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This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. (June 2024)
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![]() Screenshot of Google Maps in a web browser
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Type of site
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Web mapping |
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Available in | 74 languages |
List of languages
Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Indonesian, Malay, Bosnian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German (Germany), Estonian, English (United States), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Basque, Filipino, French (France), Galician, Croatian, Zulu, Icelandic, Italian, Swahili, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Uzbek, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Albanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish, Swedish, Vietnamese, Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Macedonian, Mongolian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Amharic, Nepali, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala, Thai, Lao, Burmese, Khmer, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
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Owner | |
URL | google |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional, included with a Google Account |
Launched | February 8, 2005 |
Current status | Active |
Written in | C++ (back-end), JavaScript, XML, Ajax (UI) |
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bike, air (in beta) and public transportation. As of 2020[update], Google Maps was being used by over one billion people every month around the world.[1]
Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen in Australia at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a real-time traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005.[2] The service's front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites,[3] and offers a locator for businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allowed users to collaboratively expand and update the service's mapping worldwide but was discontinued from March 2017. However, crowdsourced contributions to Google Maps were not discontinued as the company announced those features would be transferred to the Google Local Guides program,[4] although users that are not Local Guides can still contribute.
Google Maps' satellite view is a "top-down" or bird's-eye view; most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 to 1,500 feet (240 to 460 m), while most other imagery is from satellites.[5] Much of the available satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis, according to a 2011 report.[6] Google Maps previously used a variant of the Mercator projection, and therefore could not accurately show areas around the poles.[7] In August 2018, the desktop version of Google Maps was updated to show a 3D globe. It is still possible to switch back to the 2D map in the settings.
Google Maps for mobile devices was first released in 2006; the latest versions feature GPS turn-by-turn navigation along with dedicated parking assistance features. By 2013, it was found to be the world's most popular smartphone app, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it.[8] In 2017, the app was reported to have two billion users on Android, along with several other Google services including YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, Search, and Google Play.
Google Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, and Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, at the Sydney-based company Where 2 Technologies, which was founded in early 2003. The program was initially designed to be separately downloaded by users, but the company later pitched the idea for a purely Web-based product to Google management, changing the method of distribution.[9] In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google Inc.[10] where it transformed into the web application Google Maps. The Rasmussen brothers, Gordon and Ma joined Google at that time.
In the same month, Google acquired Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company (with investment from the CIA), whose marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as the Google Earth application in 2005 while other aspects of its core technology were integrated into Google Maps.[11] In September 2004, Google acquired ZipDash, a company that provided real-time traffic analysis.[12]
The launch of Google Maps was first announced on the Google Blog on February 8, 2005.[13]
In September 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Google Maps quickly updated its satellite imagery of New Orleans to allow users to view the extent of the flooding in various parts of that city.[14][15]
As of 2007, Google Maps was equipped with a miniature view with a draggable rectangle that denotes the area shown in the main viewport, and "Info windows" for previewing details about locations on maps.[16] As of 2024, this feature had been removed (likely several years prior).
On November 28, 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 was released.[17][18][19] It featured a beta version of a "My Location" feature, which uses the GPS / Assisted GPS location of the mobile device, if available, supplemented by determining the nearest wireless networks and cell sites.[18][19] The software looks up the location of the cell site using a database of known wireless networks and sites.[20][21] By triangulating the different signal strengths from cell transmitters and then using their location property (retrieved from the database), My Location determines the user's current location.[22]
On September 23, 2008, coinciding with the announcement of the first commercial Android device, Google announced that a Google Maps app had been released for its Android operating system.[23][24]
In October 2009, Google replaced Tele Atlas as their primary supplier of geospatial data in the US version of Maps and used their own data.[25]
On April 19, 2011, Map Maker was added to the American version of Google Maps, allowing any viewer to edit and add changes to Google Maps. This provides Google with local map updates almost in real-time instead of waiting for digital map data companies to release more infrequent updates.
On January 31, 2012, Google, due to offering its Maps for free, was found guilty of abusing the dominant position of its Google Maps application and ordered by a court to pay a fine and damages to Bottin Cartographer, a French mapping company.[26] This ruling was overturned on appeal.[27]
In June 2012, Google started mapping the UK's rivers and canals in partnership with the Canal and River Trust. The company has stated that "it would update the program during the year to allow users to plan trips which include locks, bridges and towpaths along the 2,000 miles of river paths in the UK."[28]
In December 2012, the Google Maps application was separately made available in the App Store, after Apple removed it from its default installation of the mobile operating system version iOS 6 in September 2012.[29]
On January 29, 2013, Google Maps was updated to include a map of North Korea.[30] As of May 3, 2013[update], Google Maps recognizes Palestine as a country, instead of redirecting to the Palestinian territories.[31]
In August 2013, Google Maps removed the Wikipedia Layer, which provided links to Wikipedia content about locations shown in Google Maps using Wikipedia geocodes.[32]
On April 12, 2014, Google Maps was updated to reflect the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia. Crimea is shown as the Republic of Crimea in Russia and as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine. All other versions show a dotted disputed border.[33]
In April 2015, on a map near the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, the imagery of the Android logo urinating on the Apple logo was added via Map Maker and appeared on Google Maps. The vandalism was soon removed and Google publicly apologized.[34] However, as a result, Google disabled user moderation on Map Maker, and on May 12, disabled editing worldwide until it could devise a new policy for approving edits and avoiding vandalism.[35]
On April 29, 2015, users of the classic Google Maps were forwarded to the new Google Maps with the option to be removed from the interface.[36]
On July 14, 2015, the Chinese name for Scarborough Shoal was removed after a petition from the Philippines was posted on Change.org.[37]
On June 27, 2016, Google rolled out new satellite imagery worldwide sourced from Landsat 8, comprising over 700 trillion pixels of new data.[38] In September 2016, Google Maps acquired mapping analytics startup Urban Engines.[39]
In 2016, the Government of South Korea offered Google conditional access to the country's geographic database – access that already allows indigenous Korean mapping providers high-detail maps. Google declined the offer, as it was unwilling to accept restrictions on reducing the quality around locations the South Korean Government felt were sensitive (see restrictions on geographic data in South Korea).[40]
On October 16, 2017, Google Maps was updated with accessible imagery of several planets and moons such as Titan, Mercury, and Venus, as well as direct access to imagery of the Moon and Mars.[41][42]
In May 2018, Google announced major changes to the API structure starting June 11, 2018. This change consolidated the 18 different endpoints into three services and merged the basic and premium plans into one pay-as-you-go plan.[43] This meant a 1400% price raise for users on the basic plan, with only six weeks of notice. This caused a harsh reaction within the developers community.[44] In June, Google postponed the change date to July 16, 2018.
In August 2018, Google Maps designed its overall view (when zoomed out completely) into a 3D globe dropping the Mercator projection that projected the planet onto a flat surface.[45]
In January 2019, Google Maps added speed trap and speed camera alerts as reported by other users.[46][47]
On October 17, 2019, Google Maps was updated to include incident reporting, resembling a functionality in Waze which was acquired by Google in 2013.[48]
In December 2019, Incognito mode was added, allowing users to enter destinations without saving entries to their Google accounts.[49]
In February 2020, Maps received a 15th anniversary redesign.[50] It notably added a brand-new app icon, which now resembles the original icon in 2005.
On September 23, 2020, Google announced a COVID-19 Layer update for Google maps, which is designed to offer a seven-day average data of the total COVID-19-positive cases per 100,000 people in the area selected on the map. It also features a label indicating the rise and fall in the number of cases.[51]
In January 2021, Google announced that it would be launching a new feature displaying COVID-19 vaccination sites.[52]
In January 2021, Google announced updates to the route planner that would accommodate drivers of electric vehicles. Routing would take into account the type of vehicle, vehicle status including current charge, and the locations of charging stations.[53]
In June 2022, Google Maps added a layer displaying air quality for certain countries.[54]
In September 2022, Google removed the COVID-19 Layer from Google Maps due to lack of usage of the feature.[55]
Google Maps provides a route planner,[56] allowing users to find available directions through driving, public transportation, walking, or biking.[57] Google has partnered globally with over 800 public transportation providers to adopt GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification), making the data available to third parties.[58][59] The app can indicate users' transit route, thanks to an October 2019 update. The incognito mode, eyes-free walking navigation features were released earlier.[60] A July 2020 update provided bike share routes.[61]
In February 2024, Google Maps started rolling out glanceable directions for its Android and iOS apps. The feature allows users to track their journey from their device's lock screen.[62][63]
In 2007, Google began offering traffic data as a colored overlay on top of roads and motorways to represent the speed of vehicles on particular roads. Crowdsourcing is used to obtain the GPS-determined locations of a large number of cellphone users, from which live traffic maps are produced.[64][65][66]
Google has stated that the speed and location information it collects to calculate traffic conditions is anonymous.[67] Options available in each phone's settings allow users not to share information about their location with Google Maps.[68] Google stated, "Once you disable or opt out of My Location, Maps will not continue to send radio information back to Google servers to determine your handset's approximate location".[69][failed verification]
On May 25, 2007, Google released Google Street View, a feature of Google Maps providing 360° panoramic street-level views of various locations. On the date of release, the feature only included five cities in the U.S. It has since expanded to thousands of locations around the world. In July 2009, Google began mapping college campuses and surrounding paths and trails.
Street View garnered much controversy after its release because of privacy concerns about the uncensored nature of the panoramic photographs, although the views are only taken on public streets.[70][71] Since then, Google has blurred faces and license plates through automated facial recognition.[72][73][74]
In late 2014, Google launched Google Underwater Street View, including 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) of the Australian Great Barrier Reef in 3D. The images are taken by special cameras which turn 360 degrees and take shots every 3 seconds.[75]
In 2017, in both Google Maps and Google Earth, Street View navigation of the International Space Station interior spaces became available.
Google Maps has incorporated[when?] 3D models of hundreds of cities in over 40 countries from Google Earth into its satellite view. The models were developed using aerial photogrammetry techniques.[76][77]
At the I/O 2022 event, Google announced Immersive View, a feature of Google Maps which would involve composite 3D images generated from Street View and aerial images of locations using AI, complete with synchronous information. It was to be initially in five cities worldwide, with plans to add it to other cities later on.[78] The feature was previewed in September 2022 with 250 photorealistic aerial 3D images of landmarks,[79] and was full launched in February 2023.[80] An expansion of Immersive View to routes was announced at Google I/O 2023,[81] and was launched in October 2023 for 15 cities globally.[82]
The feature uses predictive modelling and neural radiance fields to scan Street View and aerial images to generate composite 3D imagery of locations, including both exteriors and interiors, and routes, including driving, walking or cycling, as well as generate synchronous information and forecasts up to a month ahead from historical and environmental data about both such as weather, traffic and busyness.
Immersive View has been available in the following locations:[citation needed]
Google added icons of city attractions, in a similar style to Apple Maps, on October 3, 2019. In the first stage, such icons were added to 9 cities.[83]
In December 2009, Google introduced a new view consisting of 45° angle aerial imagery, offering a "bird's-eye view" of cities. The first cities available were San Jose and San Diego. This feature was initially available only to developers via the Google Maps API.[84] In February 2010, it was introduced as an experimental feature in Google Maps Labs.[85] In July 2010, 45° imagery was made available in Google Maps in select cities in South Africa, the United States, Germany and Italy.[86]
In February 2024, Google Maps incorporated a small weather icon on the top left corner of the Android and iOS mobile apps, giving access to weather and air quality index details.[87]
Previously called Search with Live View, Lens In Maps identifies shops, restaurants, transit stations and other street features with a phone's camera and places relevant information and a category pin on top, like closing/opening times, current busyness, pricing and reviews using AI and augmented reality. The feature, if available on the device, can be accessed through tapping the Lens icon in the search bar. It was expanded to 50 new cities in October 2023 in its biggest expansion yet, after initially being released in late 2022 in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris.[88][89] Lens in Maps shares features with Live View, which also displays information relating to street features while guiding a user to a selected destination with virtual arrows, signs and guidance.[90]
Google collates business listings from multiple on-line and off-line sources. To reduce duplication in the index, Google's algorithm combines listings automatically based on address, phone number, or geocode,[91] but sometimes information for separate businesses will be inadvertently merged with each other, resulting in listings inaccurately incorporating elements from multiple businesses.[92] Google allows business owners to create and verify their own business data through Google Business Profile (GBP), formerly Google My Business (GMB).[93] Owners are encouraged to provide Google with business information including address, phone number, business category, and photos.[94] Google has staff in India who check and correct listings remotely as well as support businesses with issues.[95] Google also has teams on the ground in most countries that validate physical addresses in person.[96] In May 2024, Google announced it would discontinue the chat feature in Google Business Profile. Starting July 15, 2024, new chat conversations would be disabled, and by July 31, 2024, all chat functionalities would end.[97]
Google Maps can be manipulated by businesses that are not physically located in the area in which they record a listing. There are cases of people abusing Google Maps to overtake their competition by placing unverified listings on online directory sites, knowing the information will roll across to Google (duplicate sites). The people who update these listings do not use a registered business name. They place keywords and location details on their Google Maps business title, which can overtake credible business listings. In Australia in particular, genuine companies and businesses are noticing a trend of fake business listings in a variety of industries.[98]
Genuine business owners can also optimize their business listings to gain greater visibility in Google Maps, through a type of search engine marketing called local search engine optimization.[99]
In March 2011, indoor maps were added to Google Maps, giving users the ability to navigate themselves within buildings such as airports, museums, shopping malls, big-box stores, universities, transit stations, and other public spaces (including underground facilities). Google encourages owners of public facilities to submit floor plans of their buildings in order to add them to the service.[100] Map users can view different floors of a building or subway station by clicking on a level selector that is displayed near any structures which are mapped on multiple levels.
My Maps is a feature in Google Maps launched in April 2007 that enables users to create custom maps for personal use or sharing. Users can add points, lines, shapes, notes and images on top of Google Maps using a WYSIWYG editor.[101] An Android app for My Maps, initially released in March 2013 under the name Google Maps Engine Lite, was available until its removal from the Play Store in October 2021.[102][103][104]
Google Local Guides is a volunteer program launched by Google Maps[105] to enable users to contribute to Google Maps when registered. It sometimes provides them additional perks and benefits for their collaboration. Users can achieve Level 1 to 10, and be awarded with badges. The program is partially a successor to Google Map Maker as features from the former program became integrated into the website and app.[106]
The program consists of adding reviews, photos, basic information, and videos; and correcting information such as wheelchair accessibility.[107][108] Adding reviews, photos, videos, new places, new roads or providing useful information gives points to the users.[109] The level of users is upgraded when they get a certain amount of points.[110][111] Starting with Level 4, a star is shown near the avatar of the user.[111]
Earth Timelapse, released in April 2021, is a program in which users can see how the earth has been changed in the last 37 years. They combined the 15 million satellite images (roughly ten quadrillion pixels) to create the 35 global cloud-free Images for this program.[112]
If a user shares their location with Google, Timeline summarises this location for each day on a Timeline map.[113] Timeline estimates the mode of travel used to move between places and will also show photos taken at that location. In June 2024, Google started progressively removing access to the timeline on web browsers, with the information instead being stored on a local device.[114][115]
As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business, the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the side panel and map; the page is not reloaded. A hidden iframe with form submission is used because it preserves browser history. Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively.[116] The site also uses protocol buffers for data transfer rather than JSON, for performance reasons.
The version of Google Street View for classic Google Maps required Adobe Flash.[117] In October 2011, Google announced MapsGL, a WebGL version of Maps with better renderings and smoother transitions.[118] Indoor maps use JPG, .PNG, .PDF, .BMP, or .GIF, for floor plans.[119]
Users who are logged into a Google Account can save locations so that they are overlaid on the map with various colored "pins" whenever they browse the application. These "Saved places" can be organized into default groups or user named groups and shared with other users. "Starred places" is one default group example. It previously automatically created a record within the now-discontinued product Google Bookmarks.
The Google Maps terms and conditions[120] state that usage of material from Google Maps is regulated by Google Terms of Service[121] and some additional restrictions. Google has either purchased local map data from established companies, or has entered into lease agreements to use copyrighted map data.[122] The owner of the copyright is listed at the bottom of zoomed maps. For example, street maps in Japan are leased from Zenrin. Street maps in China are leased from AutoNavi.[123] Russian street maps are leased from Geocentre Consulting and Tele Atlas. Data for North Korea is sourced from the companion project Google Map Maker.
