Google is the world’s largest business directory – any search brings up a huge number of competing organisations trying to get noticed.  As more traffic is driven by Google each day, it is becoming a necessity to stand out in search listings.

 

Since June 2011, you may have noticed pictures of authors next to search results for their articles. These authors have linked their work to their Google profiles in an effort to attract more clicks – a picture and byline can draw attention towards a page, and can link to other work by that person.

There are obvious potential benefits to a Google authorship profile – a photo and name are eye-catching and will make a website stand out next to other search results, but some have suggested that it isn’t worth it.

Having your name and picture displayed in search results requires setting up an account on Google plus, the search engine’s answer to Facebook. Authorship has been criticised as just one way for the search engine to use its domination to promote Google plus.

Tying your professional design work to your Google profile can make some people uneasy, especially if you use Google plus in a social capacity – mixing your personal and professional life online can be a concern for some people.

However, there are other benefits to having an authorship profile beyond seeing your picture next to search results. As Google gives better rankings to websites linked to Google profiles, authorship can boost your visibility to potential clients. Perhaps most importantly, a Google profile makes your work more personal – if a client can see who is behind a website, they will feel a more personal connection, and may feel more comfortable hiring you.

Your Google profile can also display a wide range of other design projects you have done, in effect an online portfolio.

A Google authorship profile does require work to set up, and a degree of professionalism on your authorship profile, but the advantage of adding a personal touch to your work will make it worth it for many.

How to set up a Google authorship profile

First, you need to set up a Google plus profile at plus.google.com. Fill in your details, including a professional picture and some of your details. For Google to verify you as a legitimate author, your profile must be fleshed out with some detail about you, but edit your privacy settings to make sure that certain private details, such as your telephone number, are not made public. The more active you are on Google plus, the more Google will trust you, resulting in higher search rankings.

When editing your profile, add the websites where your content is hosted to the ‘contributor to’ box. You must then link your website to your Google plus profile, which can be done by providing an email address that links to your website, or by adding some simple code to your website.

Google will then take some time to verify you as the author of the work, but eventually your authorship profile will show up alongside your search listings.

Last month Google, finally, opened up there extension directory for Google Chrome. The bog-standard browser is pretty good as it is – its very fast (beating Firefox with ease) and seems to render most web pages properly (I know, it wouldn't be hard to beat IE). So, thumbs up so far. Now with the added functionality of extensions you can make Chrome just as powerful as Firefox, and as a bonus you don't seem to lose any speed, something FF struggles with.

It all sounds good, doesn't it… There are some down-sides, though – some of the extensions are a little bit buggy (most are still in Beta) and others do lack a fair bit of polish. But if you choose your extensions carefully you will be able to build yourself a great web browsing environment.

Remember, the extensions directory has only just opened, with time Chrome and its extensions may just win the web browser war… Then again Firefox may come back fighting back, it always has done, hasn't it?

In today’s news round-up we have collected the best resources to help you choose best extensions for Chrome.

11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters

Google promised that Chrome would be fast to launch and fast to load web pages, but people predicted it would fail with the arrival of its extensions. Well, the extensions are here (at least for some of us) and surprisingly they do not affect the browser’s performance.

Here are a 11 cool extensions to get you started and ease you into your possible transitions to Chrome. Maybe not yet.

11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters

Creating a Web Development Environment using Google Chrome Extensions

How powerful can Chrome actually be for designers and developers? In just under a month there are dozens upon dozens of new extensions specifically developed for web developers, and in this article they have collected the best and most useful extensions for creating your own personal Google Chrome web development environment.

Creating a Web Development Environment using Google Chrome Extensions

Make the Most of Chrome with These 13 Excellent Extensions

Lifehacker, in this article, have pulled 13 fresh extensions from the extension gallery that were worthy of highlighting. They all have something a bit different from the widely-available bookmarklets, or at least fill a crucial need for those who use the web productively.

Make the Most of Chrome with These 13 Excellent Extensions

How To Create Your Own Google Chrome Extension

Developing your own Google Chrome extension is surprisingly easy. You might think you need all types of development skills and coding knowledge, but it’s really no more difficult than creating or tweaking a web page. If you know HTML/CSS and are somewhat familiar with Javascript, you can have a simple extension up and running in no time.

How To Create Your Own Google Chrome Extension

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

In the past week Google debuted its new operating system called Chrome. Have you tried it yet?
In todays news we have some resources to show you were to download and how install Chrome. And then decide for yourselves how good… or bad… it actually is.

Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How…

Most people won’t be ready to undertake the daunting task of actually taking Google’s recently open-sourced code and turning that into a bootable computer. So, in this article, they have put together a step-by-step guide to doing this, for free. It should only take about 15 minutes (depending on how long it takes to download the OS itself).

Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How…

Download Google Chrome OS and Run it from a USB Drive

Within 24 hours of its availabilty, the web was littered with disk images for running the new Google OS on virtual machines such as VMWare and VirtualBox. As an alternative, this article shows you how to run Chrome directly from a USB drive.

Download Google Chrome OS and Run it from a USB Drive

Download Google Chrome OS for free – gdgt

This is one of the many places to download the Google Chrome OS. Signup here , takes about 2 minutes, and then you can download it.
You will need VMWare Player or VirtualBox to run the OS.

Download Google Chrome OS for free – gdgt

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

By reviewing what’s changed and what’s stood the test of time, we can make general assumptions of web design principles that will work going forward. Things have moved on in terms of interface design and graphics, some websites more than others. Looking at the examples below sites such as Amazon, eBay and Craigslist have changed comparatively little (Craigslist has hardly changed at all), a testimony to their forward thinking at the time, whilst others such as the Whitehouse have come a long way.

Whitehouse 1997 – 2009

Microsoft 1999 – 2009

Digg 2004 – 2009

(note 2004 CSS styling maybe missing)

CNN 2000 – 2009

BBC 2000 – 2009

Facebook 2006 – 2009

SmashingMagazine 2006 – 2009

Ebay 1999 – 2009

Amazon 1999 – 2009

Craigslist 1999 – 2009

Apple 1999 – 2009

WordPress 2003 – 2009

(note 2003 CSS styling maybe missing)

Oakley 2000 – 2009

Techcrunch 2005 – 2009

(note 2005 CSS styling maybe missing)

Google 1999 – 2009

Yahoo 1997 – 2009

Other patterns can be seen, design centric companies such as Apple and Oakley consistently focus on design, whilst news based websites such as CNN and the BBC have only modernized the traditional news & picture format.