Search engines have become a fundamental aspect of our lives.
You open the web browser and the first thing that appears is Google.
What do you want to know?
You type the first letters and click on search. In less than a second you have 10 possible answers to your query.
It’s great.
But how does it do it?
What criteria does Google follow to order its results?
conclusion
Google follows a 3-step process
Basically, it does this:
1. Track the billions of pages accessible on the Web
2. He stores them in his index
3. When a user makes a query, it offers a list of relevant pages
Now let’s look at each step in more detail …
1. Track the millions of pages accessible on the Web
Tracking the Web is a monstrous task, for that reason Google does not do it “personally”.Instead, it uses some little programs called robots , which it sends to collect pages.
When a robot arrives at a web page, what it does is read it and collect certain sections that it will then store in its index. Then, follow the links on the page and continue doing the same on other pages.
The process resembles that of a beehive that sends its bees to collect pollen from flower to flower. Google is the hive, the robots are the bees and each flower is a web page.Pollen is the content that the search engine will use to classify the Web through its secret recipe.
2. Store the pages in your index
Nothing is worth so much effort if the information collected is not stored anywhere. So, once the robot has collected the content of a page, its next task is to store it in its huge databases.
This process is called indexing, and its purpose is to save all the information that Google will need at the time someone makes a search.
3. Offers an ordered list of pages
For most of us, the search for knowledge begins with a search query. The next step occurs when the search engine returns a list of classified pages with the intention of satisfying the request.
To accomplish this task, Google does 2 things:
1. Select the pages that are related to the entered words.
2. Sort the pages one after the other according to your own criteria It’s that simple.
What everyone would like to know is …
What criteria does Google follow to order its results?
The truth is that no one knows exactly. Naturally, the search engine does not want anyone to know its secrets. Otherwise, anyone could create web pages that exactly fit their criteria, and thus appear in first position for any search term.
The good news is that your methods can be explained.
We said that Google first selects pages and then orders them, does not it?
Let’s see how:
To select the pages that are part of the result, the search engine begins by going through its immense database in search of pages that contain the exact term entered in the search box, as well as variants and synonyms. Then, apply a series of rules to evaluate the importance of each page and thus get the order by which they should be displayed.
In this task he uses several factors, most of which have to do with:
• How relevant a page is to what you are looking for
• How popular is a page in the subject
To calculate the relevance , the words contained in the website are taken into account, where they are located and in what format. In terms of popularity , the links the page receives are considered, how many and from what pages, what words are in the link text and a few other things.
conclusion
Google does not make magic, in fact it follows a logical process to discover and order the Web. However, what you have seen here is just a basic description of how it works.
If you want to go deeper into the subject, I recommend some interesting links:
• Positioning factors in Google.
• How Google search works.
• Academic article by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on Google.
