While tech pundits are widely praising Google’s new

Plus product, I’ve found the one feature that could take away from Facebook where it’smost dominant: Time on the site.

Facebook users are known for staying on the site for over half an hour a day, something no other site could compete with… until now.

To be honest, my gut reaction after using Google Plus was initially, “Why on earth would anybody switch to this from Facebook?”

However, when I loaded up Google Finance as I do every morning, I suddenly realized that I was asking the wrong question. The reality is that users won’t have the option of not using Google Plus.

It’s been years since Google first introduced Universal Search, which blends images, videos, maps, Place Pages, news stories and product listings into Google’s integrated search results. Since then, marketers have been busy creating and optimizing content in all of these different formats to gain the advantage.

Mostly the focus has been on placing alt tags, image file name optimization, Place Page optimization, publishing videos on YouTube, and possibly optimizing your blog for Google News. Surprisingly, one of the best opportunities got lost in the shuffle…Google Product Search.

Google Product search (formerly Froogle) is a collection of product data feeds submitted by retailers that Google indexes and makes available both on the Google Product Search Engine and in the regular search results. You will typically see products in Google’s SERPS only when a user’s search que… 

Pay Per Click or PPC is a common way of advertising, and can be quite beneficial as well. But the same method has some dark areas, and fraudulent clicks are one of them. As a precondition of such ads, you are bound to pay Google a sum of money whenever someone clicks your advertisement. However, if someone clicks the ad and does not stay on your site for the reasonable period, you lose precious money without gaining any significant result. This is a problem that everyone opting for PPC faces.

If you are considering giving a boost to your PPC advertising campaign, chances are that Google AdWords already included in your to-do list. However, Google AdWords can be a double-edged sword – it can either bring profits your way or bring heavy losses and erode a sizable portion of your advertising dollar investment. So, before you jump into Google AdWords, be sure to weigh in on all aspects:

Google Health, the company’s attempt to improve health care by letting consumers move medical data online and control who can access it, is shutting down. The service will be retired on January 1, 2012.

In a blog post announcing the news, Google says the product didn’t catch on as it had hoped:

Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people.

User data stored in Google Health will remain available for download for an extra year, until January 1, 2013. There are a number of different download options detailed in Google’s blog post. Any any data not downloaded after January 1, 2013 will be permanently deleted, Google says.

Google Health launched in early 2008. As we wrote at the time, there was obvious value in what Google Health offered, but legitimate questions about whether the end user would go through the “heavy lifting” required to extract that value. Today’s decision seems to confirm that not enough users were willing to do that.

Google’s announcement today also says that PowerMeter, a somewhat similar tool that allowed users to put data about personal energy consumption online, is shutting down later this year. It’ll be available until September 16, 2011.

Though LinkedIn was originally meant as a platform for professionals to network, it has slowly gained popularity amongst business owners as the new age method to gain exposure and credibility within the LinkedIn fraternity. If you too are eyeing a slice of fame and recognition by utilizing LinkedIn for your business, here are some useful tips to help you in your endeavor: