Today, 27 September, Google celebrates its birthday. In 2026 that makes it 28 years old. What began as a university research project called BackRub now decides, every single day, which local plumbers, salons, solicitors and shops get the phone call. So while the rest of the internet is sharing birthday Doodles, here is a quick look at what 28 years of Google means for a UK small business, and what to do about it this week.

Quick answer: Google celebrates its birthday on 27 September and turns 28 in 2026. The company was incorporated in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. For small businesses, the lesson of those 28 years is simple: Google has always rewarded websites that answer real questions clearly and are kept fresh, and in the age of AI Overviews that matters more than ever.

Why does Google celebrate its birthday on 27 September?

Google was incorporated in September 1998, but the exact "birthday" has moved around over the years. Early birthday Doodles appeared on different dates in September before Google settled on 27 September, which it has used for its celebrations ever since. The google.com domain itself was registered a year earlier, in September 1997, while Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still PhD students at Stanford University.

The famous first office was a rented garage in Menlo Park, California. From there, the idea of ranking web pages by how many other trusted pages linked to them (the PageRank idea) grew into the search engine most of your customers use without thinking about it.

What has changed in 28 years of Google search?

A lot. A business owner who put up a website in the early 2000s would barely recognise today's results page:

What has NOT changed?

Here is the good news. Underneath all of those changes, the thing Google rewards has stayed remarkably steady for 28 years:

AI Overviews have not replaced these basics; they have made them more important. The AI summaries are built from pages that clearly answer questions. If your website doesn't, someone else's will be quoted instead.

A birthday checklist for your website

Use Google's birthday as an excuse to spend 20 minutes on these:

  1. Google yourself on your phone. Search your main service plus your town. Where do you appear, and who is above you?
  2. Check your Google Business Profile. Opening hours, services, photos and a recent post. Reply to any unanswered reviews.
  3. Look at your newest blog post. If it's more than a month old, Google has no fresh reason to visit.
  4. Write down five questions customers ask you. Each one is an article waiting to be written, and each one is a chance to be the answer an AI Overview quotes.
  5. Ask two happy customers for a review. Reviews remain one of the strongest local signals.

Let Auto-SEO do the "keep publishing" part

The hardest item on that list for most business owners is the one that never ends: publishing useful, well-structured articles every week. That's exactly what Auto-SEO does. We research the questions your customers are searching for, write articles in plain English with clear answers near the top, add images and internal links, and publish them straight to your website on autopilot, so Google (and the AI tools built on it) always has something new and useful to show.

Happy 28th birthday, Google. Here's to your customers being the ones it finds.

Frequently asked questions

How old is Google in 2026?

Google turns 28 in 2026. It was incorporated in September 1998 and celebrates its birthday on 27 September.

Who founded Google?

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who met as PhD students at Stanford University. The search engine started life as a research project called BackRub.

Does Google still reward regular blogging?

Yes, when the content is genuinely useful. Regularly publishing clear answers to real customer questions gives Google more pages to rank and gives AI Overviews more reasons to quote your site.