How Search Engines Work



Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Altavista, and others work very similarly, but use different criteria. The thing that remains the same among all of them is that they focus on 3 or 4 major points. These are reciprocal links (called PageRank in Google), keyword relevancy, page update frequency, and sometimes meta-tag content

Reciprocal Link Response (RLR)

The first, and most important aspect for many search engines is what we call the reciprocal link response (RLR). In order to best describe what RLR is, we will refer to the exact wording on Google’s website of how they keep track of their RLR system, called PageRank.

“PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.”

Essentially, what this is telling us is that if a website has many other important sites linking to it, the more important that website seems. The more important the website, the higher the ranking when compared to competitor’s websites.

Keyword Relevancy

It wouldn’t make for a very useful search engine if when someone typed a query for the word “shoes” that a Coca-Cola website would appear, would it? Of course not, so even though Coca-Cola has a high RLR there needs to be another criteria.

The way that the search engines select what would be an appropriate list for the selected keyword queried, is that they run small software programs called spiders over all of the internet’s websites. As those spiders view the website, they take notice of how relevant a particular website is to certain selected keywords. Since spiders do not “see” in the same way we do, they need to use clues from the website. These clues come from the way certain pictures are coded, the number of times a website uses a selected keyword in the text, if the keyword is involved in the header of the website, the description of the website, and the meta-tags of the website. The more the word is used (and related words) in the website, the higher the keyword relevancy for that particular keyword and the higher placement when someone searches for that keyword or keywords.

Page Update Frequency

The last criteria that search engines look for is page update frequency. This just means that the search engine will see how recently each page is updated. Just like in the real world, a storefront that is not regularly maintained will not attract customers, but one that is kept tidy and frequently updated will seem more attractive. This attractiveness of frequently updated sites applies to search engines also.

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