Google Anaylsis

Recommendations for Google

Google’s Competitive Advantage

Key to Google’s competitive advantage in the search industry is the accuracy, relevancy and presentation of both the search results and the search-based ads. An important point is also the speed of the search results generation. These characteristics draw Internet users to prefer Google’s search engine over others, and creates a superior value perception, which ultimately draws in more customers (Internet advertisers) for Google. With the view to improve these characteristics of the search results and search-based ads so as to sustain Google’s competitive advantage in the search industry, I suggest the following:

Improve the capability of the search engine

Google had initially differentiated its search engine by the use of its PageRank technology and text-matching techniques. While this has since served the company very well, the search engine should not remain stagnant without new innovations. Already, Microsoft is moving in to better its search engine through the use of semantic search technology, which offers potentially better relevancy. (Gamble, 2010, p. 48). Google should follow suit, not necessarily to develop semantic technology only, but any other technology that will enable faster and more relevant results for Internet users.

The challenge here is that improving the search engine to produce more relevant results than currently possible using semantic or other technology might prove difficult. There might be trade-offs like the speed of returned results. Already Microsoft is having trouble in this aspect. (Gamble, 2010, p. 48) Short term trade-offs also include investing much more in R&D in this area, without the guarantee of positive outcomes. Given Google’s dominance in the search industry, it may also become complacent and not think it is worthwhile pursing this, when it can invest time, effort and money into other initiatives. Perhaps the easier improvement to implement would be to...