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| Abbreviation | WWW |
|---|---|
| Year started | 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee |
| Organization |
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists.[1] It allows documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).[2]
The Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN in 1989 and opened to the public in 1993. It was conceived as a "universal linked information system".[3][4][5] Documents and other media content are made available to the network through web servers and can be accessed by programs such as web browsers. Servers and resources on the World Wide Web are identified and located through character strings called uniform resource locators (URLs).
The original and still very common document type is a web page formatted in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). This markup language supports plain text, images, embedded video and audio contents, and scripts (short programs) that implement complex user interaction. The HTML language also supports hyperlinks (embedded URLs) which provide immediate access to other web resources. Web navigation, or web surfing, is the common practice of following such hyperlinks across multiple websites. Web applications are web pages that function as application software. The information in the Web is transferred across the Internet using HTTP. Multiple web resources with a common theme and usually a common domain name make up a website. A single web server may provide multiple websites, while some websites, especially the most popular ones, may be provided by multiple servers. Website content is provided by a myriad of companies, organizations, government agencies, and individual users; and comprises an enormous amount of educational, entertainment, commercial, and government information.
The Web has become the world's dominant information systems platform.[6][7][8][9] It is the primary tool that billions of people worldwide use to interact with the Internet.[2]
The Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN.[10][11] He was motivated by the problem of storing, updating, and finding documents and data files in that large and constantly changing organization, as well as distributing them to collaborators outside CERN. In his design, Berners-Lee dismissed the common tree structure approach, used for instance in the existing CERNDOC documentation system and in the Unix filesystem, as well as approaches that relied in tagging files with keywords, as in the VAX/NOTES system. Instead he adopted concepts he had put into practice with his private ENQUIRE system (1980) built at CERN. When he became aware of Ted Nelson's hypertext model (1965), in which documents can be linked in unconstrained ways through hyperlinks associated with "hot spots" embedded in the text, it helped to confirm the validity of his concept.[12][13]
The model was later popularized by Apple's HyperCard system. Unlike Hypercard, Berners-Lee's new system from the outset was meant to support links between multiple databases on independent computers, and to allow simultaneous access by many users from any computer on the Internet. He also specified that the system should eventually handle other media besides text, such as graphics, speech, and video. Links could refer to mutable data files, or even fire up programs on their server computer. He also conceived "gateways" that would allow access through the new system to documents organized in other ways (such as traditional computer file systems or the Usenet). Finally, he insisted that the system should be decentralized, without any central control or coordination over the creation of links.[4][14][10][11]
Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to CERN in May 1989, without giving the system a name.[4] He got a working system implemented by the end of 1990, including a browser called WorldWideWeb (which became the name of the project and of the network) and an HTTP server running at CERN. As part of that development he defined the first version of the HTTP protocol, the basic URL syntax, and implicitly made HTML the primary document format.[15] The technology was released outside CERN to other research institutions starting in January 1991, and then to the whole Internet on 23 August 1991. The Web was a success at CERN, and began to spread to other scientific and academic institutions. Within the next two years, there were 50 websites created.[16][17]
CERN made the Web protocol and code available royalty free in 1993, enabling its widespread use.[18][19] After the NCSA released the Mosaic web browser later that year, the Web's popularity grew rapidly as thousands of websites sprang up in less than a year.[20][21] Mosaic was a graphical browser that could display inline images and submit forms that were processed by the HTTPd server.[22][23] Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark founded Netscape the following year and released the Navigator browser, which introduced Java and JavaScript to the Web. It quickly became the dominant browser. Netscape became a public company in 1995 which triggered a frenzy for the Web and started the dot-com bubble.[24] Microsoft responded by developing its own browser, Internet Explorer, starting the browser wars. By bundling it with Windows, it became the dominant browser for 14 years.[25]
Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which created XML in 1996 and recommended replacing HTML with stricter XHTML.[26] In the meantime, developers began exploiting an IE feature called XMLHttpRequest to make Ajax applications and launched the Web 2.0 revolution. Mozilla, Opera, and Apple rejected XHTML and created the WHATWG which developed HTML5.[27] In 2009, the W3C conceded and abandoned XHTML.[28] In 2019, it ceded control of the HTML specification to the WHATWG.[29]
The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet.[30][31][32][9]
|
This section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2023)
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Tim Berners-Lee states that World Wide Web is officially spelled as three separate words, each capitalised, with no intervening hyphens.[33] Nonetheless, it is often called simply the Web, and also often the web; see Capitalization of Internet for details. In Mandarin Chinese, World Wide Web is commonly translated via a phono-semantic matching to wàn wéi wÇŽng (万维网), which satisfies www and literally means "10,000-dimensional net", a translation that reflects the design concept and proliferation of the World Wide Web.
Use of the www prefix has been declining, especially when web applications sought to brand their domain names and make them easily pronounceable. As the mobile Web grew in popularity,[citation needed] services like Gmail.com, Outlook.com, Myspace.com, Facebook.com and Twitter.com are most often mentioned without adding "www." (or, indeed, ".com") to the domain.[34]
In English, www is usually read as double-u double-u double-u.[35] Some users pronounce it dub-dub-dub, particularly in New Zealand.[36] Stephen Fry, in his "Podgrams" series of podcasts, pronounces it wuh wuh wuh.[37] The English writer Douglas Adams once quipped in The Independent on Sunday (1999): "The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for".[38]
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used without much distinction. However, the two terms do not mean the same thing. The Internet is a global system of computer networks interconnected through telecommunications and optical networking. In contrast, the World Wide Web is a global collection of documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URIs. Web resources are accessed using HTTP or HTTPS, which are application-level Internet protocols that use the Internet transport protocols.[2]
Viewing a web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL of the page into a web browser or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource. The web browser then initiates a series of background communication messages to fetch and display the requested page. In the 1990s, using a browser to view web pages—and to move from one web page to another through hyperlinks—came to be known as 'browsing,' 'web surfing' (after channel surfing), or 'navigating the Web'. Early studies of this new behaviour investigated user patterns in using web browsers. One study, for example, found five user patterns: exploratory surfing, window surfing, evolved surfing, bounded navigation and targeted navigation.[39]
The following example demonstrates the functioning of a web browser when accessing a page at the URL http://example.org/home.html. The browser resolves the server name of the URL (example.org) into an Internet Protocol address using the globally distributed Domain Name System (DNS). This lookup returns an IP address such as 203.0.113.4 or 2001:db8:2e::7334. The browser then requests the resource by sending an HTTP request across the Internet to the computer at that address. It requests service from a specific TCP port number that is well known for the HTTP service so that the receiving host can distinguish an HTTP request from other network protocols it may be servicing. HTTP normally uses port number 80 and for HTTPS it normally uses port number 443. The content of the HTTP request can be as simple as two lines of text:
GET /home.html HTTP/1.1
Host: example.org
The computer receiving the HTTP request delivers it to web server software listening for requests on port 80. If the web server can fulfil the request it sends an HTTP response back to the browser indicating success:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
followed by the content of the requested page. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for a basic web page might look like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Example.org – The World Wide Web</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known ...</p>
</body>
</html>
The web browser parses the HTML and interprets the markup (<title>, <p> for paragraph, and such) that surrounds the words to format the text on the screen. Many web pages use HTML to reference the URLs of other resources such as images, other embedded media, scripts that affect page behaviour, and Cascading Style Sheets that affect page layout. The browser makes additional HTTP requests to the web server for these other Internet media types. As it receives their content from the web server, the browser progressively renders the page onto the screen as specified by its HTML and these additional resources.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications. With Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript, it forms a triad of cornerstone technologies for the World Wide Web.[40]
Web browsers receive HTML documents from a web server or from local storage and render the documents into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for the appearance of the document.
HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects such as interactive forms may be embedded into the rendered page. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as <img /> and <input /> directly introduce content into the page. Other tags such as <p> surround and provide information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to interpret the content of the page.
HTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript, which affects the behaviour and content of web pages. Inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), maintainer of both the HTML and the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997.[update][41]
Most web pages contain hyperlinks to other related pages and perhaps to downloadable files, source documents, definitions and other web resources. In the underlying HTML, a hyperlink looks like this: <a href="http://example.org/home.html">Example.org Homepage</a>.
Such a collection of useful, related resources, interconnected via hypertext links is dubbed a web of information. Publication on the Internet created what Tim Berners-Lee first called the WorldWideWeb (in its original CamelCase, which was subsequently discarded) in November 1990.[42]
The hyperlink structure of the web is described by the webgraph: the nodes of the web graph correspond to the web pages (or URLs) the directed edges between them to the hyperlinks. Over time, many web resources pointed to by hyperlinks disappear, relocate, or are replaced with different content. This makes hyperlinks obsolete, a phenomenon referred to in some circles as link rot, and the hyperlinks affected by it are often called "dead" links. The ephemeral nature of the Web has prompted many efforts to archive websites. The Internet Archive, active since 1996, is the best known of such efforts.
Many hostnames used for the World Wide Web begin with www because of the long-standing practice of naming Internet hosts according to the services they provide. The hostname of a web server is often www, in the same way that it may be ftp for an FTP server, and news or nntp for a Usenet news server. These hostnames appear as Domain Name System (DNS) or subdomain names, as in www.example.com. The use of www is not required by any technical or policy standard and many websites do not use it; the first web server was nxoc01.cern.ch.[43] According to Paolo Palazzi, who worked at CERN along with Tim Berners-Lee, the popular use of www as subdomain was accidental; the World Wide Web project page was intended to be published at www.cern.ch while info.cern.ch was intended to be the CERN home page; however the DNS records were never switched, and the practice of prepending www to an institution's website domain name was subsequently copied.[44][better source needed] Many established websites still use the prefix, or they employ other subdomain names such as www2, secure or en for special purposes. Many such web servers are set up so that both the main domain name (e.g., example.com) and the www subdomain (e.g., www.example.com) refer to the same site; others require one form or the other, or they may map to different web sites. The use of a subdomain name is useful for load balancing incoming web traffic by creating a CNAME record that points to a cluster of web servers. Since, currently[as of?], only a subdomain can be used in a CNAME, the same result cannot be achieved by using the bare domain root.[45][dubious – discuss]
When a user submits an incomplete domain name to a web browser in its address bar input field, some web browsers automatically try adding the prefix "www" to the beginning of it and possibly ".com", ".org" and ".net" at the end, depending on what might be missing. For example, entering "microsoft" may be transformed to http://www.microsoft.com/ and "openoffice" to http://www.openoffice.org. This feature started appearing in early versions of Firefox, when it still had the working title 'Firebird' in early 2003, from an earlier practice in browsers such as Lynx.[46] [unreliable source?] It is reported that Microsoft was granted a US patent for the same idea in 2008, but only for mobile devices.[47]
The scheme specifiers http:// and https:// at the start of a web URI refer to Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP Secure, respectively. They specify the communication protocol to use for the request and response. The HTTP protocol is fundamental to the operation of the World Wide Web, and the added encryption layer in HTTPS is essential when browsers send or retrieve confidential data, such as passwords or banking information. Web browsers usually automatically prepend http:// to user-entered URIs, if omitted.
A web page (also written as webpage) is a document that is suitable for the World Wide Web and web browsers. A web browser displays a web page on a monitor or mobile device.
The term web page usually refers to what is visible, but may also refer to the contents of the computer file itself, which is usually a text file containing hypertext written in HTML or a comparable markup language. Typical web pages provide hypertext for browsing to other web pages via hyperlinks, often referred to as links. Web browsers will frequently have to access multiple web resource elements, such as reading style sheets, scripts, and images, while presenting each web page.
On a network, a web browser can retrieve a web page from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access to a private network such as a corporate intranet. The web browser uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to make such requests to the web server.
A static web page is delivered exactly as stored, as web content in the web server's file system. In contrast, a dynamic web page is generated by a web application, usually driven by server-side software. Dynamic web pages are used when each user may require completely different information, for example, bank websites, web email etc.
A static web page (sometimes called a flat page/stationary page) is a web page that is delivered to the user exactly as stored, in contrast to dynamic web pages which are generated by a web application.
Consequently, a static web page displays the same information for all users, from all contexts, subject to modern capabilities of a web server to negotiate content-type or language of the document where such versions are available and the server is configured to do so.
A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, including the setting up of more client-side processing.
A client-side dynamic web page processes the web page using JavaScript running in the browser. JavaScript programs can interact with the document via Document Object Model, or DOM, to query page state and alter it. The same client-side techniques can then dynamically update or change the DOM in the same way.
A dynamic web page is then reloaded by the user or by a computer program to change some variable content. The updating information could come from the server, or from changes made to that page's DOM. This may or may not truncate the browsing history or create a saved version to go back to, but a dynamic web page update using Ajax technologies will neither create a page to go back to nor truncate the web browsing history forward of the displayed page. Using Ajax technologies the end user gets one dynamic page managed as a single page in the web browser while the actual web content rendered on that page can vary. The Ajax engine sits only on the browser requesting parts of its DOM, the DOM, for its client, from an application server.
Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is the umbrella term for technologies and methods used to create web pages that are not static web pages, though it has fallen out of common use since the popularization of AJAX, a term which is now itself rarely used.[citation needed] Client-side-scripting, server-side scripting, or a combination of these make for the dynamic web experience in a browser.
JavaScript is a scripting language that was initially developed in 1995 by Brendan Eich, then of Netscape, for use within web pages.[48] The standardised version is ECMAScript.[48] To make web pages more interactive, some web applications also use JavaScript techniques such as Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Client-side script is delivered with the page that can make additional HTTP requests to the server, either in response to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, or based on elapsed time. The server's responses are used to modify the current page rather than creating a new page with each response, so the server needs only to provide limited, incremental information. Multiple Ajax requests can be handled at the same time, and users can interact with the page while data is retrieved. Web pages may also regularly poll the server to check whether new information is available.[49]
A website[50] is a collection of related web resources including web pages, multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. Notable examples are wikipedia.org, google.com, and amazon.com.
A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site.
Websites can have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a corporate website for a company, a government website, an organization website, etc. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company's website for its employees, are typically a part of an intranet.
Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.
Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content. Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time price quotations for different types of markets, as well as sites providing various other services. End users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones and smart TVs.
A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software user agent for accessing information on the World Wide Web. To connect to a website's server and display its pages, a user needs to have a web browser program. This is the program that the user runs to download, format, and display a web page on the user's computer.
In addition to allowing users to find, display, and move between web pages, a web browser will usually have features like keeping bookmarks, recording history, managing cookies (see below), and home pages and may have facilities for recording passwords for logging into websites.
The most popular browsers are Chrome, Safari, Edge, Samsung Internet and Firefox.[51]
A Web server is server software, or hardware dedicated to running said software, that can satisfy World Wide Web client requests. A web server can, in general, contain one or more websites. A web server processes incoming network requests over HTTP and several other related protocols.
The primary function of a web server is to store, process and deliver web pages to clients.[52] The communication between client and server takes place using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Pages delivered are most frequently HTML documents, which may include images, style sheets and scripts in addition to the text content.
A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates communication by making a request for a specific resource using HTTP and the server responds with the content of that resource or an error message if unable to do so. The resource is typically a real file on the server's secondary storage, but this is not necessarily the case and depends on how the webserver is implemented.
While the primary function is to serve content, full implementation of HTTP also includes ways of receiving content from clients. This feature is used for submitting web forms, including uploading of files.
Many generic web servers also support server-side scripting using Active Server Pages (ASP), PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), or other scripting languages. This means that the behaviour of the webserver can be scripted in separate files, while the actual server software remains unchanged. Usually, this function is used to generate HTML documents dynamically ("on-the-fly") as opposed to returning static documents. The former is primarily used for retrieving or modifying information from databases. The latter is typically much faster and more easily cached but cannot deliver dynamic content.
