Search engines use various techniques to find the most relevant pages for a user’s query. These include language detection, location and personalization, among other things.

Crawling, Indexing & Ranking

A search engine works by sending bots, or spiders, through the internet to collect information about web pages. The content is then stored in a repository called an index. The search engine then uses an algorithm to organize that data and rank pages based on a given query.

This process can take several days or even a few weeks, depending on the size and popularity of the page, so it is important to keep your website up-to-date. This is particularly important when you have new content.

When the bots crawl a website, they try to understand the content by using ‘keywords’, or words that people might use when searching for information on that topic. This helps the search engine understand what your site is about, and improves your chances of getting found for the right searches.

Indexing & Arranging the Words on a Webpage

Once the bots have crawled a web page, they use artificial intelligence to identify where the words are located and how they should be arranged within the index. This is known as ‘indexing’ and it ensures that the most relevant content appears first in the search results for a particular query.

The algorithm is continually being refined and revised. It takes into account hundreds of factors or signals, including keyword density, speed and links to determine the order in which pages should appear in the search results.

During this process, search engines can also learn from their crawling and indexing activities and make changes to how they organize the words on web pages. This can help prevent what is called ‘keyword stuffing’ (i.e. putting too many keywords on a web page), which can negatively affect a sites rankings.

Natural Language Processing

When you search for information using a search engine, the algorithm tries to understand your query by rewriting it. This is done via a process called natural language processing, or NLP, which is a form of machine learning. It can read your query and translate it into a term that matches the search engine’s index, and correct misspellings.

This rewritten query is then used to find web pages that match the rewritten query, and display them in a list of results on the search engine’s homepage. This list of results is called the SERP.

In some cases, a search result may be an image or a video instead of a web page. This is a new search format that some major search engines are offering, and it represents a more nuanced approach to search.

Using more and different keywords is another way to increase your search’s accuracy. This is a good technique for finding more relevant information, but it can be hard to implement and requires a lot of time.

If you want to narrow your results, you can use the OR operator between your keywords. This will only find information that contains both of your keywords, ensuring that you get the most relevant results possible.