branded keyword variations"Branded keyword variations include different ways people might refer to your brand, products, or services. Targeting these variations ensures you capture a larger share of branded search traffic."
branded keywordsBranded keywords include your companys name or product name. Optimizing for these keywords helps you dominate search results for queries that are directly tied to your brand.
broad keywords"Broad keywords have a wider focus and often attract a large, general audience. While not as targeted, they can help increase brand awareness and drive top-of-funnel traffic."
Best SEO Agency Sydney Australia.broken link building"Broken link building involves identifying broken links on other websites and offering your content as a replacement. Best Search Engine Optimisation Services. This strategy helps businesses earn quality backlinks, improve their sites authority, and increase search rankings."
Broken link building"Broken link building is a tactic where you find broken links on other websites and suggest your own content as a replacement. By helping site owners fix their broken links, you gain valuable backlinks while improving the user experience for visitors."
buyer intent keywordsBuyer intent keywords indicate that a user is ready to make a purchase. Optimizing for these terms can increase conversions and drive more sales.
call-to-action optimization"Optimizing calls-to-action (CTAs) encourages users to take desired actions, such as subscribing, downloading, or making a purchase.
canonical tags"Canonical tags help search engines understand which version of a page is the primary one, preventing duplicate content issues. SEO Packages Sydney . By using canonical tags correctly, businesses can consolidate link equity, improve crawl efficiency, and maintain consistent rankings."
canonical tags"Canonical tags help prevent duplicate content issues by indicating the preferred version of a web page. By using canonical tags correctly, you consolidate link equity and ensure that search engines index the correct URL, improving the pages ranking potential."
commercial intent keywordsCommercial intent keywords show that users are considering a purchase but are still in the research phase. Optimizing for these terms helps position your brand as the go-to option when theyre ready to buy.
comparison keywords"Comparison keywords, like vs or comparison, indicate that users are weighing their options. By creating content that directly compares products or services, you capture traffic from users who are close to making a decision."
competitive analysis"Competitive analysis identifies how rival businesses approach SEO, highlighting opportunities and gaps. By understanding competitors strategies, businesses can refine their own approach, improve rankings, and gain an edge in the search results."
competitive keyword analysis"Competitive keyword analysis identifies which search terms competitors are targeting. By understanding these keywords, businesses can refine their strategies, discover untapped opportunities, and improve their search rankings."
competitor analysis keywords"Competitor analysis keywords are terms that your competitors rank for.
Competitor backlink analysis"Competitor backlink analysis involves examining the backlink profiles of your competitors to identify potential linking opportunities. By understanding where their links come from, you can target similar sources to enhance your own link building strategy."
Competitor backlink audits"Competitor backlink audits analyze the backlink profiles of top-performing competitors. By understanding where they earn their links, you can identify potential opportunities and refine your own link building strategy to gain a competitive edge."
competitor gap keywordsCompetitor gap keywords are terms your competitors rank for that you currently dont. Targeting these keywords helps you close the gap and compete more effectively in search rankings.
competitor keywordsCompetitor keywords are the terms your competitors rank for. Identifying these keywords provides insights into potential opportunities and helps you develop a stronger keyword strategy.
Competitor link gap analysis"Competitor link gap analysis identifies opportunities where your competitors have acquired backlinks that you havent. By targeting these missed opportunities, you can close the gap and strengthen your link building efforts."
content A/B testing"A/B testing content involves creating two variations of a page to see which performs better. By analyzing metrics like engagement, time on page, and conversion rates, you can identify the most effective content strategies and continuously improve."
content accuracy"Ensuring content accuracy builds credibility and trust with your audience. By providing correct information, sourcing reliable references, and fact-checking, you enhance the user experience and improve your sites reputation in the eyes of search engines."
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Google Search on desktop
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Type of site
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Web search engine |
|---|---|
| Available in | 149 languages |
| Owner | |
| Revenue | Google Ads |
| URL | google |
| IPv6 support | Yes[1] |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched |
|
| Current status | Online |
| Written in | |
Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search 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. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.
