Google has become far more than just a search engine.
They have developed a range of powerful online tools designed to help you be more productive and make your life easier.
And the best part is most Googles tools are completely free!
Whether you are looking to:
There is a Google tool to help you do it.
This list of Google tools will help you increase your productivity for your business and personal life.
Let’s get started.
What Will I Learn?
Business owners rely on data to monitor growth.
Looking to keep your finger on the pulse of your business? Google has a number of tools that make it easy to do that.
These first 10 tools are essential for tracking the progress of your business.
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools you can have as a business owner.
Why?
It tells you all about one of the most important parts of any business: Your audience.
You can learn so much about your website visitors and how they are engaging with your site:
Google Analytics is one of the best free Google tools available for any business. When used correctly, it does more than just track basic information about your site visitors.
Don’t trust Google? Check out my list of Google Analytics alternatives!
Google Optimise helps you deliver more personalised experiences on your website.
It helps you test and find what elements on your website deliver the best experience for your customers.
A better experience = higher conversion rates and more sales.
You simply add the code to your website and then install the Google Optimise plugin.
With Google Optimise you can:
Google Optimise is one of the easiest testing tools to use. It is amazing how simple the user interface is while being such a powerful tool.
There is a free version for Google Optimise that will work for most businesses but they also have a paid version called Optimise 360 for more advanced testing.
If you want to improve your conversion rates you should definitely look into Google Optimise.
Have a nice website that you would love to monetise?
If your website gets even a moderate level of traffic, Google AdSense is worth looking into. It’s one of the easiest ways to earn passive income.
Google AdSense is Google’s advertising affiliate network.
You simply place some code into the following:
Of your website and allow Google to show display ads.
Google then matches your website to relevant advertisers and as visitors browse your site they will see Google display ads.
You have complete control over where ads are displayed on your website so that you can optimise them for maximum income.
The amount of money you earn will depend on your website niche and how many visitors you get. While earnings will differ from site to site you can use the Google AdSense revenue calculator to estimate how much you can earn.
You probably won’t get rich with AdSense but it’s completely passive and doesn’t require much work from you.
Need a boost to your organic traffic?
You might want to consider a paid search traffic campaign.
Google Ads allows you to feature your website at the top of any search result for any keyword. You simply add the keyword you want to target, write an ad and set it live.
You will only be charged when someone clicks on your ad.
Bidding on the right keywords can bring significant traffic and high-quality conversions.
The best thing about Google Ads is that the traffic is actively looking for the keyword you are bidding on. That means that the traffic is high quality and the ads can produce higher conversion rates.
When you are ready to take your Google ads up a notch, you can use the advanced targeting options.
This allows you to refine your ads so they are laser targeted and convert well.
Google Keyword Planner is probably one of the most underrated keyword tools.
Why? …Because it contains data directly from Google themselves. Which other keyword tool can claim that?
Google Keyword Planner was built by Google to help advertisers find and bid on profitable keywords for their Google Ads campaigns. But in the right hands, Keyword Planner can be a treasure trove of valuable data.
You can use Keyword Planner to:
And so much more.
You can filter all of the information that Keyword Planner provides for specific locations.
So if you are running a local paid search or organic search campaign, you can see the details related to your target location.
Check out my Google Keyword Planner guide to learn how to get the most out of this awesome free SEO tool.
Looking for more keyword research tools? Don’t worry I got you covered. Check out my list of free keyword research tools.
There are so many valuable ways to use Google Trends – especially when it comes to business.
As it says in the name, Google Trends provides trend data around almost any topic you want. You can get data on:
And more. You can filter each result by country and in some cases Google Trends can provide data for specific regions and even cities.
As business owners there is nothing more important than making sure you are on top of your market. You don’t want to wake up one day and realise you have been left behind.
You can compare different topics and see how they differ in popularity over time. Dive deeper into the results and spot up and coming trends you can take advantage of.
The only limitation on Google Trends is YOU. Be creative and get real insights that you can use in your business.
It is a highly underrated tool.
Do you run a business with a physical location?
Google My Business should be your best friend.
Google My business is Google’s own local business directory.
