How do search engines like Google work?

DotNek Software Development 8 minute(s) read

Last updated: Mar 13, 2021

Nowadays, if people encounter a problem, they will find the answer to their question in the search engine as soon as possible, and according to the many reputable sites that exist on the Internet, they will most likely receive their answers.

But the question is how do these sites become available to users? How do search engines measure the credibility of these sites? And other questions that you may have can be about the way that search engines work which we will discuss in the following, but first it is necessary to know what a search engine is?

What is a search engine?

A search engine is a tool that provides the user with the best information among a wide range of it, simply put, it is a tool that is used to make it easier for users to search for their answers, and all sites that contain answers to users' questions appear on a page named search engine results page, which the user selects the one he/she needs to meet their needs.

How do search engines work?

Search engines have three sections, these sections are, crawling, indexing, ranking , which we will discuss in more detail below.

- Crawling:

In this section, search engines on the Internet are looking for a sign of the sites, and they will check every code and URL that they find, in fact, crawling sites is done by search engine robots such as crawlers and spiders, which encounter different types of content.

In general, they check web pages to find new codes, and it should be noted that despite the differences in the type of content available on the Internet, which through these codes through which sites can be found.

- Indexing:

 After search engines go through the crawling stage, they implement the indexing stage and analyze all the content they have found, and if the sites are of a good quality with the conditions to be indexed, they will be indexed.

Sites do their best to help their site be found and indexed by search engines sooner and more users can use the content, as well as faster indexing prevents the site content from being stolen.

- Ranking:

In this section, search engines rank all sites according to the amount of feedbacks that they achieve from users and their suitability for visitors to get the answers of their questions, so that more appropriate sites appear at the top of the search results page and the user meet their needs as quickly as possible, in other words, when a user searches for the answer to their questions, the Internet shows the most relevant answer on the first page of search results.

Your site may not appear on the search engine search results page and may not be indexed at all, in which case you should look for possible problems on your site and try to solve them, so that you can improve the ranking of your website and get to the top pages of google search results. For example, your site may have coding problems or other reasons that can be solved if you identify them quickly, search engines also use algorithms to rank sites, there are so many points to mention this topic which we will discuss later.

What are search engine algorithms?

Search engine algorithms are computer programs that have mathematical functions and formulas and which analyze and categorize the contents of sites with the help of their crawlers, the purpose of search engines is to deliver the most appropriate result to the user, it should be noted that search engines update their algorithms regularly, Google search engine has introduced many algorithms until now, including FRED algorithm, Friendly Mobile algorithm, Hummingbird algorithm, payday loan algorithm and several other algorithms, the RankBrain algorithm are among the ones that have revolutionized site optimization on the Google search engine results page.

Many factors are considered by these algorithms, three of the most important factors that are considered by search engine algorithms are dwell time , click-through rate and the bounce rate, which we will give a brief explanation of these three items in the next section.

- Dwell time:

Dwell time is considered as the amount of time that a user spends on a website which is one of the success factors, and it is used to rank a site on the search page , if your website contains more quality and up-to-date the content, the user prefers to stay on your website for a longer time because they think that it’s worth the time, and it would be useful for them to spend more time on your site to get the answer to all their needs.

As a result, when the retention time is high, it is more possible that users reach the goal they are searching for, and the more valuable the site is in Google search engine’s point of view, if your website contains less valuable content, users don’t prefer spending more time on it, according to an internet research 3 minutes and 10 seconds is the average time that a user spends on a valuable page.

- Bounce rate:

 The bounce rate is the time between the time a user enters a site and leaves it without doing anything. If this factor of your website is higher than the competitors’ site, it means that the quality of your site is lower than them in Google search engine’s point of view.

- Click-Through Rate:

Click-through rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who click on your website link in search results, or in other words, it is known as the number of users clicks on your site divided by the number of times your page is displayed to users.

Factors that search engines use for ranking:

- Site loading speed:

One of the most important factors that has a huge impact on ranking a site is the loading speed of the site, which is affected by different factors, if you try to do everything in a principled way, you can increase the loading speed of your website and get a better ranking in the list of search results and get more traffic to the website .

- Content font:

Content fonts have a great effect on attracting users, and as a result, search engines will increase the site ranking if there is a great user satisfaction.

- Continuous site update:

As we have mentioned, search engines have many bots and algorithms that frequently check sites and notice the changes that have been made in a site and apply those changes to the rankings.

- Content length:

Containing long form content is counted as a point for websites, because search engines pay attention to the number of words in a content, if the site owner's goal is just producing a content without paying attention to its length and quality, they will notice and penalize the site.

- Main keywords:

In producing a content, you have to pay attention to the keywords you want to choose, because search engines pay attention to the relevance of these words and the site, and if you choose inappropriate keywords or overuse them, they will not rank your site higher.

- Site Title:

Search engines pay a lot of attention to site title as an important factor in attracting users.

- Meta Description:

In the search engine results page, there are meta explanations that are placed exactly below the title which should show the user the main purpose of the site content, so that the user enters the site after viewing this part and spends a lot of time in it.

- Sitemap:

Sitemaps have a great impact on the speed of the site index and search engine bots are able to index the site through them more easily.

Last word:

In general, in addition to Google, there are other search engines that are all trying to improve their quality to attract more users, as a result more users can get the answers to their questions and receive a positive user experience through them.

We suggest you to use this search engine in order to save time and get the related content to the topic that they are searching for.