Start your own Google+ Brand page here.

Visit my Google+ Brand Page: Jerad Hill Photographer on Google+

Like I said before, Google+ business pages for Brands are just like a personal page. You can add a Google+ Brand Page as a friend to your circle just like you could a person and their posts will show up in the stream under that businesses name. As I write this there is no proof that there is any SEO advantages to posting to your page but I am sure that there will be. Google says that they do not use Facebook or Twitter posts in their ranking decision process but one has to assume that something in their algorithm is paying attention.

One of the most exciting features of having a Google+ page for your brand is the Direct Connect Feature. By placing the + in front of a brand’s name in Google search it will make it easy to drive traffic to your brand’s page. For example, if you do a Google Search for +Google, it will take you to Google’s + Page. Do a search for +Pepsi and it will take you to their Google+ Page. Pretty awesome. Facebook and Twitter do not have that kind of functionality unless you are already on their site.

Check out this short video of that feature in action.

In the future we will probably start seeing Google link up the Google+ Brand pages to your companies Place page, Ad Word account, Youtube and more. You can start to see the bigger picture start to unfold. This is something Google should have done long ago. I am glad to see it rolling out now.

Go grab your Google+ Brand page for your business today.

For years now I have used Phonetag.com, originally named Simulscribe to transcribe my voicemails. Up until Google recently updated their transcription service Phonetag.Com had them beat hands down. It was also easier to use Phonetag because they were a voicemail service and not a new phone number. I was a lucky early beta adopter of the Google Voice service and actually really like it. I use my Google Voice phone number, but mostly as a message line. With recent updates Google Voice has made plus the Google Chrome plugin that makes it really easy to access your voicemails, I have wanted to make Google Voice my primary Voicemail line, so here is how I did it.

I have an iPhone and a Google Nexus One Phone. The Nexus One is easy to set up for use with Google Voice. There is a setting right in the phone, you switch it on and it’s good to go. With the iPhone it is a bit more challenging.

To set up your iPhone to forward all voicemails directly to Google Voice with out using additional minutes or data you will need to do the following.

Step 1:
On you iPhone (or any GSM-based phone), pull up the keypad and type the following, substituting 1234567890 with your 10-digit Google Voice/GrandCentral account:
*61*1234567890#
To deactivate the forwarding and return to regular visual voicemail enter ##61# and hit call.

If you are on AT&T in the US then I suggest using these settings which will forward not only your regular voicemail but your busy voicemail as well (This is the option I use personally).
*004*1234567890*11#
To deactivate the forwarding and return to regular visual voicemail enter ##004# and hit call.

Step 2:
Log in to your Google Voice account and turn on Do Not Disturb mode. You will want to do this so that when your iPhone forwards to your Google Voice after the typical five or so rings, it will not go through the five or so rings it would take Google Voice before the voicemail picked up. Do Not Disturb sends the incoming call directly to voicemail.

That’s it. All unanswered calls to your iPhone will instantly be dropped in to your Google Voice voicemail.

Tip: You will need to disable any linked phones you have set up on your Google Voice account. If you do not do this, the phone will ring 2-3 additional times before it goes to voicemail resulting in a total of 7-8 or more rings before the caller actually reaches voicemail.

The only problem is that this will make your Google Voice account nothing but a voicemail. Of course you can still use your Google Voice phone number, but if someone calls it, the call will go directly to voicemail.

If you still want access to your Google Voice number then I suggest you set up an additional Google Voice account and use that account for your voicemail. This could get a little confusing to set up and I don’t want to get into those details.

How to easily access your Google Voicemail on the iPhone:

Accessing your Google Voice voicemail is easy on the iPhone. There are two ways to do this.

First Option: Open Safari, go to http://google.com/voice, click on the “+” at the bottom menu in Safari, tap “Add to Home Screen”. Then click add. This will add a shortcut to your home screen that will launch Google Voice in Safari. On occasion you may need to use your password to re-enter Google Voice.

Second and Way Better Option: Use the VoiceCentral app. Because Apple is currently blocking native apps that work with services such as Google Voice there is a work around. Visit http://voicecentral.riverturn.com from your iPhone and choose the free version. The paid version removes ads and has a few minor feature additions but the free version will do you just fine. Once you install and set up this app you will be able to access your Google Voice with great ease. I really like the app and have been using it since they released it.

If you are using the Google Chrome browser on your Mac or PC computer there is a nifty plugin that will add your Google Voice voicemail and transcribed voicemails to an easy to access button. Being that I spend 75% of my day in a web browser it makes it much easier for me to access voicemail that way.

From what I understand, it is easy to forward your other phones to point voicemail to Google Voice as well. You can Google search your way to those answers as I do not have a land line to do testing on.

