Intrigued to see how Google provides you the best-suited search results? Want to know how does Google work? Then this post will unravel the mystery for you.
Google works as a consequence of various complex algorithms working together towards one single goal, i.e. making the user experience better.
As ranking higher in Google can make or break businesses, brands, businesses, and marketers frequently ask: How does work?
If one looks from the technical perspective, then the mechanism of how Google works may be overwhelming, because of its numerous complex algorithms, that we also mentioned above.
However, the good news is that one doesn’t need to go to such a deep level of complexity to understand how the search engine works. Once we are done with the explaining, you will realize that the process in which Google works is pretty simple!
First thing first, working of Google revolves around a few terms, and they are-
Key Terms around which Google Works
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Google Search Algorithms
A below-given image will describe the significance of these terms in understanding how does Google Work –
Let’s do the in-depth analysis of the role of crawlers in working of Google-
Role of Web Crawlers in the Working of Google
The first thing that Google does to produce results is using the web crawlers or spider bots to search the net for new information.
The web crawlers crawl all the website and web pages to analyze and assess-
- What your site is about
- Who you are
- What type of information you have on the website
This is done by taking note of text, the titles, and other content present on your website.
This helps Google to understand who might benefit from the information present in your site.
How Crawling Works?
The task of web crawlers may seem simple at first, but given the quantity of new data loaded every minute of the day, they perform a great feat.
In the first step, Google locates new data and stores in the database.
Once the identification of new data and its storage is done, the second step that Google does is figuring out how it will match this data with the search query and display it. You may be astonished to know that Google processes around 2 trillion-plus searches in a year!
Speed is one of the most important factors that make Google superior to all other search engines. It can understand, retrieve, rearrange, and present the data in a matter of seconds when a user searches for a query.
Besides this, the ability to identify and storing more data, displaying more relevant results along with the fast speed in each of said tasks differentiated Google from other search engines.
The real reason that Google was able to work better than other search engines was due to the fact that Google focused on producing relevant search results from the very first day of its inception.
Google pipeline adeptly connects users to the database of information in a well automated manner that you can see in the image below-
Let us now understand the terms like indexing, parsing, schedules that are used while explaining how does Google work-
Indexing
In the very beginning, we discussed Crawling and Indexing as the two primary procedures that Google follows. You must have seen in the first image as well that after crawling comes the indexing.
So what is the role of ‘Indexing’ here?
When a user searches for a query in Google, first of all, Google searches its existing database. This database is comprised of online content, which is known as an index.
This way, Google gives you search results instantly.
For having the most updated information in its index, Crawlers or Spiders are used. Crawling is done for adding new content in Google’s index. This enables Google to display the most updated pages relevant to the query of any user.
So, having a site in Google index is inevitable to let it rank in Google search results.
Parsing
You can understand parsing as the breaking of a data block into smaller forms with the help of a few fix rules, so the information associated with that data can be easily understood, managed, channelized and transmitted by Google.
Scheduling
In Google’s working, when indexing, crawling, parsing are being processed, Scheduling plays a key role by assigning a schedule to the different relevant and interlinked data.
Now let us understand the relations amongst these procedures-
Now, comes the question, how Google ranks different websites-
How Google Ranks Website
Next thing to understand ‘how does Google work’ is knowing how Google ranks a website.
When a user searches for a query in Google Search Box, Google will first scan its index and check for the relevant pages. Then Google will display those pages that are the best response to that query as per its algorithm.
Google PageRank decides the ranking of pages; however, it is one of the most hundreds of other factors.
Google PageRank
You can understand PageRank as an algorithm that gauges the significance of a page through the incoming links from external pages.
The importance of links in Google PageRank
The importance of links on Google came from a concept thought by the founders in their college days. They first considered how the authority of the academic papers was decided by the number of citations it received.
Then they applied the same concept of authority to websites, where a website’s authority was based on the number of backlinks it received. The backlinks were considered to be as proxy votes for the websites.
Further, it was not just the number of backlinks that a website had.
It was also other factors like the source of the backlinks and the relevance of the backlinks with the site content that were looked into.
With the continuous development of Google, we had come very far from the days when PageRank mattered.
Now the new updates in Google’s algorithm like RankBrain have occupied the center stage.
Google RankBrain Algorithm
Though RankBrain was first mentioned by Greg Corrado, Google’s Engineer only a few years ago, Google was working on the RankBrain technology for nearly about the past five years.
