| Google
Technology Overview
Google stands alone in its focus on developing
the "perfect search engine," defined
by co-founder Larry Page as something that, "understands
exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly
what you want." To that end, Google has persistently
pursued innovation and refused to accept the limitations
of existing models. As a result, Google developed
its own serving infrastructure and breakthrough
PageRank™ technology that changed the way
searches are conducted.
From the beginning, Google's developers recognized
that providing the fastest, most accurate results
required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most
search engines ran off a handful of large servers
that often slowed under peak loads, Google employed
linked PCs to quickly find each query's answer.
The innovation paid off in faster response times,
greater scalability and lower costs. It's an idea
that others have since copied, while Google has
continued to refine its back-end technology to
make it even more efficient.
The software behind Google's search technology
conducts a series of simultaneous calculations
requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional
search engines rely heavily on how often a word
appears on a web page. Google uses PageRank™
to examine the entire link structure of the web
and determine which pages are most important.
It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to
determine which pages are relevant to the specific
search being conducted. By combining overall importance
and query-specific relevance, Google is able to
put the most relevant and reliable results first.
PageRank Technology: PageRank
performs an objective measurement of the importance
of web pages by solving an equation of more than
500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead
of counting direct links, PageRank interprets
a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page
B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance
by the number of votes it receives.
PageRank also considers the importance of each
page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages
are considered to have greater value, thus giving
the linked page greater value. Important pages
receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top
of the search results. Google's technology uses
the collective intelligence of the web to determine
a page's importance. There is no human involvement
or manipulation of results, which is why users
have come to trust Google as a source of objective
information untainted by paid placement.
Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google's
search engine also analyzes page content. However,
instead of simply scanning for page-based text
(which can be manipulated by site publishers through
meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full
content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions
and the precise location of each word. Google
also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages
to ensure the results returned are the most relevant
to a user's query.
Google's innovations don't stop at the desktop.
To bring its accurate and speedy search results
to users accessing the web through portable devices,
Google also pioneered the first wireless search
technology for on-the-fly translation of HTML
to formats optimized for WAP, i-mode, J-SKY, and
EZWeb. Currently, Google provides its wireless
technology to numerous market leaders, including
AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Nextel, Palm, Handspring,
and Vodafone, among others.
Life of a Google Query
The life span of a Google query normally lasts
less than half a second, yet involves a number
of different steps that must be completed before
results can be delivered to a person seeking information.
Source: http://www.google.com
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