hello there are several ways search engines can benefit from users. recently I heard that google is the leading search engine in the world and it raises millions of shillings daily. I am anxious to know apart from online advertisements what are other things that make these people to raise their money.
Apart from online advertising (Google adwords) they raise money
from their
stockholders.
On A Side Note
Google has the highest CTR (Click through rate) of all search engines.
Their CTR is 8% meaning... out of every 100 people searching on
google 8 will click on their ads. On average google receives 293.8million
searches per day (23.504 million clicks per day).
Adwords charges advertiser per click (hence we get the term pay per click).
So every time someone clicks an ad on google (adwords) or on it's
contextual network partners (adsense) google makes $$$.
On some market, keywords like ( insurance, mortgage, payday loan) CPC
( Pay per click cost) can go as high as $100 per click meaning every time
someone clicks an ad containing words like "car insurance" that advertiser
pays google $100.
To conclude google makes most of their money from ad revenue ( cash with
no refund ) rather than selling stocks.
Below is a snapshot of an estimate on what google will charge a bidder
on those keywords. You can see a phrase like "swift car insurance" cost
more than $140 a click.
Just my two cents.