How Does Google's Search Engine Work?

Each day worldwide, Google's search engine delivers over 3.5 billion search results. For Google, the numbers are not as important as the quality of each result. To ensure 3.5 billion quality results each day, Google uses a complex algorithm to sort and categorize hundreds of billions of web pages. 

Many valuable resources online attempt to explain the complexity of this process. Google has even posted a video online attempting to explain the process. Unfortunately, the video is an hour long. Below, Alex Stepman of SEO Sparta offers a summary of Google's video and answers the question: How Does Google Work?

Google's Search Engine: The Mission

Google organizes the world's information, making it universally accessible and helpful while delivering the highest quality search engine experience. 

How Does a Search Engine Work?

As noted above, Google's job is to sort and categorize the hundreds of billions of web pages on the internet. When we perform a search in Google, the search engine uses our query to find similar information, apply a filter, and deliver the most helpful information available at that time.

 First, the search engine downloads billions of pages of content, scans the language and creates a list of the words and pages where the query can be found, like the index of a book. 

For example, if you search for "lasagna," the word appears on 59,000,000 pages. When you type "lasagna" in the search bar, the search engine scans its database to uncover similar downloaded information. 

Second, the search engine orders this information on the SERP (search engine results page) with the most useful pages at the top and the less useful pages at the bottom. The "usefulness" (often referred to as "relevance") is based on Google's algorithm.

Many people searching for lasagna are interested in recipes. Some want nutrition information. However, a few people may be interested in learning about the life and research of Louis Lasagna, MD.

The search engine's software ranks the pages based on numerous on-page and off-page SEO factors, including your geolocation, recent page updates, links to and from the page, whether the word "lasagna" exists on the page's title, and whether the page contains images of lasagna.

The algorithm controls the ranking system. A search engine algorithm is a set of rules that determine where and how often a page is exposed in search results. Google's search algorithm delivers high-quality information based on the user's search queries. To Google, high-quality information means the text, images, videos, or ideas added to web pages for public use—content that website owners want people to find and read or watch and learn.

Spam Results in Search Engine

From Google's perspective, spam is low-quality content artificially boosted in search results. Typically, pages with spam content use artificial intelligence (AI) generated nonsense text, hidden keywords, and highjacked URLs. Google views spam as a never-ending game of cat and mouse. Because website owners are highly motivated to showcase websites on the first page of search results, spammers continue to innovate algorithm workarounds. Google often applies new algorithms to limit spam, but spammers adapt and evolve. To prevent spammers from abusing the algorithm and essentially breaking the search engine, the details of the algorithm and ranking system are not accessible to the public. 

Limiting spam is the main reason search engines change their algorithms so often. For example, spam accounted for 40% of all pages Google discovered in Europe last year, and 15% of queries discovered daily worldwide have never been seen by Google before. 

How Often Does Google Change its Search Engine Algorithm?

On average, Google changes its algorithm six times per day - roughly several thousand times per year. Before Google applies changes, it performs tests—about 200,000 - 300,000 tests. To launch a new algorithm, Google's engineers first need to prove the concept. The engineers decide what results to show based on search queries, but the proof of improvements comes from data. Perhaps due to these experiments, website owners often see fluctuations in website traffic from organic searches. 

Search Quality Evaluated Guidelines (Source)

From Google's perspective, websites that deserve good search results exhibit expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. The best way to impress Google is by presenting high-quality, informative, and relevant content and the best website performance. To keep search engine users happy, Google has strived to improve performance, ensuring the search engine delivers quality results faster and faster. 

How Does Google Deliver the Most Relevant Results in One Second or Less?

To deliver accurate results quickly (less than a second), Google uses data centers worldwide to keep downloaded information from the internet. Each data center contains identical information. When we perform a search, the search engine identifies our location and sends the query to the nearest data center for processing. The data center then searches its database and delivers the most accurate results. 

Many results in Google search are not relevant to the search query. Google's job is to deliver top-quality results from authoritative and trusted websites. To ensure these results are delivered with blasting speed and accuracy, Google attempts to understand the search query precisely the way it was asked.

How Does Google Determine the Authoritativeness of Websites?

Every website must explain who they are and where they find their information. If a webpage includes information from other sources, it must provide the source(s) of the information. 

How Does Google Deliver the Most Accurate Results?

As noted above, the search engine must understand what we are trying to find to deliver accurate results. To help us find the most accurate information possible, Google includes an autocomplete feature that suggests search queries. Many people believe that Google's autocomplete suggests the most frequently searched queries, but this is not always true. The goal of autocomplete is to deliver search results faster by making sure people find what they want without typing the search query entirely. However, this feature is regulated and does not work for many categories or industries. Google intentionally restricts some categories from participating in this feature, including adult websites, websites that sell and promote tobacco or drugs, violent content, and others. The autocomplete predictions are constantly updated to ensure Google's policies are not violated.

After processing the search query, Google may be unsure of the user's intent. Then Google suggests a clickable auto-correct feature or additional queries (in the form of links) at the bottom of the search result page. Understanding the intent of user search terms and phrases is more complex than finding similar terms on pages. To solve this problem, Google is utilizing the Natural Language Processing feature and launching a new project - BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representation of Transformers).

BERT is a new development of Natural Language Processing that uses machine learning to elevate search to a new level of success. BERT can understand language, recognize words and find similar words, and understand how words relate to each other. BERT also understands "STOP Words" and how they can help to narrow the search intent. 

While BERT is one of Google's projects, it is known as the BERT algorithm to marketing specialists. And just like other algorithms previously launched by Google, the intent is to improve search engine results, making them relevant and accurate.

Organic SEO with SEO Sparta

Are you looking for an SEO company that understands how to effectively promote websites with content optimized for Google? Contact SEO Sparta of Bucks County, PA.  

We combine traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--emphasizing natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective content marketing campaigns.

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If you are interested in transforming your website into a money-making tool or are interested in exploring opportunities to outperform your competition, we encourage you to contact SEO SPARTA.

We combine traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--emphasizing natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective marketing campaigns.

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