The difference is that Google My Business is featured right in the Google search engine result pages and on Google Maps.
No other site can compare to what Google My Business offers.
45% of all Google searches have local intent. More importantly, 80% of all local searches done on a mobile device end up converting into a sale.
Google My Business is your ticket to being highly visible in the local search results and on Google Maps.
All you have to do is claim your free Google My Business listing and fill out each detail in the listing. You will need a physical address that Google will verify by sending you a physical postcard with a verification code in the mail.
If you run a local business and you aren’t taking advantage of Google My Business…
You’re leaving free money on the table.
Google Marketing Platform is unified advertising and analytics software that allows you to advertise smarter and faster.
It is basically a list of Google tools integrated into one platform making it easier to use them all for your business. Google Marketing Platform has solutions for both small businesses and enterprise-level companies.
The biggest benefit of Google Marketing Platform is analysing data. Simply captcha data on your website and then use the analytics features to improve your site.
You can test different variations of:
And Google Marketing Platform will provide the insights to get better results.
Newt tool on my list is Google Voice.Google Voice allows you to create a digital phone number to make and receive calls and texts on.
You can get a personal number or business number. Google Voice also allows you to port your current number over depending on the phone carrier you use.
Google Voice has a ton of great features. One of the best is that you can receive texts and calls anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
That means if you travel overseas you can still make and receive phone calls. You can also add data to be used in certain regions.
Want a smarter phone number for your business?
Google Voice has smart AI (artificial intelligence) built-in:
A little Google Voice hack: Set up a number just to test marketing campaigns.
For example, you can set up a separate Google Voice number just for your website and track how many calls you receive throughout the month.
This allows you to test the:
…Of your phone number on your website or landing to maximise the number of calls you can get. Google Voice also has basic analytics to help you understand if your site’s improvements increase the number of calls you get.
Google Alerts has a lot of applications for your business.
For free and without needing to do much, you can get thousands of targeted pieces of data delivered directly to your inbox. Google will spoon-feed you information on anything you want to help you stay ahead of the competition.
Sounds too good to be true?
Google Alerts allows you to monitor the web for mentions on anything. You simply add a keyword or phrase that you want to monitor and Google will alert you anytime it is mentioned online.
You can monitor things like:
The list of things you can do with Google Alerts is limited only by your imagination.
No matter what your business does or what industry you are in, there is a Google Alert to help you make better decisions – faster.
Follow this guide to learn how to set up Google Alerts that grow your business.
Every successful business requires some project management to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible.
If you aren’t taking advantage of this next list of Google tools, you are missing out.
Here’s the truth.
It took ages for me to get the most out of using a digital calendar. But once I learned how to use one – I have never looked back.
Google Calendar is one of the most versatile calendar applications out there.
It integrates with almost anything you need and can be used natively on any device.
Organising tasks and keeping on top of meetings is important for any business owner. Google Calendar is an intelligent calendar that allows you to organise your days with ease.
Keep track of all your:
And so much more. Connect Google Calendar with Gmail to get AI assistance and automatically schedule relevant events.
If you are yet to find a calendar tool you love, you need to try Google Calendar.
Google Assistant is Google’s AI-powered virtual assistant.
It can help you manage tons of day to day business activities efficiently, saving you time and helping you get things done.
Google Assistant can help you:
You can even set up context commands. For example, you can ask Google Assistant to remind you of something when you arrive at a specific location.
The biggest benefit of Google Assistant is that you can simply speak to it. There is no need to fiddle around or manually type something.
Just talk to Google Assistant and tell it what you need.
While Google Assistant still has a long way to go there are already a number of impressive things it can do that will save you time.
Gmail is one of the most popular email providers on the planet.
There are 1.8 billion active users of Gmail all over the world. That’s approximately 23% of the world’s entire population.
And there is a reason Gmail is so popular – especially amongst business owners. Gmail has been intelligently designed to help you manage your emails better.
Some of their best features include:
If you struggle to keep your inbox clean, Gmail has a ton of great features to help you. Plus you can easily integrate Gmail with all your other favourite Google products like Google Calendar.
