Google recently announced an exciting new beta program called Google Sitemaps. Essentially, it allows you to tell Google which pages on your site should be included in its index. You can include all of your URLs in this "sitemap" so that you don't have to worry about the google spider finding everything on its own. Google hopes to expand the number of pages it can index and also allow them to index more quickly. The feature is free to use.

You can find out how many pages of your site Google currently has indexed by typing and searching in Google for the following: site:http://www.yoursitename.com . One you have done that, you now have a baseline to measure your success rate. Next, you or your webmaster can click to https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html and follow Google's instructions on how to generate a sitemap.

Webmasters can create an XML files using an open-source tool Google has made available call Sitemap Generator. This file lists the URLs the webmaster would like indexed along with additional data such as when the page was last updated and how often the page is expected to change. Then they load it to the web server and tell Google where to find it. When the sitemap changes, you simply update your file and Google will find it. Since this is a relatively new technology, if the technical requirements are beyond the abilities of your webmaster, you might consider searching Google for "sitemap generators" or similar and you will find several companies that are specializing in such tasks.

You can read more about it at Google's site at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html, https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/faq.html and http://groups-beta.google.com/group/google-sitemaps.

Google recently made a very useful addition to its AdWords campaign management tools for merchants that advertise on its content network. As many online marketers had been requesting, you can now exclude such sites as your competitor's or high-traffic low-value scraper-type sites that you think are not worthy of your advertising budget. Google's new Site Exclusion tool makes it easy for you; giving you more control over which sites will display your advertisements.

To use the Site Exclusion tool you first must be certain that you have chosen to show your ads on the Google content network and not just on the Google network. This allows you to reach well beyond Google.com and have your ads syndicated on Google's network of high quality websites that are relevant to your business and your customers. With Google’s network you can simply check your traffic logs to determine from where your traffic is originating in relation to your sales. If you see that some sites are sending traffic that is not converting, then you can opt to exclude those sites using the AdWords site exclusion feature. Using this tool can help you enjoy all the benefits of advertising on the content network. Plus you can add to or edit your list at any time, allowing you ample opportunity to fine-tune your approach. It certainly can go a long way towards helping boost your ROI and decrease your cost per conversion. It is definitely worthwhile to check it out.

To get started, simply log into your AdWords account, make sure you’re on the content network in the All Campaigns settings area. Then click on Tools from the top menu and then go to Site Exclusion.

Refer to: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13248&hl=en_US and https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13249

E-commerce sales shot up 24% in Q1 over the same period last year and jumped 25% for the year in 2004 over 2003, according to the US Census Bureau. And that appears to only be the beginning. E-commerce sales may continue to grow at about 20% annual rate for the next three years according to Emarketer.com. That's because e-commerce still only represents about 2% of all retail sales and is expected to outpace the market while taking an ever greater slice of the retail sales pie.

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