Google Planet

Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins

Forget the computer era or the Internet Age, centuries from now our current era will probably be called the age of Google. This assumption is not exactly a leap of faith, and Google has quickly penetrated into mainstream culture to become an underlying factor of daily life in a context of tightened our life.

But never make the mistake of trying to define Google as just a search engine or you miss the true calling of this little "Backrub, which was the original name used by its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996.

Google as we now know it debuted in 1998. The Google name is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After everything is said and done, it will most likely refer to Google's net worth - monetary or otherwise.

But forget search engine, regardless of the intentions of the founders "or the objectives of the company, Google is and has always been the ultimate marketing machine. A massive marketing machine that is just now ready and aiming for heights higher and higher. These heights seem to increase each day as Google quietly rolls on the program after the program.

All noble ambitions aside, Google is the perfect marketing machine. Google did not equal and it is very close to gaining control over the real power behind all marketing, which is information.

The marketing information. The information is put on the market.

Great is placing on the market providing the right information at the right time. Google more than any other entity on the web or in the world, moreover, fulfills this criterion at its heart. Google has rewritten the book on how products are marketed.

Google now has more than 60% of search traffic to the United States, with a staggering 7.3 billion searches per month. In some countries Google's search share is 80% or more. (Source: comScore) Webmasters who have number one keyword listings in all three major search engines know Google is the only game worth playing because it offers by far the most traffic.

While MSN and Yahoo are still the main actors and are listed in the top 5 traffic sites on the web, what most people do not realize is that (unlike the other two), almost all traffic from Google traffic. From a marketing standpoint, it is extremely important since search traffic can provide the most conversions (sales) mainly because it allows you to capture the potential customer or client when they are in the right mindset for buy or to perform an action.

Obviously the key to successful marketing is to find buyers and customers of your products and services. Google has built as the ultimate "intermediary" as more and more of world affairs is conducted in cyberspace. And as everyone knows the "intermediate" can reap huge profits and hold enormous power.

Google in its Adsense program, now offers CPA or Cost Per Action where marketers can now receive larger returns to display links from Google on their web pages. As any marketing professional will tell you, you can get 10 times the revenue by promoting affiliate products rather than the Adsense code on your sites. But by adding CPA and other affiliate products in the AdSense program, Google has made it more attractive to serious online marketers.

Another step in this direction, even the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google, which includes the massive online Performics affiliate marketing network. This means that Google can now put any customer full-circle from initial research to the fund.

This can have disastrous consequences for the major affiliate networks like Commission Junction lucrative third and LinkShare. Online marketing and e-commerce is growing at a blisterin.