When internet marketers think about search engine optimization for websites, they usually concern themselves with the algorithms of the Google search engine. Even though there are other search engines on the internet like Bing and Yahoo, it is the Google search engine that people use the most. Therefore, webmasters must optimize their websites to cater to the algorithms of the Google search engine if they want to attract the most visitors.
A lot of people wonder, why is Google the most dominating search engine on the internet? Even their website’s design is so plain that it looks like a high schooler designed it. How did this plain looking search engine become number one? Well, it became number one because of its engineering and development, not its design.
During the early years of Google’s rise in the late 1990's and early 2000's, other search engines were strictly relying on metadata to rank their websites. The problem with this was that it would rank a lot of webpages from the same domain together in the search results. Therefore, when people went to search a keyword phrase, the results page would show all the webpages from just one dominating website.
Google had a clever idea on how to make their search engine produce better results for people. Instead of their algorithm relying strictly on metadata, it would rely more on backlinks data instead. That way, different websites would show up on a search results page and offer more variety to those searching for websites to visit.
As for Google’s all-white design, there is an interesting story behind that. When Sergey Brin, who was the co-founder of Google, had first started creating the website, he knew very little about HTML coding. HTML, of course, is the markup language that web designers use to arrange text, tables, forms, images, and other content on a website in a particular way. Sergey wasn’t interested in creating some fancy design. All he wanted was a simple webpage to test out his search engine on. This became the all-white page that we’re all familiar with today. Although Google now has the power to change this design, the simplistic look of Google is what most people are familiar with now so the company has kept it that way ever since.
Google makes most of their revenue from Google AdWords. This is a platform where advertisers can purchase traffic from their website through a pay-per-click system. In addition, Google AdSense is another platform of theirs where publishers can actually make money from displaying the advertisements of those advertisers who set up campaigns through Google AdWords. With both advertisers and publishers using Google, their platforms have helped businesses from all around the world to grow and develop into something better.
Another big reason why Google continues to dominate is that they’re always investing in new technology and companies. The popular video sharing website YouTube is a popular example of this. In 2006, after YouTube was online for a little more than one year, Google purchased YouTube for around $1.65 billion worth of stock. YouTube was already one of the fastest growing websites during that time. Now that Google owned it, they soon began to incorporate their Google AdSense platform into it. That way, successful video publishers could make money from the traffic to their videos. Not only that, but their videos would easily rank in Google’s main search engine as well.
From there, Google started integrating themselves into all new areas. They created their own web browser called Google Chrome. They have their own brand of laptops called Chromebook. They’ve developed their own mobile operating system for smartphones called Android. Other technological areas that Google has expanded to include smart glasses such as Google Glass and Google Contact Lenses. They’ve even created a virtual reality platform called Google Daydream. It seems like whatever hot technology is available to consumers, Google wants to be right there to develop something better than any of the competitors in that market. That is what makes them a dominating company.
