How Search Engines Work

A search engine is a software system that is widely recognized for its ability to search through enormous amounts of information and data. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing are popular examples. So, how do search engines work? Having a clear understanding of this can be beneficial to the search engine optimisation of your website.

A search engine is a complex network of web pages, documents, information, and images. The search engine analyses and indexes data, then filters and presents the results based on the keywords and phrases entered. Results are then ranked according to how accurate the search engine believes the webpage to be in response to the search query and presented in the form of SERPs (search engine results pages).

Several key concepts must be understood to fully comprehend how search engines work.

Bots (also known as spiders or crawlers) follow links on the internet, collecting text, images, videos, news articles, and general information, before saving the HTML version of the page to a database called the Index. The index is updated whenever a bot, spider, or crawler scans your webpage and finds any new, relevant information or content that can be added to the index. Accordingly, search engines recognize that websites that are actively important, or that are regularly updated, will be scanned more frequently by bots, as opposed to websites that do not receive updates very frequently.

Upon indexation, an algorithm analyses the information from the Index, filters and sorts the data based on what the user searched for, then ranks and presents the results for the user to investigate. As a result of the algorithm, the top search results are those that are deemed to be the most relevant to your query. As there are so many complex factors built into the algorithm, it is difficult to define the factors that aid the decision-making process. Additionally, which results will be prioritized frequently changes based on intuitive, evolving factors. It is no longer possible to submit your new website to a search engine, the search engine has to identify your new website via a link already known to it.

Through the thread, the bot/crawler/spider identifies your new website and indexes it. To determine a website’s rank, the search engine uses both external and internal links. Your website can be prioritised in the search engines if it contains many external links. By regularly updating your website, you improve your website’s crawlability, which in turn regulates how often the algorithm indexes your site.

The Google algorithm is constantly being updated in a variety of ways, however, certain updates over the years have stood out and provide insight into how SEO can be altered and influenced.

Google’s RankBrain algorithm helps to determine the meaning and intent of the word’s users use when searching online. It determines what it believes to be the most relevant search results. As a result, it uses the website content, links, keywords, and many other SEO elements to identify relevant results and present them according to their ranking in the search engine results pages.

Google’s Panda update in 2011 was designed specifically to reduce the ranking of web pages that were created to alter rank in search engines. As part of the Panda algorithm update, search engine users were asked to scan pages to determine whether the content of the website is actively related to their search terms. At the time, this had a significant impact on affiliate websites that linked to other pages and websites with little content. Google has been known to re-run the Panda update on occasion since its initial release.
A similar update was released by Google in 2012 called Penguin. It was designed to determine if the links on your website supported and enriched your webpage’s content or if they served other purposes. As a result, fewer websites were created to artificially improve the ranking of other websites by increasing their links. As a result, many websites lost their Google ranking. It has been run multiple times since its inception, and now it is said to be a permanent part of Google’s system.

To optimize SERPS, Google introduced the Hummingbird update in 2013. Rather than only analyzing specific words from the query, this update analyzes the whole search phrase. The result was a search result based on keywords rather than a search based on keywords alone. Initially, it did not result in better search results, but over time it arranged the SERPs so that the answer to the query appeared at the top, allowing the user to obtain results from websites without necessarily having to click through to them. In addition to this update, Voice Search also began. Many modern devices, such as Alexa, Siri, Google Home, and others, use voice search.
Mobilegeddon 2015 was created to maintain relevance and keep up with the times. Initiated around the time that Google stated mobile devices accounted for 50% of all searches, this was designed to increase the visibility of mobile-friendly web pages in its mobile search results.

Additionally, in 2016, the Possum update was introduced to alter Google’s ranking filter in response to mobile device searches. As part of this movement, Google switched to a mobile-first index in 2018. Rankings were impacted by a website’s mobile version’s quality. This was done due to the rise in mobile search queries, which required web results to reflect this change. Googlebot crawls the mobile site to assess content quality, performance, and user experience. These factors were then used to update the website ranking.
The Medic, or Query Intent update was also implemented in 2018. Initially thought to target medical websites, the update affected organic results across a variety of industries as well. Using the exact wording and phrasing of a query, the update assesses and takes into account a user’s specific search intent. In contrast to searching for “how to attract a book publisher”, a search for “book publisher” would produce completely different results. “Book publisher” is likely to return a list of professional book publishers, while “how to attract a book publisher” may return informative web pages.

Continual updates have been active since 2018. They make continuous adjustments several times per day. Google also releases larger updates (core updates) every few months. As a result, it can be extremely challenging to predict and continuously adjust to Google’s algorithms, so instead of attempting to do this, it is best to simply improve your website to make it as informative and user-friendly as possible. To align with Google’s objective and improve your ranking, focus on providing the best information to people.

If you would like to learn more about how to optimise your website and improve your website rankings, why not book in for our SEO for Small Businesses training course or get in touch to arrange some 121 coaching.