Does Google hate affiliate marketers? ‘Hate’ may be a little extreme but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Google doesn’t want websites and web pages in its search engine index that it believes add no value to – or junk up – its search results. Unfortunately for many affiliate marketers, Google interprets many affiliate sites as doing exactly that.

Affiliate marketers have long suspected Google’s ire towards them, whether as a result of seeing their sites removed from Google’s index or of having to pay exorbitant pay-per-click costs to advertise in Google Adwords. Recently, a proprietary Google document surfaced on the Internet and in affiliate marketing circles that put all such doubts to rest. The document – which Google has subsequently sought to remove from those who have published it – indicates that Google distrusts, devalues and may even de-index websites that do little more than promote affiliate products or services.

Here’s a nifty free tool for checking for broken links on your website. It’s called, funnily enough, LinkChecker and it’s one of many handy tools for Internet marketers and webmasters available at Vebtools.

How does it work? Just go to LinkChecker, type in the URL of the webpage you want to test, key in the captcha code and click on the button to let it run.

According to a recent survey of 1,745 business-to-business (B2B) Internet marketers, even the most effective B2B marketing tactics – such as website design, SEO and email marketing – were up to 50 percent LESS effective in 2011 compared with last year.

According to Marketing Sherpa, which conducted the survey, the upshot is that online marketers need to radically improve their game in order to meet the demands of B2B customers in the current economic environment.

Car buyers prefer good-looking websites, and are more likely to be satisfied with automotive websites with attractive colors, low visual clutter, well organized content, large fonts and minimal links, according to research by J.D. Power and Associates.

J.D. Power and Associates’ ’2011 Manufacturer Website Evaluation Study’ measured the usefulness of automotive manufacturer websites during the new-vehicle shopping process. In the May 2011 study, 10,400 new-vehicle shoppers were asked evaluate websites in four key areas: appearance, speed, navigation and information/content.

Google’s recently released Sites for Mobile is a helpful tool that lets you build a mobile landing page i.e. a page viewable by mobile browsers. In just minutes, and without any coding, you can have a mobile version of your website.

Sites for Mobile is free and comes with several templates for e-commerce i.e. an online store, local businesses, restaurants, lead generation and social media. You can also integrate Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social accounts into your mobile site.

Internet users trust websites 20 percent more than they did 5 years ago and this is largely due to websites being more attractive or ‘pretty’, according to a new University of Melbourne study.

According to Dr. Brent Coker, of the University’s Faculty of Business and Economics, the increase in online consumer trust is largely due to the visual appeal of websites. Dr Coker said:

Google recently introduced Instant Pages, a new feature of its Chrome web browser that will pre-render the web page of the top search result before you visit it. In other words, after you perform a search, Google will get the web page of the first search result ready for you, before you even click on that result.

Google says it will only pre-render a web page where it has ‘very high confidence’ that it’s what a search engine user is looking for. How will Google develop such confidence? According to Google software engineer, Ziga Mahkovec:

Fuse Visual has launched Conversion Dynamo, a new plug-in system designed to incentivize first-time web visitors to sign-up, buy, or engage in some other transaction you want them to take when they visit your website.

Conversion Dynamo detects a new visitor and lets you offer a one-time incentive to complete a transaction within a limited amount of time set by you. By presenting visitors with a limited amount of time in which to complete the transaction they are encouraged to take action then and there.

Google has just released Page Speed Online. Page Speed Online is a simple tool that tells you how fast a web page loads in a desktop browser or mobile device.

Just type in a URL and Google’s Page Speed Online will score the page out of 100, indicating how fast the page loads. The higher the score the better. It will also provide ‘high priority’, ‘medium priority’ and ‘low priority’ suggestions for improving page speed.

U.S. small businesses increasingly view the Internet as crucial to their businesses and are spending more money and time on websites, social media and search engine optimization (SEO).

Over half of small businesses (56 percent) now have websites (up from just 46 percent a year ago), almost a third (31 percent) use social media (up from 24 percent last year), and over a quarter (27 percent) have a search engine optimization (SEO) plan in place (up from 19 percent).