HOW GOOGLE WORKS
THE LONGEST LIST OF THE LONGEST STUFF AT THE LONGEST DOMAIN NAME AT LONG LAST

How does Google work?

Google began as a school assignment for Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were both studying at Stanford in the Ph.D. program. The assignment required them to create a website that would provide links to specific pages that would be determined by a specific search request entered by the user. This is basically what Google still does today but it has also broadened itself to include many other uses. The company that was created and run by two students working on homework has now exploded into a multi-billion dollar company. However, what is just a series of numbered pages to the user is actually a huge organization that uses many tools and equipment to provide not only a search engine but other services as well, including email and document storage. Here is an overview of how Google works and what it takes to make it as the top website on the Internet today. The first element of Google to be understood is its search engine function, as that is how it all began.

It’s difficult to know how anyone would find any information they were looking for on the web without the help of a search engine such as Google. The search engine allows anyone to search for absolutely any item or information that they may be looking for. When you want to do any type of browsing on the Internet, your first step is to visit a search engine. Once the user has entered a search topic into the search field, Google will use a special method, which in computer-speak is called an algorithm, to generate a list of results pertaining to the search request. Although some of the processes involved in this method the company chooses have been made public knowledge, the details of the chosen method are confidential and won’t be revealed by Google so that they may continue to remain one step ahead of their competition.

Just like other search engines, Google uses spiders or crawlers and they also have an impressive list of keywords and which sites contain those keywords. However, the reason that Google has become the website mostly used online is due to the PageRank that Google assigns pages that contain keywords. This PageRank system is unique to Google, and trademarked by them to ensure that no one else can use it, is a method of assigning a certain rank to a page depending on how pertinent the article is to the keyword. A page with very little keywords will receive a low PageRank and a page that is keyword-rich will receive a much higher ranking. The higher the PageRank, the higher on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) the web page will appear.

However, the amount of keywords on a page alone does not determine a PageRank. There are three main factors taken into consideration when a ranking is given. The first is usage of keywords within the page, the second is how old the web page is. Because there are literally millions of web pages being created every day, it’s only natural that some would fade away quicker than others. For this reason, pages that have been up for a longer period of time will be given a higher PageRank. The third factor in determining PageRank is argued to be the most important factor in what rank a page will receive. This is how many other web pages hold a link to that website. Google treats this as a sort of popularity contest. They believe that the more people that want to have links to your page as equal to how much people like your page. The only way to not only attract people to your page but also have them impressed enough with it to create a link on their page for it is to provide superior content. The more interesting and relevant the material, the more attractive your web page will be, and the higher the PageRank it will receive. Having a link to your web page can have a significant impact on your PageRank if the page that holds your link already has a high PageRank.

While Google was a spectacular search engine when that was Google’s only function, the company has expanded and included many different services in an effort to continually improve. One of the first steps taken to ensure that Google was a superior search engine was an advanced search feature was added. This enables the user to provide more details to obtain results that can include videos, maps, images, blog entries, academic papers, and book content. These searches are so detailed that if someone were to search for apartment buildings within a news category, they would only receive results that showed the latest news pertaining to apartment buildings such as recent fires or construction. However, if the user were to simply enter “apartment buildings” in the basic search field, many different results would show on the SERP, ranging from classifieds advertising apartment buildings for sale or rent to how to build a foundation for an apartment building.

More recently, Google has extended past the search engine function and have begun to offer Gmail, an email provider that is absolutely free. When it was first introduced, Gmail invitations were precious to hold because account holders were limited to a certain number, determined by Google. Those account holders were given invitations to hand out to others and so on. Today, any person that wishes to have a Gmail account can do so. Google Docs is another free service offered by Google. This program that was once called Writely, provides storage space for five thousand images and documents. Within Google Docs, friends can also share documents, making it possible for many different users to manipulate documents. When using Google Docs, you can access your stored files anywhere that you can connect to the Internet. Other services that Google offers include tools such as Google Maps, which is a map and direction service that will provide you with a map and directions to a specific address. This is unique to any other same type of website because Google offers innovative options such as street view in certain United States cities, which will allow you to view actual photographs of the city from a street level view. This service also includes rotating the map for different views of an area.

So how does a website like Google offer so many services and resources to its users and still stay in business? The company of Google maintains its business by selling stocks in the company and through private investors as well but much of Google’s revenue comes from three main types of marketing. This advertising includes Google Checkout, Google AdWords and Google AdSense. Google Checkout is a service in which someone who wants to purchase something online can do so through their Google Checkout account. Creating the account is free and the individual needs only a debit card or a credit card that Google Checkout can charge the purchase to. When they are purchasing something online, they can use this account if the online merchant is equipped with Google Checkout. This eliminates the need of the individual continuing to reenter their card numbers every time they are purchasing online. This creates revenue for Google because the online retailers that are set up with Google Checkout are charged two percent plus twenty cents for every transaction that is completed through Google Checkout.

Two other ways that Google creates revenue is through AdWords and AdSense. Many people get the two services offered through Google confused however they are quite different, despite some similarities. AdWords is a service that Google offers to business owners or service providers that want to advertise on Google. Google will target keywords within their ad and whenever a search request is entered with one or more of those target keywords, the businesses ad will appear on the SERP. The company doing the advertising pays Google a service fee every time a user clicks on their advertisement. AdSense is different in the sense that for this service, webmasters can choose to display the ads right on their site. Every time a user clicks on the ad on that webpage, the webmaster will receive a certain amount from Google.

Google has been extremely popular for the last decade or so and with all of the creative and practical services that the company continues to design it does not seem that their popularity is likely to diminish any time soon. Getting to know Google and its services and advertising is not only interesting but it can also make you money if you are at all interested in online advertising or by generating revenue for yourself through a website.

 

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