Google is a pretty intriguing organization. For example, the Google campuses feature a long list of awesome perks for their employees such as free haircuts, free dry-cleaning, and free high quality meals of various cuisines. Their company grounds are even mowed by goats – yes, you read that correctly – Google rents goats from a grazing company to mow their company lawn – talk about going green. While these features certainly are cool, it’s what Google is doing for the internet in regards to search engine rankings that truly labels them as intriguing.
First, let’s start by asking ourselves where the Internet would be without Google. For a few seconds, picture yourself navigating and browsing the web without the use of a search engine – doesn’t seem too appealing, does it? It’s not a long-shot to say that the Internet is so popular today because of search engines, and recent research in regards to online shopping makes a strong argument for that statement. Almost 60% of consumers start researching a product or service by using a search engine, much higher than those who visit company websites (24%) or inquire via social media platforms (18%). Although there are a few popular search engines other than Google, Google is by far the most utilized, and that’s due to Google constantly striving to improve their search algorithms.
When you search for a keyword or phrase on Google, the process Google uses to return a list of search results to help you find what you looking for is incredibly sophisticated. You’ll notice that, typically, the website you are looking for when you search on Google is located at the top of the first SERP (search engine results page) within the first few search results provided to you. This is pretty much due to Google mastering the process of search engine rankings, otherwise known as Google rankings or PageRank. Over the years, Google has devoted much of their time to developing and tweaking their algorithms to crawl the web for almost all website data, store all of that crawled data in their systems, and rank each website based on various factors such as analytics, information provided, user experience, time spent on each webpage, etc. Simply put, their algorithms measure almost every aspect of a website and rank it accordingly in order to provide their users with the best possible results for their searches.
More recently, Google has released algorithms to help the growing number of mobile device users. Over 70 million online shoppers used a mobile device such as a cellphone or tablet in 2012, contributing to 65% of mobile Internet users claiming they rely on their mobile devices to locate, review and make purchases from businesses. Google’s algorithms for mobile users provide search engine rankings geared towards keywords and phrases that are most commonly searched for on mobile users. Google’s ability to adapt to the constant changes and trends of Internet usage is what makes their organization so interesting. Google has even helped businesses thrive through Internet marketing strategies like search engine optimization, providing inbound leads that are far more effective and cost 61% lower than outbound leads such as cold calling. Google’s influence on many businesses and industries is apparent, what will they come up with next?
