As you’ve no doubt seen, Google is 20 years old today.
One of the most powerful companies in the world, online and off, I believe kids need to know more about it.
Yes, they know about Google Classroom, Docs, Sheets, Gmail, Drive and search, but they often don’t know how Google makes most of its money or many of the other tools and services it offers, or how it can seriously impact businesses all over the world every time it updates its search algorithm (hundreds of times every year).
Now owned by Alphabet Inc., Google is one of the core subjects which I believe should form an inted curriculum as it does and offers so much more (and has a lot more clout) than many people realise, including:
- Algorithm changes – about 500–600 times every year. Most are minor, some are major (such as Google Panda and Google Penguin) and affect search results in significant ways.
- Search:
- Analytics – a free tool to publishers of websites that tracks and provides detailed data on traffic.
- AdWords – the bread and butter of Google’s revenue. AdWords is Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) search-based advertising platform.
- AdSense – the same ad platform as AdWords but on the other side of the fence. AdSense is how publishers place (and earn from) Google ads in their content.
- Search tools – want info about something that’s recent and more relevant? When you’ve entered your search term, click on tools…
then Any time, then Past year or Past month:
