By Doug Kenerson
Before Google, how did you search for information? Did you use books or lengthy articles? How many sources in your last bibliography were Internet websites? The fact is that search engines have transcended our need for paper. We no longer need to thoroughly scrutinize a book for the right information; all we have to do is type it into the Google search bar and we'll get thousands of results instantaneously. Search Engines, specifically Google, have been engrained into our lifestyles and society relies on it to be the authoritative source of all information. Before delving deeper into Google's impact on society, specifically advertising, we must define what a search engine is and understand how it works.
What is a Search Engine?While searching for this answer, all I had to do is type in “define:search engine” into Google and I instantly received 15 definitions along with their hyperlinks. I included the most-fitting ones below:
By now, mostly everyone should know what Google is. In 2001, “the transitive verb “to Google” entered the lexicon” and in 2003, “Google passed all rival search engines in the number of queries handled -- now upwards of 200 million a day” (Achenbach). But how exactly does Google Work?
How Does Google Work?All information in this section is cited from the video How Search Works by Matt Cutts.
Google searches it's own index of the web using “spider technology.” Spider software programs begin by fetching a few webpages, then follow the links on those pages and fetch the websites they point to, and so on, until a massive array of websites are indexed into Google's database.
If we were to type in “christmas gift mother” into the search bar, Google's software would identify every page where those search terms are present. There are hundreds of thousands of pages that have these terms, so how does Google determine the order in which to present these pages to you? Google also takes into account the frequency of the keywords on the website, if the keywords appear in the title, if the page includes synonyms for those keywords, the quality of the website, and most importantly the PageRank. All of these factors are combined to give you your search results in a specific order.
What is PageRank?
PageRank is named after its creator, Larry Page, and it is a “numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web” (Craven). It works based off the idea that “when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page” and the more votes the page has, the more important it must be (Craven). The importance of the vote is also determined by “the importance of the page that is casting the vote” (Craven). We also must note that “not all links are counted by Google” (Craven). The PageRank determines which websites show up first in Google's search results. This is valuable because the higher the page is in Google's search results, the more visitors view the page; therefore increasing revenue for the owner of the website.
How is PageRank Calculated?
Most of the information in this section originates from Phil Craven's article Google's PageRank Explained.
The formula for calculating the PageRank of a page is as followed:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
This was the “original one [formula] that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough” (Craven).
Now let's try to understand this formula in verbal terms. PR(A) is the PageRank of website A, “d” is the damping factor typically set to 0.85, t1 to tn represent the pages linking to website A, and “C” is the number of outbound links the website A has. Let's view the formula in simpler terms below:
PageRank of Website A = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it)
Webmasters spend their entire careers studying and analyzing this formula and Google's other tools to turn it into a profit with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search Engines and AdvertisingLet's say you need landscaping work done on your house. Where would you look to find it? Would you open up a phonebook? Would you use your local newspaper? Let's face it, print advertising and phonebooks are in the past; advertising for local businesses have transitioned to the Internet. “With more and more people searching for local businesses online, search engine optimization has become the most effective way for local businesses to bring back existing customers and draw in new ones” (Pesko).
Search Engine Optimization is “the use of various techniques to improve a web site's ranking in search engines in the hopes of attracting more visitors” (Wiktionary). Owners of local businesses will pay loads of money to webmasters who can optimize their websites. The more visitors the website is receiving, the more customers the owner of the local business will get.
Advertising Transition to the World Wide WebBefore Google, advertising was restricted to word-of-mouth, print advertising, and phonebooks. Search engines have revolutionized the way consumers find products and services. Search engines have single handedly destroyed the phonebook industry forcing the phonebook companies to turn to online advertising. Webmasters harness the power of Google's PageRank and search engine optimization to offer a better advertising solution to local businesses. Local businesses aren't restricted geographically and now have the advertising power of the World Wide Web.
Works Cited