If you have any questions about Google Voice or how to use it with your devices feel free to comment me in the box below. I will answer your questions on my blog so that they are available for everybody to read should they have the same question.

One Voicemail To Rule Them All!

Google now offers customizable profiles which show up in search engines when people search for you by name. This is an excellent way to enhance your image whether you are promoting yourself as a service provider or simply wanting to impress your future boss. The Google Profiles are set up in a similar way that your profile on most social networks are displayed. This profile will display information about you so you need to make sure the information you put into it is consistent with who you really are and also with the other profiles you have online.

My Google Profile is located at: http://www.google.com/profiles/hill.jerad

Download How to get listed locally in Google, Yelp and Yahoo.

When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: finding exact phrases matches using quotes like “so say we all” or searching a single site using site:ijerad.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we’re skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.

1. Get the local time anywhere

What time is it in Bangkok right now? Ask Google. Enter simply what time is it to get the local time in big cities around the world, or add the locale at the end of your query, like what time is it hong kong to get the local time there.

2. Track Flight Status

Enter the airline and flight number into the Google search box and get back the arrival and departure times right inside Google’s search results.

3. Convert currency, metrics, bytes and more.

Google’s powerful built-in converter calculator can help you out whether you’re cooking dinner, traveling abroad, or building a PC. Find out how many teaspoons are in a quarter cup (quarter cup in teaspoons) or how many seconds there are in a year (seconds in a year) or how many euros there are to five dollars (5 USD in Euro). For the geekier set, bits in kilobytes (155473 bytes in kilobytes) and numbers in hex or binary (19 in binary) are also pretty useful.

4. Compare items with “better than” and find similar items with “reminds me of”

Search for like items using key phrases.
Simply search for, in quotes: “better than _keyword_”
Some example results:

Results 1 – 100 of about 550 English pages for ” better than WinAmp”.

Results 1 – 57 of 57 English pages for ” better than mIRC”.

Results 1 – 100 of about 17,500 English pages for ” better than Digg”. (Wow. Poor Digg.)

The results will almost always lead you to discovering alternatives to whatever it is you’re searching for. Using the same concept, you can use this trick to discover new music or movies. For example, ” reminds me of _someband_” or “sounds like _someband_” will pull up artists people have thought sounded similar to the one you typed in. This is also a great way to find good, no-name musicians you’d probably never know of otherwise.

Examples:

Results 1 – 88 of 88 English pages for ” reminds me of Metallica”.

Results 1 – 36 of 36 English pages for ” similar to Garden State”.

Results 1 – 66 of 66 English pages for ” sounds like The Shins”.

Just get creative and you’ll, without a doubt, find cool new stuff you probably never knew existed.

5. Use Google as a free proxy

What, your company blocks that hip new web site just because it drops the F bomb occasionally? Use Google’s cache to take a peek even when the originating site’s being blocked, with cache:example.com.

6. Remove affiliate links from product searches
When you’re sick of seeing duplicate product search results from the likes of eBay, Bizrate, Pricerunner, and Shopping.com, clear ‘em out by stacking up the -site:ebay.com -site:bizrate.com -site:shopping.com operator. Alternately, check out Give Me Back My Google (original post), a service that does all that known reseller cleaning up for you when you search for products. Compare this GMBMG search for a Nintendo Wii to the regular Google results.

7. Find related terms and documents
Ok, this one’s direct from any straight-up advanced search operator cheat sheet, but it’s still one of the lesser-used tricks in the book. Adding a tilde (~) to a search term will return related terms. For example, Googling ~nutrition returns results with the words nutrition, food, and health in them.

8. Find music and comic books

Using a combination of advanced search operators that specify music files available in an Apache directory listing, you can turn Google into your personal Napster. Go ahead, try this search for Green Day tracks: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Green Day”. (Sub out Green Day for the band you’re interested in; use this one in conjunction with number 7 to find new music, too.) The same type of search recipe can find comic books as well.

9. ID people, objects, and foreign language words and phrases with Google Image Search

Google Image search results show you instead of tell you about a word. Don’t know what burritos look like? Not sure if the person named “Kelly” who you’re emailing with is a woman or a man? Spanish rusty and you forgot what “corazon” is? Pop your term into Google Image Search (or type image burrito into the regular search box) to see what your term’s about.

10. Make Google recognize faces

If you’re doing an image search for Paris Hilton and don’t want any of the French city, a special URL parameter in Google’s Image search will do the trick. Add &imgtype=face to the end of your image search to just get images of faces, without any inanimate objects. Try it out with a search for rose (which returns many photos of flowers) versus rose with the face parameter.

Hope this helps your Google experience. If you have any Google techniques you would like to share please put them in the comment box below.