Google Search is the most-visited website in the world. As of 2020, Google Search has a 92% share of the global search engine market.[3] Approximately 26.75% of Google's monthly global traffic comes from the United States, 4.44% from India, 4.4% from Brazil, 3.92% from the United Kingdom and 3.84% from Japan according to data provided by Similarweb.[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 behavior, 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 have 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's search engine held an illegal monopoly over Internet search.[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]
Google indexes hundreds of terabytes of information from web pages.[14] For websites that are currently down or otherwise not available, Google provides links to cached versions of the site, formed by the search engine's latest indexing of that page.[15] 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.[16] Users can also activate "SafeSearch", a filtering technology aimed at preventing explicit and pornographic content from appearing in search results.[17]
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.[14][18][19]
In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy.[20] 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.[21][22] In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, having already done so for multiple websites.[23]
In 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".[24][25] Google announced completion of "Caffeine" on June 8, 2010, claiming 50% fresher results due to continuous updating of its index.[26]
With "Caffeine", Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto Bigtable, the company's distributed database platform.[27][28]
In 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".[29]
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 have 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.[30]
By 2012, it handled more than 3.5 billion searches per day.[31] In 2013 the European Commission found that Google Search favored Google's own products, instead of the best result for consumers' needs.[32] In February 2015 Google announced a major change to its mobile search algorithm which would favor mobile friendly over other websites. Nearly 60% of Google searches come from mobile phones. Google says it wants users to have 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.[33]
Google's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string.[34] 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,[35][36] the specifics of which are kept secret to avoid 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.[37][38]
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?'".[39] 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."[40]
Because 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.[41] It has been hypothesized, and, allegedly, is the opinion of the owner of one business about which there have been numerous complaints, that negative publicity, for example, numerous consumer complaints, may serve as well to elevate page rank on Google Search as favorable comments.[42] 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.[43]
In 2013, Google significantly upgraded its search algorithm with "Hummingbird". Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird.[44] The change was announced on September 26, 2013, having already been in use for a month.[45] "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.[44] 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.[46] The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google search in years, with more "human" search interactions[47] and a much heavier focus on conversation and meaning.[44] 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 navigation.[48]
In 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"[49] and that the "semantic matching" of search queries put advertising profits before quality.[50] 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"».[51]
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.[52] On March 20th, it was confirmed that the roll out of the spam update was complete.[53]
On September 10, 2024, the European-based EU Court of Justice found that Google held an illegal monopoly with the way the company showed favoritism to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying €2.4 billion.[54] The EU Court of Justice referred to Google's treatment of rival shopping searches as "discriminatory" and in violation of the Digital Markets Act.[54]
At 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.[55] The length of the previewed text snipped was experimented with in 2015 and 2017.[56][57]
"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.[58][59] 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 available into one simple set of search results.[60]
In June 2017, Google expanded its search results to cover available job listings. The data is aggregated from various major job boards and collected by analyzing company homepages. Initially only available in English, the feature aims to simplify finding jobs suitable for each user.[61][62]
In 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.[63]
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.[64] Originally limited to movie and recipe websites in the United States only, the feature expanded to all countries globally in 2017.[65]
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.[66] This information is presented to users in a box to the right of search results.[67] Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google's search engine in May 2012,[66] starting in the United States, with international expansion by the end of the year.[68] The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months,[69] and being able to answer "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016.[70] The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant[71] and Google Home searches.[72] The Knowledge Graph has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution.[70]
A Google Knowledge Panel[73] 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,[74] 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[75] 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 navigation across multiple web pages.
In 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.[76][77]
Google 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.[78] 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."[78] Users can also tell Google they're not interested in certain topics to avoid seeing future updates.
Google Discover launched in December 2016[79] and received a major update in July 2017.[80] 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.[81]
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.[82]
At the 2023 Google I/O event in May, Google unveiled Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experimental feature in Google Search available through Google Labs which produces AI-generated summaries in response to search prompts.[83] 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.[84] Google added the ability to generate images in October.[85] At I/O in 2024, the feature was upgraded and renamed AI Overviews.[86]
AI Overviews was rolled out to users in the United States in May 2024.[86] 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,[87] or incorrectly claiming Barack Obama is Muslim.[88] Google described these viral errors as "isolated examples", maintaining that most AI Overviews provide accurate information.[87][89] 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.[90] Scientific American has criticised the system on environmental grounds, as such a search uses 30 times more energy than a conventional one.[91] 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, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content."[92]
In August 2024, AI Overviews were rolled out in the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, with local language support.[93] On October 28, 2024, AI Overviews was rolled out to 100 more countries, including Australia and New Zealand.[94]
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 leverages 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 is available to Google One AI Premium subscribers in the United States, who can access it through the Search Labs platform. This phased rollout allows Google to gather user feedback and refine the feature before a broader release.
The introduction of AI Mode reflects Google's ongoing efforts to integrate advanced AI technologies into its services, aiming to provide users with more intuitive and efficient search experiences.[95][96]
In 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 navigation 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 navigation 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]
Google 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 save 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]
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.
