How can you do the same?

How to Create a Google Docs Form

First step, would be to go to the Google Docs web site.  Now click on the button labeled, “Create new” and select Form.

That should take you to the Google Docs form builder, where you can easily create a web site form to use.  You can add any number of:

• text boxes (single line and paragraph sized)
• multiple choice
• check boxes
• choose from a list

There are a lot of ways you can customize your form to fit your needs.  Now once your form has been created, and you are happy with the results – you will want to embed it onto your web site.

How to Embed a Google Docs Form

Click on the button labeled, “More actions” and then choose Embed.

Once you do this, a window will pop up with the code you need to copy and paste into your own web site to make your form work.

What does the final result look like?  You can see it in action here:

• Web Hosts on Twitter
• Submit a Question to the Web Hosting Show Podcast!

When somebody sends you a result, it saves it into a spreadsheet you can check out from the Google Docs interface.  A pretty neat way to save yourself on some e-mail and save your hosting account on system resources a hosted script might take.

Tired of using your classic search engines?  InstaFound claims to be able to remove the search from the search engines out there.  How is this done?  It helps you avoid the time wasting you do now with regular searching by taking you to the page you are looking for right off the bat.

So how does it work? The InstaFound web site works by taking content from sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing and more and combines each result to give it a site score.  It then uses the best score to decide which page they should show you. 

Sounds a lot like Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky search right?  Well, they thought you would say that – and have an answer for you right off the front page:

No! Google relies on their system working and nothing else. Insta is all about removing the luck and replacing it with knowledge. Our system uses advanced algorithms to detect what site to send you to. We take data from 10 sources and combine it.

Want to learn more?  Watch the video:

You can get started finding things quicker via your searches at InstaFound.com.  It is a unique idea, that is worth trying out if you are tired of searching in the more traditional sense of the word.

Want to learn how to use Google Analytics better?

While checking out what it takes to become an authorized Google Analytics consultant, I stumbled across a series of videos online that anybody can use to get to know their own Google Analytics account a little better. 

• Check Out the Google Analytics IQ Lessons

I am still debating if I will or if I will not take the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) test, however it is good to know these tutorials are here for people in the world who just want to become a more knowledgeable Google Analytics user.

Now you can be reminded every single day, thanks to this wallpaper from VladStudio.com. 

Playing with the demo, you can see that the interface is much better looking than anything else out there in the web analytics market. 

If you want to check out how it compares to “the other guys” they have a nice table to help you do that too.  Some of the things it has that others do not include:

• Real time goals, conversions, and campaigns
• Track custom data for every visitor (usernames, cookies, etc)
• Widgets to put on your web site
• Works with visitors who have disabled JavaScript
• FeedBurner RSS stats integration

Clicky isn’t a stats package I have tried out myself yet, however – after checking out some of the features, I am kind of itching to give it a shot.  Sign up for free and let me know how does it stack up against your favorite web statistics program?

Looking for a way to get an entire social web site profile of your domain name via one simple online tool?  Buildstats is another domain information tool that does just that.  All you do is insert your domain name, and then you will be taken to a page with tons of information about that previously entered domain name. 

Some of the details you get per domain include:

• Number of pages indexed via the various search engines
• Page information
• Your rank via Pagerank, Technorati, QuantCast and more
• Social popularity and graphs

Here is the example search I came up with for mitchelaneous.com:

• Buildstats domain information lookup for mitchelaneous.com

It is a simple web site, that does it’s job well.  Check out Buildstats.com to lookup information on your own domain name of choice.

Bing Webmaster Center

The newest kid on the block, Bing gives you access to keyword research tools, a robot.txt validator, and a HTTP verifier tool right out of the box.  Once you get your site listed, you get details like your domain score, feedback on any crawl issues Bing might have had on your site, your top five pages and a lot more.  I have to say, Microsoft really impressed me with their tool set.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Poor Yahoo!, does have a site explorer, and it does pay to sign up and list your web sites on it – just to confirm that Yahoo! is watching you.  The problem is that they don’t offer much when it comes to tools you can really get much use out of.  Also, why do they think I want a badge to show everybody how many people are linking to a page?

Google Webmaster Tools

Google’s webmaster tools selection is still top dog as far as features and ease of use.  They give you a wide selection of diagnostics tools, your top search queries, keywords, subscriber stats, and more.  You can also add a new tab to iGoogle to get instant access to all the tools they provide right on your start page. 

Which webmaster tools set does the best job?  I think Google still wins hands down, however Bing’s selection of tools for webmasters is rather impressive.  I am afraid though, that puts our friends at Yahoo! in third place.  With that said though, I suggest you sign up for all three so that you can keep tabs on how well your site is being indexed in each.

Have multiple RSS feed sources that you would like to merge into one?  There are a number of different services that can get this done for you, however FeedStitch is a new one that has caught my eye recently. 

What is new here?  Well they cover the basics, for sure.  With HTML, RSS, and JSON they make it easy to republish the data however you want.  To get started, all you have to do is select your feed type, and click “Add Feed”.  You can also store your feeds in manually created groups too.  The feed types they support right now are:

• RSS Feeds
• Twitter Accounts
• Flickr Photos
• Delicious LInks
• Twitter Search
• Tumbler Micro Blogging
• and GitHub

To use the service, all you need to do is login with a pre-existing Google, Facebook, or some other open identification service, and get to adding your feeds.  It is really easy to use, and might be my new favorite service for merging multiple feeds into one.  You can try it out for yourself at FeedStitch.com.

Google has decided to give us all a little more freedom and personalization when it comes to somebody searching for you by name.  Now, when you Google a person’s name, you will get a list of Google profiles that users have setup with that name, so in turn – one would hope you find that person you are looking for faster.

How do you get your own profile setup and customized?  Go check out the Google Profiles page for more information about that.  I played around with adding more information to my own yesterday here:

• Mitch’s Really Simple Google Profile

Now, when somebody searches for “Mitch Keeler” in Google, my Google profile shows up at the bottom of the page. 

Kind of wish they would put it at the top, however then people might claim they are trying to push their own pages over the search index.  Go get your own profile setup, and make it easier for others to Google you too.