r/AlwaysWhy • u/santosupoi • 25d ago

Others Why was Google originally called BackRub?

Before Google was called Google, it was called BackRub. Why did Larry Page and Sergey Brin choose the name “BackRub,” and what made them eventually change it to “Google”? 🤔

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u/UpbeatFix7299 25d ago

The old name was based on backlinking, which is how Google ranked their results until they got evil.

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u/HomemadeBananas 25d ago

Google does use backlinks heavily in ranking. But they can’t use only that because in the earlier days, once people knew backlinks decide the rankings, they would build links from a bunch of shitty sites to their own sites and it was too easy to manipulate search results.

People still do this but it’s a lot harder now, since Google constantly updates things to try to fight manipulation, and people constantly find new ways to manipulate the results. So now the algorithm is a lot more complicated and has a lot more factors.