For most people who have a website it is likely that Google is or will the biggest referrer of all of the search engines in terms of visitor numbers. A recent survey (source: comscore) put Google’s U.S. market share at 65.6%, with its closet rival being the efforts of Microsoft’s search engine interests at 13.1%.

In terms of actual percentage referrals of actual visitors to your website the gap could be even wider with competitor search engines referring very small percentages. This means that Google is still vital and central to the success or failure of many online businesses.

Although particular pressure over the last year have come e.g. from more people spending their time on other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and the first signs of any real form of growing competitor appear to have materialised in the form of Microsoft and Yahoo’s ‘Bing’, Google is likely to matter for along time in terms of your Internet Marketing. This being the case, there is significant value in getting to know more about Google and how it works, and to begin to see Google as both your main challenge and a good source of help.

The following will highlight some facets of Google in order to help you to achieve your online goals.

Google’s Boundaries

In order to protect the integrity and quality of its search engine results, Google has to use systems that are constantly albeit incrementally changing and shifting in response to the activities of the market, and as a result of it’s own research, development and proactive marketing.

For the natural listings there are 2 basic systems in place for setting the absolute boundaries of what can and can’t be done by webmasters i.e. the algorithmic and the manual.

Automated Ranking

The algorithmic system uses calculation-based decision trees which are altered on average several hundred times a year. These incorporate many of the rules that decide what is an acceptable or unacceptable web page to be included in the search engine results, as well as deciding where acceptable pages rank for specific search engine queries.

Although nobody outside of Google is likely to know the exact make up of Google’s algorithms, Google’s design, content, technical and quality guidelines i.e. the rules for your web pages can be found here on Google’s website.

When it comes to Google’s ‘penalties’ for producing pages which don’t comply with Google’s guidelines it may be a case of achieving lower rankings in the search engine for less important elements, or not being ranked until the problems have been rectified.

As part of Google’s ‘Caffeine’ indexing system, Google sends out the Googlebot (its information gathering software) to gather information about your web pages. The pages can then be categorised, ranked, and listed according to Google’s algorithms. For pages which aren’t listed because of an algorithmic penalty it’s simply a case of putting things right before the next time the ‘bot’ comes around.

The other main system of ensuring compliance with Google’s rules is the manual system.

This system is essentially the domain of Google’s ‘Web Spam Team’. Google has a special form where you, or any other Web user (including your competitors) can report ‘spam’ activity i.e. sometimes deliberate activity that goes against Google’s guidelines which is use purely to boost rankings.

The penalties for doing so are generally ‘time outs’. These are fixed periods of time which vary in length depending on the severity of the transgression that the offending pages will not be listed in Google’s search engine results.

For example, hidden text could result in a 30 day time out. During this period however, if the transgression is put right it is possible to submit a ‘re-consideration request’ to Google. Your page could then be re-investigated and if found to be OK, the ‘time out’ could be revoked and could therefore re-enter the search engine results.

Where SEO Fits

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a way of getting your pages listed higher in the Search Engine Results for your chosen key phrases according to how well the pages fit into Google’s Guidelines, the nature of their content, and by indicators of how important the pages are from elsewhere across the Web e.g. the quality of the incoming links.

Google itself recognises the importance of this to webmasters and even provides its own new guide to SEO (introduced at the end of 2010) which can be downloaded here. Google uses approximately 200 different ‘signals’ both ‘on’ and ‘off page’ to arrive at a ranking. Competitor activity, your own activity (or lack of activity) and Google’s algorithmic changes can result in changes in these rankings.

As the owner of YouTube, Google also makes use of this platform to make its own announcements and to answer users’ questions via its current spokesperson Matt Cutts. These video clips can provide a good deal of information and insights into nature of Google and its future plans as well as some helpful SEO and conversion information.

Recent Relevant Google Activity

Towards the end of 2010 Google changed not just its indexing system, but also the way we are able to search Google, and how many of the search engine results are displayed. The results of the introduction of the Google Caffeine indexing system in June 2010, Google Instant in September 2010, and Google Instant Preview in November 2010 were all designed to allow Google to gather and display information about new content more quickly, and to Google users to find and decide which content to access more quickly easily.

Current Trends

There is currently a visible push from Google (and now in February 2011 from Bing) towards a greater local focus and personalisation in search engine results. Where Google is concerned this appears to increase the need for Webmasters to sign up to Google Tools and Google Places.