Hi there, I am Praneeth.
In this blog, you will learn exactly advantages and disadvantages of google search engine.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
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Advantages and disadvantages of google
Advantages of google
1. Very accurate search results
One of the main advantages of using Google search engine is that you can find lots of amazing and very accurate search results for almost all the search terms you search on Google in whichever the category and language you want.
This is the main thing that separates and makes Google very user friendly and popular as compared to other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
Google has been investing in hiring best software engineers and investing millions and billions of dollars in improving the algorithm and it is as a matter of fact two to three updates in algorithms have been taking place in Google everyday so this definitely reflect in improved search results in Google.
We have seen some significant changes in the algorithm of Google like updates like penguin panda hummingbird rank brain and medic update all of this have made significant improvement and changes in the algorithm of Google which has improved the accuracy and bringing on relevant results in search results page.
For example when you search for something like how long does it take to smoke a brisket then you will find a clear answer of around 30 to 60 minutes per pound in the Google search engine and when you scroll down a bit in the search results space then you will find a section called people also ask section where you will also find some similar questions related to the target keyword you searched and when you click on those questions you will find the screen to expand and you can view the answer there so that you can learn more about the topic and more importantly when you search for any recipes then you will find a section where there are a Carousel of articles that display the recipe of that particular dish to guide you in preparing the recipe which is really great.
So what I am trying to say is that when you start searching for something on Google you will most likely end up getting almost all the knowledge required to complete the action using Google which is really great user experience.
2. Lots of filtering options
Another advantage of using Google search engine is that you can get lots of filtering options if you want to get specific search results from specific websites.
In order to access this filtering options all you need to do is to click on tools on Google desktop version and you can select the time period like whether you want the results to be not more than 24 hours hold or 1 month old or 1 year old or you can also create your own custom range and you can also select your results type.
You can also change the location to get different search results in Google for different local search terms or you can also use a VPN to get better local results and you can also search and get results in specific languages like Hindi or Telugu or Spanish.
As a matter of fact Google supports more than 150 languages in search engines, which is a really great thing.
And if you want to move one step further then there is something called as Google search operators which is for more advanced searchers like web developers and digital marketers.
For example if you have a website and you want to see what are the pages that are indexed on that particular website in Google then you can easily search for that using this search operator.
Site:abc.com/blog
And when you click on enter you will find out all the articles and pages that are related to this website will appear on Google search results so you can find out what are the pages that are indexed and what are those which are not been indexed in Google so you can work from there and you can find out more amazing list of search operators here.
3. Learn the answer right on the search page
Another advantage of using Google search engine is that you can learn and get the information about most common things like what is the distance between New York and Washington DC or what is the average temperature in California or how long does it take to become a Java developer or what is the net worth of Jeff Bezos and keywords related to this right on the search results page itself.
These results are called as feature snippets and they show up right on the search results page by getting some piece of information from top search results on Google.
And if you search for some celebrity or sportsmen like Virat Kohli or Cristiano Ronaldo then you can also find their social profiles like Instagram and Facebook profile right on the search results page so you can click on it and follow them and it can save you a lot of time using Google.
If you regularly use Google search engine then this can be ideally great benefit because you do not have to wait until the search results show up and then click on the web pages to find out the answer because you can find out the answer right on the search results page itself and it can save you a lot of time when searching answers.
Apart from getting the information you can also get lots of tools like calculators, currency converter, Celsius to Fahrenheit converter, inches to centimetre converter, time in specific location, Wi-Fi speed test, lyrics of particular songs and many more right on the search results page itself.
4. Google scholar is great
Out of more than 250 different services of Google, there is one service called Google scholar which is really great especially if you want to do some research on a higher level.
For those of you who do not know Google scholar provides a simple way to search scholarly literature and from this place you can find lots of articles thesis abstract quote opinions research papers from universities societies and various individual publishers and trustworthy sources so basically you can use this service if you want to do research in specific category using white papers and research publications.
This is different from Google search engine because it is not for normal users who just want to find out the answer for any simple question but if you are content creator or any research professor then you should be using the service to gain knowledge and learn more information or if you want to create some content at specific industry because you will be getting articles and studies and research papers from top universities and you can also find and also save articles which have been highly cited.
The main advantage of using Google scholar is the credibility and trust factor because if you use Google search engine then almost any website can rank on Google search engine if they have information to particular topic but the problem is that it is not really trustworthy because you do not know who is the person behind the website and what is his credibility but with Google scholar the articles and research papers published are from top universities and top publications which have high credibility and trust factor So you can easily rely on the information.
5. Books flights, find places, read news, find stocks & do shopping on google
As I mentioned earlier there are more than 250 different products of Google and most of the products of Google are used by billions of people worldwide so the reason why Google is one of the top companies in the world is not just because it has a great search engine but it has a great ecosystem just like Apple ecosystem, You can do almost anything using Google products like,
- You can use Google flight to book tickets or find out flights, find different classes, baggage allowances rate of flights, flight duration date hotels and many more
- You can also use Google news to find out latest news from top news publications like New York Times and CNN and also find news in specific categories like business or finance or entertainment in specific time period like five hours ago or three hours ago from specific country like India or America in specific language like English or Spanish and many more
- You can also use Google books to find out top ebooks in specific category, reviews and ratings of the book, highlight the text and many more
- You can also find out stocks and their prices, stock graph and many more using Google finance
- You can also do shopping on Google and also find out the prices, brands, offers and many more details about products on Google shopping
This is the reason why Google is one of the largest companies in the world because it has created an ecosystem using different products in different categories.
