Disrupting Google Search

In 2020, nearly 2/3rds of queries on Google ended on Google itself i.e., without clicking on an external link (organic or ad). This highlights how over time Google is increasingly showing the results for common queries inline (in its knowledge graph) rather than directing traffic to websites.

Especially in a work context, the data sources that might contain answers to queries are numerous and search is quite fragmented. People are searching through email, Google, their docs suite separately.

Per Wedbush, as of today, 80% of queries are still not monetized by ads (given not being of a commercial nature), so there continues to be a lot of room for Google to show more ads.

The key drivers of the business are: number of ad impressions/clicks and the effective price per impression/click.

Google Search is great at indexing most content based websites, but arguably doesn’t do a great job with indexing some of the more user generated content and different media sources such as short-form video.

Another example is Neeva which is a subscription-model based search engine which was founded by former Google execs. Neeva is ad-free and privacy-focused, and allows user to customize search results to their liking.

On a daily basis, 15 percent of queries submitted have never been seen before by Google's search engine. This highlights just how long the tail is of search (and also just how differently people phrase perhaps similar questions).

Another angle for disruption or chipping away at share is related to the horizontal, one-size fits all nature is by creating a more curated experience. As websites have started to game search engine optimization, the websites which rank at the top for many searches are because the algorithms like them rather than humans do.

From a vertical perspective, while Google Search fares well across the board, Retail is typically the largest vertical.

On mobile, Google still has to pony up $5-10B per year (and rising) to remain the default search engine on iOS.