically filtered results developed by trained medical personnel.
5. FirstGov: FirstGov.gov is an absolutely mammoth search engine/portal that gives the searcher direct access to searchable information from the United States government, state governments, and local governments. It can be overwhelming, simply because there is SO much information here. I would suggest that you get your feet wet with FirstGov by using the Information By Topic directory, or you can choose to drill down by viewing the Site Index. In addition, FirstGov offers an above average Advanced Search help page.

Want to keep the search engine bots from indexing certain folders or pages on your website? Robots.txt to the rescue! And now it is even more convenient to create a robots.txt - you can do this right from within Google Webmaster Tools.

To access the tool, log-in to your Google Webmaster Tools account, then click on one of your sites and access the Tools menu on the left side of the screen. You’ll see a “Generate robots.txt” link among the tool options.

For more detailed information visit:

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/speaking-language-of-robots.html
• http://searchengineland.com/080327-173946.php

Google has put into place an opportunity to assist registered charities in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts through a grant program which allows the charities to raise awareness and increase traffic to their website.

This opportunity is open to charities in the United States as well as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. In the US, organizations must have current 501(c)(3) status, as assigned by the Internal Revenue Service to be considered for a Google Grant.

In Canada, Grant recipients must be registered under the Canada Income Tax Act (search for registered charities at CRA) and use their award of free AdWords advertising on Google.ca to drive traffic to their website, thereby raising awareness.

Each organization choosing to participate in Google Grants receives at least three months of free advertising and once the AdWords account and initial ad campaigns are up and running, Google will provide further assistance by refining your ad copy and keywords (if necessary) to help your organization get up and running.

The catch for most charities is that they need to have a basic understanding of the Google AdWords program and will be asked to provide sample keywords, ad copy, and a brief statement about how your organization will benefit from participating in the Google Grants program.

Google Grants recipients every quarter and DriveTraffic would be happy to assist Canadian Charities which meet the eligibility requirements to pursue this grant money. DriveTraffic can be reached at 613-725-9606 or by email at info@drivetraffic.ca

Google Analytics is growing by leaps and bounds - both by the number of people using it and the improvements made to the software. There is a great post at Mashable that details 27 fantastic features of the software!

ROI Revolution is putting on yet another free webinar - this one for Google Website Optimizer which allows you to conduct A/B testing on your site using Google’s free software rather than paying the big bucks for some of the other software.

I have not yet run into any reviews other than it’s great for the price and so long as it accomplishes what you require. Some companies that are a bit further along in the A/B testing may require more robust software.

To learn more about the software and how it works, check out the free webinar running Monday, April 9th at 2:00pm ET.