What is a Search Engine? – In this article I am going to describe what is a search engine.
You will learn what is a search engine, how it works and how you can use this to your advantage.
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What is a Search Engine?
A search engine is a large database made of web pages and resources like image, video and audio files.
Google is the most widely-popular and used search engines. Other search engines you might know are Yahoo!, Bing, DuckDuckGo.
How Does a Search Engine Work?
Search engines have two main functions:
- Crawl and index web pages and resources
- Rank and return web pages and resources (for a given search query)
How Does a Search Engine Rank a Web Page?
Search engines follow a number of rules for ranking web pages and resources. These rules are called ranking factors.
Each search engine uses its own ranking factors, although many of them overlap (for example, the title tag).
The combination of these ranking factors results in the ranking of a web page for a given search query.
The ranking doesn’t happen in real time but it’s regulated in the database through an algorithm.
How Many Ranking Factors Does Google Have?
Google has +200 ranking factors, which can lead up to +10,000 combinations.
Some ranking factors are more important than others, which means they have more or less influence than others on the ranking of a page.
Why Do Some Web Pages Rank Better than Others?
Search engines rank web pages based on how relevant their content is for a given keyword search and how optimised for search engines they are (= how compliant they are with their ranking factors).
Google also uses factors related to quality of the content and overall page experience.
What Does It Mean that a Page is Optimised for Search Engines?
It means that the web page is compliant with a number of search engine rules (ranking factors).
This is generally the result of some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) work.
Related Articles
- What is Onpage SEO?
- Google Search Algorithm Core Update (December 2020)
- Page Load Speed Stats in 2020
Sources
- Featured Image: Duncan Meyer on Unsplash
- Wikipedia: Search Engine
