Google Research and Keep track of Your Market

Although it makes sense to spend the bulk of your time improving your own site, it's undoubtedly wise to pay close attention to your market space and your competitors... and Google can help you with that, too.  Use Google Trends to compare the prevalence of searches and news articles for different keywords... evaluating which product has captured more attention or which issue excites more of your potential customers.  Google Reader enables you to stay on top of the latest articles without having to manually jump from site to site.  You can follow specific topics or keywords from popular news papers, insightful bloggers, even your favorite photo or video sites.  The Google Alerts service provides another way to track what's most important to you.  Often within minutes of being published, you can receive e-mails with links to news articles, blog entries, or other web pages that mention your name, your company's name, or any phrase of your choice.  For a more comprehensive list of and links to these and related resources, check out Google's "More products and services" page, at http://www.google.com/options/