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Google Growing - An Update on Google
By Jim Hedger


There is a lot going on at the Googleplex these days. For three 
different reasons, each of which is important to search 
marketing, Google has been in the SEO spotlight this week. For 
the technology wonks, Google engineers are said to be developing 
a Google web browser to challenge Microsoft's Internet Explorer. 
For those of us interested in the business end of search, the 
SEC imposed a 40-day "quiet period" which has expired and 
speculation on their limited revenue streams has heated up 
again. Lastly, for SEOs and web masters trying to figure out 
what Google is up to this month, multiple versions of Googlebot 
have been observed super-spidering the web. To say there is a 
lot going on in Mountain View is likely an understatement. 
Google is retooling its shed and though there may be some bumps 
in store for organic SEOs, this might actually be the beginning 
of the end of Google's technical glitches.  

Google is being driven by two important forces. The first is the 
intellectual and competitive quest to develop the best possible 
product. Google faces obvious challenges from Yahoo, MSN and Ask 
Jeeves, and less obvious challenges from smaller companies 
developing search related products. The second driving force is 
the need to find as many viable revenue sources as possible. For 
a company like Google, the path to success is founded on 
Advertising Avenue but most recently, the company came into a 
staggering amount of money through its IPO.  

Google Browser - Playing Ruthless with Redmond 

Google is most likely developing an web browser of its own to 
compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This will allow 
Google to "brand" a user's experience, much like Microsoft does 
today. (Look at the top of your browser. About 90% of you will 
see the words "Microsoft Internet Explorer") Google has recently 
introduced its own Email system known Gmail and offers a host of 
other features that could be incorporated into a browser. The 
development of a Google web browser is much like Microsoft 
developing its own search engine. It is a direct challenge to a 
major rival and a smart move leading up to the next major phase 
of the search engine war, expected next spring. Here's the 
background on the browser story.  

Google has a great deal invested in its engineering staff. Their 
resumé filtering process for engineers is the stuff of legends 
and is designed to allow only the brightest to solve their way 
through a series of mathematical puzzles. Joining those who 
solved the puzzles are a number of notable new staff members 
personally headhunted and recruited from other tech firms. 
According to a report in Digital Media Europe, Google has hired 
Java pioneer Joshua Block away from Sun Microsystems, Adam 
Bosworth and four others from Microsoft's Internet Explorer 
development team, and in a major coup, one of Microsoft's lead 
developers on the Longhorn OS, Joe Beda. This sudden grouping of 
famous IT engineers, combined with Google's April 2004 
registration of the domain name "gbrowser.com" gives a great 
deal of credibility to the rumour. Google has also dedicated a 
substantial amount of time, attention and money to the Mozilla 
community. Mozilla is an open-source browser. Open-source 
software allows developers to work with the software-code to 
improve or change the product. By offering resources to Mozilla 
developers, Google may be micro-funding the creation of what 
becomes the backbone of a Google-branded browser. Google users 
would likely accept and use a Google browser, especially if it 
is based on the current tech favourite, Mozilla. Once they have 
converted from IE to Google's product, directing their interest 
will be as easy as tracking their movements, two important 
components in making the bottom line.  

Money as a Necessary Evil - Expanding Revenue Sources 

Making money is an important part of running a successful 
business. One might think that becoming the world's most 
referenced information source would be enough to make money. 
Apparently it's not. Moving the most advertising on the web... 
now that's a ticket to making good money. Google pushes product 
like nobody's business. With over 50% of all searches conducted 
through Google's system in one way or another, and the largest 
contextual advertising distribution network on the planet, 
Google's only major competition is Yahoo/Overture. Unlike 
Yahoo/Overture however, Google is in a somewhat precarious 
position regarding revenues. Over 90% of Google's quarterly 
revenues is said to come from contextual advertising. That's a 
lot of eggs to put in one basket, no matter how large that 
basket may be. The contextual advertising market is changing and 
this is a cause for concern for all search tools dependent on 
advertising revenues. Google is betting the server-farm on 
advertising so it has to develop as many ways as possible to 
deliver that advertising to viewers and do it in such a way that 
advertisers benefit more than they would working with Yahoo. 
Google has thus far been successful in competing with Yahoo's 
Overture. They have developed a better distribution system, have 
more advertisers, and have better semantic contextualization 
abilities than Yahoo. What they don't have is other major 
revenue sources.  

