Gmail is 10th most visited US site

Gmail has been seen as 10th most visited US site

Gmail lags behind direct competitors in the US like Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Mail. However, a new study shows that - in terms of the most visited US properties overall, Google's e-mail service (Gmail) knocked the popular sister site YouTube out of the top 10 list for the first time.

As per the Hitwise report, during the week ending January 10, 2009, Gmail jumped up the list of most visited US sites to number 10. Number 10 was previously YouTube.

Hence, it can be said that Gmail overtakes YouTube as 10th most visited US site!!!

How to optimize an image and gain benefits

How to optimize an image and gain benefits?
One of my friends asked me few days back followed by one more yesterday; that asked me to put this on my blog as it should be useful to all who are unaware of image optimization.

If your image is correctly optimized, it shall come up in the Google image search.

By optimizing, you need to help Google decide what your image is. Below are some tips for optimizing images:

1) Use proper file names for your images.
For example, if your image is of Rose, your file name should be Red_rose.jpg
If it is in a folder, it should be in a folder called flowers or roses, etc.

2) Use the proper alt tag on your images.
For example, for Red_rose.jpg, the alt tag can be alt tag="American Red Rose".
The alt attribute is what determines the text that shows up when you hover your mouse over an image. Also, if due to some technical flaws, the image is not downloaded, the text is seen as alternate that says to the visitor what the image is of.

3) Use captions or relative text near the image.
Google reads that!

4) Use the width and height attributes on images.
It is advisable to put the proper width and height attributes on images. This helps for fast downloading of images and in a way is part of Optimization.

5) Make sure that your File-name, Alt-tag, caption, etc. are keyword-rich.


--> The above are what I feel the best and useful 5 Tips for Image Optimization.
One more additional tip is to submit your image into Flickr or Picasaweb with similar keyword-rich tags.

"Search the Web" button is back in Gmail

The web search button is now back in G-mail after a brief disappearance. A small number of vocal users complained and Google restored the button.



For the Gmail search: This Gmail searches the same way one would use Google Search, by entering a keyword (or search phrase) that appears anywhere within the message (body/ subject/ email-address) you want to locate. For instance, if you're looking for a message that contains the word software, simply type software in the search field and press Search Mail. The results for your search will be displayed with your search terms highlighted in yellow.

Highest searched terms in Google in 2008

This is very interesting. When I tried to see what are the most searched terms in the last year or say the Top keywords that have been searched the most in 2008; below is the list that was popped up by Google in Dec 2008:

1. obama
2. facebook
3. att
4. iphone
5. youtube
6. fox news
7. palin
8. beijing 2008
9. david cook
10. surf the channel

These were said to be the fastest-rising search terms in the U.S. for 2008. This was brought up after combing through billions of anonymous, aggregated search queries that had been in top-of-mind for Americans in 2008.

And while searching this, you know what? I guessed Obama would be in the first position and see I was right!