GoogleLogo since May 12, 2025Google Search on desktop as of August 27, 2025Type of siteWeb search engineAvailable in149 languagesOwnerGoogleRevenueGoogle AdsURLsearch.google google.comIPv6 supportYes[1]CommercialYesRegistrationOptionalLaunched1995; 30 years ago (1995) (first prototype)1997; 28 years ago (1997) (final launch)Current statusOnlineWritten inPythonCC++[2]
Google (formerly known as Google Search) is a search engine and AI chatbot operated by Google. It allows users to search or ask 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. Google Search is the most-visited website in the world. As of 2025, Google Search has a 90% share of the global search engine market.[3] Approximately 24.1% of Google's monthly global traffic comes from the United States, 5.6% from India, 5.5% from Japan, 4.8% from Brazil, and 3.7% from the United Kingdom according to data provided by Similarweb. The same source reports that 58% of users are male and 42% are female.[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 behior, 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 he 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 held an illegal monopoly over Internet search and search advertising.[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] In April 2025, the trial to determine which remedies sought by the Department of Justice would be imposed to address Google's illegal monopoly, which could include breaking up the company and preventing it from using its data to secure dominance in the AI sector.[needs update][14]
Search indexing See also: GooglebotGoogle indexes hundreds of terabytes of information from web pages.[15] Before 2024,[16] Google also provided desktop users links to cached versions of their search results, formed by the search engine's latest indexing of the website in question.[17] 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.[18] Users can also activate "SafeSearch", a filtering technology aimed at preventing explicit and pornographic content from appearing in search results.[19]
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.[15][20][21]
In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy.[22] 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.[23][24] In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, hing already done so for multiple websites.[25]
"Caffeine" search architecture upgradeIn 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".[26][27] Google announced completion of "Caffeine" on June 8, 2010, claiming 50% fresher results due to continuous updating of its index.[28]
With "Caffeine", Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto Bigtable, the company's distributed database platform.[29][30]
"Medic" search algorithm updateIn 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".[31]
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 he 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.[32]
Search results Ranking of resultsBy 2012, it handled more than 3.5 billion searches per day.[33] In 2013 the European Commission found that Google Search fored Google's own products, instead of the best result for consumers' needs.[34] In February 2015 Google announced a major change to its mobile search algorithm which would for mobile friendly over other websites. Nearly 60% of Google searches come from mobile phones. Google says it wants users to he 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.[35]
PageRank Main article: PageRankGoogle's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string.[36] 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,[37][38] the specifics of which are kept secret to oid 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.[39][40]
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?'".[41] 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."[42]
Google optimization Main article: Search engine optimizationBecause 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.[43] It has been hypothesized, and, allegedly, is the opinion of the owner of one business about which there he been numerous complaints, that negative publicity, for example, numerous consumer complaints, may serve as well to elevate page rank on Google Search as forable comments.[44] 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.[45]
"Hummingbird" search algorithm upgrade Main article: Google HummingbirdIn 2013, Google significantly upgraded its search algorithm with "Hummingbird". Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird.[46] The change was announced on September 26, 2013, hing already been in use for a month.[47] "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.[46] 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.[48] The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google search in years, with more "human" search interactions[49] and a much heier focus on conversation and meaning.[46] 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 nigation.[50]
Search results qualityIn 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"[51] and that the "semantic matching" of search queries put advertising profits before quality.[52] 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"».[53]
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.[54] On March 20th, it was confirmed that the roll out of the spam update was complete.[55]
Shopping searchOn September 10, 2024, the European-based EU Court of Justice found that Google held an illegal monopoly with the way the company showed foritism to its shopping search, and could not oid paying €2.4 billion.[56] The EU Court of Justice referred to Google's treatment of rival shopping searches as "discriminatory" and in violation of the Digital Markets Act.[56]
Interface Page layoutAt 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.[57] The length of the previewed text snipped was experimented with in 2015 and 2017.[58][59]
Universal search"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.[60][61] 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 ailable into one simple set of search results.[62]
In June 2017, Google expanded its search results to cover ailable job listings. The data is aggregated from various major job boards and collected by analyzing company homepages. Initially only ailable in English, the feature aims to simplify finding jobs suitable for each user.[63][64]
Rich snippetsIn 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.[65]
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.[66] Originally limited to movie and recipe websites in the United States only, the feature expanded to all countries globally in 2017.[67]
Knowledge Graph Main article: Knowledge Graph (Google)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.[68] This information is presented to users in a box to the right of search results.[69] Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google's search engine in May 2012,[68] starting in the United States, with international expansion by the end of the year.[70] The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months,[71] and being able to answer "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016.[72] The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant[73] and Google Home searches.[74] The Knowledge Graph has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution.[72]
Google Knowledge PanelA Google Knowledge Panel[75] 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,[76] 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[77] 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 nigation across multiple web pages.
