Samsung, the maker of millions of smartphones with preinstalled Google Search, is reportedly in talks to replace Google with Bing as the default search provider on its devices.This is the first instance of a threat confronting Google’s long-standing dominance over the search business.Despite Alphabet’s diversified segments, its core business and majority profit accrue fromGoogle Search, which accounted for US$162 billion of US$279.8 billion of Alphabet’s total revenue last year. Naturally, Google’s top agenda is to protect its core business and retain its position as the default search engine in electronic devices like tablets, mobiles, or laptops.
A critical question arises about the underlying business model of online search engines like Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, and Yahoo. What do these search engines stand to gain by being the default devices search engine? Let us examine how search engines generate revenue while allowing users to explore the internet for information and content for free.
The profit model of search engines
Search engines make money primarily through advertising (billions of dollars yearly from itsGoogle Ads platform). The working mechanism is as follows: Whenever users can enter a search query into a search engine, the search engine provides a list of web pages and other content related to the search query, including advertisem*nts. Advertisers pay search engines to display sponsored results when users search for specific keywords. These ads typically appear at the top and/or bottom ofSearch Engine Results Pages (SERPs)and are labelled as ‘sponsored’ or ‘ad’. Search engines get paid based on the number of clicks these ads get. This model is popularly known as thePPC (Pay-Per-Click).
Apart from sponsored listing, search engines also track user data for targeted advertising, using people’s search history. Search engines can easily gather information about users’ search history, preferences, and behaviours. This is done through cookies, IP address tracking, device and browser fingerprinting, and other technologies. Search engines then use these data points to profile their users to improve the targeting of advertisem*nts. For example, if a user frequently searches for details about recipes and food, the search engine may display advertisem*nts for restaurants and related food ingredient products. Thus, the user search history effectively helps improve search engine algorithms and enhances search accuracy by identifying patterns in user behaviour. In capitalising on user data, search engines allow advertisers to manage their advertisem*nts using strategies such as ad scheduling, geotargeting, and device targeting – all made possible because of accumulated user history data!
The power of default
Let us now delve into the edge granted to a search engine by being the default setup. Regardless of the default search engine, people can always change their search engine on their respective devices based on personal preferences. Despite the absence of any exclusivity, there is massive inertia to change the default search engine. It happens because the effort required to manually navigate to a different search engine to perform search functions makes the transition process a hassle, especially for ordinary people. Parallelly, technologically challenged people may not be aware of alternative search engines and might have no explicit preference for a specific search engine. Even with awareness of alternatives, the effectiveness, performance, and security of the search engine paired with their current device remains unapproved and may lead to apprehension among users.
Therefore, a default search engine further provides a sense of security (however misleading) as its performance and device compatibility are assumed to be vetted by the manufacturers. As a result, being the default search engine is advantageous for search engines as it provides them with a broader audience base leading to increased traffic alongside greater brand recognition. Thus, being the default search engine is vital for a search engine’s success as having large traffic ensures that search engines remain attractive to advertisers, their primary source of revenue – the higher the number of search engine users, the dearer the advertising space becomes, generating better returns.
For users, however, pre-installed search engines deprive them of the choice to select their preferred alternative and select those search engines that do not track user details. In 2019, the European Commission stated that Google had an unfair advantage by pre-installing its Chrome browser and Google search app on Android smartphones and notebooks. To circumvent antitrust concerns,in early 2020, Google enabled Android smartphones and tablets sold in the European Economic Area (EEA) to show a ‘choice screen’that offered users four search engines to choose from.
Search engines get paid based on the number of clicks these ads get. This model is popularly known as the PPC (Pay-Per-Click). Apart from sponsored listing, search engines also track user data for targeted advertising, using people's search history.
Search engines make money by getting searchers to click on ads. These ads are displayed both on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and on ad networks they are associated with.
You bid on keywords relevant to your business, so when people use those terms in their searches, your ads appear alongside organic results. But here's where the beauty lies — you only pay the search engine if someone clicks on your ad; hence the term 'pay-per-click'.
With that much content out there, the internet would be essentially unworkable without search engines, and internet users would drown in a sea of irrelevant information and shrill marketing messages. Search engines provide users with search results that lead to relevant information on high-quality websites.
Search engines are a searchable database of web content. They are made up of two parts, the index, which is a digital library of information about the web pages, and the algorithm, which is the search engine's program that matches your search with a result from the index.
Google. Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Capturing nearly 92 percent of the search market, it's no wonder why SEO specialists seek out any available piece of information about Google's ranking algorithm. Google can search for news, images, videos and scholarly articles.
Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising.
It started out as a research project known as BackRub, so-called due to its ranking method of checking site backlinks to determine relative authority. This was what gave Google the edge over its competitors, and continues to do so to this day.
Google Search is a fully-automated search engine that uses software known as web crawlers that explore the web regularly to find pages to add to our index.
A search engine is a software program that helps people find the information they are looking for online using keywords or phrases. Search engines are able to return results quickly—even with millions of websites online—by scanning the Internet continuously and indexing every page they find.
The first search engine invented was “Archie”, created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a brilliant student at McGill University in Montreal. The original intent of the name was “archives,” but it was shortened to Archie. This was before the creation of the World Wide Web, and was a search engine for FTP sites.
Advertisers pay search engines to display sponsored results when users search for specific keywords. These ads typically appear at the top and/or bottom of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and are labelled as 'sponsored' or 'ad'. Search engines get paid based on the number of clicks these ads get.
Wondering how many times your name has been Googled? Unfortunately, there's no way to find out: Google Search, like other search engines, doesn't disclose individual search data. Any websites or companies claiming they can reveal an exact number are, ultimately, lying—some data brokers claim to do exactly this.
Before Google became synonymous with looking things up on the Internet, Yahoo, which first indexed the web, was the number two most popular site online.
The majority of our revenue is from private ads on our search engine. On most other search engines, ads are based on profiles compiled from your personal information, such as search, browsing, and purchase history.
Google does not disclose the exact amount of revenue it generates per search. However, it is estimated that the company generates revenue of around $40 billion per year from its advertising business, which is the majority of its revenue.
Search Engine Market Share: February 2023 – February 2024
According to statistics from Statcounter GlobalStats, Google still owns the biggest share of the search engine market by a wide margin. The following are the worldwide statistics on all platforms as of February 2024: Google – 91.62% Bing – 3.31%
Google's popularity stems from its unmatched search algorithm, indexing billions of web pages with lightning-fast speed and delivering highly relevant results to users worldwide.
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Introduction: My name is Virgilio Hermann JD, I am a fine, gifted, beautiful, encouraging, kind, talented, zealous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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