What Makes the Google Search Engine - and Leadership - So Good

Friday's post looked at what search engine optimization can can teach us about leadership. Today, let's look at what we can learn about leadership from Google and how it manages its search engine infrastructure.

First some perspective from John Dvorak's Inside Track (PC Magazine, April 2006):

"Anyone who runs a blog can clearly see the search engine bots as they roam through a Web site. The Google bots will show up and scan the site perhaps ten times as frequently as either the MSN or the Yahoo! bots. Combining the MSN and Yahoo! bots still does not even come close to the Google bots' level of activity.

"This is the real key to Google's success in search. Google is better because it works harder - or at least the computers work harder. Everybody wants to believe that there is some magical algorithm that makes Google the winner. That's not it. It's the relentless crawling of the Net that does the job.

"[And] Google continues to make this network of Web crawlers bigger by the day."

So what's this got to do with Leadership? I submit that if you increase your scanning of the world around you (as the Googlebots do) and incorporate what you find into:

• the questions you ask
• the answers you give
• the views you hold
• the directives you give
• the conversations you have
• the conclusions you reach
• the 'pinging' you do
• the activities you engage in

...you'll become a a better leader - a much better leader.

Try it this week and see for yourself.