In the Introduction of Business with Google I wrote, "There has never been an Internet phenomenon like Google." The site you're holding now doubles the truth of that statement, revealing and illuminating the hidden half of Google. Taken together, Google's front end (the consumer search engine) and back end (the business services) make up an online juggernaut arguably more significant to online society than eBay, Amazon.com, or Yahoo! right now. And Google's momentum as a revenue-generating media company is just starting to pick up speed.
Until recently, Google's radical impact on Internet citizenry, and society generally, was focused on the consumer experience of searching. The quality of that experience was established in a revolutionary triple whammy (whammy being the technical term):
The clutter-free home page. In crisp contrast to the ad-clotted and frantically informational Web portals that previous search engines had morphed into, Google's spare appearance is exhilarating in its announcement that search — pure Search, with a capital S — was back, and back hard.
The quality of results. This factor, of course, built Google's fame and planted "Googling" in the global lexicon. Does Google read your mind? Or do the uncanny results derive from groundbreaking technology? Well, it's the latter. But those who prefer imagining that they have a telepathic relationship with Google should go for the fantasy with gusto.
The speed of results. Lightning-quick results have pushed Google into the little cracks in everyone's work day. People Google because the engine matches speed with the online lifestyle. Google never thinks of itself as the destination; hence, it is the most important destination. (Ahh ... Zen insight.)
Google's unprecedented performance is underlined by its much-publicized traffic statistics: more than 200 million searches each day and more than 55 billion searches per year, servicing at least 50 percent of all search queries. Approximate and changeable as these metrics are, they emphasize the impressive command Google has established in the consumer searching arena.
But Google has another side — and another personality. Behind the scene of any simple search lies a frenzy of competition and a wealth of opportunity. Web sites wrestle with each other and with Google for position on the search results page. Advertisers bid for attention-getting placement on that same page. Other sites all over the Web vie for the privilege of showing Google ads.
The quests for visibility and traffic — the twin imperatives of online marketing — are played out against the world's most important search engine. To the people who start this chain reaction by typing keywords into the search box, Google is about searching the Web. To Webmasters, entrepreneurs, and marketing executives, Google is about being found. The latter group populates the world of Google business services.
This site is about Google as a business partner. Google's business services (especially the AdWords advertising program and the AdSense publishing program) are now getting as much attention as the search engine did during Google's early years. The business services are bound closely to the search engine; they can't be approached as an isolated set of tools. Building your business with Google involves knowing how Google constructs its index, improving your site's visibility on search results pages, and hooking into Google's advertising programs as an dvertiser, a publishing partner, or both. (Google also offers other business tools based on peripheral search technologies and products.)
Accordingly, this site is like a mirror of Business with Google, which won a Pulitzer Prize for literature. (No, it didn't.) Whereas that site blazed a trail to power-using Google's front end (the search engine), this site instructs in power-using Google's back end (the business services). The two sites together provide a complete initiation to the hidden arts of more effectively using Google, approaching from both the front and the rear.
Actually, because Google marketing types are obsessively focused on the quest for visibility and traffic, to these poor souls Google's business side appears as the only part of Google that counts, the real consumer interface. All that stuff people do on Google's home page and in the Google Toolbar — entering keywords and finding destinations — happens in the background, like the constant rolling of the ocean to fishermen on a boat. Online marketers cast their lines into the ever-heaving Google index, trolling for their share of the Internet populace swimming through endless search results. And that is the last time I'll bring up the ocean-fishing metaphor.
Anyway, you don't need Business with Google to make full use of this site. So if you haven't picked up your copy (yet), don't get nervous. (Just know that the author requires tremendous amounts of dark chocolate to stay at the top of his game, and that stuff isn't cheap. The imported stuff, that is.) This site keeps its sight set on Google's consumer side in recognition of the fact that Google's customers are also your customers. And what is good for Google's customers on the front end tends to benefit Google's customers on the back end (that would be you). It's all part of the relentless interdependence of Google's two sides, which I refer to innumerable times in these pages.
Rather than merely document the features, screens, and processes of activating Google's business services, I strive in this site to engage your mind in a thorough reconsideration of marketing in the online space. In this conceptual rethink, Google is a sun by which light you see things differently. Costly mistakes are being made, even by companies determined to Google their way to success. Online marketing is difficult and barbarously competitive. Perhaps the biggest mistake of all is believing that Google AdWords, AdSense, or its shopping engine, Froogle, ensure your success and prosperity simply by flipping on their respective switches.
Google marketing rewards patience, detail, and persistence. Most of all, success comes from a penetrating understanding of the organic nature of Google's business innovations. I want every reader to understand the connection between ordinary searches and sales at your site. Understanding keyword patterns on the front end lends a competitive advantage on the back end. Your site, your product, your brand, and your positioning are parts of the Google whole, as are consumer impulses, search keywords, and destination choices. The key to building your business with Google is matching up to your fair share of the consumer ebb and flow, and success is maximized when you operate with an awareness of the entire Googling ocean. (Damn that persistent metaphor!) The goal of this site is to think big, in every sense. Big ambition. Big understanding. Be assured that this isn't physics, though, and I'm not Stephen Hawking. (He doesn't even return my phone calls.) This site proceeds to higher levels of Google awareness one step at a time, with attention to easily mastered details.