How important is Google for your business?  Let me count the ways.  Google led the U.S. search market in November with 67 percent market share, followed by Microsoft with 16.2 percent and Yahoo! with 12.1 percent.  I wanted to highlight a few free tools Google offers that can help your business grow online.

Find Out What People are Saying About Your Business

Google Alerts are email notifications sent to you when Google discovers new results across the real-time Web, such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs — that match a specific search term.  You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Internet.  You can use Google Alerts to monitor what is being said online about your company or your competitors, track industry trends and developments, follow online mentions of your brand or key executives.  Google Alerts is a great tool for online reputation management.

Get Social

Google + has more than 100 million users and growing every day.  Did you know that you can use Google+ to find out what people are saying about your business across their vast social network?  Search on Google+  can help you search keywords, names or anything else, and you can use your search results to understand what people are saying about your brand or your industry.  Use that information to help you better promote your products and interact with your audience.

Another valuable feature on Google+ is called Ripples, which can help you discover who is resharing your content and who are your most outspoken fans (or critics).  As Google says, “Use it to identify influencers and add them to a circle, or see how communities are formed around your content.”

Google Analytics

Google offers a variety of ways to better understand your Web site and measure traffic.  By accessing Google Analytics you can learn about who’s interacting with your page and how; what pages they are interested in; your users’ demographics; and info about their social activities like +1’s, shares and comments — all to improve the online experience and turbocharge your bottom line.  You probably think you know what people want on your site, Google Analytics will tell you for sure.  The results may surprise you.

P.S.  Some of the best Google business tools available today are found by searching on Google, my friends at PhD in Management have done some of the work for you and compiled a list of 100 Best Web Resources for Managers.  I’m thrilled to see they included our online reputation management blog as an Honorable Mention