Google.com’s innovative approach to algorithmic search pushed search engine technology to a new level. Before Google.com, search engines based search results on how many times a searched keyword or keyword phrase appeared on a page.
Launched in 1996, Google.com fundamentally changed search by basing results rankings on how many links have been made to a web page, and where they come from. Analyzing links is a proxy for judging how valuable a page is for a particular search terms, based on the idea that if someone thinks a page is worth linking to on a specific term, that page is probably relevant to that term. This is still the fundamental concept that drives Google’s ever-changing search algorithms.
It all sounds very complicated, but people clearly find it pretty simple — and valuable. By the beginning of 2010, Google was used for more than 72 percent of U.S.-based searches, and more than 80 percent of searches worldwide. Google.com has the most traffic of any website in the world, according to web traffic ranking site Alexa.com.
Beyond search, Google.com owns and develops other products, most of which are offered for free. These include the well known and popular Gmail.com, Google Maps, Google Earth and Google SketchUp.
Google.com Web Search Leader
Behind its simple home page, Google.com operates the world’s most powerful search engine, handling all sorts of advanced queries:
■ Searches the full text of books
■ Automatically translates sites from one language to another
■ Searches for local businesses in the U.S., U.K. and Canada
■ Requests for pages related to a specific search result
■ Generates alternate spellings and corrected spellings for queries
■ Finds web pages that link to a specified web page
■ Locates specific addresses on interactive maps
■ Searches images with advanced options such as copyright search
and much more…