Since internet search engines started in the 1990’s to fulfil a requirement for users to identify useful information on the internet, the methods used by search engines to collect, hold and rank sites have altered totally.
During the 1990’s most search engine methods of data collection, processing and interpretation were very basic. The algorithms used to grade sites and give results were in their infancy. This provided a haphazard experience for the search engine user. Users would typically receive little relevancy within their search results, either the results were of little use to their requirements, or the results were just not pertinent. Users had to give up much time (unless they got lucky) and be persistent with their searches, by choosing different keywords, and by following numerous references highlighted by the search engine in the expectation of finding what they were looking for.
Search engine users found the experience irritating, and this was borne out by the slow early growth of search engines during the initial years.
The search engine process was altered around the turn of the new millennium, when the Google search engine started to use what Google named ‘PageRank’ technology. This technology was developed to deliver what Google co-founder Larry Page described as a user experience that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want”.
Google were in all probability the first search engine provider at that point to clearly recognise that the key to their triumph would be to enhance the search engine user experience so effectively, that users would not want to use any other engine.
Google’s aim was to keep search engine users coming back to Google, and to attract competitor search engine users with the best user experience available at the time. Having the largest market share of search engine users would then permit them to execute their strategy of selling other services more effectively and profitably and capturing the search engine market. The simplicity of early search engine algorithms meant that those seeking to promote their sites via Online Marketing unethically were easily able to take advantage of search engines. Unethical Search Engine Optimisation, otherwise known as ‘Black Hat’ seeks to exploit Search Engine Placement ranking algorithms for short-term financial gain, offering a top Search Engine Placement listing very quickly.
An example of the many unethical processes available include ‘keyword stuffing’ and ‘doorway’ pages, where keywords are added to web pages in such a way that they are unnoticed by the human eye, but noticed by search engines.The aim here is to make a search engine consider the page to be more relevant to a user searching for those keywords than it in fact is, and to return the web page higher up the search results listing than it is entitled to. The end result with any of these processes is that the search engine users experience is degraded by the return of inappropriate or unsuitable search results. The risk to the search engine is that the search engine user could leave them and go to another engine.
Google’s now tries to grade pages on the Web based on the number and supposed quality of web sites and pages elsewhere that refer back to it. In doing so, Google assumes that the more a web site is referenced by quality sites elsewhere on the Web, the greater that site is ranked and the higher up their search results that page or site will appear.
This has made it much more difficult for an unethical Website Optimization Company to successfully influence search engine results within Google. Conversely it also has the required effect of reducing page rankings for web pages that use unethical search engine optimisation. Google, being the first search engine to adopt this method, ensured its user experience was the very best on the market and the company has grown as a result, leading the global search engine business today.
Figures from Hitbox back this up, showing that Google’s worldwide share of the search engine market hit a peak of 82.7% in December of 2008. Since then, Google has lost some trade to other search engines. Figures for July 2009 show that Chinese search engine Baidu has an increased 8.87% market share, with Microsoft’s Bing up to 3.17%. Other who have lost market share in addition to Google include Yahoo! Search with 7.16% and AOL with 0.6%.
However, Google still leads, and with July 2009 figures of 78.4% market share, Google’s competitors have what appears a next-to-impossible task of overhauling the global search engine market leader.