Google hits the big time

• Jul. 20, 2000

On June 26, 2000, Yahoo announced that it would be ending its partnership with Inktomi, which had provided search results for the internet giant since 1998. In the announcement, Yahoo revealed that Inktomi would be replaced by Google, a fairly new search tool gaining rapid popularity since its 1998 inception. The change took place in the early hours of July 4th, and so far the switch seems to have been a success. However, we are left wondering why Yahoo made the switch, and how this will affect internet searchers, webmasters, marketers, and Google.

According to an article on ChicagoTribune.com, the popularity and growth of the Google engine were quite significant in Yahoo's decision to use its results: Yahoo's Jeff Mallet told the publication that Google is becoming increasingly popular with web searchers (Google president Sergey Brin claims searches are up 20% every month) and that Google has grown significantly. In fact, Tom Foremski of Financial Times (FT.com) states that the Google index contains roughly a billion pages: about 70% of the estimated size of the web. This doubles the size of the Inktomi index (although Inktomi.com now also claims 1 billion documents crawled), and is about 4 times larger than the indices of competitors Alta Vista and Excite, according to theStandard.com. 

How Google Works

Yahoo users will likely be pleased with the results they receive from this new partnership. As Google chief executive Larry Page explains: "We have very complex software that constantly analyses search results and can adapt itself to provide users with web pages that are more relevant to their search than from any other search engines." In addition to the keyword relevance of indexed pages, Google measures the number of links pointing to each page. Pages with greater 'link popularity' are considered to be more relevant to searches. The relevancy of the pages that these links come from also contributes to higher relevancy for each page. This leads to higher quality results for the user, eliminating much of the irrelevant spam that often results from an internet search. Foremski theorizes that Google "should grow more efficient as the internet is used more heavily and the number of links grows." The speed with which results are obtained is also an important characteristic of Google - the network of over 5000 PCs that powers its searches can send search results to a user in about half a second.

Google Within Yahoo: GooHoo!

It appears however, that Yahoo is making changes to the results it obtains from Google. For example, searches for 'mad hatter' on both Yahoo Web Pages and Google prove similar, but not exact. After the first eight results displayed, Yahoo's search displays some results that are nowhere in Google's first two pages of results. Many webmasters and internet marketers have commented on the inconsistency of results between the two engines - although most found themselves ranking more highly in the Yahoo/Google (GooHoo) results than they had been in Google itself. Some possible explanations for the discrepancy are less emphasis placed on link popularity by the Yahoo/Google results, and Yahoo/Google's apparent preference for a slightly larger page. As for those who had ranked well with Yahoo's Inktomi based search, most found they were affected less than originally anticipated. Although Google seems to be slower to index new sites than Inktomi, the results are more stable. Inktomi's index has had a tendency to change every few weeks, with sites often being dropped unexpectedly in the past (click here for a related article).

Google executives are obviously very excited about this new development. The company is still privately owned (an IPO is possible later in the year), and though growth has already been rapid up to this point, the affiliation with Yahoo will bring about major changes. According to Page, business is expected to triple - up from 10 to 30 million searches a day - thanks to Yahoo. This means that, for now, Google is near the top of the internet searching game.