Google the powerhouse of intenet search has slipped slightly in market share since the launch of Microsoft Corp.’s rejuvenated Internet search engine Bing.

Microsoft has been heavily marketing Bing in hopes of reviving their search engine. Based on recent search volume reports from Hitwise, Microsoft’s efforts have been meet with moderate success helping to increase Bing’s share of the U.S. search market to 9.5% in August from 8% in the prior month, as Google and Yahoo saw their respective search volume shares weaken.

If we look at charts of search market share before Microsoft unveiled Bing in May we can see that Google was controlling a dominant portion of searches accounting for nearly 73% of all searches. Since the launch of Bing, Google has fallen slightly to 70.46% as of September.

Yahoo has remained fairly steady while the small player ask.com has seen its market share cut in half, they now account for a slim 2.5% of searches.

For small businesses and search marketers this is just a small reminder to not ignore smaller search engines Bing and Yahoo in your search optimization efforts.

Bing and Yahoo both have loyal followings so it is important for site owners and marketers to not ignore theses search engines. Make sure Yahoo and Bing index your site if it is not be sure to submit your site to the search feature as well as the local listing center. A favorable ranking on theses sites can still deliver steady targeted traffic

If Bing the “Decision Engine” campaign takes off we could see continual growth in search volume performed on this search engine. Bing’s search algorithm is not as good as Google’s in my opinion when it comes to providing relevant results but I am sure they are continually improving this issue and with their cool new UI they cold see growth as consumers give Bing a try. Keep your eye on the horizon as Yahoo and Bing push for a modest level of parity in the market place.

Tags: ask.com, Bing, Google, Search Market Share, Yahoo.

Backing up your files is something we are all told to do but often times it is a task that falls by the way side. I know I have been guilt of failing to back up my data a time or two.

Generally we just expect our important documents to always be available and we silently hope and pray that our computer never crashes. But inevitably there come a time when malfunction or user error results in the loss of your valuable information.

Well just last week my laptop took an unexpected dive stranding many important documents. Well as you can imagine I freaked out and quickly strutted down to the local apple genius lab but they where unable to help. In an effort to keep the hope of getting my information back  alive I searched for some local data recover experts but their prices where extortionate, ranging from $600 to $1,000 dollars. Fortunately I found Simon Partridge at Data Recover Man who was able to restore my data in minutes for a fraction of the cost quoted by other companies.

To help safe guard you and your company from data loss I would suggest implementing the following procedures.

1). Back up all of your information weekly at a minimum using an external hard drive. External hard drives are becoming increasingly affordable allowing users to get 250+ gigabytes for under $100 dollars.

2). Utilize online data storage. There are a lot of good web based data storage companies that allow you to effortlessly back up your computers files.  Online data storage gives you flexibility to access your files remotely and protect you from misplaced or lost external hard drives.

Online Data Store Resources:

Mozy:  You can get 2gb free storage including unlimited file size/bandwidth. For business users you can upgrade to a low cost pro accounts for under $5/month.

Box.net:  Offers 1gb free including collaboration folders, mobile access and public file sharing making it a handy business tool as well as a storage service.

Tags: Data Recovery, Hard Drive, Online Storage.

Today Google’s Gmail service was down for at least half an hour leaving thousands of Gmail users high and dry. The extended down time only effected a portion of Gmail users but quickly Twitter feeds were filled with chat about Google’s down time.

Perhaps we put to much faith in Google’s services. Most of Google’s services are web based so users interact with the program on Google’s servers via the internet, rather than running the program from your host computer. This forces Google to continually maintain their server uptimes so services are available to consumers and customers, interruption free.

Most popular hosting services, including Google, boast of reliability, advertising 99.9% server uptimes. At first look this sounds like a very high uptime and makes the hosting service appear very reliable but upon a quick analysis we find that there are 43,200 minutes in a 30-day month, so with 99.9 % up time we are left with roughly 43 minutes of server down time.

When you quantify this claim your server suddenly doesn’t seem as reliable.  We might not feel like 40 minutes is very long but when you are running a business and you rely solely on a web based application you can encounter problems if there is any unexpected server down time.

To help protect yourself and your business from errors and server down time in Google’s applications there are a few simple precautions you can implement that safe guard you against program malfunction and server problems.

My initial recommendation is to set up POP or IMAP forwarding to an email client like Outlook, Apple Mail, or Thunderbird. This will ensure that if the web application is down the POP/IMAP feed will be sent to your mail client. For example during Google’s most recent down time the POP/IMAP feed was still running.

Web based applications are not infallible and they are subject to downtimes. Google has many business tools that have become engrained with many business core functions and down time can result in problems. If you rely on these applications having a backup plan can save you and your organization from future embarrassment.

Tags: Google, Server Up Time, Web Applications.