These are some of the main advantages of using Google.
6. It is one of the largest companies in the world.
Google is one of the largest companies and is constantly dominating the search engine market with over 90% of the total share.
Here are a few interesting facts about google.
- As per Statista, google earned over 134 billion dollars through ad revenue.
- Google receives over 63000 searches every second on any given day.
- Google owns about 200 companies in total.
- Google has 90% of the search engine market share value.
- An average person searches 3-4 searches on Google every single day.
With these facts in place, it is no brainer that Google is one of the largest companies in the world and increasing its revenue and growth further and further,
Google currently ranks in the 29th position as per Wikipedia.
This is a result of the next advantages of google with people.
Disadvantages of google
1. No rewards like bing
One of the main disadvantages of using Google search engine is that it does not have any rewards system as compared to its competitor search engine bing which is owned by Microsoft.
Without getting into much details, Bing has this reward system where it will reward users who regularly search for different topics on bing search engine and give them some points that they can use it to redeem as gift cards and get discounts for various shopping items so basically bing is trying to increase people to use its service so that it can make money through ads and this is not a new strategy that is used by the brands as many other companies use such strategy like Facebook Amazon Flipkart Starbucks etc have strategies of rewards but it kind of makes sense with Google not having this strategy because Google has the monopoly of search engine industry, 92% of the search engine industry is currently owned by Google and it is the largest search engine in the world, whereas bing which is the second most popular search engine has 3.2% of the market share so you can see because Google has a big monopoly so it does not have to create any reward system to encourage people to use its service but still it is worth mentioning and it is disadvantage of using Google because if you use other search engines like bing you can save some money through rewards.
2. Not so good image search results
Another disadvantage of using Google search engine is that the image search engine of Google or videos search is actually not very user friendly and accurate as compared to the text and normal search engine of Google.
Even though Google presents a lot of videos and images in normal search results page but if you only want to find out Google videos then the search engine in that category is not very user friendly and accurate as compared to the normal articles.
3. Decreasing CTR to web pages
Another disadvantage of using Google search engine especially for bloggers and digital marketers is that the click through rate to websites or web pages has been going down over the period of time especially after the introduction of featured snippets on Google search results page which will enable the results to appear right on the search results page without the user clicking on the page to find out the answer.
Because of this for example if you search for any keyword like how long does it take to become a software developer then you will find an answer instantly on the Google search results page as shown in the image below
But without this feature snippet a normal user when he searches for that keyword would have to click on an article that is listed on Google to find out the answer but after this featured snippet, the number of people who click on the articles to find out what information is getting lower and lower every year and this means there is lesser traffic you can get from Google due to featured snippet.
This is one of the main disadvantages of using Google especially for bloggers because they are not getting lot of traffic from Google now as compared to what they used to get a couple of years ago before featured snippet update.
4. Penalizing sites badly.
You have understood how good google is regarding presenting the most relevant results to the users on the search results page.
Every new update of google’s algorithms creates a lot of anxiety and nervousness to hundreds and thousands of bloggers and website owners who rely on Google for traffic and income.
Basically google’s updates hurt a lot of bloggers and webmasters’ livelihood because they all are dependent on Google for traffic.
The problem is, many people try to trick the algorithms of Google or manipulate google for higher rankings artificially by using bad SEO practices such as,
- Creating spammy backlinks.
- Creating low-quality content.
- Keyword stuffing.
- Deceptive redirects.
- Not following the standards of Google.
Google penalizes badly these websites and if you don’t know what a penalty is,
It is a manual action report by google which appears in your search console which is a punishment to your website from google.
A penalty from google leads to,
- Lower rankings in google.
- Lower traffic from google.
- Lower visibility of the website on google.
With updates in the past like panda and penguin google has hit hundreds and thousands of webmasters and hit them badly for following bad SEO practices for ranking high on search engines.
It is not that you as a website owner or a blogger, all can recover from the penalty but it takes time and affects your income and livelihood by these updates and penalties from Google.
5. Always tracking users.
Another disadvantage of google is that, It is always tracking you and it kind of uses your information.
Even without using GPS or google maps, google can still track your location and your private information through your website searches.
Google tracks users’ information in various ways.
Here are ways google tracks users.
- Through permissions in google services like google maps and google searches.
- Through the searches you go on google and websites you click on search results.
- Through other google products, you use google docs and sheets.
- Through google-chrome permissions.
- Through android software, you use it on your mobile phone.
Google uses this data to test its decisions, make better products like whats the user’s interests in a specific country, what most people like and what they hate, and what people are searching for most, etc.
Google uses all this data for no negative and bad purpose but to grow the google company larger and bigger and serve more people on the planet.
This is also one of the reasons why Google and Facebook are one of the largest companies in terms of generating ad revenue.
Because these 2 companies have a lot of user data and having more user data you can attract more advertisers and show them the right ads and earn money.
This is one of the main reason why all the google product be it,
- Gmail.
- Youtube.
- Google docs, sheets, slides.
They are all free to use because by keeping them for free to use, Google can get more people in and more data and information of users in.
These are all the advantages and disadvantages of google search engine and as a company.
Ending remarks.
There you go, these are 11 advantages and disadvantages of the google search engine.
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