Dave Chase

If dog is man’s best friend then Google is webmaster’s best friend.

Let’s face it, Google is pretty much the best site on the web. It provides incredibly useful results quickly and in a clean design. However, Google’s search engine is only one of the every growing list of free products. Here are the top five for webmasters and website owners.

1. Google Apps

Anyone using any email client other than Google is just crazy. Google Apps gives you the ability to use Google’s famous Gmail interface to check their mail and keep your domain name. For instance, I have Google Apps set up for my domain so my email address is dave [at] davesday.com but I use Gmail to check my email.

Google Apps gives you a lot more then just email though. It also gives you integrated use of Google Docs and Google Calendar, effectively replacing the Microsoft Office Suite. Google Apps also allows you to create useful sites that work well for intranets for companies to share information.

The best part, Google Apps is free. Well, you can pay if you want to. They offer a $50 per year per user option with more features and 24/7 support. But the free version gives each user 7 GBs of storage space and allows you to create 200 email address, more than enough for more small business and nonprofits.

2. Google Analytics

By far the most accurate and in depth web traffic statistics program out there. Why? Because not only does it get data from your site it also gets data from Google, the number one search engine and, for most sites, the number one source of traffic.

Google Analytics is entirely free to use and incredibly easy to install, just copy and paste the code into your site.

3. Webmaster Tools

Google’s Webmaster’s tools should be the very first stop for anyone looking to move up in the search engines. It’s perhaps the best search engine optimization tool out there. All you do is create an XML sitemap and a Google account.

It lets you track how many times Google has indexed your site, what pages it has indexed and what problems it has encountered. The tools include specific data on what pages are hurting your search engine optimization and what you can do to improve them.

Once again Google Webmaster Tools is totally free.

4. Google Custom Search

In the Web 2.0 world that we live in, people want their information as soon as possible and they want to be able to find exactly what they want when they want it. Fortunately, Google’s gotcha covered. Google Custom Search allows you to embed a Google search of just your sites content into your site. This is particularly helpful for blogs or sites with a lot of content.

The down side to Google’s Custom Search is in order for it to work, Google has to first have indexed your page. It also displays some ads in your search results. Still better than nothing.

You guessed it, completely free.

5. Google Maps

Not what you were expecting was it? Google Maps is a website’s best friend. In minutes you can create a custom map with your store locations or locations of your news/blog stories or just a way to show a map of any part of the world. It’s free content that users love. Know it, use it and love it.

Google, webmasters best friend.