Street map overlays, in some areas, may not match up precisely with the corresponding satellite images. The street data may be entirely erroneous, or simply out of date: "The biggest challenge is the currency of data, the authenticity of data," said Google Earth representative Brian McClendon. As a result, in March 2008 Google added a feature to edit the locations of houses and businesses.[124][125]
Restrictions have been placed on Google Maps through the apparent censoring of locations deemed potential security threats. In some cases the area of redaction is for specific buildings, but in other cases, such as Washington, D.C.,[126] the restriction is to use outdated imagery.
Google Maps API, now called Google Maps Platform, hosts about 17 different APIs, which are themed under the following categories: Maps, Places and Routes.[127]
After the success of reverse-engineered mashups such as chicagocrime.org and housingmaps.com, Google launched the Google Maps API in June 2005[128] to allow developers to integrate Google Maps into their websites. It was a free service that did not require an API key until June 2018 (changes went into effect on July 16), when it was announced that an API key linked to a Google Cloud account with billing enabled would be required to access the API.[129] The API currently[update] does not contain ads, but Google states in their terms of use that they reserve the right to display ads in the future.[130]
By using the Google Maps API, it is possible to embed Google Maps into an external website, onto which site-specific data can be overlaid.[131] Although initially only a JavaScript API, the Maps API was expanded to include an API for Adobe Flash applications (but this has been deprecated), a service for retrieving static map images, and web services for performing geocoding, generating driving directions, and obtaining elevation profiles. Over 1,000,000[132] web sites use the Google Maps API, making it the most heavily used web application development API.[133] In September 2011, Google announced it would deprecate the Google Maps API for Flash.[134]
The Google Maps API was free for commercial use, provided that the site on which it is being used is publicly accessible and did not charge for access, and was not generating more than 25,000 map accesses a day.[135][136] Sites that did not meet these requirements could purchase the Google Maps API for Business.[137]
As of June 21, 2018, Google increased the prices of the Maps API and requires a billing profile.[138]
Due to restrictions on geographic data in China, Google Maps must partner with a Chinese digital map provider in order to legally show Chinese map data. Since 2006, this partner has been AutoNavi.[123]
Within China, the State Council mandates that all maps of China use the GCJ-02 coordinate system, which is offset from the WGS-84 system used in most of the world. google.cn/maps (formerly Google Ditu) uses the GCJ-02 system for both its street maps[139] and satellite imagery.[140] google.com/maps also uses GCJ-02 data for the street map, but uses WGS-84 coordinates for satellite imagery,[141] causing the so-called China GPS shift problem.
Frontier alignments also present some differences between google.cn/maps and google.com/maps. On the latter, sections of the Chinese border with India and Pakistan are shown with dotted lines, indicating areas or frontiers in dispute. However, google.cn shows the Chinese frontier strictly according to Chinese claims with no dotted lines indicating the border with India and Pakistan. For example, the South Tibet region claimed by China but administered by India as a large part of Arunachal Pradesh is shown inside the Chinese frontier by google.cn, with Indian highways ending abruptly at the Chinese claim line. Google.cn also shows Taiwan and the South China Sea Islands as part of China. Google Ditu's street map coverage of Taiwan no longer omits major state organs, such as the Presidential Palace, the five Yuans, and the Supreme Court.[142][additional citation(s) needed]
Feature-wise, google.cn/maps does not feature My Maps. On the other hand, while google.cn displays virtually all text in Chinese, google.com/maps displays most text (user-selectable real text as well as those on map) in English.[citation needed] This behavior of displaying English text is not consistent but intermittent – sometimes it is in English, sometimes it is in Chinese. The criteria for choosing which language is displayed are not known publicly.[citation needed]
There are cases where Google Maps had added out-of-date neighborhood monikers. Thus, in Los Angeles, the name "Brooklyn Heights" was revived from its 1870s usage[143] and "Silver Lake Heights" from its 1920s usage,[144] or mistakenly renamed areas (in Detroit, the neighborhood "Fiskhorn" became "Fishkorn").[145] Because many companies utilize Google Maps data, these previously obscure or incorrect names then gain traction; the names are often used by realtors, hotels, food delivery sites, dating sites, and news organizations.
Google has said it created its maps from third-party data, public sources, satellites, and users, but many names used have not been connected to any official record.[143][145] According to a former Google Maps employee (who was not authorized to speak publicly), users can submit changes to Google Maps, but some submissions are ruled upon by people with little local knowledge of a place, such as contractors in India. Critics maintain that names likes "BoCoCa" (for the area in Brooklyn between Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens), are "just plain puzzling" or simply made up.[145] Some names used by Google have been traced to non-professionally made maps with typographical errors that survived on Google Maps.[145]
In 2005 the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) complained about the potential for terrorists to use the satellite images in planning attacks, with specific reference to the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor; however, the Australian Federal government did not support the organization's concern. At the time of the ANSTO complaint, Google had colored over some areas for security (mostly in the U.S.), such as the rooftop of the White House and several other Washington, D.C. buildings.[146][147][148]
In October 2010, Nicaraguan military commander Edén Pastora stationed Nicaraguan troops on the Isla Calero (in the delta of the San Juan River), justifying his action on the border delineation given by Google Maps. Google has since updated its data which it found to be incorrect.[149]
On January 27, 2014, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA and the GCHQ intercepted Google Maps queries made on smartphones, and used them to locate the users making these queries. One leaked document, dating to 2008, stated that "[i]t effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system."[150]
In May 2015, searches on Google Maps for offensive racial epithets for African Americans such as "nigger", "nigger king", and "nigger house" pointed the user to the White House; Google apologized for the incident.[151][152]
In December 2015, 3 Japanese netizens were charged with vandalism after they were found to have added an unrelated law firm's name as well as indecent names to locations such as "Nuclear test site" to the Atomic Bomb Dome and "Izumo Satya" to the Izumo Taisha.[153][154]
In February 2020, the artist Simon Weckert[155] used 99 cell phones to fake a Google Maps traffic jam.[156]
In September 2024, several schools in Taiwan and Hong Kong were altered to incorrect labels, such as "psychiatric hospitals" or "prisons". Initially, it was believed to be the result of hacker attacks. However, police later revealed that local students had carried out the prank. Google quickly corrected the mislabeled entries. Education officials in Taiwan and Hong Kong expressed concern over the incident.[157][158][159]
In August 2023, a woman driving from Alice Springs to the Harts Range Racecourse was stranded in the Central Australian desert for a night after following directions provided by Google Maps.[160][161] She later discovered that Google Maps was providing directions for the actual Harts Range instead of the rodeo. Google said it was looking into the naming of the two locations and consulting with "local and authoritative sources" to solve the issue.[160]
In February 2024, two German tourists were stranded for a week after Google Maps directed them to follow a dirt track through Oyala Thumotang National Park and their vehicle became trapped in mud.[162][163] Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Roger James said, "People should not trust Google Maps when they're travelling in remote regions of Queensland, and they need to follow the signs, use official maps or other navigational devices."[162]
In June 2019, Google Maps provided nearly 100 Colorado drivers an alternative route that led to a dirt road after a crash occurred on Peña Boulevard. The road had been turned to mud by rain, resulting in nearly 100 vehicles being trapped.[164][161] Google said in a statement, "While we always work to provide the best directions, issues can arise due to unforeseen circumstances such as weather. We encourage all drivers to follow local laws, stay attentive, and use their best judgment while driving."[164]
In September 2023, Google was sued by a North Carolina resident who alleged that Google Maps had directed her husband over the Snow Creek Bridge in Hickory the year prior, resulting in him drowning. According to the lawsuit, multiple people had notified Google about the state of the bridge, which collapsed in 2013, but Google had not updated the route information and continued to direct users over the bridge.[165][166][161] At the time of the man's death, the barriers placed to block access to the bridge had been vandalized.[167][168]
In November 2023, a hiker was rescued by helicopter on the backside of Mount Fromme in Vancouver. North Shore Rescue stated on its Facebook page that the hiker had followed a non-existent hiking trail on Google Maps. This was also the second hiker in two months to require rescuing after following the same trail. The fake trail has since been removed from the app.[169][170]
