Google has decided to change the name of what was called the “Google Local Business Center” to “Google Places.” The rationale, according to the press release, is to better connect Google Place Pages with the place where local business information is claimed, entered and enhanced:

via Google Local Business Center Becomes “Google Places”.

Become a more knowledgeable Google Analytics user. Visit Google’s Conversion University.

Authority Labs shows you at a glance whether you’re #4 or #40 in Google, Bing and Yahoo! for whatever search terms are important to you and your organization.

Google’s Wonder Wheel visually represents the way Google’s search engine perceives the relationships between keywords, and is how Google’s bot initially chooses sites for ads in the Content Network. Check it out the next time you ‘google’ something!  It’s easy!  Go to www.google.com, do a search and click on “Show Options.” Down a few inches on the left is a link called “Wonder Wheel.” Click on it and voila!

Google, a company that stores lots of data for lots of people, today announced the Google Data Liberation Front. The web site, dataliberation.org is dedicated to explaining how to get your data out of Google and to discuss the ideology behind data portability.

via HOW TO: Get Your Data Out of Google.

Thanks to for publishing The Ultimate List of Google and Google Employees on Twitter which makes it easy for twitter-lovers to find/follow Google (http://twitter.com/google) and key Google employees.

Google jumped directly into Microsoft’s home turf by announcing Google Chrome OS, its new operating system for PCs and netbooks.

Read entire article… Google vs Microsoft: A Guide to the Battle.

The Wall Street Journal claims Kudo is designed to better organize search results. It shows search results on the right, and categories such as images, songs, lyrics, albums, videos on the left. Microsoft has confirmed it’s been testing Kumo internally for a while, without giving much details about it. 

Click here to read the full article.

Kudos to Boris Epstein for his April 8th, 2009 post entitled “Do You Pass the Social Media Recruitment Test?” who discusses how human resource firms are using social media sites including linkedin, blogs, facebook, twitter along with Google to help find the perfect candidates. Read his article to find out the specifics.

Effective keywords can make the difference between a liability and an asset, and as such the Google Keyword Tool is invaluable!