How Do Search Engines Work: 5 Important Lessons

How Do Search Engines Work: 5 Important Lessons

Welcome to Tips for Writing SEO Content, an unsponsored blog that provides genuine, no-fluff information to help SEOs of all levels, from beginners to the most experienced.  Now more than ever, writing quality content is imperative.  In this post, you will 5 important lessons about how do search engines work.

1. A Short History of Search Engines

Today, search engine algorithms are much more advanced and complicated than they were back in the 1980s; however, they operate under the same principle—help people find files quickly.  Several decades ago, programs like Archie and Veronica helped people find internet files.  They were breakthroughs in their day, but now, the only search engines that receive substantial volume are those on the World Wide Web.

2. Robots, or Spiders, Crawl Your Page

Spiders construct keyword lists that help search engines organize information.  This is known as Web crawling.  These lists are always being adjusted and added to.

3. Frequently Visited Pages are the First Indexed

A spider usually beings crawling the Web on high-traffic pages and servers.  The logic is, if a page receives more hits, the information is probably more useful and is therefore more important.  

4. Search Engine Spiders Crawl FAST

Search engines like Google use several spiders, as many as four, and can keep more than 300 Web connections open at once.  The Google system can analyze more than 100 pages each second.

5. Different Search Engines Work Differently

While Google analyzes pages for word patterns, locations of words and tags, others, like AltaVista, index every word, including articles like "a" and "an."  Although this provides a more “complete” analysis of a webpage, most web designers have a thorough knowledge of tags and therefore make this approach insignificant.

Here's a great video with more information on how do search engines work:

If you’re a beginning SEO, there’s much more to read and many videos to watch before you start producing quality content.  Stay tuned for more info on how do search engines work. how do search engines work how format website for search engines how search engines index pages how search engines operate stuff to know about search engines