Web servers can also frequently be found embedded in devices such as printers, routers, webcams and serving only a local network. The web server may then be used as a part of a system for monitoring or administering the device in question. This usually means that no additional software has to be installed on the client computer since only a web browser is required (which now is included with most operating systems).
Optical networking is a sophisticated infrastructure that utilizes optical fiber to transmit data over long distances, connecting countries, cities, and even private residences. The technology uses optical microsystems like tunable lasers, filters, attenuators, switches, and wavelength-selective switches to manage and operate these networks.[53][54]
The large quantity of optical fiber installed throughout the world at the end of the twentieth century set the foundation of the Internet as it’s used today. The information highway relies heavily on optical networking, a method of sending messages encoded in light to relay information in various telecommunication networks.[55]
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was one of the first iterations of the Internet, created in collaboration with universities and researchers 1969.[56][57][58][59] However, access to the ARPANET was limited to researchers, and in 1985, the National Science Foundation founded the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), a program that provided supercomputer access to researchers.[59]
Limited public access to the Internet led to pressure from consumers and corporations to privatize the network. In 1993, the US passed the National Information Infrastructure Act, which dictated that the National Science Foundation must hand over control of the optical capabilities to commercial operators.[60][61]
The privatization of the Internet and the release of the World Wide Web to the public in 1993 led to an increased demand for Internet capabilities. This spurred developers to seek solutions to reduce the time and cost of laying new fiber and increase the amount of information that can be sent on a single fiber, in order to meet the growing needs of the public.[62][63][64][65]
In 1994, Pirelli S.p.A.'s optical components division introduced a wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) system to meet growing demand for increased data transmission. This four-channel WDM technology allowed more information to be sent simultaneously over a single optical fiber, effectively boosting network capacity.[66][67]
Pirelli wasn't the only company that developed a WDM system; another company, the Ciena Corporation (Ciena), created its own technology to transmit data more efficiently. David Huber, an optical networking engineer and entrepreneur Kevin Kimberlin founded Ciena in 1992.[68][69][70] Drawing on laser technology from Gordon Gould and William Culver of Optelecom, Inc., the company focused on utilizing optical amplifiers to transmit data via light.[71][72][73] Under chief executive officer Pat Nettles, Ciena developed a dual-stage optical amplifier for dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), patented in 1997 and deployed on the Sprint network in 1996.[74][75][76][77][78]
An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the user's web browser while the user is browsing. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past). They can also be used to remember arbitrary pieces of information that the user previously entered into form fields such as names, addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers.
Cookies perform essential functions in the modern web. Perhaps most importantly, authentication cookies are the most common method used by web servers to know whether the user is logged in or not, and which account they are logged in with. Without such a mechanism, the site would not know whether to send a page containing sensitive information or require the user to authenticate themselves by logging in. The security of an authentication cookie generally depends on the security of the issuing website and the user's web browser, and on whether the cookie data is encrypted. Security vulnerabilities may allow a cookie's data to be read by a hacker, used to gain access to user data, or used to gain access (with the user's credentials) to the website to which the cookie belongs (see cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery for examples).[79]
Tracking cookies, and especially third-party tracking cookies, are commonly used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories – a potential privacy concern that prompted European[80] and U.S. lawmakers to take action in 2011.[81][82] European law requires that all websites targeting European Union member states gain "informed consent" from users before storing non-essential cookies on their device.
Google Project Zero researcher Jann Horn describes ways cookies can be read by intermediaries, like Wi-Fi hotspot providers. When in such circumstances, he recommends using the browser in private browsing mode (widely known as Incognito mode in Google Chrome).[83]
A web search engine or Internet search engine is a software system that is designed to carry out web search (Internet search), which means to search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a web search query. The search results are generally presented in a line of results, often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, videos, infographics, articles, research papers, and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler. Internet content that is not capable of being searched by a web search engine is generally described as the deep web.
In 1990, Archie, the world’s first search engine, was released. The technology was originally an index of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites, which was a method for moving files between a client and a server network.[84][85] This early search tool was superseded by more advanced engines like Yahoo! in 1995 and Google in 1998.[86][87]
The deep web,[88] invisible web,[89] or hidden web[90] are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search engines. The opposite term to the deep web is the surface web, which is accessible to anyone using the Internet.[91] Computer scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with coining the term deep web in 2001 as a search indexing term.[92]
The content of the deep web is hidden behind HTTP forms,[93][94] and includes many very common uses such as web mail, online banking, and services that users must pay for, and which is protected by a paywall, such as video on demand, some online magazines and newspapers, among others.
The content of the deep web can be located and accessed by a direct URL or IP address and may require a password or other security access past the public website page.
A web cache is a server computer located either on the public Internet or within an enterprise that stores recently accessed web pages to improve response time for users when the same content is requested within a certain time after the original request. Most web browsers also implement a browser cache by writing recently obtained data to a local data storage device. HTTP requests by a browser may ask only for data that has changed since the last access. Web pages and resources may contain expiration information to control caching to secure sensitive data, such as in online banking, or to facilitate frequently updated sites, such as news media. Even sites with highly dynamic content may permit basic resources to be refreshed only occasionally. Web site designers find it worthwhile to collate resources such as CSS data and JavaScript into a few site-wide files so that they can be cached efficiently. Enterprise firewalls often cache Web resources requested by one user for the benefit of many users. Some search engines store cached content of frequently accessed websites.
For criminals, the Web has become a venue to spread malware and engage in a range of cybercrime, including (but not limited to) identity theft, fraud, espionage, and intelligence gathering.[95] Web-based vulnerabilities now outnumber traditional computer security concerns,[96][97] and as measured by Google, about one in ten web pages may contain malicious code.[98] Most web-based attacks take place on legitimate websites, and most, as measured by Sophos, are hosted in the United States, China and Russia.[99] The most common of all malware threats is SQL injection attacks against websites.[100] Through HTML and URIs, the Web was vulnerable to attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS) that came with the introduction of JavaScript[101] and were exacerbated to some degree by Web 2.0 and Ajax web design that favours the use of scripts.[102] In one 2007 estimate, 70% of all websites are open to XSS attacks on their users.[103] Phishing is another common threat to the Web. In February 2013, RSA (the security division of EMC) estimated the global losses from phishing at $1.5 billion in 2012.[104] Two of the well-known phishing methods are Covert Redirect and Open Redirect.
Proposed solutions vary. Large security companies like McAfee already design governance and compliance suites to meet post-9/11 regulations,[105] and some, like Finjan Holdings have recommended active real-time inspection of programming code and all content regardless of its source.[95] Some have argued that for enterprises to see Web security as a business opportunity rather than a cost centre,[106] while others call for "ubiquitous, always-on digital rights management" enforced in the infrastructure to replace the hundreds of companies that secure data and networks.[107] Jonathan Zittrain has said users sharing responsibility for computing safety is far preferable to locking down the Internet.[108]
Every time a client requests a web page, the server can identify the request's IP address. Web servers usually log IP addresses in a log file. Also, unless set not to do so, most web browsers record requested web pages in a viewable history feature, and usually cache much of the content locally. Unless the server-browser communication uses HTTPS encryption, web requests and responses travel in plain text across the Internet and can be viewed, recorded, and cached by intermediate systems. Another way to hide personally identifiable information is by using a virtual private network. A VPN encrypts traffic between the client and VPN server, and masks the original IP address, lowering the chance of user identification.
When a web page asks for, and the user supplies, personally identifiable information—such as their real name, address, e-mail address, etc. web-based entities can associate current web traffic with that individual. If the website uses HTTP cookies, username, and password authentication, or other tracking techniques, it can relate other web visits, before and after, to the identifiable information provided. In this way, a web-based organization can develop and build a profile of the individual people who use its site or sites. It may be able to build a record for an individual that includes information about their leisure activities, their shopping interests, their profession, and other aspects of their demographic profile. These profiles are of potential interest to marketers, advertisers, and others. Depending on the website's terms and conditions and the local laws that apply information from these profiles may be sold, shared, or passed to other organizations without the user being informed. For many ordinary people, this means little more than some unexpected emails in their inbox or some uncannily relevant advertising on a future web page. For others, it can mean that time spent indulging an unusual interest can result in a deluge of further targeted marketing that may be unwelcome. Law enforcement, counterterrorism, and espionage agencies can also identify, target, and track individuals based on their interests or proclivities on the Web.
