Best of Google Tools & Tips for Internet Marketing Resource Center 

If you're looking for an introduction to good, basic measurement analysis, Google Analytics is an excellent first step. Sign-up is easy; you just need a Google.com account to create your Analytics account. Installing the tracking code on all the pages you want to track takes minutes. The results appear in a dashboard format. Eventually, you'll probably upgrade to the more advanced tools and tech support that are part and parcel of the paid-for analytics packages. In short, if paying for a web analytics package was a barrier to finding out what exactly is going on with your website, that barrier has been removed.

No search tool on your website? There's no need to panic, as a Google Custom Search Engine is an easy-to-use way to build your own customized vertical search engine for use on your site. You can specify which sites should be indexed within your custom search engine. Perhaps you only want to include your own website, or maybe you would like to include sites from partners or divisions of your company. You might choose instead to give your own site higher priority and ranking within search results that include the rest of the Google universe. You might even allow your site visitors to offer site suggestions for your search engine database. In any case, it's up to you, as is the look, feel and functionality of the search engine, powered by Google.

CAVEAT: In our experience with the customized Google search tool, it does not offer the granularity we would like to see in terms of reportage. At the time of writing it appeared that it will not report on specific keyword searches unless there were a minimum of twenty searches for that word. For the big guns, the level of detail we are looking for is probably not necessary, but if you are trying to finetune your site you may want too see very specific results. However, it is cheap and it gets the job done efficiently.

The tools at this site will help you diagnose your own site to figure out what you're doing wrong in terms of search engine optimization; more specifically, as related to what Google is looking for to rank your site.

For example, there is a tool to check for "Duplicate Content", which will show if the content on one page of your site closely resembles the content on another page. This makes Google angry. There is also a tool to check for Bulk Updates. Since Google spiders your site and gets to know your update habits, any major launch of new pages indicates an irregularity in the site's history. Therefore, your site is probably going to get closely examined by Google. So even if you are psyched by the redesign of your site, which suddenly shows content on thousands of new pages, you should be aware that this will set off Google alarms that need to be dealt with.

If you have purchased your domain name from someone else, the "Historic Domain Penalty" tool will tell you if that domain has been engaged in bad practices prior to your ownership.

There are many more invaluable tools to play with, and there are also links to official Google documentation, Webmaster message boards and more to get advice and answers for any problems you might encounter. Bookmark this site.