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 people rely on us so our commitment will never waver. As technology evolves, we will continue to help everyone find the information they’re looking for.

We believe Search should:

Deliver the most relevant and reliable information available
Every day, fifteen percent of searches are ones we haven't seen before, so we use automated systems to get you the most relevant and reliable information 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 our automated systems produce great results as a human would expect.
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Maximize access to information

Google’s mission is to organize 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 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 webpages 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 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 autocomplete your searches. So if you start to search for "barcelona", autocomplete might predict past places or sights 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 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 we sell.

We don’t charge anyone to appear in our search index. Whether a business, individual or organization 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 they’re relevant to the search terms you entered. For most searches, we show no ads at all. When we do show ads, they’re always labeled so 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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