Social networking sites usually try to get users to use their real names, interests, and locations, rather than pseudonyms, as their executives believe that this makes the social networking experience more engaging for users. On the other hand, uploaded photographs or unguarded statements can be identified to an individual, who may regret this exposure. Employers, schools, parents, and other relatives may be influenced by aspects of social networking profiles, such as text posts or digital photos, that the posting individual did not intend for these audiences. Online bullies may make use of personal information to harass or stalk users. Modern social networking websites allow fine-grained control of the privacy settings for each posting, but these can be complex and not easy to find or use, especially for beginners.[109] Photographs and videos posted onto websites have caused particular problems, as they can add a person's face to an online profile. With modern and potential facial recognition technology, it may then be possible to relate that face with other, previously anonymous, images, events, and scenarios that have been imaged elsewhere. Due to image caching, mirroring, and copying, it is difficult to remove an image from the World Wide Web.
Web standards include many interdependent standards and specifications, some of which govern aspects of the Internet, not just the World Wide Web. Even when not web-focused, such standards directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of websites and web services. Considerations include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites.
Web standards, in the broader sense, consist of the following:
Web standards are not fixed sets of rules but are constantly evolving sets of finalized technical specifications of web technologies.[116] Web standards are developed by standards organizations—groups of interested and often competing parties chartered with the task of standardization—not technologies developed and declared to be a standard by a single individual or company. It is crucial to distinguish those specifications that are under development from the ones that already reached the final development status (in the case of W3C specifications, the highest maturity level).
There are methods for accessing the Web in alternative mediums and formats to facilitate use by individuals with disabilities. These disabilities may be visual, auditory, physical, speech-related, cognitive, neurological, or some combination. Accessibility features also help people with temporary disabilities, like a broken arm, or ageing users as their abilities change.[117] The Web is receiving information as well as providing information and interacting with society. The World Wide Web Consortium claims that it is essential that the Web be accessible, so it can provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities.[118] Tim Berners-Lee once noted, "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."[117] Many countries regulate web accessibility as a requirement for websites.[119] International co-operation in the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative led to simple guidelines that web content authors as well as software developers can use to make the Web accessible to persons who may or may not be using assistive technology.[117][120]
The W3C Internationalisation Activity assures that web technology works in all languages, scripts, and cultures.[121] Beginning in 2004 or 2005, Unicode gained ground and eventually in December 2007 surpassed both ASCII and Western European as the Web's most frequently used character map.[122] Originally RFC 3986 allowed resources to be identified by URI in a subset of US-ASCII.
RFC 3987 allows more characters—any character in the Universal Character Set—and now a resource can be identified by IRI in any language.[123]
He wove the World Wide Web and created a mass medium for the 21st century. The World Wide Web is Berners-Lee's alone. He designed it. He set it loose it on the world. And he more than anyone else has fought to keep it an open, non-proprietary and free.[page needed]
JavaScript is part of the triad of technologies that all Web developers must learn: HTML to specify the content of web pages, CSS to specify the presentation of web pages, and JavaScript to specify the behaviour of web pages.
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| Part of a series on |
| Internet marketing |
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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.[1][2] SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as "organic" results) rather than direct traffic, referral traffic, social media traffic, or paid traffic.
Unpaid search engine traffic may originate from a variety of kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search,[3] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine results, what people search for, the actual search queries or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by a target audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher within a search engine results page (SERP), with the aim of either converting the visitors or building brand awareness.[4]
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, webmasters submitted the address of a page, or URL to the various search engines, which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[5]
According to a 2004 article by former industry analyst and current Google employee Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997. Sullivan credits SEO practitioner Bruce Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term.[6]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Flawed data in meta tags, such as those that were inaccurate or incomplete, created the potential for pages to be mischaracterized in irrelevant searches.[7][dubious – discuss] Web content providers also manipulated attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[8] By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank in search engines and that some webmasters were manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[9]
By heavily relying on factors such as keyword density, which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic signals.[10]
Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.[citation needed]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with website optimization.[11][12] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[13] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages index status.
In 2015, it was reported that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products. In response, many brands began to take a different approach to their Internet marketing strategies.[14]
In 1998, two graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[15] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[16] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[17] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link-building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focus on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[18]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation.[19] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization and have shared their personal opinions.[20] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[21] In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[22]
In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[23] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat any no follow links, in the same way, to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[24] As a result of this change, the usage of nofollow led to evaporation of PageRank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally, several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash, and JavaScript.[25]
In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[26] On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts, and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google Caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[27] Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[28]
In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice. However, Google implemented a new system that punishes sites whose content is not unique.[29] The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[30] Although Google Penguin has been presented as an algorithm aimed at fighting web spam, it really focuses on spammy links[31] by gauging the quality of the sites the links are coming from. The 2013 Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages. Hummingbird's language processing system falls under the newly recognized term of "conversational search", where the system pays more attention to each word in the query in order to better match the pages to the meaning of the query rather than a few words.[32] With regards to the changes made to search engine optimization, for content publishers and writers, Hummingbird is intended to resolve issues by getting rid of irrelevant content and spam, allowing Google to produce high-quality content and rely on them to be 'trusted' authors.
In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for English language search queries in the US. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) was another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing, but this time in order to better understand the search queries of their users.[33] In terms of search engine optimization, BERT intended to connect users more easily to relevant content and increase the quality of traffic coming to websites that are ranking in the Search Engine Results Page.
The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine-indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. The Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, two major directories which closed in 2014 and 2017 respectively, both required manual submission and human editorial review.[34] Google offers Google Search Console, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links[35] in addition to their URL submission console.[36] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed to crawl for a cost per click;[37] however, this practice was discontinued in 2009.
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by search engines. The distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[38]
Mobile devices are used for the majority of Google searches.[39] In November 2016, Google announced a major change to the way they are crawling websites and started to make their index mobile-first, which means the mobile version of a given website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index.[40] In May 2019, Google updated the rendering engine of their crawler to be the latest version of Chromium (74 at the time of the announcement). Google indicated that they would regularly update the Chromium rendering engine to the latest version.[41] In December 2019, Google began updating the User-Agent string of their crawler to reflect the latest Chrome version used by their rendering service. The delay was to allow webmasters time to update their code that responded to particular bot User-Agent strings. Google ran evaluations and felt confident the impact would be minor.[42]
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots (usually <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> ). When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish to crawl. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login-specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[43]
In 2020, Google sunsetted the standard (and open-sourced their code) and now treats it as a hint rather than a directive. To adequately ensure that pages are not indexed, a page-level robot's meta tag should be included.[44]
A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to important pages may improve its visibility. Page design makes users trust a site and want to stay once they find it. When people bounce off a site, it counts against the site and affects its credibility.[45]
Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrases so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's metadata, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL canonicalization of web pages accessible via multiple URLs, using the canonical link element[46] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the URL all count towards the page's link popularity score. These are known as incoming links, which point to the URL and can count towards the page link's popularity score, impacting the credibility of a website.[45]
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engine companies recommend as part of good design ("white hat"), and those techniques of which search engines do not approve ("black hat"). Search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods and the practitioners who employ them as either white hat SEO or black hat SEO.[47] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[48]
An SEO technique is considered a white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[11][12][49] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the online "spider" algorithms, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[50] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines or involve deception. One black hat technique uses hidden text, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off-screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking. Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO. This is in between the black hat and white hat approaches, where the methods employed avoid the site being penalized but do not act in producing the best content for users. Grey hat SEO is entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for the use of deceptive practices.[51] Both companies subsequently apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's search engine results page.[52]
Companies that employ black hat techniques or other spammy tactics can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[53] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[54] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google had banned Traffic Power and some of its clients.[55]
SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective, such as paid advertising through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals.[editorializing] Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of designing, running, and optimizing search engine ad campaigns. Its difference from SEO is most simply depicted as the difference between paid and unpaid priority ranking in search results. SEM focuses on prominence more so than relevance; website developers should regard SEM with the utmost importance with consideration to visibility as most navigate to the primary listings of their search.[56] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high-quality web pages to engage and persuade internet users, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[57][58] In November 2015, Google released a full 160-page version of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to the public,[59] which revealed a shift in their focus towards "usefulness" and mobile local search. In recent years the mobile market has exploded, overtaking the use of desktops, as shown in by StatCounter in October 2016, where they analyzed 2.5 million websites and found that 51.3% of the pages were loaded by a mobile device.[60] Google has been one of the companies that are utilizing the popularity of mobile usage by encouraging websites to use their Google Search Console, the Mobile-Friendly Test, which allows companies to measure up their website to the search engine results and determine how user-friendly their websites are. The closer the keywords are together their ranking will improve based on key terms.[45]
SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantee and uncertainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[61] Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's search engine ranking, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[62] It is considered a wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[63] In addition to accessibility in terms of web crawlers (addressed above), user web accessibility has become increasingly important for SEO.
Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[64] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and data showed Google was the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[65] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[66] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[66] As of March 2024, Google still had a significant market share of 89.85% in Germany.[67] As of June 2008, the market share of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[68][obsolete source] As of March 2024, Google's market share in the UK was 93.61%.[69]
Successful search engine optimization (SEO) for international markets requires more than just translating web pages. It may also involve registering a domain name with a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) or a relevant top-level domain (TLD) for the target market, choosing web hosting with a local IP address or server, and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve website speed and performance globally. It is also important to understand the local culture so that the content feels relevant to the audience. This includes conducting keyword research for each market, using hreflang tags to target the right languages, and building local backlinks. However, the core SEO principles—such as creating high-quality content, improving user experience, and building links—remain the same, regardless of language or region.[66]
Regional search engines have a strong presence in specific markets:
By the early 2000s, businesses recognized that the web and search engines could help them reach global audiences. As a result, the need for multilingual SEO emerged.[74] In the early years of international SEO development, simple translation was seen as sufficient. However, over time, it became clear that localization and transcreation—adapting content to local language, culture, and emotional resonance—were far more effective than basic translation.[75]
On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[76][77]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. KinderStart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit, and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[78][79]
Google Search on desktop
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Type of site
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Web search engine |
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| Available in | 149 languages |
| Owner | |
| Revenue | Google Ads |
| URL | google |
| IPv6 support | Yes[1] |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched |
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| Current status | Online |
| Written in | |
Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.
Google Search is the most-visited website in the world. As of 2020, Google Search has a 92% share of the global search engine market.[3] Approximately 26.75% of Google's monthly global traffic comes from the United States, 4.44% from India, 4.4% from Brazil, 3.92% from the United Kingdom and 3.84% from Japan according to data provided by Similarweb.[4]
The order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority rank system called "PageRank". Google Search also provides many different options for customized searches, using symbols to include, exclude, specify or require certain search behavior, and offers specialized interactive experiences, such as flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts, currency, unit, and time conversions, word definitions, and more.
The main purpose of Google Search is to search for text in publicly accessible documents offered by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as images or data contained in databases. It was originally developed in 1996 by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan.[5][6][7] The search engine would also be set up in the garage of Susan Wojcicki's Menlo Park home.[8] In 2011, Google introduced "Google Voice Search" to search for spoken, rather than typed, words.[9] In 2012, Google introduced a semantic search feature named Knowledge Graph.
Analysis of the frequency of search terms may indicate economic, social and health trends.[10] Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google can be openly inquired via Google Trends and have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels, and provide the information faster than traditional reporting methods and surveys. As of mid-2016, Google's search engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks.[11]
In August 2024, a US judge in Virginia ruled that Google's search engine held an illegal monopoly over Internet search.[12][13] The court found that Google maintained its market dominance by paying large amounts to phone-makers and browser-developers to make Google its default search engine.[13]
Google indexes hundreds of terabytes of information from web pages.[14] For websites that are currently down or otherwise not available, Google provides links to cached versions of the site, formed by the search engine's latest indexing of that page.[15] Additionally, Google indexes some file types, being able to show users PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, certain Flash multimedia content, and plain text files.[16] Users can also activate "SafeSearch", a filtering technology aimed at preventing explicit and pornographic content from appearing in search results.[17]
Despite Google search's immense index, sources generally assume that Google is only indexing less than 5% of the total Internet, with the rest belonging to the deep web, inaccessible through its search tools.[14][18][19]
In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy.[20] In October 2016, Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, announced that the search engine would be making a separate, primary web index dedicated for mobile devices, with a secondary, less up-to-date index for desktop use. The change was a response to the continued growth in mobile usage, and a push for web developers to adopt a mobile-friendly version of their websites.[21][22] In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, having already done so for multiple websites.[23]
In August 2009, Google invited web developers to test a new search architecture, codenamed "Caffeine", and give their feedback. The new architecture provided no visual differences in the user interface, but added significant speed improvements and a new "under-the-hood" indexing infrastructure. The move was interpreted in some quarters as a response to Microsoft's recent release of an upgraded version of its own search service, renamed Bing, as well as the launch of Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine based on "computational knowledge".[24][25] Google announced completion of "Caffeine" on June 8, 2010, claiming 50% fresher results due to continuous updating of its index.[26]
With "Caffeine", Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto Bigtable, the company's distributed database platform.[27][28]
In August 2018, Danny Sullivan from Google announced a broad core algorithm update. As per current analysis done by the industry leaders Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land, the update was to drop down the medical and health-related websites that were not user friendly and were not providing good user experience. This is why the industry experts named it "Medic".[29]
Google reserves very high standards for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages. This is because misinformation can affect users financially, physically, or emotionally. Therefore, the update targeted particularly those YMYL pages that have low-quality content and misinformation. This resulted in the algorithm targeting health and medical-related websites more than others. However, many other websites from other industries were also negatively affected.[30]
By 2012, it handled more than 3.5 billion searches per day.[31] In 2013 the European Commission found that Google Search favored Google's own products, instead of the best result for consumers' needs.[32] In February 2015 Google announced a major change to its mobile search algorithm which would favor mobile friendly over other websites. Nearly 60% of Google searches come from mobile phones. Google says it wants users to have access to premium quality websites. Those websites which lack a mobile-friendly interface would be ranked lower and it is expected that this update will cause a shake-up of ranks. Businesses who fail to update their websites accordingly could see a dip in their regular websites traffic.[33]
Google's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string.[34] When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance. Other keyword-based methods to rank search results, used by many search engines that were once more popular than Google, would check how often the search terms occurred in a page, or how strongly associated the search terms were within each resulting page. The PageRank algorithm instead analyzes human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are also important. The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of other pages linking to them. PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance. In addition to PageRank, Google, over the years, has added many other secret criteria for determining the ranking of resulting pages. This is reported to comprise over 250 different indicators,[35][36] the specifics of which are kept secret to avoid difficulties created by scammers and help Google maintain an edge over its competitors globally.
PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex, developed by Robin Li in 1996. Larry Page's patent for PageRank filed in 1998 includes a citation to Li's earlier patent. Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu in 2000.[37][38]
In a potential hint of Google's future direction of their Search algorithm, Google's then chief executive Eric Schmidt, said in a 2007 interview with the Financial Times: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'".[39] Schmidt reaffirmed this during a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal: "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."[40]
Because Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters attempt to influence their website's Google rankings. An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and other search engines. This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their clients' sites. Search engine optimization encompasses both "on page" factors (like body copy, title elements, H1 heading elements and image alt attribute values) and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank). The general idea is to affect Google's relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places "on page", in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking). Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Google's spam checking algorithms. Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants.[41] It has been hypothesized, and, allegedly, is the opinion of the owner of one business about which there have been numerous complaints, that negative publicity, for example, numerous consumer complaints, may serve as well to elevate page rank on Google Search as favorable comments.[42] The particular problem addressed in The New York Times article, which involved DecorMyEyes, was addressed shortly thereafter by an undisclosed fix in the Google algorithm. According to Google, it was not the frequently published consumer complaints about DecorMyEyes which resulted in the high ranking but mentions on news websites of events which affected the firm such as legal actions against it. Google Search Console helps to check for websites that use duplicate or copyright content.[43]
In 2013, Google significantly upgraded its search algorithm with "Hummingbird". Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird.[44] The change was announced on September 26, 2013, having already been in use for a month.[45] "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.[44] It also looks deeper at content on individual pages of a website, with improved ability to lead users directly to the most appropriate page rather than just a website's homepage.[46] The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google search in years, with more "human" search interactions[47] and a much heavier focus on conversation and meaning.[44] Thus, web developers and writers were encouraged to optimize their sites with natural writing rather than forced keywords, and make effective use of technical web development for on-site navigation.[48]
In 2023, drawing on internal Google documents disclosed as part of the United States v. Google LLC (2020) antitrust case, technology reporters claimed that Google Search was "bloated and overmonetized"[49] and that the "semantic matching" of search queries put advertising profits before quality.[50] Wired withdrew Megan Gray's piece after Google complained about alleged inaccuracies, while the author reiterated that «As stated in court, "A goal of Project Mercury was to increase commercial queries"».[51]
In March 2024, Google announced a significant update to its core search algorithm and spam targeting, which is expected to wipe out 40 percent of all spam results.[52] On March 20th, it was confirmed that the roll out of the spam update was complete.[53]
On September 10, 2024, the European-based EU Court of Justice found that Google held an illegal monopoly with the way the company showed favoritism to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying €2.4 billion.[54] The EU Court of Justice referred to Google's treatment of rival shopping searches as "discriminatory" and in violation of the Digital Markets Act.[54]
At the top of the search page, the approximate result count and the response time two digits behind decimal is noted. Of search results, page titles and URLs, dates, and a preview text snippet for each result appears. Along with web search results, sections with images, news, and videos may appear.[55] The length of the previewed text snipped was experimented with in 2015 and 2017.[56][57]
"Universal search" was launched by Google on May 16, 2007, as an idea that merged the results from different kinds of search types into one. Prior to Universal search, a standard Google search would consist of links only to websites. Universal search, however, incorporates a wide variety of sources, including websites, news, pictures, maps, blogs, videos, and more, all shown on the same search results page.[58][59] Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, described the goal of Universal search as "we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.[60]
In June 2017, Google expanded its search results to cover available job listings. The data is aggregated from various major job boards and collected by analyzing company homepages. Initially only available in English, the feature aims to simplify finding jobs suitable for each user.[61][62]
In May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing website microformats to populate search result pages with "Rich snippets". Such snippets include additional details about results, such as displaying reviews for restaurants and social media accounts for individuals.[63]
In May 2016, Google expanded on the "Rich snippets" format to offer "Rich cards", which, similarly to snippets, display more information about results, but shows them at the top of the mobile website in a swipeable carousel-like format.[64] Originally limited to movie and recipe websites in the United States only, the feature expanded to all countries globally in 2017.[65]
The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine's results with information gathered from a variety of sources.[66] This information is presented to users in a box to the right of search results.[67] Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google's search engine in May 2012,[66] starting in the United States, with international expansion by the end of the year.[68] The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months,[69] and being able to answer "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016.[70] The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant[71] and Google Home searches.[72] The Knowledge Graph has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution.[70]
A Google Knowledge Panel[73] is a feature integrated into Google search engine result pages, designed to present a structured overview of entities such as individuals, organizations, locations, or objects directly within the search interface. This feature leverages data from Google's Knowledge Graph,[74] a database that organizes and interconnects information about entities, enhancing the retrieval and presentation of relevant content to users.
The content within a Knowledge Panel[75] is derived from various sources, including Wikipedia and other structured databases, ensuring that the information displayed is both accurate and contextually relevant. For instance, querying a well-known public figure may trigger a Knowledge Panel displaying essential details such as biographical information, birthdate, and links to social media profiles or official websites.
The primary objective of the Google Knowledge Panel is to provide users with immediate, factual answers, reducing the need for extensive navigation across multiple web pages.
In May 2017, Google enabled a new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos.[76][77]
Google Discover, previously known as Google Feed, is a personalized stream of articles, videos, and other news-related content. The feed contains a "mix of cards" which show topics of interest based on users' interactions with Google, or topics they choose to follow directly.[78] Cards include, "links to news stories, YouTube videos, sports scores, recipes, and other content based on what [Google] determined you're most likely to be interested in at that particular moment."[78] Users can also tell Google they're not interested in certain topics to avoid seeing future updates.
Google Discover launched in December 2016[79] and received a major update in July 2017.[80] Another major update was released in September 2018, which renamed the app from Google Feed to Google Discover, updated the design, and adding more features.[81]
Discover can be found on a tab in the Google app and by swiping left on the home screen of certain Android devices. As of 2019, Google will not allow political campaigns worldwide to target their advertisement to people to make them vote.[82]
At the 2023 Google I/O event in May, Google unveiled Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experimental feature in Google Search available through Google Labs which produces AI-generated summaries in response to search prompts.[83] This was part of Google's wider efforts to counter the unprecedented rise of generative AI technology, ushered by OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT, which sent Google executives to a panic due to its potential threat to Google Search.[84] Google added the ability to generate images in October.[85] At I/O in 2024, the feature was upgraded and renamed AI Overviews.[86]
AI Overviews was rolled out to users in the United States in May 2024.[86] The feature faced public criticism in the first weeks of its rollout after errors from the tool went viral online. These included results suggesting users add glue to pizza or eat rocks,[87] or incorrectly claiming Barack Obama is Muslim.[88] Google described these viral errors as "isolated examples", maintaining that most AI Overviews provide accurate information.[87][89] Two weeks after the rollout of AI Overviews, Google made technical changes and scaled back the feature, pausing its use for some health-related queries and limiting its reliance on social media posts.[90] Scientific American has criticised the system on environmental grounds, as such a search uses 30 times more energy than a conventional one.[91] It has also been criticized for condensing information from various sources, making it less likely for people to view full articles and websites. When it was announced in May 2024, Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance was quoted as saying "This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as marketed by Google to further satisfy user queries, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content."[92]
In August 2024, AI Overviews were rolled out in the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, with local language support.[93] On October 28, 2024, AI Overviews was rolled out to 100 more countries, including Australia and New Zealand.[94]
In March 2025, Google introduced an experimental "AI Mode" within its Search platform, enabling users to input complex, multi-part queries and receive comprehensive, AI-generated responses. This feature leverages Google's advanced Gemini 2.0 model, which enhances the system's reasoning capabilities and supports multimodal inputs, including text, images, and voice.
Initially, AI Mode is available to Google One AI Premium subscribers in the United States, who can access it through the Search Labs platform. This phased rollout allows Google to gather user feedback and refine the feature before a broader release.