Want to up your Gmail game? Check out these Gmail hacks.
Want a place to share and store files online?
Google Drive is definitely worth a try. It is one of the best online file storage and synchronisation services available.
You can easily store:
And the best part is you can access them anywhere from any device – you just need an internet connection.
Collaborating with someone online?
Easily share anything you create with anyone within minutes. You can also invite people to collaborate with you in real-time.
With all Google accounts, you get a free 20GB of Google Drive storage. You can then sign up for a paid Google Drive plan to get more online cloud storage as you need it.
You could pay for Microsoft office or you could use Google Docs, Sheets and Slides completely free.
Google Docs makes it easy to create:
That can easily be shared with others.
You can also invite others to collaborate and work with them in real-time.
The best part?
Everything you create in Google Documents is automatically saved to your Google Drive account in the cloud. That means you always have a saved copy of every document that you can access from anywhere.
Google Docs is a complete office and word processing tool suite perfectly designed for businesses.
Google Contacts is a contact address and management tool that makes it easy to save all of your contacts in one place.
You can add important details for each contact:
And more. You can even add an intelligent labelling system to segment each contact based on your own chosen parameters.
Online contact address tools are usually frustrating to use.
Google Contacts has a clean user interface and a smart search bar built in to make it easy to find the right contact whenever you want. You can integrate Google Contacts with all of your other favourite Google tools.
The best way to describe Google Data Studio is an all-in-one dashboard for almost anything data related.
Unlock the power of data in your business and create interactive dashboards that provide you with insights on important business metrics.
You can create SEO dashboards for:
The list is almost endless. If you have any tool that collects data in some capacity, you can likely display it on Google Data Studio.
There is a huge range of free and paid dashboard templates to choose from. Or you can create your own dashboard just the way you want it.
Google Data Studio has a number of native integrations with different tools and there is API access to build out your own.
As they say…”Whatever gets measured gets done.”
With Google Data Studio you can stay on top of all the important metrics with powerful customised dashboards.
SEO is one of the best investments a business can make for their marketing and long-term strategy.
If you have a website this next list of Google tools are for you.
Google Search Console is an essential tool for all website owners.
You get access to valuable information with a click of a button.
Google Search Console provides information on:
You essentially get complete reports on how Google sees your website. It makes it much easier to identify areas of improvement for your site and optimise it for higher rankings.
If you have already set up Google Analytics, you can easily set up Google Search Console as well.
Website load speed is one of the most important Google ranking factors.
Google PageSpeed Insights analyses your web page content and generates a detailed report on making that page faster. It breaks down individual elements on your web pages and provides a score out of 100.
A perfect Google PageSpeed score is the best way to ensure that your site loads rapidly for your visitors.
Slow websites will:
Fixing your page speed is very important and Google PageSpeed score will help you do it faster.
Mobile-Friendly Test is a stand-alone Google tool that provides detailed insights on your website’s mobile version.
The Mobile-First Index started rolling out in March 2018.
It basically meant that Google made it mandatory to have a mobile version of your website if you wanted any hope in ranking in the search results.
People are using the web more and more on mobile devices. That means you need to have an engaging mobile version of your website if you want to perform well in search.
Want Google to understand your site better?
The Google Structured Data Testing Tool helps you discover whether you have implemented markup data correctly on your site.
Structured data helps Google understand the content of your website better, highlighting specific elements of each page.
It also helps your site get featured for rich snippets in the Google search results.
On top of that, the Structured Data Testing Tool crawls your page and delivers an in-depth report so you can:
Bad and abusive implementation of structure data can trigger penalties.
This tool makes sure that your code is correct and gives you an opportunity to get more visibility in the search results with rich snippets.
While we are on the subject of rich snippets…
The Rich Results Test is similar to the Structured Data Testing Tool.
It analyses your website page and sees what rich results (rich snippets) can be generated from the structured data on your page.
Ideally, you want to ensure that you have the correct structured data to appear for as many rich results as possible.
With the Rich Results test you can:
Winning a rich result in the Google SERPs is a great way to get more real estate online. It will give you more visibility and more importantly…
…more quality traffic to your website.
