Google

The Google search engine is the most significant search engine on the Internet. The engine is responsible for three out of every four searches performed by Internet users, and that is why most site promoting efforts are focused on promotion on Google.

Google's repository contains over 8 billion webpages, and its search results are delivered within a half of a second. Google achieves these amazing results by using over a 10,000 computers that are scattered around the world.

The History of Google

Google was established by Larry Paige and Sergey Brin, two Stanford university students, who started developing a search engine that focused on analyzing the links between webpages. This was when they named their search engine Google, which is a pun of the number googol (number 1 followed by a hundred zeroes).

Google was initially launched in 1998, when other search engines were already well established. Despite of their late start, Google succeeded in advancing to the number 1 spot in its field.

Reasons for Google's success

The first reason for Google's success was the quality of its search results. Google was the leader in this area from the beginning, in correctly filtering of search results and a very fast response time.

The second reason for Google's success is in its absolute objectivity. You can't buy a placement in Google, therefore its search results are not influenced by advertising.

Some technical background

The computers used by the Google search engine are divided to data centers that are distributed around the world. The exact number of computers is not clear, but there are 15 data centers. Every data center contains thousands of computers that are used for the calculations of the search results. Each data center has its own unique IP address.

When a user performs a search on Google, it receives the search results from one of these data centers. The data center that sends the search results is determined by one of four DNS servers operated by Google which are named ns1.google.com through ns4.google.com. These servers have an important role in the search engine load distribution and in case of technical problems. When you type www.google.com on the Explorer, the DNS servers translate the URL to one of the data centers' IP address. This address is constantly changing: in fact, Google switches the IP address of www.google.com in order to distribute the load between all data centers.

If you perform a number of searches during the day, these will probably be handled by different data centers. In case a certain data center is loaded, or is experiencing technical problems, Google can easily prevent searches from reaching that center. You can see this occurrence when you perform a ping command on www.google.com several times during the day.

The list containing the names of the various domains and IP addresses that are defined for each domain is kept by your Internet service provider, through his DNS server. In Google's case, the service provider can keep Google's IP address for 5 minutes before it has to connect to Google's DNS servers for an update. Each time a DNS server connects to receive an update, it receives a new IP address. The time that it is allowed to keep a certain domain's IP address is called Time To Live - TTL.

Recent Promotion on Google

Recently (August-September 2004), Google almost doesn't update its search results. The direct result is that companies that engage in site promotion cannot show immediate results. It seems that the only way to achieve good results is to make improvements to a website that has been on the web for more than a year, or simply wait (and wait, and wait, and wait?)

Phrases I found myself saying lately:

"Honestly, at least, a year would pass until you will be able to see reasonable results of your site promotion actions, unless you use the Google AdWords service. Google has actually turned to a pay for search engine, unless your website has been on the web for over a year".
"I understand that six months have passed, and that you invested 80,000 NIS in your website. Unfortunately, no amount of money will help you to get a high place in the natural search results. I am sorry from the bottom of my heart that I told you that it would take 2-3 months until you can see some results. I was wrong".
"You are asking me when will your site start to make money? I have no idea, since Google has this mysterious sand box effect. I know it sounds like I'm leading you on, but I am being sincere, and I don't know how much time it will take for things to change".
"I am deeply disappointed that you have decided to stop using my services, and decided to use the services of Spam inc. instead. I have tried to market your website with my entire knowledge acquired in the past six years, but unfortunately there is a serious delay today until the results can be seen. I still believe that you will enjoy the fruits of my labor, although the Spam company will receive the credit for that".

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The History of Google

Reasons for Google's success

Some technical background

Recent Promotion on Google