The introduction of AI Mode reflects Google's ongoing efforts to integrate advanced AI technologies into its services, aiming to provide users with more intuitive and efficient search experiences.[95][96]
In late June 2011, Google introduced a new look to the Google homepage in order to boost the use of the Google+ social tools.[97]
One of the major changes was replacing the classic navigation bar with a black one. Google's digital creative director Chris Wiggins explains: "We're working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll continue to see more updates to our look and feel."[98] The new navigation bar has been negatively received by a vocal minority.[99]
In November 2013, Google started testing yellow labels for advertisements displayed in search results, to improve user experience. The new labels, highlighted in yellow color, and aligned to the left of each sponsored link help users differentiate between organic and sponsored results.[100]
On December 15, 2016, Google rolled out a new desktop search interface that mimics their modular mobile user interface. The mobile design consists of a tabular design that highlights search features in boxes. and works by imitating the desktop Knowledge Graph real estate, which appears in the right-hand rail of the search engine result page, these featured elements frequently feature Twitter carousels, People Also Search For, and Top Stories (vertical and horizontal design) modules. The Local Pack and Answer Box were two of the original features of the Google SERP that were primarily showcased in this manner, but this new layout creates a previously unseen level of design consistency for Google results.[101]
Google offers a "Google Search" mobile app for Android and iOS devices.[102] The mobile apps exclusively feature Google Discover and a "Collections" feature, in which the user can save for later perusal any type of search result like images, bookmarks or map locations into groups.[103] Android devices were introduced to a preview of the feed, perceived as related to Google Now, in December 2016,[104] while it was made official on both Android and iOS in July 2017.[105][106]
In April 2016, Google updated its Search app on Android to feature "Trends"; search queries gaining popularity appeared in the autocomplete box along with normal query autocompletion.[107] The update received significant backlash, due to encouraging search queries unrelated to users' interests or intentions, prompting the company to issue an update with an opt-out option.[108] In September 2017, the Google Search app on iOS was updated to feature the same functionality.[109]
In December 2017, Google released "Google Go", an app designed to enable use of Google Search on physically smaller and lower-spec devices in multiple languages. A Google blog post about designing "India-first" products and features explains that it is "tailor-made for the millions of people in [India and Indonesia] coming online for the first time".[110]
Google Search consists of a series of localized websites. The largest of those, the google.com site, is the top most-visited website in the world.[111] Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides a link to the search results using its proposed spelling), the ability to filter results to a date range,[112] and many more.
Google search accepts queries as normal text, as well as individual keywords.[113] It automatically corrects apparent misspellings by default (while offering to use the original spelling as a selectable alternative), and provides the same results regardless of capitalization.[113] For more customized results, one can use a wide variety of operators, including, but not limited to:[114][115]
OR or | – Search for webpages containing one of two similar queries, such as marathon OR raceAND – Search for webpages containing two similar queries, such as marathon AND runner- (minus sign) – Exclude a word or a phrase, so that "apple -tree" searches where word "tree" is not used"" – Force inclusion of a word or a phrase, such as "tallest building"* – Placeholder symbol allowing for any substitute words in the context of the query, such as "largest * in the world".. – Search within a range of numbers, such as "camera $50..$100"site: – Search within a specific website, such as "site:youtube.com"define: – Search for definitions for a word or phrase, such as "define:phrase"stocks: – See the stock price of investments, such as "stocks:googl"related: – Find web pages related to specific URL addresses, such as "related:www.wikipedia.org"cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached pages, so that "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.( ) – Group operators and searches, such as (marathon OR race) AND shoesfiletype: or ext: – Search for specific file types, such as filetype:gifbefore: – Search for before a specific date, such as spacex before:2020-08-11after: – Search for after a specific date, such as iphone after:2007-06-29@ – Search for a specific word on social media networks, such as "@twitter"Google also offers a Google Advanced Search page with a web interface to access the advanced features without needing to remember the special operators.[116]
Google applies query expansion to submitted search queries, using techniques to deliver results that it considers "smarter" than the query users actually submitted. This technique involves several steps, including:[117]
In 2008, Google started to give users autocompleted search suggestions in a list below the search bar while typing, originally with the approximate result count previewed for each listed search suggestion.[118]
Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky". This feature originally allowed users to type in their search query, click the button and be taken directly to the first result, bypassing the search results page. Clicking it while leaving the search box empty opens Google's archive of Doodles.[119] With the 2010 announcement of Google Instant, an automatic feature that immediately displays relevant results as users are typing in their query, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button disappears, requiring that users opt-out of Instant results through search settings to keep using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" functionality.[120] In 2012, "I'm Feeling Lucky" was changed to serve as an advertisement for Google services; users hover their computer mouse over the button, it spins and shows an emotion ("I'm Feeling Puzzled" or "I'm Feeling Trendy", for instance), and, when clicked, takes users to a Google service related to that emotion.[121]
Tom Chavez of "Rapt", a firm helping to determine a website's advertising worth, estimated in 2007 that Google lost $110 million in revenue per year due to use of the button, which bypasses the advertisements found on the search results page.[122]
Besides the main text-based search-engine function of Google search, it also offers multiple quick, interactive features. These include, but are not limited to:[123][124][125]
During Google's developer conference, Google I/O, in May 2013, the company announced that users on Google Chrome and ChromeOS would be able to have the browser initiate an audio-based search by saying "OK Google", with no button presses required. After having the answer presented, users can follow up with additional, contextual questions; an example include initially asking "OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?", hearing a spoken answer, and reply with "how far is it from here?"[126][127] An update to the Chrome browser with voice-search functionality rolled out a week later, though it required a button press on a microphone icon rather than "OK Google" voice activation.[128] Google released a browser extension for the Chrome browser, named with a "beta" tag for unfinished development, shortly thereafter.[129] In May 2014, the company officially added "OK Google" into the browser itself;[130] they removed it in October 2015, citing low usage, though the microphone icon for activation remained available.[131] In May 2016, 20% of search queries on mobile devices were done through voice.[132]
|
Type of site
|
Video search engine |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Owner | |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Recommended |
| Launched | August 20, 2012 |
In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos (Google Videos), searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online. Google Videos allows searching the World Wide Web for video clips.[133] The service evolved from Google Video, Google's discontinued video hosting service that also allowed to search the web for video clips.[133]
In 2012, Google has indexed over 30 trillion web pages, and received 100 billion queries per month.[134] It also caches much of the content that it indexes. Google operates other tools and services including Google News, Google Shopping, Google Maps, Google Custom Search, Google Earth, Google Docs, Picasa (discontinued), Panoramio (discontinued), YouTube, Google Translate, Google Blog Search and Google Desktop Search (discontinued[135]).
There are also products available from Google that are not directly search-related. Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.
In 2009, Google claimed that a search query requires altogether about 1 kJ or 0.0003 kW·h,[136] which is enough to raise the temperature of one liter of water by 0.24 °C. According to green search engine Ecosia, the industry standard for search engines is estimated to be about 0.2 grams of CO2 emission per search.[137] Google's 40,000 searches per second translate to 8 kg CO2 per second or over 252 million kilos of CO2 per year.[138]
On certain occasions, the logo on Google's webpage will change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle". This is a picture, drawing, animation, or interactive game that includes the logo. It is usually done for a special event or day although not all of them are well known.[139] Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic. The first was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1998,[140][141] and others have been produced for the birthdays of notable people like Albert Einstein, historical events like the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary and holidays like Valentine's Day.[142] Some Google Doodles have interactivity beyond a simple search, such as the famous "Google Pac-Man" version that appeared on May 21, 2010.
Google has been criticized for placing long-term cookies on users' machines to store preferences, a tactic which also enables them to track a user's search terms and retain the data for more than a year.[143]
Since 2012, Google Inc. has globally introduced encrypted connections for most of its clients, to bypass governative blockings of the commercial and IT services.[144]
In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.[145] In both Field v. Google and Parker v. Google, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google.[146][147]
A 2019 New York Times article on Google Search showed that images of child sexual abuse had been found on Google and that the company had been reluctant at times to remove them.[148]
Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually. The bug was caused by human error.[149][150][151][152] The URL of "/" (which expands to all URLs) was mistakenly added to the malware patterns file.[150][151]
In 2007, a group of researchers observed a tendency for users to rely exclusively on Google Search for finding information, writing that "With the Google interface the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality. ... In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools."[153]
In 2011, Google Search query results have been shown by Internet activist Eli Pariser to be tailored to users, effectively isolating users in what he defined as a filter bubble. Pariser holds algorithms used in search engines such as Google Search responsible for catering "a personal ecosystem of information".[154] Although contrasting views have mitigated the potential threat of "informational dystopia" and questioned the scientific nature of Pariser's claims,[155] filter bubbles have been mentioned to account for the surprising results of the U.S. presidential election in 2016 alongside fake news and echo chambers, suggesting that Facebook and Google have designed personalized online realities in which "we only see and hear what we like".[156]
In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google US$22.5 million for violating their agreement not to violate the privacy of users of Apple's Safari web browser.[157] The FTC was also continuing to investigate if Google's favoring of their own services in their search results violated antitrust regulations.[158]
In a November 2023 disclosure, during the ongoing antitrust trial against Google, an economics professor at the University of Chicago revealed that Google pays Apple 36% of all search advertising revenue generated when users access Google through the Safari browser. This revelation reportedly caused Google's lead attorney to cringe visibly.[citation needed] The revenue generated from Safari users has been kept confidential, but the 36% figure suggests that it is likely in the tens of billions of dollars.