Google was developing RankBrain technology all these years to attain one of its key objectives.
This objective was the fulfillment of its need to efficiently handle the continuously increasing data on the internet and that too, without the loss of the accuracy.
The thing that enables RankBrain to achieve this great feat is artificial intelligence.
This secret ingredient allows RankBrain not only continue to learn, but it also improves Google’s ability to perform its work as the volume of data increases.
What does it mean?
It means that the more users put in their queries in the search engine and the more data is uploaded in the net regularly, it gets more efficient at its task of displaying accurate results.
As mentioned by Search Engine Land, Google might be using about 10000 sub-signals or variations to process and display data.
This number is huge, there is no doubt about it, but probably this is also the reason why the search engine can produce so relevant results.
Key Ranking Factors of RankBrain Algorithm
The two most important factors for Google when it comes to ranking are Links (Citation) and Words (queries and content).
These two factors are taken into account by the RankBrain, and connections are found between them.
This helps Google understand the context behind the question when people ask something.
Let’s take the help of an example to give you a clear idea of how Google produces such relevant results and how RankBrain works.
RankBrain Example
Say, you type in the word ‘Doctor’ in Google.
Now, how does Google figures out that you require information on a particular kind of doctor?
Well, it’s simple!
With the help of RankBrain, Google looks into its databases and also finds out all the searches you did in the past that may provide it the answer.
For example, you may have searched for skin remedies one week back, or you may have followed some page of beauty treatments in your social media account.
Google puts all these bits of information together to conclude that you must be looking for a skin doctor or dermatologist.
Therefore, based on this conclusion, it provides you the results.
Now, I hope the concept behind how does Google Work would have cleared to you. So, let us understand how you can rank better in Google search results-
How to achieve higher ranking?
People come to Google because they have a question.
When they have a question, it also means they are looking for an answer or a solution. The most important point that we can understand from this is- “people are looking for a solution, and whoever can give them that solution, they will be ranked higher.”
This is how Google works, and this how Google ranks web pages.
Therefore, if you want to rank higher, you must also aim to solve people’s problems better than the others.
How does Google Work to rank a Page Higher
When people ask Google a question, Google checks two things that help it to furnish good results.
These are the Meta description and the title tag of websites.
These same two elements also get displayed on the search result pages.
Therefore, another point to remember, to rank higher is that your title and the Meta description should represent the content of your website.
Another point that Google looks into is website usage data. Now, what is that?
Usability of your Content to Users
Well, website usage data tells Google how useful was your content to people.
To understand this, consider a scenario where one user searched for a florist and then clicked on a particular website. Now, if the website has dramatic and distracting page design, the user will get immediately turned off.
He exits and goes back to Google to start a new search.
In such a scenario, Google makes a note that the user was not happy with this website and hence tries to replace that website with some other one that had proven to provide value to users.
So, there are many factors upon which Google gauges the quality, relevance, authority of your content. Also, SEO compatibility of your content is one of the key factors that can improve the ranking of your site.
Role of SEO Compatibility Factors in Google Ranking
SEO factors can be divided into two different categories, and they are Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO. Let us have a close look upon both-
Onsite SEO Factors that affect Google Rankings
1) Optimization of Website
- Title tag
- Meta tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Meta keywords
2) Website Content
- Keywords in text
- Keywords in h1, h2, h3 tags
- Hyperlinks
- Image Descriptions, Image Title Tags, Image Alt Tags
3) Other Onsite Factors
- Search engine friendly URL
- Internal Links
- Outbound Links
- Bread Crumbs
- Sitemap
- W3 Code Validation
Offsite SEO Factors that affect Google Rankings
1) Links to your site
- From other websites
- From Social Media
- Business Directory Websites like Brabys, Google+ Business Page, Yellow Pages, Cylex, etc
2) Google+ Business Page
3) Product and Service Reviews
- Google Reviews
- Reviews from other sites like LinkedIn, Google+ Business page, Trip Advisor, Facebook, etc.
4) Social Media
- Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Twitter, YouTube, Vine, etc.
- Submission of your site to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
Wrapping it up!
Google might be technically very complex, but its ultimate aim is to help the masses.
If your website can serve that purpose, then you will gain good ranking and more traffic.
Now, we hope you would have understood how does Google work and how you use it for your benefits. In case of any query, feel free to ask us in the comments.
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