A search engine by definition is a set of coordinated computer programs that indexes or reaches to pages contain in its database so that users of search engines can find these web pages by entering specific search queries, basically in the form of keywords or keyword phrases. There are approximately more than 400 odd listed search engines available for the users in search engine to use, with about ten major search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Ask etc. (Although few use other search engine’s technology & vice versa). You can find the list of 10 major search engines here.
Usually a search engine includes four major components, known as spider, indexer, relevancy algorithms & search engine result pages or SERP. Search engines work by sending out spiders or crawlers or robots to crawl as many web pages as possible. These pages are then indexed according to the keywords found in each webpage. In other words, the results in the search engines appeared on the basis of keywords found in webpages submitted to the database of search engine.
The significance of a particular web page in search engine is rated by variety of factors including the relevancy of algorithm, and matched to particular search queries by the search results component of the given search engine. Search engines are normally geared towards returning most relevant, organic or ethical results and neglect banners and other rich media in their search as they indexed only words and not graphics.
Concept of Page Rank:
The concept of PageRank is launched by Google in which Google provide rank to a webpage on the basis of variety of algorithms. Google provide PageRank from 0 to 10. The higher your PageRank, higher your chances to appear at the top of search engine results for user’s query. PageRank also ensures that the web surfer will get the most relevant and authoritative results.
How does Google and Other Search Engines Work?
Turn on your computer & open any of the Internet browser i.e Mozilla, Google Chrome, Safari, Internet explorer etc. Then, this is what most of the people and you too will probably do next? Well, Go to Google and perform a search here or any other search engine of course (unless you have the direct access of the website URL of a website to go to, or you may go for any social media site i.e. Facebook or Twitter).
So, you type in the search bar your main keyword or key phrase into Google or to any other search engine, did you ever think about how these search engines bring relevant result to your search query? Or, how all of those sites that come up are relevant to your query or search? Believe it or not, search engines become an important element of modern life, and I believe many of the people reading out this blog post have no idea how they work, or don’t even care.
Don’t you really want to know the essentials details of it all, but just want a summary in a few sentences? Read on, and you will be able to know about the three major components that provide power to search engines.
Crawling
When a new webpage or whole website goes “live” on the Internet, search engine “spiders,” or crawlers or indexers or robots as webmasters call them (along with the majority of SEO savvy people), crawl the website and its content. This also happens to current websites as well. In fact, it happens again and again so that the spiders can move into the next phase of their job, “indexing” the website.
Indexing
These spiders are not just crawling over a website; they are grasping the information and storing it in its database. This is known as indexing. The point of indexing websites is so a searcher, like you, can possibly go through that website and its content—if the website/content is significant to your search keyword or key phrase of course.
Ranking
Have you ever think why few websites appear higher in search results rather than others? Well, to say the least, this is achieved by few defined search engine algorithms that keeps on changing—which is fancy for “Google and other search engines have search software that follows complex guidelines or instructions,” fancy huh? These instructions or guidelines determine how content on one website is better than available on other. So, how do these sites compete? Well, you may have to study search engine optimization (SEO) in depth to find out how the ranking factor works. We will complete that in the later chapters to come. For now, you should also know few more essential terms such as What is Organic search or ethical search in search engine and what is paid or non-ethical search engine and how they are different from each other.
What is Organic Search in Search Engines?
Use of the word Organic is another example of language evolution driven by the evolution of the internet. When used in an agricultural context, organic refers to a certain desirable quality in fresh produce, free from artificial inputs such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, etc. Organic is deemed to be the essence of natural, wholesome & healthy. Having a certified organic label on produce is an indication of perfectly natural quality, the best of all.
In search engine optimization or SEO, organic searches or natural searches or unpaid listings are those which appear in the search engine result pages according to relevance and perceived importance or authority by search engines. This is usually determined by Link Data, Usage Data, Domain History, Page Content, Page Rank, & Authority Related Data.
Organic results are very desirable for every webmaster or business owner as several researches shows that 60% to 80% of clicks are come from search engine results are on the organic search results, vs. paid for listings that appear on the top and the left side of a search engine. Paid searches or non-ethical or sponsored searches shared only 30 to 40 percent of clicks and still people more rely on organic searches as compared to paid or sponsored searches.
What are Benefits of SEO?
SEO has lots of benefits and the major benefit is that it brings quality traffic, conversions, leads and business free of cost. It is only your efforts that bring results in organic search results and you do not need to pay for those results which are the case of sponsored results. We can examine the success and reputation of any website by analyzing the genuine traffic of that particular website. As much traffic comes to that website through search engines then there are higher chances to earn through this website. To get information and access to websites Search Engines are major resources for users.
To generate website traffic search engines played a significant role. Most of websites today get traffic through these search engines especially the Google, after that websites gets traffic from some other resources. In search engines Google is most famous and after this Yahoo, Bing and Msn is in the list from where any website gets lots of targeted traffic. So, it is very essential to know that you must build up your website/blog in accordance with the SEO parameters.
SEO has great importance and every newbie or professional bloggers are using this. As I mentioned above, we can drive a tons of targeted and quality traffic due to Search Engine Optimization. We shall be able to get high PR (Page Rank) if we use it in an appropriate manner. You must avoid Black Hat SEO technique, though it can penalize your website/blog on and your website or blog will be hit by hummingbird, penguin etc, sometime it might be kicked out from search engines. SEO can be divided into two main types which are on page and off page.
In the next chapter we will be discussing about both of these Onpage and Offpage Factors.
Thanks for the posts i enjoyed it.