Search engines serve as a significant portal to the internet. They discover and organize masses of information on the internet, sort out the results from the web, and rank it in milliseconds. In this way, it makes decisions to provide you with the most relevant answers to your specific queries.
Search engines are generally composed of a database of information as well as algorithms that help in ranking your website for a given query. For example, Google whose database covers up to trillions of web pages and its algorithms considers various factors to provide you the most relevant results. Thus, the search engine employs some sophisticated algorithms to rank billions of websites and categorize it on the internet based upon the quality and relevancy of its contents.
Before presenting relevant answers to the user’s query, search engines calculate the overall quality of the web page. It includes loading time of the site, metadata, quality of the content present, relevancy to the query a user asked for, and so on. Understanding the process of search engine ranking will help you in learning how to create engaging content for audiences so that it ranks higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Let’s gain an insight into how these search engines work and some common procedures upon which this search engine algorithm is built.
How do these Search Engines Work?
Whenever you look out for information, the search engine makes some matching pages visible before you, after its algorithms rank them based upon its priorities. First of all, these search engine algorithms discover the newly published contents, understand what kind of information it has, and match it with that of the user’s query. Then it stores the information on servers and organizes it finally before presenting it to the users.
This break down process of a search engine is accomplished through three fundamental actions, namely, crawling, indexing, and ranking.
- Crawl: By using web crawlers, commonly known as search engine bots or spiders, these search engines crawl hundreds and billions of pages and review the web contents. From time to time, these web crawlers look at the sitemaps, URLs, and code of new as well as old websites to choose the content that is being displayed.
- Index: During the crawling process, the search engines store and organize the contents and information on the website. After that, when the indexing process starts, it reviews the website data for both positive as well as negative ranking signals. Moreover, it also stores it in the current location on their servers so that it can be displayed when the user places their queries.
- Rank: While indexing web pages, search engines start making decisions on where to show specific content on SERPs. Accordingly, it ranks the website based upon the user’s query. Ranking of a website is accomplished through a number of factors that include the quality and relevancy of its contents.
You should keep these factors in mind as the search engine algorithm makes a decision depending upon these processes. Furthermore, it also helps in creating engaging content that ranks well on different search engine platforms.
What is the Search Engine Algorithm?
The primary part of the SEO puzzle is merely discovering and indexing websites with relevant content. Whenever a user performs a search, the role of search engine algorithms come into play. It needs to rank the matching results of the user’s search by undergoing different factors. The main aim of a search engine algorithm is to rank the relevant web pages hierarchically.
It fulfills the user’s query by presenting before them a set of high-quality and relevant search results. However, every search engine works differently in ranking web pages because of their unique algorithms. Google is among the most used search engines.
How does Google Algorithm Work?
With an approximate of 3.5 billion searches every day, Google is by far the most used search engine. Google algorithms prioritize their website by looking at hundreds of factors and relevancy of the content.
At first, web crawlers crawl through different websites to collect enough information, and then they take it back to Google for indexing purposes. While indexing, it analyzes the website data which includes content, images, videos, etc. Also, it looks for some positive and negative ranking signals like the freshness of websites, keywords, and so on. During the indexing process, Google uses a knowledge base algorithm known as Knowledge Graph and a machine-learning algorithm called RankBrain.
After the indexing completes, it moves on to rank the pages on the SERPs. The ranking is done based upon what a user is looking for and how it interacts with Google’s search functionality.
Major Factors upon which Google Search Algorithm Depends:
Whenever a user performs a search in Google, its search algorithm focuses on five major factors, such as:
Search Intent
It determines the intent of the user who has placed a query. Google uses this factor to identify what exactly the user is looking for. It determines this through the use of complex language models that are built upon past searches of the user.
Relevance of Web Page
After Google determines the user’s search intent, it starts doing keyword analysis. It reviews the contents of the website to figure out which is more relevant and then match it with Google’s understanding of the query that the user places.
Quality of Content
When keywords match with the query, Google takes a step forward. It navigates through the requisite web pages and reviews the content quality. This helps Google in deciding which content has fresh ideas and also helps in prioritizing the ranking of the website.
Usability of Web Page
Websites that are user-friendly and easy to navigate are mostly preferred by Google in the ranking. The overall usability of the web page covers everything, from its responsiveness to its loading speed.
Additional Settings and Context
This step on the Google platform customizes searches based upon the past user engagement. It also tailors some specific settings on the platform.
As Google is one of the most popular search engines, most content marketers use to customize their content specifically so that it can rank on Google. This is how Google and other search engines work.