Why Google is so successful:
What really sets Google apart from its competition, of which there is plenty? In this article we will discuss some of the factors which has turned Google into the international conglomerate and success story which it currently is today.
The web is changing, becoming more of a social environment where people are sharing things as they find them and there is plenty of development and encouragement of this type of web browsing.
Google was set-upp by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997 to provide a search engine service. The name is derived from the word “googol” the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
Google’s philosophy, revolves around providing the “best possible user experience possible”. Their original idea was to index as much of the web as possible and provide the best possible results for search phrases. The founders firmly believed that if they focused solely on the user, then all else would follow – Its fair to say that this has certainly been the case!
Google’s employees, a large proportion of which are based in Silicon Valley, having a very unique working environment, where they are actively encouraged to develop their own ideas for 20% of the time which they work. As you can imagine, this is part of the lifestyle which has generated the continuous new developments which Google is continually making.
It is estimated that Google’s search formula tweaked over 500 times per year, which provides further demonstration of how flexible the business is required to be to provide the best possible search engine results.
Google has introduced the term Page Rank, which is a complex algorithm which Google has developed to measure how important certain pages are. There are allegedly more than 500 million variables and more than 2 billion terms. This goes some way to demonstrate the complexity of the business in which Google operates.
Google’s current areas of business include Search Engines, Google Docs (an online version of Microsoft Office, which enables the live sharing of documents), YouTube, Google’s video platform, Google Buzz, which is similar to a combination of Twitter and Facebook, Google has developed its own mobile phone operating system the Andriod, Google earth, which provides images of the earth and whole host of other amazing services!
Google’s primary revenue stream is through its provision of advertising through AdWords. This is the service which generates relevant advertising which displays adverts whenever you search on Google, and also a whole host of other websites. Google basically charge advertisers for every time their link is clicked (subject to certain terms). From the advertisers perspective this means that you can generate traffic from extremely relevant search terms. Google allegedly generates 97% of its revenue through AdWords which demonstrates how successful this has been.
If you are thinking of advertising using Google AdWords the more popular the keywords the more expensive these will be, as you have to place a bid for the price which you are prepared to pay for a particular click on a search phrase. If you are considering this type of model, do some testing before you commit to thousands of pounds or dollars worth of advertising as it is imperative that you make sure that you website is converting efficiently.
Some of the proposed services from Google over the coming months and years apparently include the following:
Social searches will generate results from your social network. So when you search for a term your results will include those which have been generated from your social network.
There was a recent deal transacted last year with twitter which provides live updates from Twitter which are contained within search engine results.
Google Googles which is a service which provides search engine results based on images which you input! The testing that I have seen was somewhat dubious, but I’m sure that this will be refined to Google’s usual high standards.
So in summary the things which have made Google so successful is their ability to adapt, their work ethic, their philosophy, their aggressive stance in terms of acquiring business which they believe add value to their services, and most importantly providing an outstanding service to its users.