Also in November 2023, Google apologized after users were directed through desert roads after parts of Interstate 15 were closed due to a dust storm.[171] Drivers became stranded after following the suggested detour route, which was a "bumpy dirt trail".[172] Following the incident, Google stated that Google Maps would "no longer route drivers traveling between Las Vegas and Barstow down through those roads."[171]
In 2020, a teenage motorist was found frozen to death while his passenger was still alive but suffered from severe frostbite after using Google Maps, which had led them to a shorter but abandoned section of the R504 Kolyma Highway, where their Toyota Chaser became disabled.[173]
In 2024, three men from Uttar Pradesh died after their car fell from an under-construction bridge. They were using Google Maps for driving which misdirected them and the car fell into the Ramganga river.[174][175]
In February 2025, as a response to Donald Trump's Executive Order 14172, the Gulf of Mexico was renamed to "Gulf of America" for US users and "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" elsewhere, except for Mexico itself where it remained the Gulf of Mexico. The decision received criticism, with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum asking Google to reconsider its decision.[176] Google subsequently blocked and deleted negative reviews of the gulf after the name change occurred.[177][178]
Google Latitude was a feature that let users share their physical locations with other people. This service was based on Google Maps, specifically on mobile devices. There was an iGoogle widget for desktops and laptops as well.[179] Some concerns were expressed about the privacy issues raised by the use of the service.[180] On August 9, 2013, this service was discontinued,[181] and on March 22, 2017, Google incorporated the features from Latitude into the Google Maps app.[182]
In areas where Google Map Maker was available, for example, much of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe as well as the United States and Canada, anyone who logged into their Google account could directly improve the map by fixing incorrect driving directions, adding biking trails, or adding a missing building or road. General map errors in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States could be reported using the Report a Problem link in Google Maps and would be updated by Google.[183] For areas where Google used Tele Atlas data, map errors could be reported using Tele Atlas map insight.[184]
If imagery was missing, outdated, misaligned, or generally incorrect, one could notify Google through their contact request form.[185]
In November 2016, Google announced the discontinuation of Google Map Maker as of March 2017.[186]
Android | 25.10.04 (Build 732665141) / 7 March 2025[187][188] |
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Wear OS | 25.09.00 (Build 730474011) / 25 February 2025[187][189] |
iOS | 25.10.02 / 7 March 2025[190] |
Android Go,[a] discontinued | 161.1 / 13 October 2023[191][192] |
Android (Beta) | 11.143.0303 / 20 August 2024[193] |
---|
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Original author(s) | |
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Initial release | 2006 |
Stable release(s) [±] | |
Preview release(s) [±] | |
Operating system |
Formerly: Java ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile |
Google Maps is available as a mobile app for the Android and iOS mobile operating systems. The first mobile version of Google Maps (then known as Google Local for Mobile) was launched in beta in November 2005 for mobile platforms supporting J2ME.[194][195][196] It was released as Google Maps for Mobile in 2006.[197] In 2007 it came preloaded on the first iPhone in a deal with Apple.[198] A version specifically for Windows Mobile was released in February 2007[199] and the Symbian app was released in November 2007.[200]
Version 2.0 of Google Maps Mobile was announced at the end of 2007, with a stand out My Location feature to find the user's location using the cell towers, without needing GPS.[201][202][203] In September 2008, Google Maps was released for and preloaded on Google's own new platform Android.[204][205]
Up until iOS 6, the built-in maps application on the iOS operating system was powered by Google Maps. However, with the announcement of iOS 6 in June 2012, Apple announced that they had created their own Apple Maps mapping service,[206] which officially replaced Google Maps when iOS 6 was released on September 19, 2012.[207] However, at launch, Apple Maps received significant criticism from users due to inaccuracies, errors and bugs.[208][209] One day later, The Guardian reported that Google was preparing its own Google Maps app,[210] which was released on December 12, 2012.[211][212] Within two days, the application had been downloaded over ten million times.[213]
The Google Maps apps for iOS and Android have many of the same features, including turn-by-turn navigation, street view, and public transit information.[214][215] Turn-by-turn navigation was originally announced by Google as a separate beta testing app exclusive to Android 2.0 devices in October 2009.[216][217] The original standalone iOS version did not support the iPad,[215] but tablet support was added with version 2.0 in July 2013.[218] An update in June 2012 for Android devices added support for offline access to downloaded maps of certain regions,[219][220] a feature that was eventually released for iOS devices, and made more robust on Android, in May 2014.[221][222]
At the end of 2015 Google Maps announced its new offline functionality,[223] but with various limitations – downloaded area cannot exceed 120,000 square kilometers[224][225] and require a considerable amount of storage space.[226] In January 2017, Google added a feature exclusively to Android that will, in some U.S. cities, indicate the level of difficulty in finding available parking spots,[227] and on both Android and iOS, the app can, as of an April 2017 update, remember where users parked.[228][229] In August 2017, Google Maps for Android was updated with new functionality to actively help the user in finding parking lots and garages close to a destination.[230] In December 2017, Google added a new two-wheeler mode to its Android app, designed for users in India, allowing for more accessibility in traffic conditions.[231][232] In 2019 the Android version introduced the new feature called live view that allows to view directions directly on the road thanks to augmented reality.[233] Google Maps won the 2020 Webby Award for Best User Interface in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.[234] In March 2021, Google added a feature in which users can draw missing roads.[235] In June 2022, Google implemented support for toll calculation. Both iOS and Android apps report how much the user has to pay in tolls when a route that includes toll roads is input. The feature is available for roads in the US, India, Japan and Indonesia with further expansion planned. As per reports the total number of toll roads covered in this phase is around 2000.[236]
USA Today welcomed the application back to iOS, saying: "The reemergence in the middle of the night of a Google Maps app for the iPhone is like the return of an old friend. Only your friend, who'd gone missing for three months, comes back looking better than ever."[237] Jason Parker of CNET, calling it "the king of maps", said, "With its iOS Maps app, Google sets the standard for what mobile navigation should be and more."[238] Bree Fowler of the Associated Press compared Google's and Apple's map applications, saying: "The one clear advantage that Apple has is style. Like Apple devices, the maps are clean and clear and have a fun, pretty element to them, especially in 3-D. But when it comes down to depth and information, Google still reigns superior and will no doubt be welcomed back by its fans."[239] Gizmodo gave it a ranking of 4.5 stars, stating: "Maps Done Right".[240] According to The New York Times, Google "admits that it's [iOS app is] even better than Google Maps for Android phones, which has accommodated its evolving feature set mainly by piling on menus".[241]
Google Maps' location tracking is regarded by some as a threat to users' privacy, with Dylan Tweney of VentureBeat writing in August 2014 that "Google is probably logging your location, step by step, via Google Maps", and linked users to Google's location history map, which "lets you see the path you've traced for any given day that your smartphone has been running Google Maps". Tweney then provided instructions on how to disable location history.[242] The history tracking was also noticed, and recommended disabled, by editors at CNET[243] and TechCrunch.[244] Additionally, Quartz reported in April 2014 that a "sneaky new privacy change" would have an effect on the majority of iOS users. The privacy change, an update to the Gmail iOS app that "now supports sign-in across Google iOS apps, including Maps, Drive, YouTube and Chrome", meant that Google would be able to identify users' actions across its different apps.[245]
The Android version of the app surpassed five billion installations in March 2019.[246] By November 2021, the Android app had surpassed 10 billion installations.[247]
Google Maps Go, a version of the app designed for lower-end devices, was released in beta in January 2018.[248] By September 2018, the app had over 10 million installations.[249]
The German "geo-novel" Senghor on the Rocks (2008) presents its story as a series of spreads showing a Google Maps location on the left and the story's text on the right. Annika Richterich explains that the "satellite pictures in Senghor on the Rocks illustrate the main character's travel through the West-African state of Senegal".[250]
Artists have used Google Street View in a range of ways. Emilio Vavarella's The Google Trilogy includes glitchy images and unintended portraits of the drivers of the Street View cars.[251] The Japanese band group inou used Google Street View backgrounds to make a music video for their song EYE.[252] The Canadian band Arcade Fire made a customized music video that used Street View to show the viewer their own childhood home.[253][254]
cite web
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Google employs automatic face and license plate blurring technology to protect people's privacy in Street View, and users can even request additional blurring. Aerial imagery provides much less detail and resolution.