Personal tabIn 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.[78][79]
Google DiscoverGoogle 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.[80] 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."[80] Users can also tell Google they're not interested in certain topics to oid seeing future updates.
Google Discover launched in December 2016[81] and received a major update in July 2017.[82] 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.[83]
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.[84]
AI Overviews Main article: AI Overviews Early AI Overview response to the problem of "cheese not sticking to pizza"At the 2023 Google I/O event in May, Google unveiled Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experimental feature in Google Search ailable through Google Labs which produces AI-generated summaries in response to search prompts.[85] 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.[86] Google added the ability to generate images in October.[87] At I/O in 2024, the feature was upgraded and renamed AI Overviews.[88]
AI Overviews was rolled out to users in the United States in May 2024.[88] 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,[89] or incorrectly claiming Barack Obama is Muslim.[90] Google described these viral errors as "isolated examples", maintaining that most AI Overviews provide accurate information.[89][91] 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.[92] Scientific American has criticised the system on environmental grounds, as such a search uses 30 times more energy than a conventional one.[93] 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, leing even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content."[94]
In August 2024, AI Overviews were rolled out in the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, with local language support.[95] On October 28, 2024, AI Overviews was rolled out to 100 more countries, including Australia and New Zealand.[96]
AI Mode Main article: AI Mode This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)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 uses 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 was ailable to Google One AI Premium subscribers in the United States, who could access it through the Search Labs platform. This phased rollout allowed Google to gather user feedback and refine the feature before a broader release.
Redesigns Product Sans, Google's typeface since 2015In 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 nigation 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 nigation 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]
Smartphone appsGoogle 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 se 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]
Performing a search A definition link is provided for many search terms.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.
Search syntaxGoogle 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 race AND – 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 -ai – Exclude AI-generated content from webpages, including Google AI Overviews. "" – 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" -site: – Do not display search results from 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" ( ) – Group operators and searches, such as (marathon OR race) AND shoes filetype: or ext: – Search for specific file types, such as filetype:gif before: – Search for before a specific date, such as spacex before:2020-08-11 after: – Search for after a specific date, such as iphone after:2007-06-29 @ – Search for the search term on a specific social media site, 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]
As of 2024 Google no longer displays cached versions of webpages. Previously the command cache: would present a cached version of a webpage with the search term highlighted, e.g. "cache:www.google.com xxx" showed cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.[117]
Unlike other search engines, when searching for exact phrases, Google Search only takes words that are on the same line into account.
Query expansionGoogle 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:[118]
Word stemming – Certain words can be reduced so other, similar terms, are also found in results, so that "translator" can also search for "translation" Acronyms – Searching for abbreviations can also return results about the name in its full length, so that "NATO" can show results for "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" Misspellings – Google will often suggest correct spellings for misspelled words Synonyms – In most cases where a word is incorrectly used in a phrase or sentence, Google search will show results based on the correct synonym Translations – The search engine can, in some instances, suggest results for specific words in a different language Ignoring words – When search queries contain extraneous or insignificant words, Google search may drop those specific words from the query Location sensitivity – Google may consider users' geographical location to deliver more relevant results. A screenshot of suggestions by Google Search when "wikip" is typedIn 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.[119]