What made Google popular?

When it comes to searching the web every man and his dog seems to use Google. Even when you ask questions on a forum you get replies like, "Just google it", and "I googled up the information"
Seems Google is pretty much the de-facto search engine now.

I don't know what made Google popular though. First I heard of it was when Carol Vorderman (on Countdown) mentioned that it was her favourite search engine.

I previously stuck with Altavista so when I first went to Google it looked very basic and featureless. I even hated the name.
However, the bare bones hassle-free clean approach of google soon grew on me. Its now my standard search site.

Still, how did the site become so popular?

Standard button in Mozilla?

It's pretty simple. They made a better wheel. The others weren't really innovating, but Google jumped in and added a bunch of innovative improvements to the way search engines work. PageRank, for example, and a proper page scanning search, instead of just using a bunch of metatags which webmasters were abusing and misusing to get the results they wanted.

So when you used Google, you got the site(s) you were looking for more often than you did with other search engines. It doesn't take long for people to catch on when the improvement is so noticeable, and from there on, word of mouth, help and support people start using the phrase "google it" and it took over.

Well for me it was when my Email providers search engine (Yahoo) said "Powered by Google"

2 reasons, already stated.

Simple Interface.
It Works.

Good Algorithm + Good Interface = Good Product.

on another topic: where do they get the money? google ads - i mean: does google get paid for the google ads?

boy i hate yahoo and fireball and all the other search engines...

Google get paid for each click on the ads, they also license their technologies to other companies and provide paid for services.

Simplicity

It worked ;)

Their page doesn't look like this:
http://www.yahoo.com/

For me it was the simple clean interface - very little clutter and bentness compared to some search engines.

Google's innovation was the way it ranked results. The good ones were near the top far more often than with other search engines.

I think the basic idea was to compile statistics about links. Then the search results were sorted so the 'most linked to' pages were at the top.

all that AND their motto about not being evil... When everyone else was trying to shove a hot poker in your ass. Google was doing their best to NOT charge the basic user ever. And they still do that. The people who get charged, are the people with all the money.

I love that about them.

Yeah, that's pretty much it really.

Extremely clean interface......and text-ads are the bomb, no annoying seizure-inducing 2-frame gif animations like on other search engines...

As stated, clean interface + accurate results.

I used to use Yahoo and Altavista.

Didnt they develop some kind of new search indexing technology?
I seem to remember all the other search engines being 'powered by google' when they used to be all 'powered by yahoo'. I think that even yahoo became 'powered by google' too, at least for a while...

hmm, 'google' it and see :)

I started using it because it was simple, clean and faster than the competition. No brainer.

As others have stated, Google has a clean interface and seems to get the best results.

Every so often I go back and try yahoo for their directory, but the page is so cluttered that I have trouble finding it. Even though Google's is buried down a bit they keep the method of getting to it simple.

Same as most others - I was back and forth between Yahoo and Altavista, if one didn't give me the result I was looking for the other one would.

Someone showed me Google and I fell in love with it - real results every time and the I'm feeling lucky! button is cute.

It actually seemed like it was built for search. Yahoo is trying to be way too much at one time - a problem especially noticeable if you first install Yahoo Messenger. Its "Yahoo! Today" "Yahoo! News!" etc. popups are worse than spam...
I like how Google's account system doesn't sign you up for everything at once; you have one account that works everywhere, but you only have to worry about the Google email account if you say that you want one.
(Yahoo Messenger, on the other hand, gave me an email account that I have never looked at).

The smaller search engines, like Teoma, give that same sort of quick, 'get it done', search-centric interface as well, but the other big ones sure don't!

They always looked like the only thing they were selling was the sponsored links, and not to me in particular, and happily they kept that restrained and in good taste, every one has to eat, so not a problem. Everywhere else took the search details and seemed to want to sell me something in case I could not find anything else I wanted to buy using their not terribly good search.

