Working to Serve the User their Search Engine Terms
How search engines work is a mystery to many. Search engine secrets are often
cloaked behind complicated algorithms that undergo constant changing. The website www.google.com/technology gives an overview of Google’s page ranking system and software, however is void of the mathematics that are underlying in the formulas that determine how search engines work. Fortunately, through articles, forums and blogs, professional search engine optimizers (SEOs) and web developers have analyzed processes and are willing to share their knowledge of how search engines work and the grinding gears that churn out search engine results.
To the dismay of these experts, however, the gears are always changing which direction they’re headed - Google has a reputation for changing how their search engine works, often without notice. Moreover, other search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN, continuously change to keep up with Google. But despite the aggravation of frequent changes, staying updated on how search engines work is imperative to success. Users use search engines more than typing in direct URLs, and the search engine developers are focused on bringing the most relevant results to users.
Search engines work by first indexing a website. Each page in the website is indexed separately. A website can be submitted directly to search engines or indexed from “spiderbots” crawling through webpages, searching for content and analyzing pages with formulas to determine if the results are relevant to the user. The spider that Google uses is called “Googlebot.” If you need help learning how search engines work; visit Google’s webmaster site at www.google.com/support/webmasters/ for free advice on how Google’s search engine works. Google also has an option to submit a “sitemap” to keep them updated on the details of your website. This tool also makes your website accessible to other search engines.
“Spiders” will take into consideration domain names, meta tags, html tags, headings and subheadings, keywords, geography, RSS feeds, history of the website, how much time users have spent on the website, how many times the website has been clicked through (referred to as “click through rate”), how relevant the text content is to the user request, the links included on the website, and the reputation and ranking of the links of each individual connecting website. These are all elements you must consider when developing your strategy to get the search engines working for you. You can see why there are so many mathematical formulas to ascertain relevancy!
Search engines keep much of their algorithms secret so they have an edge on their competition, but it is necessary to give general information on how search engines work so that web developers can develop their websites to show up in the results of a search engine request. Fortunately, the comradery of the Internet and the importance of linking has made a great deal of research available on how search engines work to the general public. Search engines are the vehicles that bring customers to websites. Learning how search engines work is a critical area of study for every website developer or anyone wanting to start a website.
