Aside from being a well-known search engine, Google is also a successful advertising company. We make most of our revenue from the ads shown next to our search results, on our other websites, and on the websites of our partners. Through these tools we help many others make a living, too. This report presents a conservative estimate of Google’s economic impact on businesses across the U.S. based on three core parts of our business: Google Search and AdWords, AdSense, and Google Grants.
Google directs many potential customers to businesses for free via our search results. Through a program called AdWords, Google also directs many potential customers to businesses via the sponsored links you see above and to the right of the search results. To use AdWords, businesses create short text ads and bid in an online auction for the keywords they want those ads associated with. So a yoga teacher might bid on the phrase "beginner yoga classes denver." When someone types those words into Google they will see the yoga teacher's ad next to the search results.
AdSense is a program website publishers can use to run ads on their websites and make money from their content. For example, if you publish a website or blog about dog names and puppy training, your readers may see an ad for dog grooming or other dog services next to your content. Website publishers large and small receive a majority of the revenue earned from every ad – an important source of income for many content creators.
The Google Grants program offers free advertising to non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations. Grants recipients can spend up to $10,000 a month on ads that they use to fundraise, educate the public, and more. Since the program began in 2003, Google has supported non-profits worldwide with more than $860 million in advertising.
Economic Impact