Google 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 raceAND – 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"" – 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"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"cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached pages, so that "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.( ) – Group operators and searches, such as (marathon OR race) AND shoesfiletype: or ext: – Search for specific file types, such as filetype:gifbefore: – Search for before a specific date, such as spacex before:2020-08-11after: – Search for after a specific date, such as iphone after:2007-06-29@ – Search for a specific word on social media networks, 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]
Google 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:[117]
In 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.[118]
Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky". This feature originally allowed users to type in their search query, click the button and be taken directly to the first result, bypassing the search results page. Clicking it while leaving the search box empty opens Google's archive of Doodles.[119] With the 2010 announcement of Google Instant, an automatic feature that immediately displays relevant results as users are typing in their query, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button disappears, requiring that users opt-out of Instant results through search settings to keep using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" functionality.[120] In 2012, "I'm Feeling Lucky" was changed to serve as an advertisement for Google services; users hover their computer mouse over the button, it spins and shows an emotion ("I'm Feeling Puzzled" or "I'm Feeling Trendy", for instance), and, when clicked, takes users to a Google service related to that emotion.[121]
Tom Chavez of "Rapt", a firm helping to determine a website's advertising worth, estimated in 2007 that Google lost $110 million in revenue per year due to use of the button, which bypasses the advertisements found on the search results page.[122]
Besides the main text-based search-engine function of Google search, it also offers multiple quick, interactive features. These include, but are not limited to:[123][124][125]
During Google's developer conference, Google I/O, in May 2013, the company announced that users on Google Chrome and ChromeOS would be able to have the browser initiate an audio-based search by saying "OK Google", with no button presses required. After having the answer presented, users can follow up with additional, contextual questions; an example include initially asking "OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?", hearing a spoken answer, and reply with "how far is it from here?"[126][127] An update to the Chrome browser with voice-search functionality rolled out a week later, though it required a button press on a microphone icon rather than "OK Google" voice activation.[128] Google released a browser extension for the Chrome browser, named with a "beta" tag for unfinished development, shortly thereafter.[129] In May 2014, the company officially added "OK Google" into the browser itself;[130] they removed it in October 2015, citing low usage, though the microphone icon for activation remained available.[131] In May 2016, 20% of search queries on mobile devices were done through voice.[132]
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Screenshot
Google Videos homepage as of 2016
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Type of site
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Video search engine |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Owner | |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Recommended |
| Launched | August 20, 2012 |
In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos (Google Videos), searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online. Google Videos allows searching the World Wide Web for video clips.[133] The service evolved from Google Video, Google's discontinued video hosting service that also allowed to search the web for video clips.[133]
In 2012, Google has indexed over 30 trillion web pages, and received 100 billion queries per month.[134] It also caches much of the content that it indexes. Google operates other tools and services including Google News, Google Shopping, Google Maps, Google Custom Search, Google Earth, Google Docs, Picasa (discontinued), Panoramio (discontinued), YouTube, Google Translate, Google Blog Search and Google Desktop Search (discontinued[135]).
There are also products available from Google that are not directly search-related. Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.
In 2009, Google claimed that a search query requires altogether about 1 kJ or 0.0003 kW·h,[136] which is enough to raise the temperature of one liter of water by 0.24 °C. According to green search engine Ecosia, the industry standard for search engines is estimated to be about 0.2 grams of CO2 emission per search.[137] Google's 40,000 searches per second translate to 8 kg CO2 per second or over 252 million kilos of CO2 per year.[138]
On certain occasions, the logo on Google's webpage will change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle". This is a picture, drawing, animation, or interactive game that includes the logo. It is usually done for a special event or day although not all of them are well known.[139] Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic. The first was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1998,[140][141] and others have been produced for the birthdays of notable people like Albert Einstein, historical events like the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary and holidays like Valentine's Day.[142] Some Google Doodles have interactivity beyond a simple search, such as the famous "Google Pac-Man" version that appeared on May 21, 2010.
Google has been criticized for placing long-term cookies on users' machines to store preferences, a tactic which also enables them to track a user's search terms and retain the data for more than a year.[143]
Since 2012, Google Inc. has globally introduced encrypted connections for most of its clients, to bypass governative blockings of the commercial and IT services.[144]
In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.[145] In both Field v. Google and Parker v. Google, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google.[146][147]
![[icon]](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} |
A 2019 New York Times article on Google Search showed that images of child sexual abuse had been found on Google and that the company had been reluctant at times to remove them.[148]
Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually. The bug was caused by human error.[149][150][151][152] The URL of "/" (which expands to all URLs) was mistakenly added to the malware patterns file.[150][151]
In 2007, a group of researchers observed a tendency for users to rely exclusively on Google Search for finding information, writing that "With the Google interface the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality. ... In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools."[153]
In 2011, Google Search query results have been shown by Internet activist Eli Pariser to be tailored to users, effectively isolating users in what he defined as a filter bubble. Pariser holds algorithms used in search engines such as Google Search responsible for catering "a personal ecosystem of information".[154] Although contrasting views have mitigated the potential threat of "informational dystopia" and questioned the scientific nature of Pariser's claims,[155] filter bubbles have been mentioned to account for the surprising results of the U.S. presidential election in 2016 alongside fake news and echo chambers, suggesting that Facebook and Google have designed personalized online realities in which "we only see and hear what we like".[156]
In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google US$22.5 million for violating their agreement not to violate the privacy of users of Apple's Safari web browser.[157] The FTC was also continuing to investigate if Google's favoring of their own services in their search results violated antitrust regulations.[158]
In a November 2023 disclosure, during the ongoing antitrust trial against Google, an economics professor at the University of Chicago revealed that Google pays Apple 36% of all search advertising revenue generated when users access Google through the Safari browser. This revelation reportedly caused Google's lead attorney to cringe visibly.[citation needed] The revenue generated from Safari users has been kept confidential, but the 36% figure suggests that it is likely in the tens of billions of dollars.
