Google is easily the largest search engine of the web and beyond. No one comes close, and nothing can stop it from reigning the industry.
By sitting on top of the food chain, Google definitely earn lots of money. But at the same time, its dominant position makes it an alluring target by antitrusts and other scrutinies. Among other reasons, this is why the company updated its "How Search Works" website.
The website that was created back in 2016, to contain information on how Google organizes, ranks, and tests search results.
It was made to explain the inner workings of Google’s search engine
And here, it has been redesigned in a way that even non-technical people can understand it, in an attempts to better explain how its core business functions.
According to Google Search liaison in a blog post:
"It gives an overview of the technology and work that goes into organizing the world's information, understanding what you're looking for and then connecting you with the most relevant, helpful information."
Sullivan said that the website is made to explain how Google's ranking systems sort through hundreds of billions of web pages.
Through the update, the company wants to explain in its own words, more details about the process of how it decides what website and what page to show up on its search results.
For example, Google wrote that there have been 4,500 adjustments to Google Search in 2020 alone.
By comparison, in 2019, Google made 3,200 changes to Google Search. Looking further back, in 2010, Google had about one change per day.
Sullivan refers this as "improvements."
Besides that, Google has also experimented on more than 17,000 live traffic, tested more than 380,000 search quality, and made more than 60,000 side-by-side experiments.
The effort comes under growing legal pressure, as U.S. government filed yet another antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Most of these investigations, especially from the U.S. Department of Justice, have centered on the company's Search business. Regulators have criticized Google for being a "black box" where only Google knows how results are displayed.
Lawmakers have especially zeroed in on Google because of its dominance in web search, and on digital advertising. The company's monopoly processes around 90% of all online searches in the U.S.. That dominance is the foundation of Google's massive advertising business, which generates almost all of the company's over $180 billion in annual sales.
It should be noted though, while Google made some design changes, the content is barely touched.
Aside to some tweaks in the wordings, there is nothing new to learn from it.
In other words, Google updated the site to contain all the same information, but presented in a different way.
To Google’s credit, however, the changes in presentation do come with usability improvements.
For instance, people visiting the redesigned website need less clicking to navigate, as it allows them to read all the content by scrolling down the page.
Read: How Google Search Works, And How It Can Show You The Things You Want