Today, everyone uses Google; it is one of the world's largest corporations. We all watch YouTube videos, write in Google Docs, and are aware that our phone contains a search engine. But do you understand how the search engine works? It's critical to understand how the software known as the search engine search for information, especially if you work online or want to build your own website.
What are search engines?
Search engines are software programs that find and categorize web content that matches a user's query. That is, if you type 'board games' into Google, you probably want to see a game store or a game rental store in your area first, and only then, for example, some man's board game collection from another continent.
A search engine's crucial task is to provide users with the most relevant results. This is, in theory, how they gain or maintain market share. Some of the most popular search engines are Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. If you ask a stranger what a search engine is, they will almost certainly say "Google."
The more websites there are on the internet, the more difficult it is to find interesting content. In the nineties, when you typed something into Google, the program would search its library until it found the words you typed in. Now the search engine employs an algorithm, which is a set of rules that determines how relevant a page is to your query. For example, if there are a lot of links on the web that say "I recommend this great board game store," the program will know what that site is.
Search index and algorithms
Search engines index the Web using bots known as spiders.... no, they are not real robots, they are programs that perform one simple function. In their case, it's following links from page to page to discover new content for the search index. They act as if they were a human, clicking on every link they come across, and saving each page to the index. Each search engine consists of two main components:
- Search index. This is a digital library of information about web pages. Pages on the web are stored in it as the robot "sees" them. For example, Google asks web designers to add descriptions of illustrations to images so that they can be found more easily.
- Search algorithm. Those are computer programs that process the results of the search index and knows when to give you what result. Such an algorithm appropriately arranges the web pages, from the best related to the topic to the least. For example, a search for "board games" will turn up game stores or the boardgamegeek.com board game database - which is very popular and is often linked to.
How search engines create their indexes
The search indexes of the most popular search engines, such as Google and Bing, contain trillions of pages. Google provides the following basic procedure of indexing content:
- It all starts with a known list of URLs. Google discovers them through various methods. Once, the Internet users used to talk about "web portals" like yahoo.com or aol.com - this was a special website, constituting basically a "gateway" to the Internet. On it, you could find links to one site, where there were links to another, and so on. There were site directories, aggregating various sites, which today no longer work. So, how are Google's "robots" indexing pages nowadays?
- Google's index already contains trillions of websites. The robots "return" to old sites from time to time to see what has changed. The robots will follow a link from one of these websites to one of your pages. It's a good idea to add your own site to Google's index when you build it - there are special tools for this.
The spider will easily scan your site if you use a sitemap that includes all of the subpages. Submitting a sitemap to Google can help them find your content more quickly.
Google searches the Internet, you search Google
Indexing is the process of visiting and evaluating discovered pages by a computer bot known as a spider (for example, Googlebot). It detects keywords such as "board games," "dice," "pawns," and "family games" here. More keywords don’t always mean ‘better’. When search engines were first developed, for example, there were link farms, which were pages filled with randomly generated content containing keywords. Fortunately, the algorithm has learned to ignore such farms and frequently penalizes pages that use them.
The following section is a ranking. Google ranks indexing pages based on several factors, including their popularity, how frequently the URL changes, how keywords are distributed, and whether the page is well-designed. Nobody but Google is aware of the entire process. The higher the Page Rank, the higher the position of the website in a Google search engine, which is important for people who sell things on the Internet
According to these criteria, the webpages are added to Google's index. When you type a query into a search engine, you are not searching the Internet for matching results. You are searching Google's index of websites. If you created a website 10 minutes ago, Google has not yet indexed it and will not search for it. Google has backups of wide swaths of WWW network (the pages you see when you log on the Internet) and other internet services - like Usenet archives, which were like early Internet discussion boards.
Search engine users will not find a website if it is not in the search index. That's why it's so important that your site is indexed in major search engines like Google and Bing. Many contents is held in the so-called Darknet - which is essentially webpages not indexed by search engines.
The most popular search engine is…
Google is the most popular search engine, with 92 percent of all users using it. Microsoft's Bing is quite popular, with many advanced features similar to ones Google uses. It survives because it is integrated with Microsoft Office and the Edge browser.
Local search engines exist—China uses Baidu, and Russia uses Yandex—not only because of heavy censorship, but also because local engines are better at indexing local content. For example, many people in the Czech Republic use the local Seznam, whereas Naver is popular in South Korea. Many Linux users prefer DuckDuckGo because it does not track their browsing habits and provides privacy. You can find many more examples here.
New features of search engines
Google has been adding more and more features to their search engine in recent years. You're probably aware that Google can convert currency and units from US to metric and back again. It integrates with Wikipedia to provide you with specific knowledge about the searched topic, as well as with other reliable local sites to deliver local information such as weather forecasts and movie listings.
Search engine users will not find a website if it is not in the search index. That's why it's so important that your site is indexed in major search engines like Google and Bing. Many contents is held in the so-called Darknet - which is essentially webpages not indexed by search engines.
