{"id":320,"date":"2009-06-25T10:07:03","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T17:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.yola.com\/?p=320"},"modified":"2009-06-25T10:07:34","modified_gmt":"2009-06-25T17:07:34","slug":"how-do-search-engines-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/how-do-search-engines-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How do search engines work"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Oh Say Can You Be Seen: Get your site noticed (Part 2 of 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the first part, we introduced search engine optimization, and how it\u2019s vital for getting your website noticed by people who are searching for sites like yours.<\/p>\n

In this part, we\u2019ll show you how search engines work and how they rank their results.<\/p>\n

Take a spin with a search engine<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may wonder how search engines know what to display when you search for a given keyword or phrase, and how they know what order to present the results to the user. It all starts with a query, or keyword or phrase that users enter in search engine, like these:<\/p>\n

Search Engine Queries<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Search<\/p>\n

\"yahoo\"<\/p>\n

\"msn\"<\/p>\n

When you enter the keyword or phrase and start your search, the engine displays the results on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"serp\"
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A SERP presents two kinds of search results: paid search results, and organic search results. SEO focuses on the organic search results.<\/p>\n

The inner workings of a search engine<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of the major search engines have their own homegrown technology, or algorithm, for finding and ranking information, but they follow the same basic process:<\/p>\n

How Search Engines Work <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u00a0\"spider\"<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Search engines\u2019 servers have programs on their Web servers called \u201cspiders.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. These spiders crawl the Web to gather page content.<\/li>\n
  3. The spiders find pages on your website and collect information from the content and meta tags.<\/li>\n
  4. The search engines\u2019 spiders follow the internal links on your site and index its content.<\/li>\n
  5. When searchers search on a given keyword or phrase, results from the index are displayed in order of rank on the SERP.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Tune up your site to increase your ranking<\/strong><\/p>\n

    SEO means designing a new site or improving your existing site to improve your ranking, or position, in the organic search results. Making an SEO-friendly website involves these four parts:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n