Google's Secret Weapon

"Algorithms are like saw mills, and saw mills require lumber," says Steve Arnold, of Arnold IT, who consults for a bulge bracket Wall Street investment bank about Google. "Data is the lumber, and the more data you have, the more efficiently you can run the saw mill."

And when it comes to search, data is one of the behind-the-scenes reasons for Google's domination of the search market.

The Secret to Better Search Results

Google's data advantage breaks down along two lines. The first is in its ability to crawl the Web and index Web sites. Here, the company's clever computer formulas, massive investment in technology infrastructure and well-documented use of distributed computing -- computer processing where different parts of a program can be run on many computers at the same time -- give it a vital edge.

"Microsoft and Yahoo! have tentacles crawling the Web too, but Google has the longest tentacles of them all," says Riza Berkan, CEO of search engine Hakia.

But how Google is able to deliver better search results as more queries are run on its search engine is key to understanding why data could allow it to extend its dominance.

For starters, Google can create better "information taxonomies" -- or groups of topics -- than other search engines, says Kortikar.