Top Reasons - How Does Google Make So Much Money While Being Free

There are so many reports floating online showing how Google gets its revenue. But this article can be labeled as a simple layman's article to help understand how all this works.

We all know that Google search, the most prominent of Google Products is completely free. So how does Google make so much money? Of course, it has other products like Gmail, Google Maps, Google News, Google Earth, Google Drive, but all these are free too. This is where the smartness of Google comes in to play.

A tactic which was adopted early in the scene by Google – after their initial Venture Capitalists played that pivotal role in making Google launch their search engine brain to work. These services offered by Google take immense investments and time. But these are all offered for free to majority of its users (others being corporate users who pay for certain upgrades and services). These also demand extensive resources, space and bandwidth. However, this makes the user spend more time on Google, clicking on ads - thus the resources, money and time well spent on part of Google.

Targeted Advertising

What is it that makes this giant become an even bigger one with every passing day?

Advertising. Yes. Advertising is what makes Google make so much money. It's the revenue from ads which is the highest among Google's entire revenue stream.

Regular Updates

So what do they do to make this magic happen?

They continue to drive constant innovation and new techniques. Frequent and regular updates are made to the way Google displays its ads in Google searches made by billions of people worldwide – and all those are mostly done as a silent update, never known visibly to the end user who is making a simple Google Search using their computer or in a Smartphone.

Clutter-free design with non-obtrusive approach

Google strives to help people find ads which are relevant and useful. They do this by separating ads from the regular Google search results. This way the regular or 'organic' searches are displayed without getting mixed up with 'paid' links which are the ads.

This is the revolutionary business model created by Google which the other early players in the Search Engine arena failed to accomplish. If there is one word that can summarize Google's combined search and ad aesthetics – it's 'Relevance'. Being relevant is what helps Google stand out from the other players.

Smartness

Taking this study to its next level, one must understand that Google's Search Engine is still the prominent and ranks at the top in fetching substantial revenues for Google. And searching is all about words. In Google's terminology, these are called as 'keywords'.

© 2011 WordStream, Inc.

The above Infographic depicts clearly the top keywords that Google, bidders and publishers use.

It all works seamlessly in a virtually perfect world:

Advertisers use Google AdWords to pay for their placement of ads.

Publishers offer ad space in their blogs and websites using Google AdSense.

Users click on the ads – advertisers pay Google and the Publishers – only when they are clicked.

Conclusion

There is a lot to learn from the Google's Business Model. There are even hundreds of books on Google and its approach. No wonder there is a large fan base for what Google does and there are people who follow it religiously for what it does and stands.  It's the simplicity that helped Google skyrocket its business model in its early days. Some even say that the founders still prefer to keep the home page simple and they insist that the words on the home page do not exceed 28 words.(Source).

Since all the key players in the advertising business get benefited, this system would run effectively as long as Google runs its business with all the key players in mind while making any changes to its business model.

To share your thoughts, please write your comments below.

Posted by Arun Sarathy

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Changes in Google's AdSense new homepage

Google has updated its AdSense homepage. The newer look is neat and offers key insights and analysis right on the initial view of Google AdSense homepage as soon as one logs in, avoiding the clutter and unwanted information. 

You can still revert back to the old homepage layout after trying out the new homepage. 

Let's now walk through the key changes made in the new look.

Look and Feel

 The number of tabs has remained the same though:

However, what you see on the initial view of your Google AdSense homepage differs a bit more than the older look. A guided tour shows us the key changes when we adopt to use the new look.

Mainly the options available under the “Home” tab have taken a back seat in the new look. In fact, all the options in the left side list under the “Home” tab are now placed under various other places. We will now look their placements in the new look:

Messages and Policy Violations are now placed under the ‘Status’ screen given inside the ‘Gear icon’ drop down menu on the top right corner.

Google AdSense - Previous Look

  

Gear Icon

Gear Icon > Status Page

        

Payments and Account Settings are now placed under Settings page given inside the ‘Gear icon’ drop down menu.

 Alternatively, Payments can also be viewed within the Home page by clicking on ‘View Payments’.

It’s the Resources page that’s been dropped in the new look.

Here’s what AdSense’s product manager, Matt Goodridge has to say about the new look:

The new Insights stream on the right-hand side of the page provides personalized recommendations for your account, such as monetization opportunities and tips to enhance user experience, which can be put into action in just a few clicks.

Your key account stats for today are quick and easy to view and now provide comparison data such as earnings so far this month versus the same period last month.

The new Performance Today section gives you quick access to more detailed information like your countries and platforms reports, without requiring additional clicks.

Your Scorecard will continue to be prominent on your homepage, providing quick benchmarking information on how your site is performing relative to the sites of other AdSense publishers.

  

You can read more about it from here: 

http://adsense.blogspot.in/2013/11/get-right-insights-quickly-with-new.html


Written by Arun Sarathy.

Five websites that provide Currency Conversion online

How often have you decided to travel abroad and wanted to know the value of your local currency outside your country?  Or just simply wanted to know what you currency value is when compared with any other nation?

Image courtesy of PinkBlue / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No matter what’s the situation, there are many websites to work that out for you. More so, there are also apps that can do the job on the go - most of the websites given below in this post have their own apps available for download. 

How to know which website offers a better solution to answer your above questions? 

First of all, you can just jump to any of these websites to get the conversion done. However, if you wanted to dig deeper, ponder over which website you might want to stick to in the future or share with your friends, then this guide shows you five easy to use websites that helps you convert the currency as per the current market rate.

1. Xe.com (xe.com)

XE.com not only is the top in my opinion but it also provides a very good snapshot of many other currencies right on their homepage. It refreshes automatically to show current rate.

2. Google (google.com)

My 2nd option to go for currency conversion is Google homepage. Yes! Google search window offers quick currency conversion online. Just type in your local currency amount to be converted to the other nation’s currency that you want to convert to. For example, you may type in 11 USD in EUR and it gives you the following output:

3. Oanda.com (oanda.com/currency/converter/)

Oanda.com offers the same conversion but website is little more trendier in my opinion. I have been using Oanda since 2007 and their way of presentation is pleasing. I usually take a print of their Traveler’s cheatsheet. Pretty neat personalized cheatsheet for our wallets.

4. GOCURRENCY.com (gocurrency.com)

Gocurrency provides a drop-down menu right on top as soon as we visit them. This has a list of countries which when chosen gives historical data, credit ratings, bank rates, GDP details, etc. Their currency conversion is also good enough that gets the job done.

5. finance.yahoo.com (finance.yahoo.com/currency-converter/)

Yahoo Finance page has its own currency conversion section within finance.yahoo.com page. But it takes some time to locate it in the site. One good thing is that it also offers along side their page an ‘education’ section. It provides us links to trading with currency, intro to currency, floating vs. fixed rates, etc. For someone who wants to learn the basics should surely give it a shot.

These are the five currency converter websites available online which does well in my viewpoint. Sometimes you may find slight differences in the converted rates. This should be kept in mind and thus warrants a reason to check more than one website - this post helps you to do just that!

As with freedom of choice, you're welcome to dig even deeper and find your favourites. Though many other websites offer this conversion to us like Bloomberg, X-Rates, etc., in my opinion the above mentioned websites do the job well. You can find the rest here in this simple google search for Currency Converter.

Written by Arun Sarathy.