By Daniel Monson
Now that Google has made the transition from a noun to a verb, the company?s stock has swept past the $400 mark.
Google?s keyword search system has spawned a new niche market called search engine optimization, a field where marketing companies help to insure that their customers are featured at the top of Google searches and ads.
Moving into the marketing field, Google has begun offering advertisers free marketing analysis and also has begun selling and placing ads in printed publications for themselves and other companies.
Google?s savvy ambition has whole industries unnerved, from phone companies to advertising agencies, fearing that Google?s technology will encroach on their business.
?Embrace it,? said Aaron Shear, chief technology officer of Search Engine Optimization Inc. ?Fearing Google?s power is only going to extend the time that Internet traffic comes to you. By stepping away you miss out on business.?
Search engine optimization involves reworking Web site?s coding, links and content to better their chances of being googled.
Google is pioneering and thinking up new programs and ideas to incorporate their search engine into different facets of life such as maps and online classified ads.
'There''s this notion that Google has a grandmaster devious plan to put ad agencies and publishers out of business,' said Marc Leibowitz, Google''s director of strategic partnerships, in a recent public interview. 'Nothing could be further from the truth. We see ourselves in a symbiotic relationship with them.?
After going public in August 2004, Google now has the resources and support to bolster the depressed Internet and technology market, and is also becoming a competitor for the technology market-giant Microsoft.
?A lot of people fear technology and fear change,? said Stephen Liddle, director of the Rollins Center for eBusiness at BYU. ?This is an opportunity, and companies should try to play smart to design their Web sites for modern Google searching. Everybody ought to be doing search engine optimization.?
For the Internet dot-com market that has remained taboo for years following the crashes years back, Google is an example of a continually growing and successful technology company. Leading with more than 65 percent of the search engine market, Google continues to create other services that incorporate search options such as GoogleEarth, Froogle and Gmail.
?Google is such a valuable service, and you can find so much information,? Liddle said. ?People are recognizing they need to get in front of this global audience.?
Google Information:
Google processes more than 150 million searches a day
- Google gets 1,500 r?sum?s a day from wanna-be googlers.
- Google''s market value has soared above $100 billion since August 2004.