Search
Our approach to Search

People around the world turn to Search to find information, learn about topics of interest, and make important decisions. We know that people rely on us, so our commitment will never waver. As technology evolves, we will continue to help everyone find the information that they’re looking for.

We believe that Search should:

Deliver the most relevant and reliable information available
Every day, fifteen per cent of searches are ones that we haven't seen before, so we use automated systems to get you the most relevant and reliable information that we can find. To help you find what you're looking for, these systems consider many factors, including the words in your query, the content of pages, the expertise of sources, and your language and location. To measure whether people continue to find our results relevant and reliable, we have a rigorous process that involves extensive testing and the use of quality raters who ensure that our automated systems produce great results as a human would expect.
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Maximise access to information

Google’s mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. That's why Search makes it easy to discover a broad range of information from a wide variety of sources. Some information is simple, like the height of the Eiffel Tower. For more complex topics, Search is a tool to explore many angles so that you can form your own understanding of the world.

To keep information accessible, we only remove content from our search results in limited circumstances, such as compliance with local laws or site owner requests.

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Present information in the most useful way
Today, information exists not just on web pages but in images, videos, news, sports scores and many other types of content. So if you’re searching for directions, we show a map. Or when you’re looking for the weather or stock prices, we show the most up-to-the-minute information. We use approachable language and design to guide you through your experience on Search, and test our approach broadly to make sure that we’re presenting information in the most useful way.
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Protect your privacy
Guided by our privacy principles, we create tools and explanations to help you understand how we use data to make Search more helpful to you. For example, using your Search history, Google can auto-complete your searches. So if you start to search for 'barcelona', auto-complete might predict past places or sights that you searched for before you've even finished typing them. When you use our products, you trust us with your data, and it’s our responsibility to keep your data private, safe and secure. That’s why we build controls so that you can choose the privacy settings that are right for you or even permanently delete your data. To keep your data secure, we’ve built some of the most advanced security infrastructure in the world. And we'll never sell your personal information to anyone. We make money from advertising, not by selling personal information.
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Sell ads, nothing more

Ads are how Search remains accessible to everyone. But ads are the only thing that we sell.

We don’t charge anyone to appear in our search index. Whether a business, individual or organisation buys ads is not a factor in our Search algorithms. We never provide special treatment to advertisers in how our Search algorithms rank their websites, and nobody can pay us to do so.

Ads are only displayed if we believe that they’re relevant to the Search terms that you entered. For most searches, we show no ads at all. When we do show ads, they’re always labelled so that you can tell them apart from Search results.

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Help creators succeed online
To support a healthy ecosystem of fresh and useful content in all the world’s languages, we help people, publishers and businesses of all sizes succeed and be found by others. We do this by sending visitors to websites small and large through our search results, or by connections such as listing business addresses and phone numbers. We don't charge to be in our search listings, and we also provide free tools and resources to help site owners be successful.
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Learn more about
How we guard your privacy and security
How to make your site successful in our Search Central
The latest information in our research papers
Recent data about privacy, security and access to information in our Transparency Report