How Search Engines Work

April 26, 2018 By Ashley Orndorff, aka Marketing Geek

Many of us use search engines every day for fun, research, or just in our daily lives. While we know that search engines can provide targeted results based on what we’re looking for, it’s unclear for many users how this happens. Let’s take a more in-depth look at how search engines work and how this affects you:

3 Major Functions of Search Engines

Not only do search engines provide results for users, but they also have other functions as well. For websites that wish to appear in the results, search engines crawl and index their pages. In addition, each search engine provides its own benefit to the owners and shareholders of the search engine. So, how do search engines work and what does each of these functions look like?

1. Providing Search Results

Providing search results is the most commonly seen and used feature of search engines. This typically starts with the user entering or voicing a query. After receiving the query, the search engine will provide results from its index (collection of websites and pages for which it has information) based on the context that it has from the query and on the user. For search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, this information may be minimal and may deliver results based on your last few days of search history and general location. For Google, the context might be much more complex, using data from all related software that Google owns.

Beyond just the standard text query search, some search engines provide additional types of search that allow you to look through specific types of content – just images, just video, or a variety of other options. All of this is stored in each search engine’s database and is displayed as a list of results in the index, also referred to as the SERPs (search engine results pages).

2. Indexing Web Pages

To create a database of pages to allow users to search, each search engine must “crawl” through all of the website pages it wishes to include. Crawling means different things to each search engine, but in most cases, it involves their crawler or bot visiting a page, “reading” it, and storing data from it to the database, so it is available for indexing. Sometimes this may mean taking a snapshot of the page or storing all of its data for later use. In many cases, it just means scanning the page to store relevant information.

This is important because if the correct pages aren’t crawled, which means they can’t be indexed, the website associated with those pages is likely to lose out on a large amount of traffic (especially with Google providing over 3.5 billion search queries per day). Not being indexed can be a huge problem for online businesses, and a general pain for small businesses as well. It means your customers cannot easily find you online.

It is important to note that getting your site indexed does not mean it automatically shows up for whatever queries you want it to, just that it has a chance. Following SEO best practices can give your site a better chance and more opportunities to show up when potential customers are searching queries related to your business.

To make sure your site is indexed, you can add the URL using Google’s submit tool. If you have Google Search Console, formerly called Google Webmaster Tools, already set up, you can use the “Fetch as Google” tool and the Index Coverage Status Report to help you determine which pages Google has in their index and to identify any indexation issues.

3. Business Motives

Search engines are businesses too. Because of this, each has a profit motive behind why they are providing search results. For Google, they want you to use their search engine so that they can show advertisements that are relevant to your search, generating cash flow for the business side of the search engine.

Other businesses pay into Google AdWords and other Google advertising networks so they can extend their reach to customers. Because this is how income is generated for the business, it is in their best interest to show the most relevant results as possible to keep users coming back to their search engine. The more searchers who use Google, the more other businesses will want to pay for ads on that platform because they will be able to reach a wider audience and are more likely to generate a positive return on investment (ROI) from their efforts.

Search engines make money when people and other businesses use their products. It is in their best interest to make those products as valuable as possible to gain and maintain the most market share and encourage continued use.

Independent Algorithms

Each search engine has its own set of algorithms, which essentially are rules, calculations, and formulas that determine how data is organized in their database and where it shows up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). These algorithms are constantly changing and updating to keep up with new information coming in, evolving technology, user behavior, and more. Knowing how search engines work and how they evaluate websites for their index can help you succeed.

1. Google Webmaster Guidelines

Right now, Google is the largest search engine with the most market share. Showing up in Google when customers are searching for terms related to your business takes work. The landscape is saturated with competition and everyone is vying for the top spots. Between fluctuating algorithms, competitors, paid ads, and more, it can be difficult to keep up and to compete. Following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is a good place to start.

There are tons of factors that Google uses to evaluate a website for quality and relevancy. They also have RankBrain. This is their artificial intelligence system that uses machine learning to help process Google search results. It’s always learning and updating as information comes in to take context and searcher intent into account when serving up results.

The best thing you can do to compete in Google is to build a strong, high-quality website that is built for mobile, responds to all devices, loads quickly, is full of relevant content, and, most importantly, offers the best user experience possible. This gives you a good start. Ongoing SEO, marketing, and continuous improvements will help you continue to stay competitive from there.

2. Bing Search Guidelines

Although Bing does not hold nearly as much market share as Google, searchers are still using it. The quality guidelines you follow for Google tends to also help your website’s performance in Bing. Bing is a search engine and a business as well, which means they are also interested in showing the most relevant results possible so searchers who use them continue to do so. The Bing Webmaster Guidelines go in-depth and offer a ton of useful information on the page.

In addition to building out a quality website and content, you also need to consider all of the ongoing marketing aspects as well to compete in search. This includes social media, local directories, link building, content marketing, and everything else under the far-reaching SEO umbrella. Paid Ads are also an option and likely an important part of your digital strategy on Bing as well as on Google.

3. Other Major Search Engines

Although Google is the market leader and Bing commands a wider audience than the next batch of search engines, the others should not be ignored. Yahoo still commands a large audience, even with a small percentage of the market share.

The same goes for those with less than 1% of the market share, like Ask, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and others. On a global scale, Baidu is continually increasing. You certainly don’t want to put all of your focus on these smaller search engines, especially since doing things right for Google will often benefit your website in them as well. At the same time, you don’t want to write them off completely when evaluating your efforts.

Is your website designed and built to compete in search engines? Contact us today for a meeting of the MINDs to help get your website in shape and fit to compete!