Google Voice Phone Management Service

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Jul 1, 2010 in Internet Mastery | 1 comment

Google Voice is now available to subscribers in the United States after being in beta mode (with over a million subscribers) since 2007 after Google purchased a company called Grand Central.

As with all new product launches there are good and bad points, ranging from really great to oh no! However Google Voice is a free service and when combined with other free tools available from Google can provide the synergy to make a unified communication solution available to small home-based companies. As the system in its present form does not support ported numbers, users are required to use a new Google Voice phone number which can be a non-starter for businesses with a widely known or published phone number.

To recap:

• You get your own free phone number.
• You can provide customized phone messages depending on who is calling.
• You can have your Google voice number forward to any number you want.
• Voice mail messages can be transcribed to email and emailed to you. However, it should be noted that the inaccuracies are so extensive some companies may decide not to rely upon this feature in its present state.

The following information was pulled from Google’s website:

The first thing you’ll need to decide is whether you’d like to use the full version of Google Voice with a brand new phone number, or add some Google Voice features (like voicemail) to your existing mobile phone number.

The basic differences between these options are:

Google Voice with a Google number

• Use one number to manage all your phones; your Google Voice number is tied to you, not to a particular device or location.
• Voicemail like email: Save voicemail messages for as long as you’d like, star important ones, and search through them
• Voicemail transcription: Voicemail messages will be automatically transcribed to text and sent to you via email and/or SMS.
• Customize your callers’ experience (custom voicemail greetings, decide which of your phones ring based on who’s calling, send some callers straight to voicemail, etc.)
• Define which phones ring, based on who’s calling, and even ListenIn^TM on voicemail before answering the call. We use smart technology to route your calls. So, if you’re already on a Google Voice call, we’ll recognize it and use call waiting to reach you on the phone you’re on.
• Works with mobile phones, desk phones, and work phones. There’s nothing to download, upload, or install, and you don’t have to make or take calls using a computer.
• International calling: Make low priced international calls from the web or from your phone.

Google Voice with your non-Google phone number:  

With this option you won’t get some features (i.e. call forwarding, screening, and call recording), but you’ll still get plenty of others, including:

• Voicemail like email: Save voicemail messages for as long as you’d like, star important ones, and search through them
• Voicemail transcription: Voicemail messages will be automatically transcribed to text and sent to you via email and/or SMS.
• Custom voicemail greetings: Customize your voicemail greeting based on who is calling.
• International calling: Make low priced international calls from the web or from your phone.

For a complete list of the features with each option, click here. You can also check out a video about Google Voice’s You Tube channel for explanatory videos.

Please be sure to drop back by here and let us know how Google Voice works for you.

Tracking Blog Visitors Through Google Analytics

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Sep 11, 2009 in Internet Mastery, Web Development | 0 comments

If you follow me around at all you know that I am a huge fan of WordPress Platform website/blogs. In fact, I blog about it quite a bit here on my Internet Mastery Blog. Just type in “wordpress” in the search box and you will find a lot of very helpful information.

Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine and one that is on my “MUST INSTALL” list for any WP installation is Ultimate Google Analytics.

How to install and activate Ultimate Google Analytics

1. Login to your Google accounts control panel. If you have not set this up yet, you will need to create an account here.
2. Create a website profile by clicking the “Add Website Profile” link.
3. Provide the URL of the site that you will be adding Google Analytics to.
4. You will be provided with two options. You need the Web Property ID from the yellow box at the top of the page entitled “Tracking Status Information. The code will look something like this: UA-999999-9.
5. Login to your WordPress Admin. Depending on the version of WP that you are using you should be able to install new plugins directly from your dashboard. If not, you will need to download this plugin and FTP into your account.
6. Once you have installed and activated the plugin, enter your Google Analytics account ID and save your options.

Make it a point to login to your Google accounts regularly to track visitor traffic such as the total number of visits and page views your site received, the average number of page views per visit, (P/V) and the number of visits and page views over time. You will also be able to see visits by new and returning. This is valuable data to have and will assist you in creating content that your visitors want to return to time and time again.

**You have permission to reprint in your publication or to your website/blog any articles by Denise Griffitts found on this Website as long as Denise Griffitt’s name and contact information is included. Denise Griffitts, Virtual Assistance Industry Expert, http://internetmasteryblog.com, info @ virtualassistantindustry.com, 888-719-6711.

Google As a Social Network?

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Jun 1, 2009 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

Recently I asked if you had built your Google Profile yet. That post prompted a flurry of emails from people who had never even heard of a Google Profile and wanted to know more about Google as a social network.  When I came across this great post by Chris Crum on WebProNews that spoke directly to some of the questions that we have been responding to, I wanted to share.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Have You Built Your Google Profile Yet?

Posted by Denise Griffitts on May 5, 2009 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

The latest Google buzz is that they have introduced a feature within Google Profiles that will give you a little more control over search results when you Google your own name. Google profiles are not new — mine has been in place for quite a while now. What is new is that you can now show up in a box on the first page of search results for your name.  If you have uploaded a photo you will see a thumbnail image next to a link to your full profile page. You will likely notice that Google profiles resembles a Facebook profile page which can’t be an accident.

Your Google profile lets you offer up a lot of information about yourself or your business. By including a brief bio, an image (I suggest the one you brand yourself with across the internet), links to your blogs, social networking profiles, websites and just about any place else that you may appear on the internet, you are able to aggregate your online presence and obtain prominent placement in Google results.

Google Flags Entire Internet as “Malware”

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Feb 1, 2009 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

If you were working on the internet yesterday you undoubtedly came across the same issues that had the Twitter world in a panic. It seems that yesterday any search result from Google was getting flagged as malware with a message stating “This site may harm your computer”. In other words, our entire online world was blacklisted for a short time.  The problem apparently affected internet pages across the globe and lasted for about 55 minutes or so before engineers were able to fix the problem.

Twitter went crazy yesterday as people were reporting the problems and just generally commiserating with each other, but I am happy to report today that the Google is explaining this as a “human error” and you can read their explanation here on the Official Google Blog. All is well. Until the the next time.