Both Apple and Google have argued that disclosing the specific terms of their search default agreement would harm their competitive positions. However, the court ruled that the information was relevant to the antitrust case and ordered its disclosure. This revelation has raised concerns about the dominance of Google in the search engine market and the potential anticompetitive effects of its agreements with Apple.[159]
Google search engine robots are programmed to use algorithms that understand and predict human behavior. The book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code[160] by Ruha Benjamin talks about human bias as a behavior that the Google search engine can recognize. In 2016, some users Google searched "three Black teenagers" and images of criminal mugshots of young African American teenagers came up. Then, the users searched "three White teenagers" and were presented with photos of smiling, happy teenagers. They also searched for "three Asian teenagers", and very revealing photos of Asian girls and women appeared. Benjamin concluded that these results reflect human prejudice and views on different ethnic groups. A group of analysts explained the concept of a racist computer program: "The idea here is that computers, unlike people, can't be racist but we're increasingly learning that they do in fact take after their makers ... Some experts believe that this problem might stem from the hidden biases in the massive piles of data that the algorithms process as they learn to recognize patterns ... reproducing our worst values".[160]
On August 5, 2024, Google lost a lawsuit which started in 2020 in D.C. Circuit Court, with Judge Amit Mehta finding that the company had an illegal monopoly over Internet search.[161] This monopoly was held to be in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.[162] Google has said it will appeal the ruling,[163] though they did propose to loosen search deals with Apple and others requiring them to set Google as the default search engine.[164]
As people talk about "googling" rather than searching, the company has taken some steps to defend its trademark, in an effort to prevent it from becoming a generic trademark.[165][166] This has led to lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and the use of euphemisms, such as calling Google Search a famous web search engine.[167]
Until May 2013, Google Search had offered a feature to translate search queries into other languages. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that "Removing features is always tough, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Unfortunately, this feature never saw much pick up".[168]
Instant search was announced in September 2010 as a feature that displayed suggested results while the user typed in their search query, initially only in select countries or to registered users.[169] The primary advantage of the new system was its ability to save time, with Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, proclaiming that the feature would save 2–5 seconds per search, elaborating that "That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we'll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!"[170] Matt Van Wagner of Search Engine Land wrote that "Personally, I kind of like Google Instant and I think it represents a natural evolution in the way search works", and also praised Google's efforts in public relations, writing that "With just a press conference and a few well-placed interviews, Google has parlayed this relatively minor speed improvement into an attention-grabbing front-page news story".[171] The upgrade also became notable for the company switching Google Search's underlying technology from HTML to AJAX.[172]
Instant Search could be disabled via Google's "preferences" menu for those who didn't want its functionality.[173]
The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly compiled a list of words that Google Instant did not show suggested results for, with a Google spokesperson giving the following statement to Mashable:[174]
There are several reasons you may not be seeing search queries for a particular topic. Among other things, we apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech. It's important to note that removing queries from Autocomplete is a hard problem, and not as simple as blacklisting particular terms and phrases.
In search, we get more than one billion searches each day. Because of this, we take an algorithmic approach to removals, and just like our search algorithms, these are imperfect. We will continue to work to improve our approach to removals in Autocomplete, and are listening carefully to feedback from our users.
Our algorithms look not only at specific words, but compound queries based on those words, and across all languages. So, for example, if there's a bad word in Russian, we may remove a compound word including the transliteration of the Russian word into English. We also look at the search results themselves for given queries. So, for example, if the results for a particular query seem pornographic, our algorithms may remove that query from Autocomplete, even if the query itself wouldn't otherwise violate our policies. This system is neither perfect nor instantaneous, and we will continue to work to make it better.
