When Brett Satterfield started building a website for his family's business, he turned to Google search for help finding how-to sites and instructions.

Soon he became so successful -- and his narrative so pitch-perfect -- that Google turned to him for help.

Mr. Satterfield took the 88-year-old Rollier's Hardware store in Mt. Lebanon online, and the storied retailer on Washington Road found itself competing with big-box operations.

He fielded Google search traffic to his retail site from across the country with the help of Google AdWords, and was subsequently drafted as a freelance supporter by the company that helped him get there.

On the Internet, "you can look big without being big," he said.

It helps to use programs as big as Google's, which enjoys a dominant market share and earned reputation as a continual game-changer -- or, in industry parlance, "disrupter" -- across multiple industries.

Mr. Satterfield's story offers a glimpse of how a quiet outlet not known outside its community can rub digital elbows with what some hail as Silicon Valley's shining light -- or deride as the Wal-Mart of the Web.

Mr. Satterfield's resume includes a finance degree and brief stint at Federated Investors, but his age -- 27 -- was qualification enough to become the default computer guy for his family's business. The store, which is run by his father and two uncles, had little online presence before Mr. Satterfield joined them in 2007.

As Mr. Satterfield brainstormed Web ideas, his father offered a suggestion that might help the hardware store find its niche online: "Why don't we just focus on hard-to-find items?" he asked.

A name was born.

HardToFindItems.com launched two years ago and now operates out of an upstairs office in the 52,000-square-foot store on Washington Road. While floor sales go on below, Mr. Satterfield works behind a laptop in sleek red Puma shoes. His younger brother, Derek, helps with graphic design.

Online sales are currently up about 700 percent since last year, though Mr. Satterfield admits it's easy to go "to something from nothing" on the Web.

So far this year, the store's online efforts have seen about $300,000 in revenue through Amazon sales and about $55,000 from sales on its own site -- which shoppers usually discover through Google.

Think of Google AdWords as a "matchmaking service between businesses and customers," said April Anderson, head of retail for AdWords.

The program, launched in 2000, was initially powered by small business owners and is now a main source of the company's revenue. Google posted nearly $23 billion in advertising revenue last year.

The program allows advertisers like Mr. Satterfield to target customers by matching their advertisements with certain search queries.

Ads for Mr. Satterfield's website appear above or to the right of specific Google searches. For example, a search of "white wire light sets" will yield a page where HardToFindItems.com is the top-ranked ad.

Mr. Satterfield pays Google per customer click and can track metrics on the origin and activity of each ad clicker. From October 2009 to January 2010, the average cost-per-click was 33 cents, and the company spent about $100 per day.

The program can be at once totally personalized and completely automated. Exhibit A: "Burnout 2," a car-racing video game, is not to be confused with "Burnout II," an organic weed killer sold on Mr. Satterfield's site. He quickly fixed that problem with finer keyword limitations.

As revenue poured in, Mr. Satterfield's story became an American metaphor: A homegrown community standard competes with faceless, corporate contenders.

Google -- a company built on successful finds -- didn't miss this.

Though clearly comfortable with AdWords, Mr. Satterfield attended a Google 101 session for AdWord novices at the company's Pittsburgh office in Oakland. He soon emerged as the star student.

He shared his effort with a Google associate who said it was "a good match, story-wise," Mr. Satterfield said. The associate passed Mr. Satterfield onto Google's public relations team in California.

"Within our AdWords base we're constantly looking for clients with interesting trends," said Google spokeswoman Deanna Yick. Mr. Satterfield's example showcased a mom-and-pop client working through a nationwide recession -- with Google's help.

The world's dominant search company "wanted to help smaller businesses compete with giants," Mr. Satterfield said.

He talked with Ms. Yick in October about some "joint PR" for the two of them, he said.

"He wasn't working with our team directly" when the website was created, she said.

"That's the beauty of it as well; the program is so intuitive."

A symbiotic relationship between Rollier's and Google formed -- similar to a politician finding the perfect local case study for his stump speech -- and a familiar Mt. Lebanon hardware store suddenly personalized an enigmatic Mountain View, Calif., corporation.

Ms. Yick called to learn more about Mr. Satterfield's story and passed it along to the Pittsburgh media as an example of a company as large as Google helping a local store.

Who wouldn't want Google's help?

"Obviously Google is a much better source to try and pitch this" with its name recognition, Mr. Satterfield said. Ms. Yick checked in with him before and after interviews.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt previously told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that his company is often mistakenly perceived as an omnipotent force, as "more powerful than we really are."

No money is exchanged in the PR agreement between the Goliath company and its David client, but Google gained a makeshift spokesperson whose endorsement is backed up by firsthand results.

And they picked a good one: Mr. Satterfield discusses AdWords with an authority typically reserved for those with note cards.

"It's what I do," he said.

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