Both Apple and Google have argued that disclosing the specific terms of their search default agreement would harm their competitive positions. However, the court ruled that the information was relevant to the antitrust case and ordered its disclosure. This revelation has raised concerns about the dominance of Google in the search engine market and the potential anticompetitive effects of its agreements with Apple.[159]
Google search engine robots are programmed to use algorithms that understand and predict human behavior. The book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code[160] by Ruha Benjamin talks about human bias as a behavior that the Google search engine can recognize. In 2016, some users Google searched "three Black teenagers" and images of criminal mugshots of young African American teenagers came up. Then, the users searched "three White teenagers" and were presented with photos of smiling, happy teenagers. They also searched for "three Asian teenagers", and very revealing photos of Asian girls and women appeared. Benjamin concluded that these results reflect human prejudice and views on different ethnic groups. A group of analysts explained the concept of a racist computer program: "The idea here is that computers, unlike people, can't be racist but we're increasingly learning that they do in fact take after their makers ... Some experts believe that this problem might stem from the hidden biases in the massive piles of data that the algorithms process as they learn to recognize patterns ... reproducing our worst values".[160]
On August 5, 2024, Google lost a lawsuit which started in 2020 in D.C. Circuit Court, with Judge Amit Mehta finding that the company had an illegal monopoly over Internet search.[161] This monopoly was held to be in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.[162] Google has said it will appeal the ruling,[163] though they did propose to loosen search deals with Apple and others requiring them to set Google as the default search engine.[164]
As people talk about "googling" rather than searching, the company has taken some steps to defend its trademark, in an effort to prevent it from becoming a generic trademark.[165][166] This has led to lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and the use of euphemisms, such as calling Google Search a famous web search engine.[167]
Until May 2013, Google Search had offered a feature to translate search queries into other languages. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that "Removing features is always tough, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Unfortunately, this feature never saw much pick up".[168]
Instant search was announced in September 2010 as a feature that displayed suggested results while the user typed in their search query, initially only in select countries or to registered users.[169] The primary advantage of the new system was its ability to save time, with Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, proclaiming that the feature would save 2–5 seconds per search, elaborating that "That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we'll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!"[170] Matt Van Wagner of Search Engine Land wrote that "Personally, I kind of like Google Instant and I think it represents a natural evolution in the way search works", and also praised Google's efforts in public relations, writing that "With just a press conference and a few well-placed interviews, Google has parlayed this relatively minor speed improvement into an attention-grabbing front-page news story".[171] The upgrade also became notable for the company switching Google Search's underlying technology from HTML to AJAX.[172]
Instant Search could be disabled via Google's "preferences" menu for those who didn't want its functionality.[173]
The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly compiled a list of words that Google Instant did not show suggested results for, with a Google spokesperson giving the following statement to Mashable:[174]
There are several reasons you may not be seeing search queries for a particular topic. Among other things, we apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech. It's important to note that removing queries from Autocomplete is a hard problem, and not as simple as blacklisting particular terms and phrases.
In search, we get more than one billion searches each day. Because of this, we take an algorithmic approach to removals, and just like our search algorithms, these are imperfect. We will continue to work to improve our approach to removals in Autocomplete, and are listening carefully to feedback from our users.
Our algorithms look not only at specific words, but compound queries based on those words, and across all languages. So, for example, if there's a bad word in Russian, we may remove a compound word including the transliteration of the Russian word into English. We also look at the search results themselves for given queries. So, for example, if the results for a particular query seem pornographic, our algorithms may remove that query from Autocomplete, even if the query itself wouldn't otherwise violate our policies. This system is neither perfect nor instantaneous, and we will continue to work to make it better.
PC Magazine discussed the inconsistency in how some forms of the same topic are allowed; for instance, "lesbian" was blocked, while "gay" was not, and "cocaine" was blocked, while "crack" and "heroin" were not. The report further stated that seemingly normal words were also blocked due to pornographic innuendos, most notably "scat", likely due to having two completely separate contextual meanings, one for music and one for a sexual practice.[175]
On July 26, 2017, Google removed Instant results, due to a growing number of searches on mobile devices, where interaction with search, as well as screen sizes, differ significantly from a computer.[176][177]
Instant previews[edit]
"Instant previews" allowed previewing screenshots of search results' web pages without having to open them. The feature was introduced in November 2010 to the desktop website and removed in April 2013 citing low usage.[178][179]
Various search engines provide encrypted Web search facilities. In May 2010 Google rolled out SSL-encrypted web search.[180] The encrypted search was accessed at encrypted.google.com[181] However, the web search is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) by default today, thus every search request should be automatically encrypted if TLS is supported by the web browser.[182] On its support website, Google announced that the address encrypted.google.com would be turned off April 30, 2018, stating that all Google products and most new browsers use HTTPS connections as the reason for the discontinuation.[183]
Google Real-Time Search was a feature of Google Search in which search results also sometimes included real-time information from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and news websites.[184] The feature was introduced on December 7, 2009,[185] and went offline on July 2, 2011, after the deal with Twitter expired.[186] Real-Time Search included Facebook status updates beginning on February 24, 2010.[187] A feature similar to Real-Time Search was already available on Microsoft's Bing search engine, which showed results from Twitter and Facebook.[188] The interface for the engine showed a live, descending "river" of posts in the main region (which could be paused or resumed), while a bar chart metric of the frequency of posts containing a certain search term or hashtag was located on the right hand corner of the page above a list of most frequently reposted posts and outgoing links. Hashtag search links were also supported, as were "promoted" tweets hosted by Twitter (located persistently on top of the river) and thumbnails of retweeted image or video links.
In January 2011, geolocation links of posts were made available alongside results in Real-Time Search. In addition, posts containing syndicated or attached shortened links were made searchable by the link: query option. In July 2011, Real-Time Search became inaccessible, with the Real-Time link in the Google sidebar disappearing and a custom 404 error page generated by Google returned at its former URL. Google originally suggested that the interruption was temporary and related to the launch of Google+;[189] they subsequently announced that it was due to the expiry of a commercial arrangement with Twitter to provide access to tweets.[190]
This onscreen Google slide had to do with a "semantic matching" overhaul to its SERP algorithm. When you enter a query, you might expect a search engine to incorporate synonyms into the algorithm as well as text phrase pairings in natural language processing. But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to generate more commercial results.
Since Dec. 4, 2009, Google has been personalized for everyone. So when I had two friends this spring Google 'BP,' one of them got a set of links that was about investment opportunities in BP. The other one got information about the oil spill
The global village that was once the internet ... digital islands of isolation that are drifting further apart each day ... your experience online grows increasingly personalized
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General SEO focuses on improving a website's visibility on a broader scale, often targeting national or international audiences. Local SEO, on the other hand, zeroes in on geographic areas, helping businesses attract nearby customers through local keywords, directory listings, and Google My Business optimization.
SEO agencies in Sydney typically offer comprehensive services such as keyword research, technical audits, on-page and off-page optimization, content creation, and performance tracking. Their goal is to increase your site's search engine rankings and drive more targeted traffic to your website.
A local SEO agency specializes in improving a business's visibility within a specific geographic area. They focus on optimizing local citations, managing Google My Business profiles, and targeting location-based keywords to attract nearby customers.
Search engine optimisation consultants analyze your website and its performance, identify issues, and recommend strategies to improve your search rankings. They provide guidance on keyword selection, on-page optimization, link building, and content strategy to increase visibility and attract more traffic.
SEO, or search engine optimisation, means improving your website's structure, content, and overall performance to rank higher in search results. This leads to more organic traffic, increased brand visibility, and better conversion rates, ultimately supporting your business's growth.