Bad advice!

The purpose of this page is to give our response of some of the incorrect advice we have heard circulated.

Host your website on our in-house web-server so we get full control and we aren't dependent on some third party we don't know.
A web-server is the computer where the on-line version of your website is stored.
Our preferred web-hosting solution is to outsource the job to experts.
In contrast we have competitors who boast of their own in-house server.
Where would you prefer your site to be hosted?

• A tier 1 service provider, a member of the London Internet Exchange with duplicate data centres, 24x365 support by on-site technicians, daily backups, diverse mains power supplies (supplemented by short term battery backup switching to in-house generators) and diverse internet feeds separately routed onto the high security data centres and peering with different providers.
• On a computer under the desk in a relatively insecure office, reliant on the normal mains for power and a broadband internet connection. Reliant for support on a single local technician (who presumably doesn't take holidays!).

I should add that the cost of both options is about the same, the large companies have the advantage of highly automated systems and economies of scale.

Host your website free - use the space your broadband or dial-up service provider gives you.
Commercial webspace is not expensive, it comes with service level commitments and a raft of useful tools on the webserver which a competent designer may need to use.
"Free" web space may become unavailable for days at a time, pages may be slow to load, support is unresponsive (or on a premium rate phone line), you may get advertising inserted in your pages by the provider and you probably can't use your own domain name (would you rather be known as www.fred_scoggins_enterprises.co.uk or www.bargain_hosting.co.uk/scoggins ?). If you read the providers terms and conditions they often state that the "free" webspace is for non-commercial use.
Our advice is if you have some "free" webspace, use it to make an online photo album to share with your family and friends.

Don't bother with Google other search engines are better
Google indexes three times as many pages as any other search engine. This is sometimes represented as a disadvantage, "it's harder to find what you want...".
True, up to a point. To search effectively there are some skills to be learnt. Here's a letter about the subject.

Look at it this way - users vote with their mice! Depending on what set of statistics you choose to believe, Google accounts for between 50% and 80% of all Internet search activity. The best estimate for their nearest competitor is about 20%.