A Sydney suburb has been awarded for its movements toward online business and lifestyles, and celebrated for stepping beyond the traditional boundaries of bricks and mortar.

The North Sydney Council has received Google’s eTown 2013 award for the Australian market, which recognises and ranks communities that outpace the rest of the country in ICT uptake.

Google uses its own ranks as the judging panel for the awards, assessing over 600 local government areas and ranking them according to their use of Adwords - a reasonable indicator of positive web activity.

The company uses Adwords to whittle-down a shortlist of leading towns and business, then sending representatives to visit and determine the success of online marketing, blogs, directory presence, and social media.

North Sydney has leapt from fourth place to first since last year’s competition, showing a rapid uptake of technological practices in the last 12 months.

Google Australia managing director Maile Carnegie said; “in North Sydney’s case you have one of the world's biggest CBDs just over the bridge so you really need to work out how to differentiate. Small businesses that use digital are twice as likely to grow revenue, generate twice as much revenue per employee, and they are four times as likely to be hiring more staff.”

Local man, member for North Sydney and Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey MP was on hand to celebrate his region’s efforts, and generally connect with the heralds of the new age of business.

“We can either be victims of change or beneficiaries – we are facing a rapidly changing world and we cannot allow ourselves to become inert victims – we must move with the times. Business must change its models to accommodate the times – or become irrelevant. The internet will not do the hard work for you but will facilitate change,” Hockey said.

“We have bought small business into the Treasury for the very first time – it has made a world of difference. Small business will be at the epicentre of decision making for the economy. Whether it be dealing with red tape, the Tax Office, ACCC, or ABS – we will be considering it from a small business viewpoint – you don’t have dedicated human resources, legal, accounting and excess staff – often it is one person out the back doing the paperwork - often late at night. Canberra’s mindset must change to small business rather than thinking that every business is a global player or has massive resources.”