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It’s a real dilemma these days as by spending some amount any hosting company can prevail at all possible location of customer search like google, yahoo, forums, market places etc. thus wherever you go you find few hosting companies haunting you.

The other aspect relates to huge, throw away costs some of the hosting companies offer, thus customer without knowing how much space and bandwidth really he needs gets engaged with these hosting companies.

To find a good hosting company, you can always search in Yahoo, google and msn for a while. May be you need to go to about 2 to3 pages depth.

While searching prefer key words like quality, performance, etc. Also you may like to prefer to mention your location with every key word, if you are keen to find a hosting company in your region (which is always a bonus).

Omit key words like “low cost”, “Cheaper” etc as firstly these are not indication of good web hosting services and secondly the hosting service providers have normally littered the net with these.

When you start analyzing the hosting companies, you can keep following points with you which not only explain what to look for but also how to ascertain its effectiveness:-

*Feature Offered. These could be:-

• Space and Bandwidth. First determine how much you need, do not fall prey to big offers just for nothing. Most of these are very simple tricks. Based on years of experience hosting companies know that an average customer does not use more than 100 Mb space and 300 MB bandwidth thus whatever bigger than that is offered is just an offer to attract customers.
• Email and Database. The number of emails per account should only effect you as per your needs, do not get over influenced by ‘unlimited” when you know you do not need more than 10 in any case. Use of mysql will be important if you need a data base driven site or contents.
• Other Features These could be free scripts for guest boot, chat and web development etc. Most hosting companies do have these in their hosting panels. These make things easier for you if you are to use these. So give a plus to hosting company for that.

What kind of support they are offering ie email only, ticketing system, phone support and a toll free phone. Give an additional point for each service offered. You may need only one of few of these, but eventually it may be important to have a hosting service provider with more kind of mechanisms to be reached to.

Note the response time to your sales requests. Better host respond within 4 hours. Note that the auto responder is not to be rated as response, though that does indicate a bit effort.

Do they have physical office location. It may be a indication of serious business, this also ensures that you do not run into part timer. You can always ascertain it from the contact us page, by calling them, seeing if only a mobile number is given and not a land number etc. Its not that a part timer or the one who cannot afford an office location cannot be good in provision of services, yet generally the one with physical offices may mean a bit more settled ones. This may not be totally true in all cases

Price / Cost. Not always the ones who are cheaper are good and not always ones who are expensive offer high quality services. Better is to stay away from two extremes in cost. Mostly one can think and expect that the ones asking a bit higher prices should be able to afford management of things better.

Popularity A web host might have the best feature offered, unbeatable customer support and reliability in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go bust too. Let’s face it. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient members and steady growth of new members, it’s very difficult to survive in this highly competitive industry.

• Do not go for the more than 2 to 3 pages in search engines. The hosting company should be effective enough to appear in these pages.
• Sponsored listing shows interest of company to promote themselves but not always an indication of good hosting company.
• Read reviews and see top 10 list. Though in most cases these are the ones haunting the net with their money and not always quality.

Reliability. Every web hosting service provider will have more than 99% listed on their site. But few have the courage to provide independent prove of their uptime. Ask for it. A hosting company should always have a monitoring service and should be able to provide you a report of the same.

Google has said it intends to crack down on the use of its name as a generic verb, in phrases such as "to google someone."

The Internet search giant said such phrases were potentially damaging to its brand.

"We think it's important to make the distinction between using the word 'Google' to describe using Google to search the Internet and using the word 'google' to generally describe searching the Internet. It has some serious trademark issues," a representative for the search company said.

Julie Coleman, an authority on linguistics from the University of Leicester, said she could understand Google's concerns.

"The prestige associated with a trademark is lost if people use it generically, so I do see Google's point. They also do lots more than just search, so maybe they're reluctant for their brand name to be restricted in this way," Coleman said.

But Coleman added that once new words enter into common usage, it is impossible to stop their use.

"Google can't possibly stop the spread of the verb," Coleman said. "Normal people are using it in normal conversation and in writing, and they aren't likely to face legal proceedings."

What Google could do, said Coleman, is "force dictionaries to mention its origin in a trademarked brand name, which is what the Oxford English Dictionary already does."

Even if Google's attempts to stop this misuse of its trademark turn out to be in vain, many argue it shouldn't even be trying.

Members of the blogging community have suggested it is a sign that Google is losing its once-cool facade and that the search giant is taking itself too seriously.

One blogger also suggested Google has missed the obvious compliment in all this, which is that the use is evidence the company now owns the search industry.

"This should be the ultimate compliment, and I cannot believe Google sees it differently," blogger and computing graduate Frank Gruber wrote.

Steve Rubel, another blogger, branded it "one of the worst PR moves in history".

Morgan McLintic, a PR executive based in the heart of Silicon Valley, said Google should certainly learn when to love its addition to the English language.

"'Googling' is already common parlance for searching on the Internet," McLintic wrote. "And there is only one place you go to 'google,' so this is a good thing for Google with a capital 'G'. The media's use of the verb is simply a reflection of everyday use."

Google's move reflects the concerns of other businesses, such as Xerox, which has complained that its brand has become a generic term for photocopying respectively. Apple Computer is also taking action to defend "iPod."

AOL is another technology company that has fought the tendency of brands to become generic. It has contacting media outlets in the past over the use of "instant messenger" to describe any IM application, claiming that to be its brand.

Source: ZDNet