Google Search: How The Search Giant Works

Google and the Internet continue to be a similar thing for the majority of people even today. Every second million of searches take place…do you know what makes it possible?

We know and in this blog post, we will share with you the insights about the way Google Search works!

You may be searching something everyday on Google and never gave a thought to how it happens. It’s acceptable…but don’t you want to know? We bet you do and this post will help you understand the process in detail. So no more Google mysteries or scratching heads thinking what on earth Google considers when it comes to search! Here we will discuss in detail the three stages of Google Search – Crawling & Indexing, Algorithms, and Spams.

 

1. Crawling & Indexing

Not even millions or billions, but the search on Google happens in trillions! A query starts earlier than something is searched, where the process of crawling and indexing the hundreds of thousands of documents continues.

 

Let’s get the facts straight…

Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to more than 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.

 

How It Works…

Well well… these are the two founding processes that make it possible to collect and arrange all the info on the world wide web in order to bring only the most meaningful and relevant results matching your search query. Google’s index range is more than 100 million gigabyte and the credit goes to the 1 million hours spent in computing to build it.

The process is simple. The search giant first finds the information with the help of crawling and then organizing is done by indexing them. Check out the detailed info below.

 

Find Info With The Help Of Crawling

Also known as web crawlers, these are used to find publicly available pages. This software go through the web pages, follow the links on these pages, and ultimately fetch data back to Google servers.

For this purpose, it uses past crawls and sitemaps. Attention is paid to the new websites or modifications in existing sites as well as dead links. Everything from listing the sites to crawl, how often to crawl them, and what numbers of pages to fetch out of each website. Note that Google NEVER accepts any kind of payment for crawling a particular site more than others.

 

Organize This Info With Indexing

After the info is crawled from different web pages across the web, now comes the turn for organizing this fetched data. The web works more like a public library where there’s no filing system but the continuous addition of new books. During crawling, Google collects web pages and on the basis of their relevancy, it creates an index. After this, you come to see the search results when you enter a query.

From a heading to a single word written on a particular page, Google keeps the record of every info from the most basic level and then with the help of algorithms, it finds the results according to your search query.

That’s where the whole process becomes all the more complex. There would be thousands of pages with the same name yet Google won’t show you that many when you type it, for example, Apple. You might be looking for anything on Apple like images, videos, or info. Here Google algorithms work differently and using its Knowledge Graph, it surpasses keyword matching to bring better results from the pages that may be useful to you.

 

2. Algorithms

It’s obvious that when you search on Google, you want the results not a pile of documents or web pages threw over you at a time. This is where algorithms prove to be useful by surfing through clues so that they bring back only the most relevant results matching your search query.

Algorithms can be expressed as computer (automated) process and formulas that accept your input (search query) and bring you back the suitable results. In the present time, Google’s algorithms depend on over 200 unique factors (otherwise clues) which are responsible for estimating what the user wants.

The clues can be anything from the keywords or content written on the website, how updated the content is, your location, etc. Under Google Search Projects, the company works with more than 21 projects to help the search process and the results pages as well. The technology behind all this math is constantly updated and innovated to provide better results and search experience to the user.

A new algorithm is made from a simple idea on how to enhance search. Using data-driven approach, all proposed algorithms then go through deep quality testing and analysis before getting finally released.

Sometimes, these are released as a testing in beta phase to know the reaction and results.

 

3. Spams

Google is no exception from spam and every day, millions of spams are created and added to the web. The company aims to fight spam with a mix of advanced computer algorithms and manual techniques. Spam sites, as you may know, try to outscore the web with black hat techniques. Spam sites can be in different in appearance, size, and shape. In order to top the search results, they often do keyword stuffing and uploads invisible text to the screen. The result…the relevant ones get lagged behind and users compromise useless results for their queries.

There are more than 10 types of spam as per Google, but fortunately, Google is able to identify most of the spams and ban or demote it automatically for using the tricks. Apart from the automated ways, the company also fights spam manually by reviewing sites.

 

Alerting the Website Owners…

Whenever an action is taken manually on a website, Google notifies the site’s owner regarding the issues so that they can take measurable action to fix them. When site owners do not optimize in spite of warnings, then Google finally demotes them.

 

Feedback

Google welcomes feedback from site owners when a notification is sent to them. As soon as the changes are made and issues are fixed, they can request Google to reconsider their website for ranking. This process is ongoing and handled manually. If you look at the past reports, then the majority of sites submitted for reconsideration were actually affected manually with spam activities. They can be suffering anything from the traffic flow to algorithmic change and technical glitches which prevent Google to access the content on these sites.

 

Summary…

All in all, Google makes every possible effort behind the curtains to keep the search process as smooth and relevant as possible for users across the globe. The combination of innovative algorithms and manual reviewing makes it possible for the search giant to maintain the web of queries and answers. Even when there are so many details available on the way search works, it’s still only an estimate of the real factors that Google considers. Yet if you are a website owner, you can anyway take care of what Google doesn’t want you to do!