In today’s wired world, it’s not enough to simply go online. Savvy business owners need to know how to use the Internet in order to promote their business, do networking and gain new customers. Google is among the titans of the technology industry. From its humble beginnings in a garage in Menlo Park, Google is now the premier search engine of the Internet.
Google started small. It was the brainchild of two Stanford graduate students whose names are now widely known – Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They were said to disagree about everything when they initially met. But in 1996, Page and Brin started working together on a search engine called BackRub.
In 1997, they changed its name to Google, patterned after the word googol. This is a mathematical term for the number that starts with the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Page and Brin chose this name because they had an ambitious goal: to organize the almost endless data that could be found on the Internet.
Now that almost every megabyte of data is just a mouse click away, business owners will need to know how to manage their business’s online presence. Even when it comes to something as seemingly simple as choosing a brand name, you have to keep the process of Google searching in mind. Google searches are based on rankings and Google has a system of ranking and rating personal and business names.
First of all, some search queries are obvious. When a reader googles catnip for example, there can be no doubt that she’s looking for catnip. There are times however when a single word has several different meanings, and it isn’t clear what information a Web searcher would like to view.
When this happens, Google will not give a user options. Instead, one will see a whole page of results based on only a single interpretation of a word. This will come in handy when deciding your future business name. Run a quick Google search using your future business name and see what comes up. If there are so-called dominant interpretations for that search request, then it will be sure to feature prominently in many of the search results.
For example, don’t name your company Yahoo Travel and Tours because all of the search results will be dominated by the Internet company if you try to search using the key word Yahoo. Don’t expect your company to ever make the first page of Google results if you pick a name that already has a dominant interpretation.
If there is no dominant brand with the same name as your business, then go ahead and use it. You might find it easier than you think to land on the first page of search results. It takes effort to come up with a unique business name that will stand out. It will take more effort to come up with a distinct business name for which there is no existing dominant interpretation. But don’t give up. Once you find the perfect name, the results will be worth it.
