Google Processes “Trillions” of Search Queries per Year
“Every year there are trillions of searches on Google.com and over half of those searches happen on mobile. “
This is the statement made by Google during their recent performance summit, confirming that the global search volume for all queries is two trillion (2,000,000,000,000) or more.
This is the first confirmation Google has made of its annual number of Global search queries in four years.
Back in 2012, the search giant confirmed that they handled 1.2 trillion searches per year.
Conflicting Figures
However, there is a slight problem with the statement, as the term “trillions of searches”, carries a huge amount of ambiguity.
Search industry journal Search Engine Land asked Google for clarification following the statement.
In response to this, Google said that it could be safely assumed that the figure was over two trillion.
Google did not specify just how exactly how much larger than two trillion the number of searches was.
It’s assumed by Search Industry Expert Danny Sullivan, that the actual figure is “probably close to the single or low double digits” of the trillions.
If the figure was two trillion, this would mean that Google’s search engine processes 63,000 searches every second and 5.5 billion (5,500,000,000) searches per day.
During their earlier years, Google were a lot more open about their number of annual searches, proudly admitting back in 1999 that they achieved one billion searches per year.
However as the company has grown, diversified and the numbers have become larger and more difficult to evaluate, the figures have become more ambiguous.
Other Revelations from Google’s Performance Summit
Google’s Performance Summit where the “trillions” statement was made, is also known as the Google Ads and Analytics Keynote and was held on the 24th of May. The summit covered the latest Google features and developments in organic and paid search.
The summit also revealed that Google Analytics tracks 500+ billion interactions a day and 30% of all mobile interactions are location based (“near me” queries).
Though there may be quite a deal of confusion over the exact numbers, it’s clear to see that search is continuing to increase in popularity and mobile will continue to play an important part in this growth.
