In this post, get to know what happens when you do a web search? How a search engines works? From your search to search results.
When we search on search engine whether it is Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine, about our query, Actually we search on Web. We search on Search Engines, and they search on there index on Web.
How Search Engines make there Index on Web?
Search Engines uses software called spiders for making there index on the web. These spiders crawled and fetches some webpages and then they follow up the links on these webpages and fetches the webpages these links point. Then they finds and follows the links in these webpages to fetches the webpages, the links point to and fetches all the webpages linked to these webpages so on and index all that pretty chunk of webpages across thousand of machines.
Search Engines also offers webmaster tools for website owners, where they can submit there website’s sitemaps. Webmaster tools offers granular choices to webiste owners about how they want search engines to crwal their website. They can request for recrawl by webmaster tools and can opt out of crawling altogether using a file called “robots.txt”.
How search engines gives you result when you search?
Information available on the web is in a large amount that, finding the information you need would be nearly impossible without any sorting of data. Every time you search, there are thousands, or sometimes millions of webpages with the information that is helpful for you.
All the Search Engines have there ranking systems that are designed to do sorting through hundreds of billions of webpages in there Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present the results in a way that helps you to find what you’re looking for.
These ranking systems of search engines are made up of whole series of algorithms. To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors.
Factors on which Search Algorithm works
Meaning of your query
To return relevant results for your search query, Search engines first need to understand what information you’re looking for - intent behind your query. Understanding intent is a critical aspect of Search.
This involves steps as seemingly simple as interpreting spelling mistakes, and extends to trying to understand the type of query you’ve entered by applying the latest research on natural language understanding they have done to improve the search results. For example, there synonym system helps Search know what you mean by establishing that multiple words mean the same thing. This capability allows Search to match the query.
Relevance of webpages
Next, algorithms analyze the content of webpages to assess whether the page contains information that might be relevant to what you are looking for.
The most basic signal that information is relevant to your search is when a webpage contains the same keywords as of your search query. If those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information is more likely to be relevant.
These relevance signals help Search algorithms assess whether a webpage contains an answer to your search query, rather than just repeating the same question.
Quality of content
While matching the words in your query with relevant documents on the web, Search algorithms also aim to prioritize the most reliable sources available. They look for sites that have many users seem to value for similar queries.
Spam algorithms play an important role in establishing whether a page is low-quality and help Search ensure that sites don’t rise in search results through deceptive or manipulative behavior.
Usability of webpages
When ranking results, evaluation of webpages aslo done, to check whether they are easy to use or not. They have develop some algorithms to promote more usable pages over less usable ones, all other things being equal.
These algorithms analyze that all the users are able to view the result, like whether the site appears correctly in different browsers; whether it is designed for all device types and sizes, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones; and whether the page loading well for users having slow Internet connections.
Context and settings
Information such as your location, past Search history and Search settings all help search engines to tailor your results to what is most useful and relevant for you in that moment.
They use your country and location to deliver content relevant for your area. Search settings are aused to indiacte which results you’re likely to find useful, such as if you set a preferred language or opted in to SafeSearch (a tool that helps filter out explicit results).