Perhaps there is no greater testament to Google’s (GOOG) success than the fact that it has become a verb. We google for information in the same sense as we drink water. However, Google as a company has grown far beyond search. In this article, we’ll look at the story behind Google’s success Read more: The Story Behind Google's Success (GOOG) Taming the Sea of Information Google’s original business was creating algorithms to help people sort quickly through the rapidly growing amount of content being put online. Rather than employ editors and researchers to curate links for specific queries, Google began building algorithms that scored the content it was indexing against specific criteria. These included novel concepts like inbound links from trusted sources as well as standard measures like keyword frequency and page titles. All of these pieces came together in a pagerank that decided where a site would display on a specific query. Using this scoring approach, Google was able to serve up more accurate results than many of the existing search engines that preceded it in the market. The algorithm was — and still is — being constantly tweaked and updated to give users the most relevant results. Because it started strong and just kept getting better and better, Google became the go-to search engine for the internet in the space of a few years. Monetizing Search: Adwords The launch and subsequent iterations of the search algorithm set the method that Google has brought to every subsequent product. Although they had already proven successful at prototyping and improving, Google wasn’t initially making a lot of money for having the best search page on the market. Three years into its existence, Google took the first step towards monetizing its position in search by introducing Google Adwords. Initially using the CPM model where advertisers paid for impressions rather than clicks, Adwords underwhelmed at first. Again, Google started tweaking and updating the Adwords platform in the same way it iterated the search engine algorithms. Within three years, Adwords transformed into an automated, pay-per-click ad auction that brought the concept of relevance to digital advertising. Google didn’t simply focus on selling ads to advertisers on any keyword, and instead offered relevant ads thatresulted in more clicks and more revenue for Google. To this day, Adwords generates the automatic revenue that powers Google’s activities. Adwords was followed by Adsense, which allowed anyone with a website to access the Google advertising inventory, effectively setting up Google for dominance in digital advertising. (For more, see: How The Internet Web Ad Industry Works.)