| IMD |
| Page: Definition Google |
Google:
Google is the most popular search engine on the planet which handles close to 1 billion search queries per day and dominates about 70% of the search engine market.
It is probably worth knowing how it achieved this unique status.
Google started in 1996 as a research project of
two graduate students of the Stanford University, Sergey Brin
and Larry Page. Their original goal was, to build a better
search engine than what was existing at that time. At that time
search engines were not considered as a very important part of
the Internet which mainly was based on the fact that using a
search engine was a rather annoying experience. Users had to
filter actual relevant results out of up to 75%
spam
sites returned for a search query. It could
take several minutes to finally find a relevant site amongst
the search results. Therefore site directories like the Yahoo
directory were much more popular means to find content.
The reason for this disappointing performance lay in the fact
that search engines – even then market leaders like AltaVista,
GoTo.com etc. – had rather crude search algorithms which mainly
focused on the evaluation of keyword
s.
The more frequent a
keywordappeared on a web page the more relevance
was attributed to it. Therefore it was very easy to
manipulate search results by keyword spamming and other
means. For example finding 7 or more sex-sites amongst
the top 10 results for the keyword “stock market” was not
an uncommon experience.
Brin and Page had the original idea to include an analysis of
the interaction between websites through
link
s into their search algorithm. They figured
that a website with many links from highly relevant sites
would be more important and relevant than a site with no or
less backlinks. This became the basis of the later
patented PageRank
TM
concept. Tests soon proved that the
search results delivered were far superior to anything
experienced before. Google (the name was coined at that time
and is a variation of the word “googol” which means
1100, a 1 followed by one hundred zeros) soon
became a insider tip amongst Stanford students and took it’s
way to an almost total domination of the search engine market
mainly through word-of-mouth promotion.
Google homepage on
www.google.com
Google was incorporated 1997, at that time without a laid out plan how to convert it’s superior search technology into revenue and profit. Page and Brin refused to let the integrity of the search results and the company’s mission – “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” - be impaired or corrupted through advertisements on the homepage or search result pages. Therefore they designed the simple and austere Google homepage with nothing more than the search box on it, which was a world of a difference to other business and service websites plastered with advertisement and became an integral part of Google’s success.
In 2000 Google launched his
AdWords
program and since then displays context
sensitive sponsored ads on his search result pages which,
however, are clearly distinct from the organic search
results.
Since 2004 there is Google’s AdSense
program which allows webmasters to
show AdWords ads on their webpages and earn a commission for
every click.
Google has developed into a multi billion dollar company within a few years. Meanwhile it has expanded it’s services into other fields and is not only a search engine anymore. There is the email service Gmail, Google maps, the blog portal Blogger and many other services. You can find a list here .
With it’s dominance of the search engine market Google is of superior interest for every Internet marketer. To make it amongst the top 10 on Google for an only mediocre search phrase can take one’s business into completely new levels. Therefore most SEO strategies are designed to especially achieve good Google rankings.
|
Recommended Resources:
|
