Reuben H. Donnelley created the first official Yellow Pages directory in 1886. About a hundred years later the Yellow Pages saw inklings of its demise. Google's official birth date is September 27, 1998. And since we're into a mild history lesson - the internet as "www" originated around 1992. What made the internet so powerful was availability of information. What made Google so powerful was the ability to find the information you needed. What made it all possible was the personal computer.

I've said it many times to clients, don't try to game the system. You might get some short term gains but in the end, you'll get caught. It's not like the internet police will put you in jail but you're gonna think that's where your website is if you don't play by the rules. In the end it has been and always will be about good, authoritative content, easy navigation, informative inbound and outbound links and common sense.

Dear Google, I know in the age of political correctness you've taken the position of non-partisan, non-religious, non-white to the point where your absence may appear to be contempt for the very people you need in order to keep your business thriving.

There's no question that a lot of changes happened related to Google searches last year with PANDA and other updates. Some of these changes were quite subtle and very far reaching. How Google intuitively handles local search is a great example.

All your life you may have been told, "don't act up", "don't brag", "don't be the center of attention". Unless your the guy at the party with the lamp shade on his head, most of us shy away from that kind of popularity. But that is not the person Google is looking for anyway. So it might not seem intuitive to want to be "that guy" when it comes to your website. On the web, THAT GUY is the center of attention (or appears to be). He seems to know a lot. He seems to have good authority and a lot of people seem to be listening. THAT is exactly who you want to be. Google is looking for THAT GUY! You can be THAT GUY!

There's so much to get your arms around relative to Google, I've come up with a new description. It's mind-googling. Every Yellow Cat knows the importance of showing up in the search engines and specifically of showing up in Google. And quite honestly, most of these small businesses think that if they just get the keywords right in their website, that's all they have to do. Nothing could be further from the truth.