Part 2: How Search Engines Work

Step 1: The Spider Crawls the Web
The “spider” is like a robot web browser. It visits your web site link by link and remembers the text, photos, etc. on the web site. The spider gives the information it found to the engine.

Step 2: The Engine Crunches the Spider's Data
The engine takes what the spider found and organizes it. Understanding how the engine organizes this data is the key to bettering your search engine rankings. The result of the “crunching” is something called an Index. Search engines change its process from time to time– that's why nobody can claim to “guarantee” placement. Competing search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, have a different methodology as to how their engines work.

Step 3: Users “Query” the Search Engine
We ask the search engine a question by specifying keywords or phrases. The Engine looks up which pages best fit the query in its index, and sorts them by relevance. The more accurate and reliable the search engine, the more people will trust it and return to use it.

Content provided by Dan Purcell of Danemco LLC www.danemcoweb.com