SEO: How Google Search Engine Works

Have you ever wondered how Google search engine Search gathers and organizes data so quickly?

Google’s search engine is a powerful tool. Without search engines like Google, it would be possible to find the information you need when you browse the Web.

In order to keep its results as relevant as possible for its users, search engines like Google have a well-defined process for identifying the best web pages for any given search query.

And this process evolves over time as it works to make search results even better.

This helps them remain competitive with other search engines on the Web and reduces the chance of someone finding out how to abuse the system.

Google uses automated programs called spiders or crawlers, just like most search engines.

Also like other search engines, Google has a large index of keywords and where those words can be found.

What sets Google apart is how it ranks search results, which in turn determines the order Google displays results on its Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Google uses a trademarked algorithm called PageRank, which assigns each Web page a relevancy score.

What is SERP?

SERP is an acronym that stands for “Search Engine Results Page”.

For anyone working in search engine optimization or PPC, this page on the web is viewed as pristine property — the higher your company ranks, the more exposure and credibility your company will have in regard to search engines.

PageRank?

PageRank is the first algorithm used by Google to evaluate web pages. It uses a simplistic model of web surfing to estimate the probability of browsing each site on the internet. It uses the concept of random walks in a Directed Acyclic Graph.

How does Google Search Engine work?

Search Engine like Google is complex computer program. Its job is to provide internet users with the best result as quickly as possible.

How do they do it?

They do a lot of ‘preparation work’ in advance so that when you search for something in Google, you’re presented with a set of precise and quality results that answer your query or question.

‘Preparation work’ involves three main stages:

• Crawling: The process of discovering publicly available web pages on the internet.
• Indexing: Storing and organizing the web pages found during the crawling process.
• Serving results (Ranking): Web Pages are ordered by most relevant to least relevant based on various factors.

1. Crawling ─ How does Google crawl the web?

The internet is like an ever-growing library with billions of different books without any central filing system.

Search engine like Google uses automated software (known as web crawlers or spiders) to find new and updated content.

In the case of Google, they call their web crawler “Googlebot.”

Googlebot begin its crawling from –

•  The URLs stored in Google’s database are fetched from the previous crawl processes, augmented by sitemap data provided by website owners.
•  When Googlebot visits a web page, it finds links on the page (either pointing to pages within the site or to an external site) and adds them to its list of pages to crawl.

This is a nonstop and fully automated process. Googlebot is therefore likely to crawl a specific site multiple times, depending on the nature of the site.

How to Improve Your Website Crawling?

There are a number of things you can do to make sure GoogleBot discovers the right pages on your site quickly.

1. Create a Robot.txt file for your website

Robots.txt files are located in the root directory of your website (example:- yourwebsite.com/robots.txt).

This allows you to specify which page/section of your site you want Google to crawl and not to crawl.

Learn More: How to Create the Perfect Robots.txt File for SEO?

2. Internally Link Your Web Pages

When adding new pages to your site, linking to it from existing pages on your site is a good way to make sure it gets discovered by Google.

3. Add an XML Sitemap To Your Website

Use an XML sitemap to make a list of all important pages of your website.

Sitemap acts as an instruction manual for web crawlers, telling them which pages to crawl.

If you are a WordPress user, your SEO plugin (Yoast SEO & Rank Math) has an inbuilt option to generate and update your sitemap when you publish new content.

Indexing ─ How Google Reads and Stores Website Information?

Indexing is the second stage of the search engine working process.

Information identified by GoogleBot while crawling process needs to be organized, sorted, and stored so that it can be processed later by google ranking algorithm.

When crawlers discover a new web page, they render the content of the page, just as a web browser does.

Then they take note of the key things and all those pieces of information to their search index.

The key things include:

There are many techniques you can use to improve Google’s ability to understand the content of your web page:

1. Use the ‘No-Index’ Tag When Needed

You can prevent your low-quality pages from appearing in Google search results by including a no-index meta tag in the page’s HTML code, or by returning an index header in the HTTP request.

When Googlebot crawls that page and sees the index tag or header, it will not include that page in its search index.

How Google Rank Pages

The third and final stage in the process is called ‘Ranking.’

In this stage, Google decides which web page to show in the SERPS and in what order when someone types a search query.

This is achieved through search engine ranking algorithms.

What are Ranking Algorithms?

In simple words, it is a piece of software having a number of rules to analyze what a searcher is looking for and which results in the best answer to the query.

These rules and decisions are made based on what information is available in the Google search index.

How does the Google Search Algorithm Work?

Over the years, Google search algorithms have evolved and become really complex.

Today Google ranking algorithms take more than 200 factors into account to determine which pages to show in SERP and in what order.

Although nobody knows the exact factor and their weight in ranking a web page, we do know about the key ones through Google’s patents and documentation.

Next, Google algorithms analyze the content of pages to assess whether the page contains information that answers the user’s search query in the best way possible.

According to Google – when a web page contains the same keywords as the search query, especially in important positions like title & subheadings, then that’s a signal of relevance.

However, this idea is not foolproof in modern days SEO, which is why Google also looks for the presence of other topically relevant words on the web page.

Conclusion

Search engine like ‘Google’ is actually very complex computer program.

But the way Google collects and makes decisions is far from a normal internet user’s imagination.

The process starts with crawling and indexing. During this phase, Google web crawlers gather as much information as possible for all sites that are available on the web.

They discover, process, sort, and store this information in a systematized format so that it can be used by ranking algorithms to make the correct decision and return the best result for the user’s query.

As a website owner, your job is to make their crawling and indexing process easier by creating a website that has a simple and logical structure.

Once they can crawl and index your site without issues, you then need to create high-quality content and give them the right signals to help the algorithms, rank your website’s content for relevant queries.

That is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about.

So, now you know the basics of How Google search engine works.

Please feel free to leave your comments in the comment section.

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