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Screenshot
![]() The Main Page of the English Wikipedia running an alpha version of MediaWiki 1.40
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Original author(s) | |
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Developer(s) | Wikimedia Foundation |
Initial release | January 25, 2002 |
Stable release |
1.43.0[1]
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Repository | |
Written in | PHP[2] |
Operating system | Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris |
Size | 79.05 MiB (compressed) |
Available in | 459[3] languages |
Type | Wiki software |
License | GPLv2+[4] |
Website | mediawiki |
MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,[5][6] after which development has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It powers several wiki hosting websites across the Internet, as well as most websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Meta-Wiki and Wikidata, which define a large part of the set requirements for the software.[7] Besides its usage on Wikimedia sites, MediaWiki has been used as a knowledge management and content management system on websites such as Fandom, wikiHow and major internal installations like Intellipedia and Diplopedia.
MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language and stores all text content into a database. The software is optimized to efficiently handle large projects, which can have terabytes of content and hundreds of thousands of views per second.[7][8] Because Wikipedia is one of the world's largest and most visited websites, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication has been a major concern for developers. Another major aspect of MediaWiki is its internationalization; its interface is available in more than 400 languages.[9] The software has hundreds of configuration settings[10] and more than 1,000 extensions available for enabling various features to be added or changed.[11]
MediaWiki provides a rich core feature set and a mechanism to attach extensions to provide additional functionality.
Due to the strong emphasis on multilingualism in the Wikimedia projects, internationalization and localization has received significant attention by developers. The user interface has been fully or partially translated into more than 400 languages on translatewiki.net,[9] and can be further customized by site administrators (the entire interface is editable through the wiki).
Several extensions, most notably those collected in the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle, are designed to further enhance the multilingualism and internationalization of MediaWiki.
Installation of MediaWiki requires that the user have administrative privileges on a server running both PHP and a compatible type of SQL database. Some users find that setting up a virtual host is helpful if the majority of one's site runs under a framework (such as Zope or Ruby on Rails) that is largely incompatible with MediaWiki.[12] Cloud hosting can eliminate the need to deploy a new server.[13]
An installation PHP script is accessed via a web browser to initialize the wiki's settings. It prompts the user for a minimal set of required parameters, leaving further changes, such as enabling uploads,[14] adding a site logo,[15] and installing extensions, to be made by modifying configuration settings contained in a file called LocalSettings.php
.[16] Some aspects of MediaWiki can be configured through special pages or by editing certain pages; for instance, abuse filters can be configured through a special page,[17] and certain gadgets can be added by creating JavaScript pages in the MediaWiki namespace.[18] The MediaWiki community publishes a comprehensive installation guide.[19]
One of the earliest differences between MediaWiki (and its predecessor, UseModWiki) and other wiki engines was the use of "free links" instead of CamelCase. When MediaWiki was created, it was typical for wikis to require text like "WorldWideWeb" to create a link to a page about the World Wide Web; links in MediaWiki, on the other hand, are created by surrounding words with double square brackets, and any spaces between them are left intact, e.g. [[World Wide Web]]
. This change was logical for the purpose of creating an encyclopedia, where accuracy in titles is important.
MediaWiki uses an extensible[20] lightweight wiki markup designed to be easier to use and learn than HTML. Tools exist for converting content such as tables between MediaWiki markup and HTML.[21] Efforts have been made to create a MediaWiki markup spec, but a consensus seems to have been reached that Wikicode requires context-sensitive grammar rules.[22][23] The following side-by-side comparison illustrates the differences between wiki markup and HTML:
MediaWiki syntax (the "behind the scenes" code used to add formatting to text) |
HTML equivalent (another type of "behind the scenes" code used to add formatting to text) |
Rendered output (seen onscreen by a site viewer) |
---|---|---|
====A dialogue====
"Take some more [[tea]]," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take ''less''," said the Hatter: "it's '''very''' easy to take ''more'' than nothing."
|
<h4>A dialogue</h4>
<p>"Take some more <a href="/wiki/Tea" title="Tea">tea</a>," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.</p> <br>
<p>"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."</p> <br>
<p>"You mean you can't take <i>less</i>," said the Hatter: "it's <b>very</b> easy to take <i>more</i> than nothing."</p>
|
A dialogue
"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing." |
(Quotation above from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
MediaWiki's default page-editing tools have been described as somewhat challenging to learn.[24] A survey of students assigned to use a MediaWiki-based wiki found that when they were asked an open question about main problems with the wiki, 24% cited technical problems with formatting, e.g. "Couldn't figure out how to get an image in. Can't figure out how to show a link with words; it inserts a number."[25]
To make editing long pages easier, MediaWiki allows the editing of a subsection of a page (as identified by its header). A registered user can also indicate whether or not an edit is minor. Correcting spelling, grammar or punctuation are examples of minor edits, whereas adding paragraphs of new text is an example of a non-minor edit.
Sometimes while one user is editing, a second user saves an edit to the same part of the page. Then, when the first user attempts to save the page, an edit conflict occurs. The second user is then given an opportunity to merge their content into the page as it now exists following the first user's page save.
MediaWiki's user interface has been localized in many different languages. A language for the wiki content itself can also be set, to be sent in the "Content-Language" HTTP header and "lang" HTML attribute.
VisualEditor has its own integrated wikitext editing interface known as 2017 wikitext editor, the older editing interface is known as 2010 wikitext editor.
MediaWiki has an extensible web API (application programming interface) that provides direct, high-level access to the data contained in the MediaWiki databases. Client programs can use the API to log in, get data, and post changes. The API supports thin web-based JavaScript clients and end-user applications (such as vandal-fighting tools). The API can be accessed by the backend of another web site.[26] An extensive Python bot library, Pywikibot,[27] and a popular semi-automated tool called AutoWikiBrowser, also interface with the API.[28] The API is accessed via URLs such as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=recentchanges
. In this case, the query would be asking Wikipedia for information relating to the last 10 edits to the site. One of the perceived advantages of the API is its language independence; it listens for HTTP connections from clients and can send a response in a variety of formats, such as XML, serialized PHP, or JSON.[29] Client code has been developed to provide layers of abstraction to the API.[30]
Among the features of MediaWiki to assist in tracking edits is a Recent Changes feature that provides a list of recent edits to the wiki. This list contains basic information about those edits such as the editing user, the edit summary, the page edited, as well as any tags (e.g. "possible vandalism")[31] added by customizable abuse filters and other extensions to aid in combating unhelpful edits.[32] On more active wikis, so many edits occur that it is hard to track Recent Changes manually. Anti-vandal software, including user-assisted tools,[33] is sometimes employed on such wikis to process Recent Changes items. Server load can be reduced by sending a continuous feed of Recent Changes to an IRC channel that these tools can monitor, eliminating their need to send requests for a refreshed Recent Changes feed to the API.[34][35]
Another important tool is watchlisting. Each logged-in user has a watchlist to which the user can add whatever pages he or she wishes. When an edit is made to one of those pages, a summary of that edit appears on the watchlist the next time it is refreshed.[36] As with the recent changes page, recent edits that appear on the watchlist contain clickable links for easy review of the article history and specific changes made.
There is also the capability to review all edits made by any particular user. In this way, if an edit is identified as problematic, it is possible to check the user's other edits for issues.
MediaWiki allows one to link to specific versions of articles. This has been useful to the scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and provide links to the trusted version of that article.[37]
Navigation through the wiki is largely through internal wikilinks. MediaWiki's wikilinks implement page existence detection, in which a link is colored blue if the target page exists on the local wiki and red if it does not. If a user clicks on a red link, they are prompted to create an article with that title. Page existence detection makes it practical for users to create "wikified" articles—that is, articles containing links to other pertinent subjects—without those other articles being yet in existence.
Interwiki links function much the same way as namespaces. A set of interwiki prefixes can be configured to cause, for instance, a page title of wikiquote:Jimbo Wales
to direct the user to the Jimbo Wales article on Wikiquote.[38] Unlike internal wikilinks, interwiki links lack page existence detection functionality, and accordingly there is no way to tell whether a blue interwiki link is broken or not.
