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Well this has definitely been an interesting week and one that I'm so glad is coming to an end. In fact it's coming to a work end for us here where I live sooner than it is for you guys in the US. I know you guys are coming up to the Memorial Day long weekend but here, in this part of Australia, the weekend started today.

Each year this Friday is a public holiday here in town because it's when our local Agricultural Show is on - a bit like your country fairs I guess - and people head for the showgrounds to have a great time. We've just got back from the show and it was great to wander around and look at produce, cattle, horses, cars, knitting and a hundred other things that had nothing to do with our business.

If there's a show or a fair on near you and you've never been before then don't miss it. Go and have some fun and spend at least a few hours away from the computer and away from the Internet.

Now that I'm back though ... and resting my feet ... maybe it's time to think about business just for a little while before it's time to kick back and enjoy our regular Friday beer and noodle night.

Google Trends
If you've never looked at Google Trends before then you really should go over to google.com/trends and have a little play with the search box you will find there. It is quite an interesting and valuable tool if you happen to be looking for information on which keyword or keyword phrase that's worth targeting.

If you have used Google Trends before then go back and have another look because they've just added an interesting link to the page. Look below the search box and you will see ten links listed as 'Today's Hot Trends (USA)'. Those are 10 search terms that Google has noticed have attracted a surge in search numbers since the previous day.

Follow another link you will find there and you will be presented with a list of the next 90 hot search terms too.

So what, you might ask. Well a few cluey people have found that if they write a blog entry focusing on one of those keywords or keyword phrases early the same day they can often find their blogs hitting some great positions on the search engine results page for that term on the same day as people are searching for it. If they achieve a good position they get an interesting surge in traffic.

Of course you're going to need have your blog set to ping Google when you make your post and you'll need to be a little patient if you're running a new blog. Your blog will need to age a little before Google reacts positively and almost instantly to your pings but with a little work and a little patience you could be getting the same results from Google Trends.

Usability
Not all that long ago one of my columns included a piece about making links look like links. You want people to click on your links then they need to know intuitively that they are links and so I suggested that they should always be blue and they should always be underlined.

I'm still quite sure that I want to underline my links ... I know that might make them look ugly and I know that designers want to make websites look as pretty as possible but people still need to know what is a link an what isn't. But the question of color ... and making all links blue ... may not be as important as it once was.

In a recent interview the guru of usability - Jakob Nielsen - was asked about the color of links and he admitted that he had now changed his mind. There was a time when he was big on making links blue but these days he suggests that as long as the link is a different color to the rest of the text then surfers will recognize them as links.

Oh and by the way ... if you're wondering what a true guru can earn then I can tell you that in the same interview Jakob Nielsen told the interviewer that his time was charged out at between $10k and $20k a day.

Google Shuffle
Earlier this week I suggested that you should not panic if your sites had all disappeared from their top positions following the latest Google shuffle. I mentioned that a couple of our clients' sites had disappeared off the first page and had been replaced with some sites that were basically rubbish. I also suggested that in a week or two Google would probably begin to gradually change and the good sites would again return to the top of the search engine results pages.

Well I can now report that what I said then is already beginning to happen. One of our clients is already back on top for the search terms he was focused on. But you shouldn't be disappointed if your sites haven't come back just yet. Another client that was at the top of the search engine results pages for his terms is still nowhere to be seen but these changes can take a little time so if you're experiencing the same drop in ranking as our client then just be patient for a little longer. You may find that Google will bring your pages back to the top in the coming week.

And that's it for me this week. Have a great weekend and be sure to get out and enjoy the outdoors ... it's much more fun than being stuck in front of the computer.