PC Magazine discussed the inconsistency in how some forms of the same topic are allowed; for instance, "lesbian" was blocked, while "gay" was not, and "cocaine" was blocked, while "crack" and "heroin" were not. The report further stated that seemingly normal words were also blocked due to pornographic innuendos, most notably "scat", likely due to having two completely separate contextual meanings, one for music and one for a sexual practice.[175]
On July 26, 2017, Google removed Instant results, due to a growing number of searches on mobile devices, where interaction with search, as well as screen sizes, differ significantly from a computer.[176][177]
Instant previews[edit]
"Instant previews" allowed previewing screenshots of search results' web pages without having to open them. The feature was introduced in November 2010 to the desktop website and removed in April 2013 citing low usage.[178][179]
Various search engines provide encrypted Web search facilities. In May 2010 Google rolled out SSL-encrypted web search.[180] The encrypted search was accessed at encrypted.google.com[181] However, the web search is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) by default today, thus every search request should be automatically encrypted if TLS is supported by the web browser.[182] On its support website, Google announced that the address encrypted.google.com would be turned off April 30, 2018, stating that all Google products and most new browsers use HTTPS connections as the reason for the discontinuation.[183]
Google Real-Time Search was a feature of Google Search in which search results also sometimes included real-time information from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and news websites.[184] The feature was introduced on December 7, 2009,[185] and went offline on July 2, 2011, after the deal with Twitter expired.[186] Real-Time Search included Facebook status updates beginning on February 24, 2010.[187] A feature similar to Real-Time Search was already available on Microsoft's Bing search engine, which showed results from Twitter and Facebook.[188] The interface for the engine showed a live, descending "river" of posts in the main region (which could be paused or resumed), while a bar chart metric of the frequency of posts containing a certain search term or hashtag was located on the right hand corner of the page above a list of most frequently reposted posts and outgoing links. Hashtag search links were also supported, as were "promoted" tweets hosted by Twitter (located persistently on top of the river) and thumbnails of retweeted image or video links.
In January 2011, geolocation links of posts were made available alongside results in Real-Time Search. In addition, posts containing syndicated or attached shortened links were made searchable by the link: query option. In July 2011, Real-Time Search became inaccessible, with the Real-Time link in the Google sidebar disappearing and a custom 404 error page generated by Google returned at its former URL. Google originally suggested that the interruption was temporary and related to the launch of Google+;[189] they subsequently announced that it was due to the expiry of a commercial arrangement with Twitter to provide access to tweets.[190]
This onscreen Google slide had to do with a "semantic matching" overhaul to its SERP algorithm. When you enter a query, you might expect a search engine to incorporate synonyms into the algorithm as well as text phrase pairings in natural language processing. But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to generate more commercial results.
Since Dec. 4, 2009, Google has been personalized for everyone. So when I had two friends this spring Google 'BP,' one of them got a set of links that was about investment opportunities in BP. The other one got information about the oil spill
The global village that was once the internet ... digital islands of isolation that are drifting further apart each day ... your experience online grows increasingly personalized
cite news: |last2= has generic name (help)Google Instant only works for searchers in the US or who are logged in to a Google account in selected countries outside the US
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Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design (UX design); and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all.[1] The term "web design" is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing markup. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.
Although web design has a fairly recent history, it can be linked to other areas such as graphic design, user experience, and multimedia arts, but is more aptly seen from a technological standpoint. It has become a large part of people's everyday lives. It is hard to imagine the Internet without animated graphics, different styles of typography, backgrounds, videos and music. The web was announced on August 6, 1991; in November 1992, CERN was the first website to go live on the World Wide Web. During this period, websites were structured by using the <table> tag which created numbers on the website. Eventually, web designers were able to find their way around it to create more structures and formats. In early history, the structure of the websites was fragile and hard to contain, so it became very difficult to use them. In November 1993, ALIWEB was the first ever search engine to be created (Archie Like Indexing for the WEB).[2]
In 1989, whilst working at CERN in Switzerland, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee proposed to create a global hypertext project, which later became known as the World Wide Web. From 1991 to 1993 the World Wide Web was born. Text-only HTML pages could be viewed using a simple line-mode web browser.[3] In 1993 Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, created the Mosaic browser. At the time there were multiple browsers, however the majority of them were Unix-based and naturally text-heavy. There had been no integrated approach to graphic design elements such as images or sounds. The Mosaic browser broke this mould.[4] The W3C was created in October 1994 to "lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability."[5] This discouraged any one company from monopolizing a proprietary browser and programming language, which could have altered the effect of the World Wide Web as a whole. The W3C continues to set standards, which can today be seen with JavaScript and other languages. In 1994 Andreessen formed Mosaic Communications Corp. that later became known as Netscape Communications, the Netscape 0.9 browser. Netscape created its HTML tags without regard to the traditional standards process. For example, Netscape 1.1 included tags for changing background colours and formatting text with tables on web pages. From 1996 to 1999 the browser wars began, as Microsoft and Netscape fought for ultimate browser dominance. During this time there were many new technologies in the field, notably Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, and Dynamic HTML. On the whole, the browser competition did lead to many positive creations and helped web design evolve at a rapid pace.[6]
In 1996, Microsoft released its first competitive browser, which was complete with its features and HTML tags. It was also the first browser to support style sheets, which at the time was seen as an obscure authoring technique and is today an important aspect of web design.[6] The HTML markup for tables was originally intended for displaying tabular data. However, designers quickly realized the potential of using HTML tables for creating complex, multi-column layouts that were otherwise not possible. At this time, as design and good aesthetics seemed to take precedence over good markup structure, little attention was paid to semantics and web accessibility. HTML sites were limited in their design options, even more so with earlier versions of HTML. To create complex designs, many web designers had to use complicated table structures or even use blank spacer .GIF images to stop empty table cells from collapsing.[7] CSS was introduced in December 1996 by the W3C to support presentation and layout. This allowed HTML code to be semantic rather than both semantic and presentational and improved web accessibility, see tableless web design.