Interlanguage links are the small navigation links that show up in the sidebar in most MediaWiki skins that connect an article with related articles in other languages within the same Wiki family. This can provide language-specific communities connected by a larger context, with all wikis on the same server or each on its own server.[39]
Previously, Wikipedia used interlanguage links to link an article to other articles on the same topic in other editions of Wikipedia. This was superseded by the launch of Wikidata.[40]
Page tabs are displayed at the top of pages. These tabs allow users to perform actions or view pages that are related to the current page. The available default actions include viewing, editing, and discussing the current page. The specific tabs displayed depend on whether the user is logged into the wiki and whether the user has sysop privileges on the wiki. For instance, the ability to move a page or add it to one's watchlist is usually restricted to logged-in users. The site administrator can add or remove tabs by using JavaScript or installing extensions.[41]
Each page has an associated history page from which the user can access every version of the page that has ever existed and generate diffs between two versions of his choice. Users' contributions are displayed not only here, but also via a "user contributions" option on a sidebar. In a 2004 article, Carl Challborn and Teresa Reimann noted that "While this feature may be a slight deviation from the collaborative, 'ego-less' spirit of wiki purists, it can be very useful for educators who need to assess the contribution and participation of individual student users."[42]
MediaWiki provides many features beyond hyperlinks for structuring content. One of the earliest such features is namespaces. One of Wikipedia's earliest problems had been the separation of encyclopedic content from pages pertaining to maintenance and communal discussion, as well as personal pages about encyclopedia editors. Namespaces are prefixes before a page title (such as "User:
" or "Talk:
") that serve as descriptors for the page's purpose and allow multiple pages with different functions to exist under the same title. For instance, a page titled "[[The Terminator]]
", in the default namespace, could describe the 1984 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, while a page titled "[[User:The Terminator]]
" could be a profile describing a user who chooses this name as a pseudonym. More commonly, each namespace has an associated "Talk:
" namespace, which can be used to discuss its contents, such as "User talk:
" or "Template talk:
". The purpose of having discussion pages is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content.[43][44]
Namespaces can be viewed as folders that separate different basic types of information or functionality. Custom namespaces can be added by the site administrators. There are 16 namespaces by default for content, with 2 "pseudo-namespaces" used for dynamically generated "Special:
" pages and links to media files. Each namespace on MediaWiki is numbered: content page namespaces have even numbers and their associated talk page namespaces have odd numbers.[45]
Users can create new categories and add pages and files to those categories by appending one or more category tags to the content text. Adding these tags creates links at the bottom of the page that take the reader to the list of all pages in that category, making it easy to browse related articles.[46] The use of categorization to organize content has been described as a combination of:
In addition to namespaces, content can be ordered using subpages. This simple feature provides automatic breadcrumbs of the pattern [[Page title/Subpage title]]
from the page after the slash (in this case, "Subpage title") to the page before the slash (in this case, "Page title").
If the feature is enabled, users can customize their stylesheets and configure client-side JavaScript to be executed with every pageview. On Wikipedia, this has led to a large number of additional tools and helpers developed through the wiki and shared among users. For instance, navigation popups is a custom JavaScript tool that shows previews of articles when the user hovers over links and also provides shortcuts for common maintenance tasks.[48]
The entire MediaWiki user interface can be edited through the wiki itself by users with the necessary permissions (typically called "administrators"). This is done through a special namespace with the prefix "MediaWiki:", where each page title identifies a particular user interface message. Using an extension,[49] it is also possible for a user to create personal scripts, and to choose whether certain sitewide scripts should apply to them by toggling the appropriate options in the user preferences page.
The "MediaWiki:" namespace was originally also used for creating custom text blocks that could then be dynamically loaded into other pages using a special syntax. This content was later moved into its own namespace, "Template:".
Templates are text blocks that can be dynamically loaded inside another page whenever that page is requested. The template is a special link in double curly brackets (for example "date=October 2018
"), which calls the template (in this case located at Template:Disputed) to load in place of the template call.
Templates are structured documents containing attribute–value pairs. They are defined with parameters, to which are assigned values when transcluded on an article page. The name of the parameter is delimited from the value by an equals sign. A class of templates known as infoboxes is used on Wikipedia to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, usually on the top (mobile view) or top right-hand corner (desktop view) of the document.
Pages in other namespaces can also be transcluded as templates. In particular, a page in the main namespace can be transcluded by prefixing its title with a colon; for example, :MediaWiki
transcludes the article "MediaWiki" from the main namespace. Also, it is possible to mark the portions of a page that should be transcluded in several ways, the most basic of which are:[50]
<noinclude>...</noinclude>
, which marks content that is not to be transcluded;<includeonly>...</includeonly>
, which marks content that is not rendered unless it is transcluded;<onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>
, which marks content that is to be the only content transcluded.A related method, called template substitution (called by adding subst:
at the beginning of a template link) inserts the contents of the template into the target page (like a copy and paste operation), instead of loading the template contents dynamically whenever the page is loaded. This can lead to inconsistency when using templates, but may be useful in certain cases, and in most cases requires fewer server resources (the actual amount of savings can vary depending on wiki configuration and the complexity of the template).
Templates have found many different uses. Templates enable users to create complex table layouts that are used consistently across multiple pages, and where only the content of the tables gets inserted using template parameters. Templates are frequently used to identify problems with a Wikipedia article by putting a template in the article. This template then outputs a graphical box stating that the article content is disputed or in need of some other attention, and also categorize it so that articles of this nature can be located. Templates are also used on user pages to send users standard messages welcoming them to the site,[51] giving them awards for outstanding contributions,[52][53] warning them when their behavior is considered inappropriate,[54] notifying them when they are blocked from editing,[55] and so on.
MediaWiki offers flexibility in creating and defining user groups. For instance, it would be possible to create an arbitrary "ninja" group that can block users and delete pages, and whose edits are hidden by default in the recent changes log. It is also possible to set up a group of "autoconfirmed" users that one becomes a member of after making a certain number of edits and waiting a certain number of days.[56] Some groups that are enabled by default are bureaucrats and sysops. Bureaucrats have the power to change other users' rights. Sysops have power over page protection and deletion and the blocking of users from editing. MediaWiki's available controls on editing rights have been deemed sufficient for publishing and maintaining important documents such as a manual of standard operating procedures in a hospital.[57]
MediaWiki comes with a basic set of features related to restricting access, but its original and ongoing design is driven by functions that largely relate to content, not content segregation. As a result, with minimal exceptions (related to specific tools and their related "Special" pages), page access control has never been a high priority in core development and developers have stated that users requiring secure user access and authorization controls should not rely on MediaWiki, since it was never designed for these kinds of situations. For instance, it is extremely difficult to create a wiki where only certain users can read and access some pages.[58] Here, wiki engines like Foswiki, MoinMoin and Confluence provide more flexibility by supporting advanced security mechanisms like access control lists.
The MediaWiki codebase contains various hooks using callback functions to add additional PHP code in an extensible way. This allows developers to write extensions without necessarily needing to modify the core or having to submit their code for review. Installing an extension typically consists of adding a line to the configuration file, though in some cases additional changes such as database updates or core patches are required.
Five main extension points were created to allow developers to add features and functionalities to MediaWiki. Hooks are run every time a certain event happens; for instance, the ArticleSaveComplete
hook occurs after a save article request has been processed.[59] This can be used, for example, by an extension that notifies selected users whenever a page edit occurs on the wiki from new or anonymous users.[60] New tags can be created to process data with opening and closing tags (<newtag>...</newtag>
).[61] Parser functions can be used to create a new command (...
