Top 10 Google Tools

For work, play, and everything else, the right Google tool can change your life. How to choose? We got you covered.

You already know that Google has excellent search capabilities, and there's a very good chance that you use Gmail for your email, but did you know that there are loads more Google tools that can improve your productivity in just about every area of your life? Whether you’re looking for tweaks for your business, tools to improve collaboration with colleagues, students, friends, or family, need some assistance in planning lessons, getting through your studies, or just want to organize your life across the board, Google has apps that can help you out. Choose the best Google tool for the task and get started!

Marketing Your Product

Some of Google’s tools have more specific purposes that you’re only likely to need if you’re working in marketing, selling a product, or want to promote a blog, service, or small business. But, if you are a marketer, you’ll find them invaluable. Adwords Keyword Planner is a vital tool that helps you find the best keywords for your SEO and marketing campaigns. You simply enter one word or phrase which encapsulates your service, blog, or product and the Google Adwords Keyword Planner will produce groupings of connected keywords, show you how popular they are for searches, and an estimated cost per click (CPC) price for a paid Google Adwords campaign using that word or phrase.

Google Trends is another key tool for anyone who wants their site to rank high in Google search results. You just enter the words, phrases, or website name that you want to investigate and Google Trends scans and analyzes recent Google searches to see how many people entered those terms. Google Trends lets you view the popularity of the terms you entered both now and historically, compare website traffic, and more so that you can decide what action to take to improve your ranking.

One last useful tool for marketers is Google Correlate. Correlate is much less known than Google Trends but for anyone looking to jump in on a new trend while it’s still beginning, it’s priceless. Google Correlate lets you search for trends that have a similar pattern of popularity. So, if you want to find more rising trends, you just enter the trend you already found and search for more topics that match it. The topics that turn up aren’t necessarily connected in terms of subject, only in terms of their data pattern. It helps marketers and businesses choose where and how to promote their products.

Collaborating With Others

Collaboration is necessary for so many spheres of life. Whether you're a businessman collaborating on your business planner with your company, an employee working on a presentation with colleagues, a student preparing a shared homework assignment, or a family coordinating their schedules, collaboration tools make it all much easier. Google Docs is a fantastic word processing app that now rivals Microsoft Word. It lets you create and edit shared documents online, saving every change automatically and showing them in real time. You can share documents with differing levels of privacy controls, and the ‘Offline' feature for Chrome users means that you can carry on working offline and all your changes will be synced once you're online again.

Google Calendar is another multi-purpose collaboration tool. You can utilize it to create a custom calendar for your business that shows the dates of meetings, exhibitions, launches, etc. and share it with all of your employees. When one person updates the calendar, it syncs across everyone’s version. Marketers use Google Calendar to plan campaigns, teachers use it to keep students informed about assignment deadlines, and workgroups can use it to find the best date for meetings.

One last suggestion is Google Drive. Although many people confuse Google Drive and Google Docs, they aren’t the same tool. Google Docs is the word processing app that also enables document sharing. Google Drive is a cloud storage facility for anyone. It can hold virtually any type of file, including docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, videos, audio files, and more, and makes it easy to share your material safely. You can set different permission levels for different files to preserve your security. Every Google account holder gets 16GB of free storage, or you can pay $2.49 for up to 25GB all the way up to $799 per month for 16TB. Because you can link Google Drive to your Wordpress account, it’s a great way to automatically and securely store all of your website backup files.

Running Your Business

If you’re in charge of a small business or running a website, Google tools can add up to the equivalent of an extra employee. Google Analytics is a mostly free tool that gives you insight into your website traffic. It shows your engagement levels, visitor demographics, traffic sources, which content is performing best, how visitors convert through your site, and more. It shows you what areas are succeeding and which need improvement. This information is vital for underpinning your business strategy and using smarter and more targeted ways to capture, engage, and retain customers.

Google Trends is another good tool for businesses to see how their company name is faring in terms of search popularity and to track the level of interest in your product. Diving deep into Google Trends can bring up useful data to guide the direction of your business.

Google Alerts is also useful for small businesses that want to monitor their brand reputation. You can set a Google Alert to send you a notification by email or to your RSS reader whenever your company name or product item is mentioned. Google Alerts can be set up for basically anything so that you can always be quick to respond to new events.

Keeping Your Life Organized

Life is busy, and it's hard to keep on top of all of our obligations, appointments, and events. Everyone could do with a little help to stay organized. Google Keep is one of the most multi-purpose Google tools. You can save information as notes, voice recordings, photos, lists, or drawings and sync it between all connected devices. With Google Keep, families and roommates can add to a shared grocery list, colleagues can collaborate on a brainstorming document, and friends can plan a party together remotely. There’s a mobile and desktop app so that you can stay up to date on your to-do list everywhere, and extras like voice-to-text transcription, photo scanning to save documents, color coding, sharing options, a powerful in-app search to find saved information, and location-based reminders make it even more useful.

Google Calendar is another useful crutch for everyone. You can use it to set reminders for errands and appointments, share birthday lists so that you won’t forget a date again, and create communal or work-linked calendars for easy event sharing.

If your email inbox easily veers out of control, Google Gmail helps you keep on top of that too. You can use Google's filters and tags to direct emails into certain folders, without having to even receive them into your inbox. Because Gmail has built-in search, you can just search for the right email instead of having to hunt for it through a crowded inbox.

You can also use Google Drive to keep all your documents, PDFs, photos, and more in one place so that nothing gets lost. Just use the built-in search function to retrieve them.

Keeping on Top of What Interests You

Google Alerts helps keep you informed about your favorite topics, products, and events so that you’ll never miss out. You can set an alert for anything you’d like, like movie news about your favorite actor, updates about the release of the latest smartphone, or breaking news about a geographic location that interests you.

Creating and sharing custom Google Calendars means that you’ll never miss a birthday again. You can use it to create and respond to invitations to parties and events, and add calendars for your favorite sports teams’ game schedules or concert dates for your best bands as soon as they are released.

Take Control of Your Life With Google Tools

Whether you’re a businessman or a student, want to improve your revenues, or avoid forgetting your girlfriend’s birthday; there are Google tools that will help you get there. The right Google tools can bring order to your life and boost your company’s success, so choose all the ones you need to start now.