One of the goals of all search engines is to deliver the most 
relevant results possible to each individual user. Concepts such 
as personalization and localization of search results are based 
on this goal. One of the effects of localization and 
personalization will be the adoption of Google as a replacement 
for daily-use items such as the phone book and yellow pages. 
This is an obvious goal for Google and other search tools, 
however, it also represents an extraordinary and recurring 
revenue generator, especially as the Pay-per-Call model layers 
over the current Pay-per-Click model. As Google engineers find 
new ways of presenting search to the public, perhaps we'll see 
new kitchen appliances referencing Google for recipes or even 
Froogle for the lowest prices on local produce. Eventually, 
digital radio and television will become the standard. Wouldn't 
it be cool to look for a specific song or show currently playing 
somewhere? That may sound far-fetched today but, if they can do 
it with the news, they'll soon do it with other digitalized 
signals. The bottom line to this section is the bottom line. 
Google knows it needs to diversify its revenue streams if only 
to continue to satisfy investors.  

Googlebot, meet GOOGLEBOT. 

Lastly, Googlebot has a doppelganger and both have been running 
rampant across the Net the last few weeks. Posts in several SEO 
forums have speculated widely and wildly about what Google is 
doing and why it is doing whatever it's doing. Nobody can claim 
to know what Google is doing from moment to moment with the 
exception of a few dozen people working at Google. The best the 
rest of us can do is offer educated guesses and many have been 
doing just that. There are definitely two unique Googlebots out 
there. One appears to be performing a deep-scan of a website and 
its links while another seems to be doing a surface scan of 
pages in the site's directory. This leads credence to our first 
theory...  

Over at WebmasterWorld, moderator Brett Tabke speculated that 
Google was in the midst of rebuilding their entire database from 
the ground up. There have been a few times in the past when 
Google has served up month-old results due to errors in their 
main index. This may be one of those times and Google is trying 
to cover much ground in as short a time as possible. Given the 
unprecedented levels of R&D at the Googleplex, I am a bit 
bearish on much of this theory except a basic assumption that 
Google is somewhat broken and needs patching up.  

"Would you like some links with that website sir?"

The Google is sort-of-broken theory appears in other postings, 
both at Webmaster World and at the IHelpYouServices forums. 
Google has been sort-of-broken for a while now. Actually, Google 
is working just fine but as search marketing has become so 
important, marketers have learned how to absolutely manipulate 
it. As almost everyone knows, Google is highly affected by the 
number and relevance of incoming links. Strong keyword enriched 
titles and text along with a good number of highly relevant 
links should get your site front page prominence. It's 
relatively easy. So easy in fact that the search engine result 
pages are often clogged with irrelevant results and references 
to direct-marketing products. Google often makes minor moves to 
fix this problem, more often than not relating to the way Google 
measures the validity of incoming links. These algo shifts often 
clean up results for a short time but have not yet prevented the 
masses of marketers from figuring out new tricks and "magic 
bullet" strategies to shoot at the SERPs. This type of algorithm 
tinkering was what was behind last November's Florida Update.  

Another theory states that when Google was originally 
programmed, the number 4 Billion was considered really, really 
big. Today, Google has over 4 Billion websites in it's database 
but, due to its original programming it may be limited in growth 
past that requiring the compilation of a new database. 

Whatever the cause for two versions of Googlebot, there is no 
question that an update is underway as this column is being 
written. Page ranks and backlink counts have been fluctuating 
over the past few days and several webmasters report seeing 
their rankings bounce widely from page to page in the SERPs. By 
next week we'll have a better idea of what Google's been doing 
by analyzing the outcome of this update.  

The world of search is changing very rapidly. Google is one of 
the most innovative companies working the web and it too is 
changing. Based on the past week, much of this change may be for 
the better. Google seems to be focusing on technologies as well 
as monetization, which is a huge step forward now that the IPO 
hurdle has been crossed. When compared to rival firms such as 
Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and Microsoft, much of the recent speculation 
around Google looks very positive. Investors seem to think so 
too with Google shares continuing to rise in value though this 
may be driven by IPO euphoria as well as educated investing. 
With a new browser appearing to be in the works, the development 
of new revenue streams, and the refocusing of their core 
algorithm, Google is getting ready to be cool again. 

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Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine 
Placement Inc. (http://www.stepforth.com/). Based in Victoria, 
BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of 
BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix 
Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine 
placement and management services since 1997. 
Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198  
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