It works, it's clean and they didn't try forcing any old trash on me the whole time; There's not much that upsets me more in this world than some kind of cold call, I loathe & detest blatant advertising of any kind, there just isn't any excuse for it.

Google can afford to have a clean interface since their ads are already all over the rest of the internet. ;)

Have you ever noticed, everyone can spell it right too? I don't know of another word you can say that of. Hell, people don't even typo it all that often. How mind bendingly telling is that? ;O)

> I like how Google's account system doesn't sign you up for everything at once

Reminds me of Googles only real negative. The Google toolbar keeps ending up on my machine and I despise it. That's what I get for having to share with the rest of the family though.

polygoon.

Actually. I will sometimes mistype it as "Googol" seeing as that is the correct spelling of the word.

Funny old thing, that. I used to stick to Altavista back in the day, but after a while, after every search, it would start saying things like "Would you like to shop for <search term>?" "Have you tried looking on <sponsored site> for <search term>?" more and more, until I had to scroll really quite far to actually see my results.

By contrast, Google didn't have any of that. It does now, of course, but it's less intrusive than Altavista used to be.

It's funny how AV used to be the search king, and now it's not even in the top three anymore.

Their algorithm works by counting links to a site to determine relevancy. When Yahoo! first began they had individuals screening and indexing every page to make the searches accurate. Google put that same methodology to work via an algorithm which utilizes everyone who's ever made a webpage as a screener.

The first time I tried google I was initially not impressed with the bland first screen... it looked like it was still under construction as there was just nothing in it.. Then I tried out a search and was blown away with the fact it came back almost instantly with loads of pages of results. Other search engines seemed sloooow in comparison. As the results seemed to return the same if not more as other search engines it was a bit of a no brainer which one I would use from then on.

I think Google have a good sense of humour too.
Examples being the cheese images in http://moon.google.com when you zoom right in, and www.googlefight.com

Yup, the clean interface really helps. Especially when you are surfing on a slow connection. In fact I have Google as the startup page.

There is also Google´s entire philosophy behind how they have implemented their search engine:

Carefully targeted content, making sure you get relevent search information.

They take this very seriously as you will know if you have ever implemented AdSense or bid on keywords for AdWords.

The clean simple interface got them popular, targeted content keeps them popular.

DampeS8N:

"Actually. I will sometimes mistype it as "Googol" seeing as that is the correct spelling of the word."

Not if you want to search for things via google it isn't. ;O)

Given that situation I feel it's safe to speculate they are perhaps two different words by now, they are not even spelled the same for a start. ;O)

I'm pretty certain that last year some dictionary or other, touting itself on a radio interview, said they had included Google for the first time in that year's edition too. Could have bee two years back I suppose.

However it's also worth remembering that a dictionary is not there as a rule book, it's there as a reference to reflect what's going on with the words of a language that is in current use (as in it is undergoing change by being in current use). Not sure if it says that about it in the dictionary or not, can't be bothered to go look it up right now either. It could have changed too, obviously! ;O)

I have to say, in the 7 or 8 years I've been using Google, I've got the hang of spelling it ;)

Compared to the other searchengines of the time, Google would give you pages of results that seemed relevant. The other searchengines would spit out 10 pages where the 5 first were mostly searchoptimized advertising.

That I like!

Andy

The genius behind hte google interface is it's simplicity. You instantly know what to do. You don't have to hunt for a bar, or wade through a page of crap.

In todays Web2.0 world. It is still the only site with popularity that gets the un-cluttered-ness right.

Every other site crams tons of useless content into the page.

As mentioned:

It works well.
It's uncluttered.

The second being THE killer selling point IMHO. Google has been around for a while, and it gained popularity at a time when most people were using dead slow modems. Waiting half a minute to have crap (read : advertising, news you aren't intersted in) load was only going to make people flee to another uncluttered search engine. And even today with a fast connection you can still enjoy the uncluttered interface.