Did you know that over 5 billion searches are performed on Google every single day? If you are a small business owner, it can be really helpful learning how does a search engine work. This will ensure that your business site is seen when people are searching for what you have to offer.
We have put together this simple guide to teach you more in depth about search engines at work. Read on to learn more.
Search Engine Crawling
This is the discovery process where a search engine such as Google sends out “crawlers” or a team of robots. These mini robots help find new content such as videos, images, PDFs, webpages, etc. The crawling process involves looking at keywords, page titles, headers, and links.
Keep in mind that if the content with the keywords in your site are hidden too many clicks away from your homepage, it will deter the crawlers, making them give up.
Indexing
When all the information on a site is crawled, then this is indexed in with other related content. Selected pieces of the information crawled is stored into its own virtual facilities. A good illustration is a library that puts similar books in the same section to make it easy for people to find.
This is similar to how a search engine works, except it is a lot more information because of the amount of websites there are around the world. To give you an idea of how much work this entails, think about indexing all the libraries’ books around the entire globe.
Ranking
When a search engine ranks the websites it crawls and indexes, it bases it on both the popularity of the website (how many people visit the site) and the relevance of the topics. Search engines are kind of like answer machines that will show the person searching, results for what they are asking in their search.
The most basic search engines look at the frequency of the keyword that is being searched, but crawlers have become smarter in knowing when someone’s page just has a bunch of keywords stuffed together that do not make sense.
URLs
Search engines also look at URLs found on websites. They look for other sites that have your website’s URL in their pages because this shows them that others recommend your page (giving it more authority). Crawlers also look for what URLs you have linked within your pages and posts.
This is why you want to include links to only reputable sites within your niche, and also add internal links to other pages on your own site.
Now You Know How Does a Search Engine Work
Now that we answered the question “how does a search engine work?” you can start looking for ways to improve your business search engine results. The goal for every business is to land on the first page of Google so that people know you exist.
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