How far does your Google search query travel? According to Google,1,500 miles on average.

This is a factoid Google Fellow Ben Gomes dropped in an interview with ReadWriteWeb about the inner workings of Google Search. There wasn’t much in the way of new information revealed in the interview, but like Google’s own videos on the topic, it’s still interesting.

“The query is sent back to Google through the Internet,” Gomes told Jon Mitchell. “Typically, this is a journey of over 750 miles in either direction. We have data centers all over the world, but, on average, your query travels about 1,500 miles.”

The stat has been dropped by Google a few times before, but I’ve not seen much attention brought to it.

Google has data centers in:

• Berkeley County, South Carolina
• Council Bluffs, Iowa
• Douglas County, Georgia
• Mayes County, Oklahoma
• Lenoir, North Carolina
• The Dalles, Oregon
• Hamina, Finland
• St Ghislain, Belgium
• Hong Kong
• Singapore

On a side note, notice the poor relevancy of the results in the image. This is without “Search Plus Your World“. They’re not much better with it turned on.