The Basics of Search Engines

The real question here is how do these search engines work?  With millions and millions of web pages in existence, how do search engines return a concise list of results to you so quickly?  Places like Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, and MSN have made tons of money offering their services.  Is it a toss-up or is there a strategy?

Well, the science and technology behind computer software and how it works would take a technical genius to figure out.  Suffice it to say, the search engine program is set up to “crawl” through all of those web pages and find what you are looking for.  If you’ve ever looked at what comes up in the subject line once you enter your request, you will see that all of your words are separated by plus signs.  Each word is looked for in website names, posts, and article titles.

The words or phrases that you enter into the search box are called “keywords”.  These keywords are used to fuel the search that the program makes through all of that data.  That is why search engine optimization has become so popular.  Articles that contain a high percentage of the most popular keywords will rank higher on the list of search results. 

Search engine optimization does not just extend to the content on your site.  Everything on your site needs to be optimized to ensure that it will find a way into search results.  Many website owners check their rankings to see how they are doing from week to week.  If you use your website for business, how easy you are to find is a big deal.

Once a web page has been viewed by a search engine, it is indexed.  This means that the information found there is stored in a massive file to be accessed later if search parameters warrant it.  Each page is not crawled for every search or the system would be really slow.  Indexing previously viewed pages speeds up the process of the search.

Pages are ranked when the search engine finds all of the pages that fit the search parameters.  There is a complex mathematical algorithm that governs this process.  The better your content is optimized using easily recognizable keywords, the higher your page will be ranked.  Check your pages.  The computer spiders and bots that go through these web pages will not choose to pursue complex website addresses, links that require an ID, websites that block such conduct and pages that require too many clicks to reach them.

The particulars are complicated, but the basics of what a search engine does are easy to understand.  If you want a search engine to find you, keep the wording simple and use popular terms.