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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The Internet contributes more to the American economy than the entire federal government, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group.

The Internet accounted for $684 billion, or 4.7% of all U.S. economic activity in 2010, Boston Consulting Group found. By way of comparison, the federal government, contributed $625 billion, or 4.3%, to the nation's output.

If it was considered its own separate industry, the Internet would also be larger than America's education, construction or agricultural sectors.

In the retail sphere alone, e-commerce accounted for 5% of U.S. sales in 2010.

"All businesses are increasingly digital and need to think about how to take advantage of these opportunities," said Dominic Field, a BCG partner and co-author of the report. "And for policymakers, we would hope they recognize the importance of Internet growth and making sure their countries are taking advantage of these opportunities."

As a share of gross domestic product, only three countries have larger Internet economies: the United Kingdom, South Korea and China. The U.S. is tied with Japan.

Boston Consulting Group predicts the Internet will grow about 10% a year through 2016 in the Group of 20 nations. It will grow nearly twice as fast in emerging markets as in developed economies, with Argentina and India accounting for the fastest growth, the study said.

"The U.S. is relatively mature as an Internet economy, whereas some of the developing economies are further behind -- so their growth rates are higher," Field said.

Granted, measuring the full impact of the Internet can be a fuzzy matter. In the Boston Consulting Group study, the researchers included the impact of e-commerce, what consumers pay to access the Internet and money spent by businesses and the government on building Internet infrastructure.

The study also looked at some other slightly silly metrics to measure how consumers value the Internet. It found for example, that 77% of Americans would be willing to give up chocolate for an entire year, rather than go without the Internet. Only 21% though would give up sex, and an even smaller 7% would go without a shower.

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Internet accounts for 4.7% of U.S. economy

WASHINGTON & GENEVA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The Internet Society today announced that Paul Brigner has joined the organization as Director of its North America Regional Bureau. As a global organization, the Internet Society has five regional bureaus that are instrumental in addressing Internet-related issues, mobilizing local support for global efforts, and developing policy, technology, membership, Chapter, and regional educational awareness.

The Internet Societys Regional Bureaus are vital conduits to connecting our Chapters, Members, and staff, and are central to the success of our mission of ensuring that the Internet is for everyone, said Walda Roseman, Chief Operating Officer, Internet Society. Pauls impressive industry knowledge and policy expertise, as well as the founding role he played in the Internet Societys Washington, DC Chapter, are ideally-suited for the important work he will do in Canada and the United States. His addition to the Internet Society team represents the heightened importance that we place on the work of our Regional Bureaus, including that of North America. Were delighted that Paul has joined us.

Michael Nelson, Research Associate at CSC Leading Edge Forum and a leader of the Internet Societys Washington, DC Chapter commented, Paul is an excellent addition to the Internet Society team. He knows the technology and is respected and well connected in both the ISP and content industries. Paul has been very active in the Internet Societys Washington, DC Chapter, and his organizational and communication skills will be a valuable asset in advancing the initiatives of the Internet Societys North America Chapters.

Previously, Brigner was Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Policy Officer for the Motion Picture Association of America, and Executive Director, Internet and Technology Policy, for Verizon Corporate Services. He worked at Verizon for nearly 10 years in numerous management positions. Earlier in his career, Brigner was a software and network architect for several large organizations and also served in a technology consulting capacity.

About the Internet Society

The Internet Society is the world's trusted independent source of Internet leadership. With its principled vision and substantial technological foundation, the Internet Society promotes open dialogue on Internet policy, technology, and future development among users, companies, governments, and other organizations. Working with its members and Chapters around the world, the Internet Society enables the continued evolution and growth of the Internet for everyone.

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Internet Society Announces Paul Brigner as Regional Bureau Director for North America

19-03-2012 09:41 This is a quick tutorial on how to add a user to Google Webmaster Tools.

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How to Add User to Google Webmaster Tools | Gnome Tips - Video

Google posted a new Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts today. The question at hand this time is: How much time should I spend on meta tags, and which ones matter?

This one is also significant because Cutts submitted the question himself. That means, he felt this was an important enough issue, that even though it wasnt submitted it by a user, needed to be addressed.

