Google Trends — See which search keywords are popular now

A very interesting service that Google, the largest search engine on the Internet, has recently released for beta use is called Google Trends. It allows the user to see the search volume for a certain keyword for the past few years. This information is very powerful if you are relying on the Internet for marketing or selling your products. For example, if you are in the tourism industry, you would know if the keyword Bohol has gained more popularity over other provinces. You would also know if which cities in the Philippines the search volume originated. That then enables you to target certain cities for your Internet marketing effort. Have a look at this and you will see that search volume for the keyword Bohol has increased slightly in 2007 compared to previous years. However, when compared with Cebu, you will see that Cebu has been searched on a much higher scale vs. Bohol and this search volume has increased significantly in 2007. The Bohol trend is actually relatively flat when viewed together with Cebu. What does this mean? This could mean a lot of things, like we are not marketing Bohol as much as Cebu, or there are much lesser people interested in doing business in Bohol vs. Cebu and so on. There could be a lot of reasons but that is beyond the scope of this article. Google trends can be a very powerful tool for Internet based business activities. You should try it...

Internet Bandwidth — What is it, really?

Probably one of the commonly used yet most misunderstood technologies is the Internet.  And perhaps its most misunderstood element is the capacity of a user’s Internet access subscription often termed as Internet Bandwidth.  With the proliferation of Internet access services priced at around Php1000 per month or even lower with bandwidths published as “up-to” 2MBPS or even higher, many frustrated users ask why is a 2MBPS connection still slow to load a normal webpage? Internet connection from the Philippines going out to the world is done through submarine fiber optic cables going from the Philippines to Taiwan, Hongkong and other countries that serve as hubs for interconnections.  Just image the cost of laying out thousands of kilometers of expensive cables submerged into deep ocean, then include the cost of operating it and repairing any cable faults.  That’s not going to be cheap to use this interconnection service. The very large bandwidth specifications published by many Internet Service Providers, including telcos like PLDT, Smart and Globe, is generally a marketing ploy.  It gives you an illusion that your connection is going to be very fast.  And this is true, when you are the only one using it.  When you look at the fine print, most likely you will see a zero committed information rate or CIR, which technically means they are not committing to any service rate at all. So in order to be able to offer Internet access at Php1000/month given that the international connections is expensive, the service providers “share” the connection among its subscribers.  A 2MBPS connection with zero CIR is probably shared by a hundred or...