In 1996, Flash (originally known as FutureSplash) was developed. At the time, the Flash content development tool was relatively simple compared to now, using basic layout and drawing tools, a limited precursor to ActionScript, and a timeline, but it enabled web designers to go beyond the point of HTML, animated GIFs and JavaScript. However, because Flash required a plug-in, many web developers avoided using it for fear of limiting their market share due to lack of compatibility. Instead, designers reverted to GIF animations (if they did not forego using motion graphics altogether) and JavaScript for widgets. But the benefits of Flash made it popular enough among specific target markets to eventually work its way to the vast majority of browsers, and powerful enough to be used to develop entire sites.[7]
In 1998, Netscape released Netscape Communicator code under an open-source licence, enabling thousands of developers to participate in improving the software. However, these developers decided to start a standard for the web from scratch, which guided the development of the open-source browser and soon expanded to a complete application platform.[6] The Web Standards Project was formed and promoted browser compliance with HTML and CSS standards. Programs like Acid1, Acid2, and Acid3 were created in order to test browsers for compliance with web standards. In 2000, Internet Explorer was released for Mac, which was the first browser that fully supported HTML 4.01 and CSS 1. It was also the first browser to fully support the PNG image format.[6] By 2001, after a campaign by Microsoft to popularize Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer had reached 96% of web browser usage share, which signified the end of the first browser wars as Internet Explorer had no real competition.[8]
Since the start of the 21st century, the web has become more and more integrated into people's lives. As this has happened the technology of the web has also moved on. There have also been significant changes in the way people use and access the web, and this has changed how sites are designed.
Since the end of the browsers wars[when?] new browsers have been released. Many of these are open source, meaning that they tend to have faster development and are more supportive of new standards. The new options are considered by many[weasel words] to be better than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
The W3C has released new standards for HTML (HTML5) and CSS (CSS3), as well as new JavaScript APIs, each as a new but individual standard.[when?] While the term HTML5 is only used to refer to the new version of HTML and some of the JavaScript APIs, it has become common to use it to refer to the entire suite of new standards (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript).
With the advancements in 3G and LTE internet coverage, a significant portion of website traffic shifted to mobile devices. This shift influenced the web design industry, steering it towards a minimalist, lighter, and more simplistic style. The "mobile first" approach emerged as a result, emphasizing the creation of website designs that prioritize mobile-oriented layouts first, before adapting them to larger screen dimensions.
Web designers use a variety of different tools depending on what part of the production process they are involved in. These tools are updated over time by newer standards and software but the principles behind them remain the same. Web designers use both vector and raster graphics editors to create web-formatted imagery or design prototypes. A website can be created using WYSIWYG website builder software or a content management system, or the individual web pages can be hand-coded in just the same manner as the first web pages were created. Other tools web designers might use include markup validators[9] and other testing tools for usability and accessibility to ensure their websites meet web accessibility guidelines.[10]
One popular tool in web design is UX Design, a type of art that designs products to perform an accurate user background. UX design is very deep. UX is more than the web, it is very independent, and its fundamentals can be applied to many other browsers or apps. Web design is mostly based on web-based things. UX can overlap both web design and design. UX design mostly focuses on products that are less web-based.[11]
Marketing and communication design on a website may identify what works for its target market. This can be an age group or particular strand of culture; thus the designer may understand the trends of its audience. Designers may also understand the type of website they are designing, meaning, for example, that (B2B) business-to-business website design considerations might differ greatly from a consumer-targeted website such as a retail or entertainment website. Careful consideration might be made to ensure that the aesthetics or overall design of a site do not clash with the clarity and accuracy of the content or the ease of web navigation,[12] especially on a B2B website. Designers may also consider the reputation of the owner or business the site is representing to make sure they are portrayed favorably. Web designers normally oversee all the websites that are made on how they work or operate on things. They constantly are updating and changing everything on websites behind the scenes. All the elements they do are text, photos, graphics, and layout of the web. Before beginning work on a website, web designers normally set an appointment with their clients to discuss layout, colour, graphics, and design. Web designers spend the majority of their time designing websites and making sure the speed is right. Web designers typically engage in testing and working, marketing, and communicating with other designers about laying out the websites and finding the right elements for the websites.[13]
User understanding of the content of a website often depends on user understanding of how the website works. This is part of the user experience design. User experience is related to layout, clear instructions, and labeling on a website. How well a user understands how they can interact on a site may also depend on the interactive design of the site. If a user perceives the usefulness of the website, they are more likely to continue using it. Users who are skilled and well versed in website use may find a more distinctive, yet less intuitive or less user-friendly website interface useful nonetheless. However, users with less experience are less likely to see the advantages or usefulness of a less intuitive website interface. This drives the trend for a more universal user experience and ease of access to accommodate as many users as possible regardless of user skill.[14] Much of the user experience design and interactive design are considered in the user interface design.
