It’s hard to imagine not having a search engine to use to search for information, research topics, check sports scores, or read news articles. So when did this whole search thing begin? The world’s first search engine, dubbed “Archie” (short for archive), was founded in 1989 or 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and J. Peter Deutsch, students at McGill University in Montreal.

Last week, our friend Drew McLellan at McLellan Marketing Group in Iowa blogged about the importance for small businesses to have a Google account. Not only do we completely agree with Drew’s opinion but we wanted to expand on Drew’s points. Let’s start with the free listing on Google Local Business Center.

My father used to say, “You have two ears to listen with and only one mouth to speak with. That means you should listen twice as much as you talk.”I find those drops of wisdom can also be true for many of today’s businesses. Just like people, a lot of businesses like to just talk about themselves. All they want to do is tell you about me.. me.. me and what they can DO for you. That’s okay and all, heck that’s all they know how to do. But today more than ever, companies need to listen twice as much. If your company doesn’t have a good policy set in place for search engine optimization, social media and search engine marketing…you are basically putting cotton balls in your ears and saying, “la la la la.”