A Search Engine Explanation

August 24, 2009 | Filed Under SEO 
by Justin Harrison

With the widespread growth of the World Wide Web a specially designed tool to search through the information available was developed called the search engine. Using both algorithms and human editing the search engine will present results organized in a list consisting of web pages, information, links, and images. These results are viewed by the user after inputting a keyword or keyword phrase in to the search engines search field.

A search engine uses web crawling, indexing and searching in that order to provide the most accurate results related to a particular search. Search engines work by storing information about millions of web pages that can be retrieved at the request of its user. The web crawler, or “spider,” is used as an automated web browser. It follows every appropriate visible link. The web crawler analyzes the contents of each link to determine how the pages should be indexed.

Words found inside the pages are extracted from the description and allocated appropriate meta tags. Meta tags are also taken from contents the webpage itself to establish its relevance. Data from the sites is collected, indexed and stored to be retrieved when it’s needed.

The major search engines, such as Google amass all, or a miniature portion of the source page, or “cache”, in addition to information the web page offers. The search engine, AltaVista stores every word from every page. Storing the cache helps the search engine filter more easily because web pages are updated constantly. Google’s technique of indexing relieves the “linkrot” and allows users to be sure that the content they find in their search results will be up to date and utilizable. The cache can be helpful when obsolete information is removed. The cache allows users to find and recover information from archived sources.

Search engine users normally input a keyword or key phrase into the search field. The engine will search for their particular keyword and key phrase on the World Wide Web. The search engine index will provide an organized list of results with the best matched web pages. A short summary of each webpage describing the contents is provided along with the list.

The goal of major search engines is to supply the most relevant results. Not all sites with the requested keywords are relevant to the search. The search engines have used their spiders and indexing to filter out useless information. They generate their own system for analyzing a website for content.

Increasingly search engines have been implementing a page ranking system in which each page’s descriptions, keywords and content are scanned for relevancy to the inputted keyword and their index. Pages with higher ranks get seen more often at the top of the list. If a site is linked to a high ranking website that site receives a vote that increases its ranking.

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