What is a Search Engine? – SEO Basics Part 1
This is the first article in a series that will examine the most basic aspects of Search Engine Optimization and look at the ways it is changing. This series is meant for both beginning SEOer’s and those who simply want a better understanding of the internet. We will start at the most basic level, e.g. what is a search engine, and move up from there.
So then, what is a search engine?
A search engine is a program designed to help you find information stored on a computer system (e.g. World Wide Web or a personal computer). The search engine allows you to ask for content that meets specific criteria; that criterion is a word or phrase a user types in.
The three most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Google is by far the largest with more traffic than the other two search engines combined.
When you search any of these engines, you typically get 10 results back; this list of results is generally referred to as “first page” and is the most highly coveted position of any company doing business on the internet. To put it into perspective: coming up number one on the first page of Google can offer literally hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, in revenue to many industries. It is also extremely difficult to do so and requires the experience of seasoned SEO professionals.
On the right side of any page displayed by a search engine is a sponsored or advertised link. These results are the first ten from any query. These search engines also have a preferences link that allows you to change numerous elements, including how many results you want and a host of other choices.
Chances are you’ve already been to one or more of these engines. Visit them again and take a closer look.
Go into the help section, check out the site, visit the directories and play around–get to know these search engines because you’ll be visiting them a lot to check rankings, do research, analyze your competition and more.
Now, for the basics of what search engines are and how they work. There are different levels to that answer, but we’re going to keep it pretty basic for the moment.
In the physical world, a search engine is a large group of interconnected computers spread out in various online data centers.
The database or catalog of a website is called the index. Special software running on these computers calls them, follows the links and saves each page.
Each page is then added to their index or catalog of websites. Think of the index as a giant library with copies of all the different websites you can look through.
The software that goes on the web and finds websites is called a spider. The spider returns to each website on a regular basis, such as once a month, to look for updates and new information.
Currently our search engine picture looks like this:
We’ve got the web page that users see, with a search bar where they type in whatever they want to find.
We have a large network of computers that contains an index full of copies of all the different websites which can be returned as results to the user.
Thus, we’ve got a web page where users interact, with a simple text box totype in what they want to find. We’ve also got a large, up-to-date catalog of copied websites to look through and a software program called a spider continually visiting web pagesand updating the index.
What’s missing?
How does the search engine know what pages to return to the user? In the beginning, search engines used extremely simple algorithms. Algorithms are mathematical instructions for solving a task.
They relied heavily on basic concepts, such as how many times a word was repeated in a web page’s text.
For example, if you went to a search engine’s webpage, typed in the word “apple,” and clicked search, search engine software would search through the index looking for pages that contained apple and return the pages that used the word “apple” the greatest number of times.
The problem with these simple algorithms was they were easily manipulated by website owners who could add words repeatedly to their website, even though these words may have had little or nothing to do with the actual subject of their site.
Additionally, it was difficult for early search engines because they had little to no stability and results would vary greatly from month to month.
There were many competing companies and engines, but many of them didn’t have enough resources to function correctly. Thus, large portions of the internet weren’t indexed. As time passed, search engine algorithms gradually became more complex, and engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN gained a strong foothold.
Read Search Basics part 2: What is Search Engine Optimization?
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