A Peek Behind the Curtain

A Basic Explanation of How Google Works

Caryn Brown – 22 May 2014 – BNI

GOOGLE’S MISSION STATMENT

To organize the world's information to make it universally accessible and useful.

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GOOGLE FACTS1. At the end of 2013, almost 70% of all web searches were done on Google.2. In 2013 there were over 2 trillion searches on Google, averaging almost 6

billion searches per day.3. Google was started in 1998 and has grown steadily every year.4. Google is know for asking very interesting (hard) interview questions.5. Google generates income of $20 billion a year.6. 16% of the searches Google sees are new searches.7. Google is VERY secretive about it’s Algorithms and it’s Data Centers.8. Google’s most recent major algorithm change, (to their Panda system) was

made on 20 May 2014.9. Google has over 19 data centers in the US and at least 17 more around the

world.10. 56% of internet users Google themselves.

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GOOGLE’S USER INTERFACE AND DESIGN

• Google’s approach is to keep the user interface clean and simple.

• All changes are put through user studies, analysis, and testing.

• Google is concerned both about simplicity and about server stability.

• The User Interface design is the responsibility of cross-functional teams, including psychologists, business analysts, and blue-sky researchers.

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HOW GOOGLE WORKS

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CRAWL THE WEB

• "Crawling" is the process of following links to locate pages, and then reading those pages to make the information on them searchable.

• The more links you have from higher authority pages, the greater your own pages’ authority grows.

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BUILD THE INDEX

• Google separates the content into 2 indexes:– Page Titles and Link Data– Page Content

• So, when you search the web you are not searching the web, you are actually searching Google’s databases.

• Google’s index is well over 100 million gigabytes.– Google has spent over 1 million computing hours to build it.

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RANK THE CONTENT

• Before the content is added to Google’s database:– Google estimates the domain and page’s overall

authority– All pages are checked against Google’s editorial policies– Penalties are calculated

• Each page now has data in Google’s database and will be displayed in relevant searches

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USER QUERY

• Someone goes to Google.com and enters a search.

• Google suggests searches based on what has been typed so far.

• Google uses synonyms to look for similar words to include in the search query.

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CREATE RESULT

• Google may find millions of results, but only the top 1,000 or less are displayed. Google’s goal is to give you the answer, not lots of webpages.

• Local websites are promoted in the results.

• Duplicate results are removed.

• Relevant ads are found and placed in order to appear with the search results.

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SERVE SEARCH RESULTS

• Google often promotes past websites the user has visited.

• Google places additional weight on results featuring trending topics.

• If there are multiple pages from the same domain with high rank, they may all be clustered together.

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ANATO

MY O

F A GO

OG

LE RESU

LTS PAGE

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Additional Resources

• How does Google search work? with Matt Cuttshttp://youtu.be/KyCYyoGusqs

• Google’s Inside Searchhttp://www.google.com/insidesearch/

22 May 2014