Google is a super popular search engine, but what exactly is Google Search? The goal of this article is to provide you with a basic understanding of how Google Search works.
Google works by crawling and indexing the web, searching for relevant information. It then ranks results according to what it knows about you, your interests and behavior patterns from previous searches.
When you type a query into Search, Google looks at its index of billions of documents (pages on websites) to see if there’s something matching your request. If not, it sends signals back through its servers to those sites that contain what you’re looking for; this process is called “search engine optimization.”
Crawling and Indexing
When you perform a search, the Google Search Engine sends a request to your web server. The server returns the requested page and it’s parsed by our computers.
The information stored in our index is:
- Information about what pages exist on the site (a list of URLs)
- Information about the content of those pages (how much text there is, what it says)
- Information about how often people visit each page (the number of times they click on it when they do a search) The first two types of data are called “metadata” because they’re information about other information.
Crawling
Google crawls the web to find new content, which it then indexes and ranks. A lot of this happens automatically—Google doesn’t need to think about how often it should crawl the web, or where in the world it should be doing so.
The frequency at which Google crawls sites depends on several factors:
- How long ago a page was created
- Whether or not that page has been linked from other sites (for example, if you share an article on Facebook, this counts as another link)
- Whether or not Google thinks there might be other pages on your site that offer more relevant information than what you are displaying right now
Indexing
Indexing is the process of storing a document in the search engine’s database. In other words, it’s what happens when you run Google or Bing and type in your query (like “what does a cat say?”).
Indexing is an incredibly complex process that involves many steps. For example:
- The indexer scans each page of every website they crawl
- They record all links between pages on those sites—including internal links between pages within the same site and external links to other websites
Ranking
Google’s ranking algorithm is a complex set of factors that determine what webpages appear in search results. There are many ways to rank pages, but the main ones are:
- Authority – which means how trusted a website or blog is by other websites and blogs. If you have lots of backlinks from other sites that link to your page, this will help boost its authority score;
- Relevance – how relevant the content on each page is relative to query terms; and
- User Experience (UX) – this takes into account whether users find something useful when they visit your site or not.
Serving Results
Google has a lot of servers, and it uses them to serve results to users across the world. The more people use Google Search, the more data it can collect about what you’re looking for. This data helps Google create better search results and make sure that no matter where you are or what time of day it is in your local time zone, there’s always something relevant for you to find.
Google also serves results from its server quickly so that everyone gets an optimal experience when searching—even if they’re searching on their phone while waiting at the doctor’s office!
Understanding how Google Search Works is helpful when developing SEO strategies.
Knowing how Google Search Works is helpful when developing SEO strategies.
- Optimizing your content can be a challenge, but knowing how to use the right tools can help you achieve success.
- Understanding how Google Search Works can help you optimize your website and its pages in particular.
It’s important to remember that search engines like Google are constantly evolving, and there are many things you can do to increase your chances of ranking higher in their results. The more you understand about how Google Search Works and how it affects your website or business, the better off you will be when developing strategies for increasing visibility in an increasingly competitive industry! If you have any questions about this article or how it affects your company, please contact us today. We’d be happy to help!