Advanced interactive functions may require plug-ins if not advanced coding language skills. Choosing whether or not to use interactivity that requires plug-ins is a critical decision in user experience design. If the plug-in doesn't come pre-installed with most browsers, there's a risk that the user will have neither the know-how nor the patience to install a plug-in just to access the content. If the function requires advanced coding language skills, it may be too costly in either time or money to code compared to the amount of enhancement the function will add to the user experience. There's also a risk that advanced interactivity may be incompatible with older browsers or hardware configurations. Publishing a function that doesn't work reliably is potentially worse for the user experience than making no attempt. It depends on the target audience if it's likely to be needed or worth any risks.
Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, whilst users with additional browser features or faster Internet access receive the enhanced version instead.
In practice, this means serving content through HTML and applying styling and animation through CSS to the technically possible extent, then applying further enhancements through JavaScript. Pages' text is loaded immediately through the HTML source code rather than having to wait for JavaScript to initiate and load the content subsequently, which allows content to be readable with minimum loading time and bandwidth, and through text-based browsers, and maximizes backwards compatibility.[15]
As an example, MediaWiki-based sites including Wikipedia use progressive enhancement, as they remain usable while JavaScript and even CSS is deactivated, as pages' content is included in the page's HTML source code, whereas counter-example Everipedia relies on JavaScript to load pages' content subsequently; a blank page appears with JavaScript deactivated.
Part of the user interface design is affected by the quality of the page layout. For example, a designer may consider whether the site's page layout should remain consistent on different pages when designing the layout. Page pixel width may also be considered vital for aligning objects in the layout design. The most popular fixed-width websites generally have the same set width to match the current most popular browser window, at the current most popular screen resolution, on the current most popular monitor size. Most pages are also center-aligned for concerns of aesthetics on larger screens.
Fluid layouts increased in popularity around 2000 to allow the browser to make user-specific layout adjustments to fluid layouts based on the details of the reader's screen (window size, font size relative to window, etc.). They grew as an alternative to HTML-table-based layouts and grid-based design in both page layout design principles and in coding technique but were very slow to be adopted.[note 1] This was due to considerations of screen reading devices and varying windows sizes which designers have no control over. Accordingly, a design may be broken down into units (sidebars, content blocks, embedded advertising areas, navigation areas) that are sent to the browser and which will be fitted into the display window by the browser, as best it can. Although such a display may often change the relative position of major content units, sidebars may be displaced below body text rather than to the side of it. This is a more flexible display than a hard-coded grid-based layout that doesn't fit the device window. In particular, the relative position of content blocks may change while leaving the content within the block unaffected. This also minimizes the user's need to horizontally scroll the page.
Responsive web design is a newer approach, based on CSS3, and a deeper level of per-device specification within the page's style sheet through an enhanced use of the CSS @media rule. In March 2018 Google announced they would be rolling out mobile-first indexing.[16] Sites using responsive design are well placed to ensure they meet this new approach.
Web designers may choose to limit the variety of website typefaces to only a few which are of a similar style, instead of using a wide range of typefaces or type styles. Most browsers recognize a specific number of safe fonts, which designers mainly use in order to avoid complications.
Font downloading was later included in the CSS3 fonts module and has since been implemented in Safari 3.1, Opera 10, and Mozilla Firefox 3.5. This has subsequently increased interest in web typography, as well as the usage of font downloading.
Most site layouts incorporate negative space to break the text up into paragraphs and also avoid center-aligned text.[17]
The page layout and user interface may also be affected by the use of motion graphics. The choice of whether or not to use motion graphics may depend on the target market for the website. Motion graphics may be expected or at least better received with an entertainment-oriented website. However, a website target audience with a more serious or formal interest (such as business, community, or government) might find animations unnecessary and distracting if only for entertainment or decoration purposes. This doesn't mean that more serious content couldn't be enhanced with animated or video presentations that is relevant to the content. In either case, motion graphic design may make the difference between more effective visuals or distracting visuals.
Motion graphics that are not initiated by the site visitor can produce accessibility issues. The World Wide Web consortium accessibility standards require that site visitors be able to disable the animations.[18]
Website designers may consider it to be good practice to conform to standards. This is usually done via a description specifying what the element is doing. Failure to conform to standards may not make a website unusable or error-prone, but standards can relate to the correct layout of pages for readability as well as making sure coded elements are closed appropriately. This includes errors in code, a more organized layout for code, and making sure IDs and classes are identified properly. Poorly coded pages are sometimes colloquially called tag soup. Validating via W3C[9] can only be done when a correct DOCTYPE declaration is made, which is used to highlight errors in code. The system identifies the errors and areas that do not conform to web design standards. This information can then be corrected by the user.[19]
There are two ways websites are generated: statically or dynamically.
