How Search Engines Work

So often the word "Google" comes up in discussing websites, business, and internet marketing. In fact, it can almost be said that Google is so important to internet marketing, that if Google doesn't know that your website exists - well, then it doesn't really exist! But what exactly is Google, and why is it so important?

 

Google is quite simply a search engine. A search engine can be likened to a card catalogue in a library; without it, there may be plenty of books around, but you simply can't find what you’re looking for. There are several search engines available to today's web surfer, such as Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and AOL, but of all of these, Google has the largest number of daily users. In other words, more people use Google to find information on the internet than all the other search engines combined. Where do you find a search engine? Well, if your computer automatically opens up to Yahoo or MSN when you go on the internet, you will often see a blank box which is labeled "Search the Web". You probably also have a search box on your computer screen near the upper left corner (under the address bar). If not, you can type in www.Google.com, www.Yahoo.com, www.MSN.com or www.Ask.com to access the search engines. If a person is looking for something on the internet, he generally types his request into the blank box, hoping to stumble upon a helpful website. The actual words which he types into that box (such as "Dog Groomer Queens" or "Bicycle Shop New York") are called keywords. The search engine then returns (almost instantaneously) a list of the websites that contain those keywords.
In reality, the search engine is not “searching the web” in the microsecond after you type in your keywords; it is searching its own database of websites. Search engines are constantly ‘crawling’ the web in search of new websites to add to their databases, and consequently, return upon search requests. New websites get added to a search engine’s database in one of 2 ways:

  • A website is manually submitted to a search engine
  • A search engine ‘finds’ a website by following a link from another website it has already searched.

The search engine then displays a list of websites which match your search terms – or keywords. In most cases, there are many websites which contain your search terms – often millions of websites! – and the search engine lists them in the order which it has determined most closely matches your search intent. This ‘ranking’ system is very critical to you as a website owner, because you certainly want your website to appear ‘high’ in the search engine rankings, or else no one will find you there. Each of the major search engines ranks websites a bit differently, so your website may rank higher on one search engine than on another. In any case, you will want your website to rank as high on all of the search engines as possible, thus bringing your website the most 'traffic', or web visitors. In general, people searching for something on the internet rarely go beyond the first few pages of search results, so getting your website to rank as highly as possible is the key to bringing more visitors - and more business - to your website.