).[62] New special pages can be created to perform a specific function. These pages are dynamically generated. For example, a special page might show all pages that have one or more links to an external site or it might create a form providing user submitted feedback.[63] Skins allow users to customize the look and feel of MediaWiki.[64] A minor extension point allows the use of Amazon S3 to host image files.[65]
Among the most popular extensions is a parser function extension, ParserFunctions, which allows different content to be rendered based on the result of conditional statements.[66] These conditional statements can perform functions such as evaluating whether a parameter is empty, comparing strings, evaluating mathematical expressions, and returning one of two values depending on whether a page exists. It was designed as a replacement for a notoriously inefficient template called Qif.[67] Schindler recounts the history of the ParserFunctions extension as follows:[68]
In 2006 some Wikipedians discovered that through an intricate and complicated interplay of templating features and CSS they could create conditional wiki text, i.e. text that was displayed if a template parameter had a specific value. This included repeated calls of templates within templates, which bogged down the performance of the whole system. The developers faced the choice of either disallowing the spreading of an obviously desired feature by detecting such usage and explicitly disallowing it within the software or offering an efficient alternative. The latter was done by Tim Starling, who announced the introduction of parser functions, wiki text that calls functions implemented in the underlying software. At first, only conditional text and the computation of simple mathematical expressions were implemented, but this already increased the possibilities for wiki editors enormously. With time further parser functions were introduced, finally leading to a framework that allowed the simple writing of extension functions to add arbitrary functionalities, like e.g. geo-coding services or widgets. This time the developers were clearly reacting to the demand of the community, being forced either to fight the solution of the issue that the community had (i.e. conditional text), or offer an improved technical implementation to replace the previous practice and achieve an overall better performance.
Another parser functions extension, StringFunctions, was developed to allow evaluation of string length, string position, and so on. Wikimedia communities, having created awkward workarounds to accomplish the same functionality,[69] clamored for it to be enabled on their projects.[70] Much of its functionality was eventually integrated into the ParserFunctions extension,[71] albeit disabled by default and accompanied by a warning from Tim Starling that enabling string functions would allow users "to implement their own parsers in the ugliest, most inefficient programming language known to man: MediaWiki wikitext with ParserFunctions."[72]
Since 2012 an extension, Scribunto, has existed that allows for the creation of "modules"—wiki pages written in the scripting language Lua—which can then be run within templates and standard wiki pages. Scribunto has been installed on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites since 2013 and is used heavily on those sites. Scribunto code runs significantly faster than corresponding wikitext code using ParserFunctions.[73]
Another very popular extension is a citation extension that enables footnotes to be added to pages using inline references.[74] This extension has, however, been criticized for being difficult to use and requiring the user to memorize complex syntax. A gadget called RefToolbar attempts to make it easier to create citations using common templates. MediaWiki has some extensions that are well-suited for academia, such as mathematics extensions[75] and an extension that allows molecules to be rendered in 3D.[76]
A generic Widgets extension exists that allows MediaWiki to integrate with virtually anything. Other examples of extensions that could improve a wiki are category suggestion extensions[77] and extensions for inclusion of Flash Videos,[78] YouTube videos,[79] and RSS feeds.[80] Metavid, a site that archives video footage of the U.S. Senate and House floor proceedings, was created using code extending MediaWiki into the domain of collaborative video authoring.[81]
There are many spambots that search the web for MediaWiki installations and add linkspam to them, despite the fact that MediaWiki uses the nofollow attribute to discourage such attempts at search engine optimization.[82] Part of the problem is that third party republishers, such as mirrors, may not independently implement the nofollow tag on their websites, so marketers can still get PageRank benefit by inserting links into pages when those entries appear on third party websites.[83] Anti-spam extensions have been developed to combat the problem by introducing CAPTCHAs,[84] blacklisting certain URLs,[85] and allowing bulk deletion of pages recently added by a particular user.[86]
MediaWiki comes pre-installed with a standard text-based search. Extensions exist to let MediaWiki use more sophisticated third-party search engines, including Elasticsearch (which since 2014 has been in use on Wikipedia), Lucene[87] and Sphinx.[88]
Various MediaWiki extensions have also been created to allow for more complex, faceted search, on both data entered within the wiki and on metadata such as pages' revision history.[89][90] Semantic MediaWiki is one such extension.[91][92]
Various extensions to MediaWiki support rich content generated through specialized syntax. These include mathematical formulas using LaTeX, graphical timelines over mathematical plotting, musical scores and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The software supports a wide variety of uploaded media files, and allows image galleries and thumbnails to be generated with relative ease. There is also support for Exif metadata. MediaWiki operates the Wikimedia Commons, one of the largest free content media archives.
For WYSIWYG editing, VisualEditor is available to use in MediaWiki which simplifying editing process for editors and has been bundled since MediaWiki 1.35.[93] Other extensions exist for handling WYSIWYG editing to different degrees.[94]
MediaWiki can use either the MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite relational database management system. Support for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server has been dropped since MediaWiki 1.34.[95] A MediaWiki database contains several dozen tables, including a page
table that contains page titles, page ids, and other metadata;[96] and a revision
table to which is added a new row every time an edit is made, containing the page id, a brief textual summary of the change performed, the user name of the article editor (or its IP address the case of an unregistered user) and a timestamp.[97][98]
In a 4½ year period prior to 2008, the MediaWiki database had 170 schema versions.[99] Possibly the largest schema change was done in 2005 with MediaWiki 1.5, when the storage of metadata was separated from that of content, to improve performance flexibility. When this upgrade was applied to Wikipedia, the site was locked for editing, and the schema was converted to the new version in about 22 hours. Some software enhancement proposals, such as a proposal to allow sections of articles to be watched via watchlist, have been rejected because the necessary schema changes would have required excessive Wikipedia downtime.[100]
Because it is used to run one of the highest-traffic sites on the Web, Wikipedia, MediaWiki's performance and scalability have been highly optimized.[101] MediaWiki supports Squid, load-balanced database replication, client-side caching, memcached or table-based caching for frequently accessed processing of query results, a simple static file cache, feature-reduced operation, revision compression, and a job queue for database operations. MediaWiki developers have attempted to optimize the software by avoiding expensive algorithms, database queries, etc., caching every result that is expensive and has temporal locality of reference, and focusing on the hot spots in the code through profiling.[102]
MediaWiki code is designed to allow for data to be written to a read-write database and read from read-only databases, although the read-write database can be used for some read operations if the read-only databases are not yet up to date. Metadata, such as article revision history, article relations (links, categories etc.), user accounts and settings can be stored in core databases and cached; the actual revision text, being more rarely used, can be stored as append-only blobs in external storage. The software is suitable for the operation of large-scale wiki farms such as Wikimedia, which had about 800 wikis as of August 2011. However, MediaWiki comes with no built-in GUI to manage such installations.
Empirical evidence shows most revisions in MediaWiki databases tend to differ only slightly from previous revisions. Therefore, subsequent revisions of an article can be concatenated and then compressed, achieving very high data compression ratios of up to 100×.[102]
For more information on the architecture, such as how it stores wikitext and assembles a page, see External links.
The parser serves as the de facto standard for the MediaWiki syntax, as no formal syntax has been defined. Due to this lack of a formal definition, it has been difficult to create WYSIWYG editors for MediaWiki, although several WYSIWYG extensions do exist, including the popular VisualEditor.
MediaWiki is not designed to be a suitable replacement for dedicated online forum or blogging software,[103] although extensions do exist to allow for both of these.[104][105]
It is common for new MediaWiki users to make certain mistakes, such as forgetting to sign posts with four tildes (~~~~),[106] or manually entering a plaintext signature,[107] due to unfamiliarity with the idiosyncratic particulars involved in communication on MediaWiki discussion pages. On the other hand, the format of these discussion pages has been cited as a strength by one educator, who stated that it provides more fine-grain capabilities for discussion than traditional threaded discussion forums. For example, instead of 'replying' to an entire message, the participant in a discussion can create a hyperlink to a new wiki page on any word from the original page. Discussions are easier to follow since the content is available via hyperlinked wiki page, rather than a series of reply messages on a traditional threaded discussion forum. However, except in few cases, students were not using this capability, possibly because of their familiarity with the traditional linear discussion style and a lack of guidance on how to make the content more 'link-rich'.[108]
MediaWiki by default has little support for the creation of dynamically assembled documents, or pages that aggregate data from other pages. Some research has been done on enabling such features directly within MediaWiki.[109] The Semantic MediaWiki extension provides these features. It is not in use on Wikipedia, but in more than 1,600 other MediaWiki installations.[110] The Wikibase Repository and Wikibase Repository client are however implemented in Wikidata and Wikipedia respectively, and to some extent provides semantic web features, and linking of centrally stored data to infoboxes in various Wikipedia articles.