Google Tag Manager is a very powerful tool for measuring and tracking the right data on your website.
Tag Manager was created by Google to make implementing JavaScript and HTML tracking tags super easy. And they did a great job of it.
You can implement tags to track:
And so much more.
You can even set up other tracking tools like the Facebook pixel and Google ads conversion tracking directly in Google Tag Manager. This makes it super easy to manage all of your tracking tags from one dashboard.
And everything that you track is easily viewable within Google Analytics.
For even more accurate results, you can implement Google Tag Manager for server-side tracking. This means you can move third-party tracking pixels off your website and make your website load even faster.
Google Tag Manager has a ton of powerful use cases for website owners and marketers.
Although it is easy to use, it will take some time to fully understand everything you can accomplish with it.
These last 4x tools of the list can help all marketers get more reach and visibility online.
Take a look at each of them and think about how you could use them to grow your business.
Want to dominate the video market in your niche?
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. It has 2+ billion monthly active users. Impressive, isn’t it?
Creating YouTube content is a great way to increase your business’s visibility online and grow your website traffic.
People learn in different ways. Some people prefer to read, others prefer to watch. Having both video and written content helps you reach both types of people.
If you are already creating written content you just need to transform that into video content. You already have the niche, topic and you know what you need to say.
YouTube has been working hard to consistently update its tool suite for video content creators. There are lots of tools within YouTube to help you get the most out of the platform for your business.
Note: If you have a Youtube channel, don’t forget to check your rankings with a Youtube tracker tool.
If you want to start a blog but aren’t ready to commit to a fully self-hosted blog on a platform like WordPress – Blogger could be a good option.
Blogger is Google’s free blogging platform.
Simply launch a fully customised blog within just a few minutes. They have a variety of themes and it’s very easy to make the blog look just the way you want it.
Google has also made it easy to write content and publish it.
Within the content you can add:
And anything else you want to make your blog look good.
If you want to create great content but aren’t yet ready to set up a full-blown blog then Blogger is worth a second look.
There is a lot of news out there.
Keeping up with all the latest updates about your industry and how that impacts your business is necessary. Google News makes this more accessible than ever.
Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It displays a continuous feed of news and magazine articles from thousands of new websites from all over the internet.
But that’s not all it is. You can customise the Google News feed so you only see articles about topics you are interested in. Take this a step further by narrowing it down to a specific location.
In other words, you can create your own curated flow of news articles directly related to your business and nothing else.
This makes it super easy to:
All of these articles can be saved in your profile so you can come back and visit them any time.
Learn how to get on Google news step by step.
Google Translate is the most popular translation tool in the world.
If you have ever run into a language barrier problem – the chances are high you’ve likely turned to Google Translate to help get you past it.
Google Translate can help your business in two important ways:
While Google Translate is far from perfect, it does enough to get the job done.
Want to create content for a different language?
Google has been working on their Translate API. This allows you to automatically translate all of your written content into any other language.
Not only will it help you get more readers from other countries, but it allows you to rank in the Google SERPs in a different language.
Search ranking difficulty is usually significantly less competitive in languages other than English. It is easier to rank for targeted keywords and increase your global visibility.
And yes… The Translate API is much better than the standard Google Translate tool.
If your business or blog is read by people who speak a different language, Google Translate can help.
This list of Google tools offers lots of great solutions to increase your business productivity and grow your online presence.
But before you jump on and start using them, decide what you need help with first.
Tools are great but applying them to your situation is where you will get value from them.
Think about what part of your business you want to improve or automate, then use the appropriate tool above to help you do it.
Did I miss one of your favourite Google tools?
If there is a Google tool that you use and it isn’t on the list, let me know what it is and why you love it in the comments so I can put it on here.
2 Responses
Join My Facebook Group
Subscribe to my YouTube
Connect on Linkedin
Follow My Twitter Page
Great post! I had no idea there were so many Google tools available that can help with SEO, marketing, and productivity. I’m definitely going to start using Google Analytics to track my website’s traffic and Google My Business to manage my local search presence. Thanks for sharing these valuable resources!
Glad it was helpful