How Search Engines Work Using a 3 Step Process about:reader?url=[Link]
[Link]
How Search Engines Work Using a 3 Step
Process
by Rotem Gal
3 minutes
All search engines work using a 3 phase approach to
managing , ranking and returning search results. But a lot of
people have no idea what is happening behind that search box
when they type in their search queries. So just how do Google,
Bing and the rest of them work out what is on the web, what is
relevant to your general query and which specific websites
should be ranked highly?
There are three functions which need to be done:
Web Crawling
This is the means by which search engines can find out what is
published out on the World Wide Web. Essentially, crawling is
copying what is on web pages and repeatedly checking the
multitude of pages to see if they are changed and make a copy
of any changes found.
The programs which have the job of doing this are variously
referred to as robots, crawlers, spiders or some variation using
‘web’, e.g. web crawler..
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Indexing
Once a spider has crawled a web page, the copy that is made is
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How Search Engines Work Using a 3 Step Process about:reader?url=[Link]
returned to the search engine and stored in a data center. Data
centers are huge, purpose built collections of servers which act
as a repository of the all the copies of webpages being made
by the crawlers. Google owns dozens of them dotted around
the world, which it guards very closely and which are among
the most hi-tech buildings in the world.
The repository of web pages is referred to as the ‘Index’, and it
is this data store which is organized and used to provide the
search results you see on the search engine. Indexing is the
process of organizing the masses of data and pages so they
can be searched quickly for relevant results to your search
query.
The Algorithm
Finally, we have a huge collection of web page copies which
are being constantly updated and organized so we can quickly
find what you are looking for. But we need a means by which
they can be ranked in order of relevance to your search term –
this is where the Algorithm comes into play.
The algorithm is a very complex and lengthy equation which
calculates a value for any given site in relation to a search
term. We don’t know what the algorithm actually is, because
search engines tend to keep this a closely guarded secret from
competitors and from people looking to game the search
engine to get to the top spots. That said, enough about the
algorithm has been worked out to let SEOs advise website
owners on how to improve their sites and SEO factors to move
up in the rankings
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