Upgrading MediaWiki is usually fully automated, requiring no changes to the site content or template programming. Historically troubles have been encountered when upgrading from significantly older versions.[111]
MediaWiki developers have enacted security standards, both for core code and extensions.[112] SQL queries and HTML output are usually done through wrapper functions that handle validation, escaping, filtering for prevention of cross-site scripting and SQL injection.[113] Many security issues have had to be patched after a MediaWiki version release,[114] and accordingly MediaWiki.org states, "The most important security step you can take is to keep your software up to date" by subscribing to the announcement mailing list and installing security updates that are announced.[115]
Support for MediaWiki users consists of:
MediaWiki is free and open-source and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version. Its documentation, located at its official website at www.mediawiki.org, is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license, with a set of help pages intended to be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software in the public domain instead to eliminate legal issues for wikis with other licenses.[119][120] MediaWiki's development has generally favored the use of open-source media formats.[121]
MediaWiki has an active volunteer community for development and maintenance. MediaWiki developers are spread around the world, though with a majority in the United States and Europe. Face-to-face meetings and programming sessions for MediaWiki developers have been held once or several times a year since 2004.[122]
Anyone can submit patches to the project's Git/Gerrit repository.[123] There are also paid programmers who primarily develop projects for the Wikimedia Foundation. MediaWiki developers participate in the Google Summer of Code by facilitating the assignment of mentors to students wishing to work on MediaWiki core and extension projects.[124] During the year prior to November 2012, there were about two hundred developers who had committed changes to the MediaWiki core or extensions.[125] Major MediaWiki releases are generated approximately every six months by taking snapshots of the development branch, which is kept continuously in a runnable state;[126] minor releases, or point releases, are issued as needed to correct bugs (especially security problems). MediaWiki is developed on a continuous integration development model, in which software changes are pushed live to Wikimedia sites on regular basis.[126] MediaWiki also has a public bug tracker, phabricator.wikimedia.org, which runs Phabricator. The site is also used for feature and enhancement requests.
When Wikipedia was launched in January 2001, it ran on an existing wiki software system, UseModWiki. UseModWiki is written in the Perl programming language, and stores all wiki pages in text (.txt) files. This software soon proved to be limiting, in both functionality and performance. In mid-2001, Magnus Manske—a developer and student at the University of Cologne, as well as a Wikipedia editor—began working on new software that would replace UseModWiki, specifically designed for use by Wikipedia. This software was written in the PHP scripting language, and stored all of its information in a MySQL database. The new software was largely developed by August 24, 2001, and a test wiki for it was established shortly thereafter.
The first full implementation of this software was the new Meta Wikipedia on November 9, 2001. There was a desire to have it implemented immediately on the English-language Wikipedia.[127] However, Manske was apprehensive about any potential bugs harming the nascent website during the period of the final exams he had to complete immediately prior to Christmas;[128] this led to the launch on the English-language Wikipedia being delayed until January 25, 2002. The software was then, gradually, deployed on all the Wikipedia language sites of that time. This software was referred to as "the PHP script" and as "phase II", with the name "phase I", retroactively given to the use of UseModWiki.
Increasing usage soon caused load problems to arise again, and soon after, another rewrite of the software began; this time being done by Lee Daniel Crocker, which became known as "phase III". This new software was also written in PHP, with a MySQL backend, and kept the basic interface of the phase II software, but with the added functionality of a wider scalability. The "phase III" software went live on Wikipedia in July 2002.
The Wikimedia Foundation was announced on June 20, 2003. In July, Wikipedia contributor Daniel Mayer suggested the name "MediaWiki" for the software, as a play on "Wikimedia".[129] The MediaWiki name was gradually phased in, beginning in August 2003. The name has frequently caused confusion due to its (intentional) similarity to the "Wikimedia" name (which itself is similar to "Wikipedia").[130] The first version of MediaWiki, 1.1, was released in December 2003.
The old product logo was created by Erik Möller, using a flower photograph taken by Florence Nibart-Devouard, and was originally submitted to the logo contest for a new Wikipedia logo, held from July 20 to August 27, 2003.[131][132] The logo came in third place, and was chosen to represent MediaWiki rather than Wikipedia, with the second place logo being used for the Wikimedia Foundation.[133] The double square brackets ([[ ]]) symbolize the syntax MediaWiki uses for creating hyperlinks to other wiki pages; while the sunflower represents the diversity of content on Wikipedia, its constant growth, and the wilderness.[134]
Later, Brooke Vibber, the chief technical officer of the Wikimedia Foundation,[135] took up the role of release manager.[136][101]
Major milestones in MediaWiki's development have included: the categorization system (2004); parser functions, (2006); Flagged Revisions, (2008);[68] the "ResourceLoader", a delivery system for CSS and JavaScript (2011);[137] and the VisualEditor, a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) editing platform (2013).[138]
The contest of designing a new logo was initiated on June 22, 2020, as the old logo was a bitmap image and had "high details", leading to problems when rendering at high and low resolutions, respectively. After two rounds of voting, the new and current MediaWiki logo designed by Serhio Magpie was selected on October 24, 2020, and officially adopted on April 1, 2021.[139]
MediaWiki's most famous use has been in Wikipedia and, to a lesser degree, the Wikimedia Foundation's other projects. Fandom, a wiki hosting service formerly known as Wikia, runs on MediaWiki. Other public wikis that run on MediaWiki include wikiHow and SNPedia. WikiLeaks began as a MediaWiki-based site, but is no longer a wiki.
A number of alternative wiki encyclopedias to Wikipedia run on MediaWiki, including Citizendium, Metapedia, Scholarpedia and Conservapedia. MediaWiki is also used internally by a large number of companies, including Novell and Intel.[140][141]
Notable usages of MediaWiki within governments include Intellipedia, used by the United States Intelligence Community, Diplopedia, used by the United States Department of State, and milWiki, a part of milSuite used by the United States Department of Defense. United Nations agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and INSTRAW chose to implement their wikis using MediaWiki, because "this software runs Wikipedia and is therefore guaranteed to be thoroughly tested, will continue to be developed well into the future, and future technicians on these wikis will be more likely to have exposure to MediaWiki than any other wiki software."[142]
The Free Software Foundation uses MediaWiki to implement the LibrePlanet site.[143]
Users of online collaboration software are familiar with MediaWiki's functions and layout due to its noted use on Wikipedia. A 2006 overview of social software in academia observed that "Compared to other wikis, MediaWiki is also fairly aesthetically pleasing, though simple, and has an easily customized side menu and stylesheet."[144] However, in one assessment in 2006, Confluence was deemed to be a superior product due to its very usable API and ability to better support multiple wikis.[76]
A 2009 study at the University of Hong Kong compared TWiki to MediaWiki. The authors noted that TWiki has been considered as a collaborative tool for the development of educational papers and technical projects, whereas MediaWiki's most noted use is on Wikipedia. Although both platforms allow discussion and tracking of progress, TWiki has a "Report" part that MediaWiki lacks. Students perceived MediaWiki as being easier to use and more enjoyable than TWiki. When asked whether they recommended using MediaWiki for knowledge management course group project, 15 out of 16 respondents expressed their preference for MediaWiki giving answers of great certainty, such as "of course", "for sure".[145] TWiki and MediaWiki both have flexible plug-in architecture.[146]
A 2009 study that compared students' experience with MediaWiki to that with Google Docs found that students gave the latter a much higher rating on user-friendly layout.[147]
A 2021 study conducted by the Brazilian Nuclear Engineering Institute compared a MediaWiki-based knowledge management system against two others that were based on DSpace and Open Journal Systems, respectively.[148] It highlighted ease of use as an advantage of the MediaWiki-based system, noting that because the Wikimedia Foundation had been developing MediaWiki for a site aimed at the general public (Wikipedia), "its user interface was designed to be more user-friendly from start, and has received large user feedback over a long time", in contrast to DSpace's and OJS's focus on niche audiences.[148]
488 languages (not including languages that are supported but have no translations)
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Google Search on desktop
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Type of site
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Web search engine |
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Available in | 149 languages |
Owner | |
Revenue | Google Ads |
URL | google |
IPv6 support | Yes[1] |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional |
Launched |
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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]
![]() |
|
Type of site
|
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]
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
cite web
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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