So the conventional wisdom a few years ago was that meta tags mattered a whole lot, says Cutts. You really had to tweak them and spent a lot of time to get your keywords right, and did you have a space, or a comma between your keywords, and all that kind of stuff. And weve mostly evolved past that, but the pendulum might have gone a little bit too far in the other direction, because a lot of people sometimes say, dont think at all about meta tags. Dont spend any time whatsoever on them, and so let me give you a more nuanced view.

You shouldnt spend any time on the meta keywords tag, he says. We dont use it. Im not aware of any major search engine that uses it these days. Its a place that people dont really see when they load the browser, and so a lot of webmasters just keyword stuff there, and so its really not all that helpful. So we dont use meta keywords at all.

This is actually not the first time Cutts has posted a video about this topic. There was one from several years ago, where he basically said the same thing about the keywords meta tag. At the time, Google talked about how it used the description meta tag, as well as the meta tags google, robots, verify-1, content type, and refresh.

Heres a chart from Google Webmaster Tools, which breaks down how Google understands different meta tags:

But we do use the meta description tag, Cutts continues in the new video. The meta description is really handy, because if we dont know what would make a good snippet, and you have something in the meta description tag that would basically give a pretty good answermaybe it matches what the user typed in or something along those lines, then we do reserve the right to show that meta description tag as the snippet. So we can either show the snippet that might be the keyword in context on the page or the meta description.

Now, if the meta description is really well written and really compelling, then a person who sees it might click through more often, he says. So if youre a good SEO, someone who is paying attention to conversion and not just rankings on trophy phrases, then you might want to pay some attention to testing different meta descriptions that might result in more clickthrough and possibly more conversions. So dont do anything deceptive, like you say youre about apples when youre really about red widgets that are completely unrelated to apples. But if you have a good and a compelling meta description, that can be handy.

There are a lot of other meta tags, he says. I think in the metadata for this video, we can link to a really good page of documentation that we had, that sort of talks about which stuff we pay attention to and which stuff we dont pay attention to. But at a 50,000-foot level, dont pay attention to the keywords meta tag. But the description meta tag is worth paying attention to.

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Google: Actually, Meta Tags Do Matter.

In a recent webmaster Q&A session at SXSW, Googles Matt Cutts briefly discussed some changes Google is making that will level the playing field between smaller, mom and pop sites and overly optimized sites, as bigger companies have a lot more money to spend on SEO.

Former Googler Vanessa Fox, who happens to be the creator of Webmaster Central, wrote an interesting blog post about it, which we discussed in another article about how the changes sound like they fall in line with Googles greater philosophy of providing high quality sites (which is what the Panda update was all about).

We reached out to Fox for some additional insight, as hers is particularly unique given her background.

I dont think this is part of Panda, Fox tells WebProNews. Google makes hundreds of algorithm changes/introduces new signals/etc. every year. Panda is just one of many. Google just doesnt name each one (and of course, not all of them are as impactful).

She notes, as she hinted at in her own post, that Cutts may have been simplifying things for a non-search audience (SXSW isnt a search conference like SES or SMX), and says that its possible this isnt a new anything, but instead is just tweaking of existing signals that look for things like keyword stuffing and link exchanges.

Last week, Cutts pointed to the audio. Today he points to a full transcript:

If youve listened to or read what was said, youll notice that the whole thing was in response to a question about mom and pops, which might make you wonder if brand is a significant part of whats at play.

I dont think its about just mom and pop vs. big brands, Fox says. Lots of big brands dont know the first thing about SEO. I think (total guess on my part) the sites that will be negatively impacted are those that focus on algorithms and build content/sites based on the things what they think the algorithms are looking for. The kind of sites where someone didnt say I want this page to rank for query X. How can this page best answer what the searcher is asking about X but instead said I want this page to rank for query X. How many times should I repeat X in my title, heading, content on the page, internal links

I think its still useful (and not negative) to make sure the words that searchers are using are on the page, but some sites go well beyond this and get so caught up in what they think the algorithms are doing that they forget to make sure the content is useful, she adds.

As far as sites that will see a positive from this, I think it will likely be both small sites (B&B in Napa that titles their home page home vs. an affiliate site that sells wine gift baskets) and large brands (sites that use a lot of Flash), says Fox. I think foundational SEO practices (like those I describe in my article) will continue to be beneficial for sites.

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New Google Changes: Really A Matter Of Mom And Pop?