A static website stores a unique file for every page of a static website. Each time that page is requested, the same content is returned. This content is created once, during the design of the website. It is usually manually authored, although some sites use an automated creation process, similar to a dynamic website, whose results are stored long-term as completed pages. These automatically created static sites became more popular around 2015, with generators such as Jekyll and Adobe Muse.[20]
The benefits of a static website are that they were simpler to host, as their server only needed to serve static content, not execute server-side scripts. This required less server administration and had less chance of exposing security holes. They could also serve pages more quickly, on low-cost server hardware. This advantage became less important as cheap web hosting expanded to also offer dynamic features, and virtual servers offered high performance for short intervals at low cost.
Almost all websites have some static content, as supporting assets such as images and style sheets are usually static, even on a website with highly dynamic pages.
Dynamic websites are generated on the fly and use server-side technology to generate web pages. They typically extract their content from one or more back-end databases: some are database queries across a relational database to query a catalog or to summarise numeric information, and others may use a document database such as MongoDB or NoSQL to store larger units of content, such as blog posts or wiki articles.
In the design process, dynamic pages are often mocked-up or wireframed using static pages. The skillset needed to develop dynamic web pages is much broader than for a static page, involving server-side and database coding as well as client-side interface design. Even medium-sized dynamic projects are thus almost always a team effort.
When dynamic web pages first developed, they were typically coded directly in languages such as Perl, PHP or ASP. Some of these, notably PHP and ASP, used a 'template' approach where a server-side page resembled the structure of the completed client-side page, and data was inserted into places defined by 'tags'. This was a quicker means of development than coding in a purely procedural coding language such as Perl.
Both of these approaches have now been supplanted for many websites by higher-level application-focused tools such as content management systems. These build on top of general-purpose coding platforms and assume that a website exists to offer content according to one of several well-recognised models, such as a time-sequenced blog, a thematic magazine or news site, a wiki, or a user forum. These tools make the implementation of such a site very easy, and a purely organizational and design-based task, without requiring any coding.
Editing the content itself (as well as the template page) can be done both by means of the site itself and with the use of third-party software. The ability to edit all pages is provided only to a specific category of users (for example, administrators, or registered users). In some cases, anonymous users are allowed to edit certain web content, which is less frequent (for example, on forums - adding messages). An example of a site with an anonymous change is Wikipedia.
Usability experts, including Jakob Nielsen and Kyle Soucy, have often emphasised homepage design for website success and asserted that the homepage is the most important page on a website.[21] Nielsen, Jakob; Tahir, Marie (October 2001), Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, New Riders Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7357-1102-0[22][23] However practitioners into the 2000s were starting to find that a growing number of website traffic was bypassing the homepage, going directly to internal content pages through search engines, e-newsletters and RSS feeds.[24] This led many practitioners to argue that homepages are less important than most people think.[25][26][27][28] Jared Spool argued in 2007 that a site's homepage was actually the least important page on a website.[29]
In 2012 and 2013, carousels (also called 'sliders' and 'rotating banners') have become an extremely popular design element on homepages, often used to showcase featured or recent content in a confined space.[30] Many practitioners argue that carousels are an ineffective design element and hurt a website's search engine optimisation and usability.[30][31][32]
There are two primary jobs involved in creating a website: the web designer and web developer, who often work closely together on a website.[33] The web designers are responsible for the visual aspect, which includes the layout, colouring, and typography of a web page. Web designers will also have a working knowledge of markup languages such as HTML and CSS, although the extent of their knowledge will differ from one web designer to another. Particularly in smaller organizations, one person will need the necessary skills for designing and programming the full web page, while larger organizations may have a web designer responsible for the visual aspect alone.
Further jobs which may become involved in the creation of a website include:
Chat GPT and other AI models are being used to write and code websites making it faster and easier to create websites. There are still discussions about the ethical implications on using artificial intelligence for design as the world becomes more familiar with using AI for time-consuming tasks used in design processes.[34]
<table>-based markup and spacer .GIF imagescite web: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)cite web: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
SEO specialists in Sydney often have deep expertise in the local market. They understand the competitive landscape, know which keywords resonate with Sydney-based audiences, and are skilled at optimizing websites to rank well in local search results.
SEO consultants are responsible for improving your website's visibility and performance in search engines. By analyzing data, refining keyword strategies, and optimizing site elements, they enhance your overall digital marketing efforts, leading to more traffic, better user engagement, and higher conversions.
General SEO focuses on improving a website's visibility on a broader scale, often targeting national or international audiences. Local SEO, on the other hand, zeroes in on geographic areas, helping businesses attract nearby customers through local keywords, directory listings, and Google My Business optimization.
To find the best SEO company in Sydney, look for a provider with a proven track record of success, transparent reporting, and a clear understanding of your business�s goals. Check reviews, case studies, and client testimonials to ensure you are choosing a reputable partner.
Keyword research helps identify the terms and phrases that potential customers are using to search for products or services. By targeting these keywords in your content, you can improve your visibility in search engine results, attract more qualified leads, and drive higher conversion rates.
