What’s So Special About Google Anyway?

Many of my articles focus around optimizing your websites to perform well on the Google search engine. Why am I so Google-centric? What is so special about Google anyway? Didn’t your mother always say to never put your eggs in one basket? In this article, I will discuss the reasons why Google is the reigning “king” of the Internet, and why you should be optimizing your website primarily for Google.

Has anyone ever told you to “google” that new tax imposed by the government? Have you ever told your friend to “google” your favorite coffee blend? Google is so popular that it is now an official entry as a verb in 3 popular dictionaries. And that is just the beginning.

The numbers don’t lie. When users are not willing to remember your domain name no matter how easy it is to remember or spell, they will use a search engine to find you. And chances are, they will “google” you. At the time, out of all the world wide web searches conducted, Google is responsible for the majority of them. It is hands-down, the most used search engine and is the top referrer of visitors in North America. It is the most visited search engine, with Yahoo placing a distant second with more than 5 times less visits. And for all traffic on the internet, Google ranks second among the most visited websites in the planet, second only to you know who: Facebook. Google is responsible for search engine volume with more than 5 times the amount generated by its closest rival, Yahoo. If you were to receive 100 free visits from users, 71 of these users will most likely come from Google so it just makes sense to optimize your website for them.

You are really not putting your eggs in one basket. Google is so popular that many search engines are using similar algorithms as them. Even though Bing claims that their search algorithm is completely different than Google, I find that most of my searches turn up the same search results. I guess Bing figured that since Google has been successful with the way they are doing things, why mess with a good thing?

Ride the wave. With how quickly news travels around the world nowadays, many visionaries have been able to capitalize on its popularity. For example, when Oprah “sort of” endorsed a slimming tea product, many tea manufacturers used this to their advantage. For several months, hundreds of slimming tea websites profited from this until it died down. Google is the dominant force in generating free traffic at the moment and I think we should tag along for the ride while they are on top. Let’s ride the wave until it breaks.